Lighting
Main tank is lit by a twin 150w Geissmann halide pendant with 2 actinic. The halides are on for 8 hours and the actinic for 14 hours.
I'm using 14,000 Kelvin bulbs (non branded)with normal light spectrum.
The sump is lit for 16 hours by single 100w household bulb - the macro algae likes this and even zoa's are growing! (I have subsequently installed an ARCPOD using 11w bulbs to save energy)
Water
Water is pushed round the tank in a number of ways and I believe this is critical to a quality setup. My old tank had dead spots and always got cyano build up in these areas. The main tank has two weirs at the back corners which ensure there is no surface scum to block the light. The water travels down the two waste pipes and enters the sump via a T joint. The sump return pump is rated at 3600 litres per hour so actual throughput is probably around 1500 litres due to head hight loss. This equates to four times the tank volume.
The first part of the water treatment is skimming, I'm using a V2 400 skimmer which does a very nice job removing the proteins. Water then passes through a live rock rubble section for additional filtration. The final cleansing section is the refugium, where excess phosphates are removed.
There are four BOYU powerheads in the main tank rigged up to a wave maker which ensures a good random flow. Each powerhead is rated at 5,000 litres per hour but only two are on at any one time. Therefore total 'flow' is around 12,000 litres per hour (sump return and powerheads)
FTS (Sept 09)
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