Hi Tech or Low Tech... My thoughts for the NewFolks

[Harry_Y]

When I first got into this hobby over 20 years ago it was far different than it
is today. Pretty much things were done Low tech, but they worked and with
a bit of care we had some nice aquariums.

Now fast forward to today, we have controllers, and all the fancy equipment,
and for someone new to the hobby it can be a wonder as to what do I need
to get into this. Well that depends on who you ask. If you ask the person
selling the equipment they may tell you that you need a lot more than you
really do. So I’ll try to pass on a little bit of my experiences (and hopefully
save you a little money). I have to admit, I got caught up in the bigger is
better a bit as well, but lately I have been thinking about it myself.


So let’s look at this.

Aquarium:
I would say get the biggest you can get as a larger aquarium is a bit more
forgiving. Personally a 75 gallon is the smallest I would ever go, it really is
not much bigger than a 55 and the extra room is nice.

I would strongly suggest a drilled tank with a sump, I’ve had both and I was far
happier with a drilled tank since it lets you hide all the equipment out of sight.


Heaters:
We need to heat the water so get quality heaters (don’t Skimp here), you
may notice I said Heaters. I have found it is better to break up your heating
into smaller chunks as it gives a bit of protection. If you have one large
heater it gets stuck on you will easily over heat your tank and if it dies you have
no backup. On my system I use Five 200 watt heaters instead of One 1000 watt one.


Lighting:
My personal favorite is T5, The bulbs seem to last the longest, and have a
wide selection to get the look you want. Metal Halides are also very nice,
but they run hot and from my understanding need to be changed more often.

Personally I would stay away from Power compacts as from my experience;
the bulbs don’t last as long and not as bright as T5.


Flow:
Depending on what you are keeping will determine the flow you need, but
typically you want a lot of flow. I run about 25 times my tank volume.

I currently run some fancy Tunze pumps but to be honest I think a modded
Maxi-Jet or a Hydor-Korola would be just as good and at a lower price.


Filtration:
Pretty much you will want a good quality skimmer that is correctly rated for
your tank; to big can almost be as bad as too small. But beware many
skimmer manufactures underrate their skimmers.

You will also want some good porous live rock, it’s not weight but surface
area, and the more porous the better.

I would skip all the UV Sterilizers, Ozone Units etc.


Timers and controllers:
I only started using a controller in the past few years; I had used timers and
they worked just fine. The controllers just make it a bit easier. So if you’re
just starting out you can skip the controller and put that money towards
other things like corals and fish.


Water:
I have setup aquariums with Tap water, Filtered, and RO/DI Water and
without a doubt the best is RO/DI. Less junk in the water meant an easier
startup right from day one. I would strongly suggest getting a good RO/DI
unit. Mine is rated 150 gallons per day; it seems like a lot until you find that
you need to make a lot of water quick.


I am not an expert by any stretch, and I am still learning every day,
But hopefully this info will help you enjoy your aquarium.

And please feel free to add to this to help the new people off to a great start.




.

 

[beaslbob]

And here is my low tech advice for both Fw and reef tanks.

Start the tank with plant life then do the rest.

With reef tanks that usually means macros like chaeto in a refugium.

what happens is the plant life conditions the tank IMHO much better than any man made devices. And the tank is much more stable and easier to maintain.


my .02

 

[starfish]

The nice thing about our hobby is there is room for everybody because you do not have to do it just one way. Low tech runs just as good as the hi-tech tanks with all the bells and whisltes they just take more dilligence in keeping them up but I have always run low tech since the mid 70's and have had little or no problems. So our hobby is one everyone can enjoy whether you have lots of money to spend on all the hi-tech devices to auto mate the tank or a beer budget we can all enjoy our saltwater. There is a niche' somewhere for everyone.

It has certainly come a long way since the early days. I think the greatest improvement is lighting. It has probably made keeping saltwater more affordable more than anything else.

 

[Hahnmeister]

I suggest that new reefers stick to 'low tech' for several reasons. For instance, daily calcium/alk dosing gives a real 'hands on' approach to upkeep of chemistry that those who go right for the automated systems wont develop an intuitive understanding of.

My list would be as follows:
1. A drilled tank w/ overflows. Size of this isnt so important, but I would suggest something with longer or shallower proportions. A 55g is good, 75g as well. IMO, success is more likely with a 6' tank though, like a 125g... if you can afford it. The upcharge is minimal for a 125g, and the length will allow you to house some very key fish that will help with upkeep better than inverts, like tangs. Providing good flow is easier in longer tanks as well (vs. a cube).

2. two heaters of reliable make/brand. Ebo? Maybe. I had a very high failure rate with their TS line actually. I say two of smaller wattage so that if one fails, you are likely able to catch it before it melts your tank.

3. T5's for now. By 2011 I would imagine LED's will be the way to go. Right now, if the Cree XP-G's come out in fixture form, getting a combo of them in cool white with T5's to suppliment the actinic/blue is really the way to go IMO. For a 4' tank, 54 watt T5's with individual parabolic reflectors provide great bang for the buck, and dont come with the mounting drawbacks and hazards of metal halide. IMO, metal halide is just about dead. If it weren't for that Ushio/BLV/Giesemann 14,000K bulb, I would abandon it all together... and even then, depending on what I think of these XP-G's, I might take that back as well.

4. Flow: prop pumps in the tank are the way to go. Low wattage, high flow. Several cheaper makes have come out as well. If you can afford the DC/speed controlled ones, go for it. Hydor, Tunze, VorTech, SEIO Polario... you name it. Alternating flow is a good thing, but not a must.

5. Sump: If you go low tech, go large. As large as possible. Im not even talking about the refugium here... Im talkin' just a water holding area. A big blank area with nothing in it... maybe a pump or two, and maybe your skimmer goes in here. A large sump means a stable system. If you can make a seperate section that allows the system to function w/o this area, all the better... A 'dual sump' setup would go something like this: for say, a 125g, you could have a sump as small as a 40L IMO (I did). This sump could also be another 125g, but either way, having a good 60-100g stock tank or water barrel plumbed into the system is a good thing. If your heaters go out of whack, if some chemistry level starts to go off, etc... that extra volume will likely save your neck. It also makes for a nice area to add your buffers (so you dont melt the corals or something), and if you make it so you can bypass it, its also a great way to do mandatory large water changes. You can set this part to fill, then mix the salt and let it sit for a day, then put that area back into the system. If you are one of the lucky ones... you might be able to have a finished area in your basement to keep the tank, with the backside of the tank being on a divider wall that can seperate the nice area of the basement from a 'sump room' and house the whole thing in the basement, with minimal height to pump the sump water back to the tank. This helps keep the whole system cool in summer, and should you ever spill, or have a flood... its all on concrete with a floor-drain.

A refugium is nice, if nothing else, for the extra nutrient export. Chaeto is perhaps the best macro algae for this along with some sand and rock, but there is a red grassilaria macro that grows as if its a dense steel-wool pad... called 'tang-heaven' its worth a try. It grew like a weed for me, and tangs love to eat it. Otherwise, as an alternative, you can just use a 'dark' fuge loaded with sand, or maybe just live rock. This area will grow pods like mad if left unlit, and pods eat detritus, so its a win-win. Not needing another light for the sump is nice as well.

6. Skimmers are not needed, but sure do make life easier! I would say that if you plan on keeping stony corals, they are pretty much a given to keep the ORP and oxygenation up if nothing else. As for types... well, I am partial to the cones after owning them. I also prefer bubble plates. But you dont need to buy a top of the line skimmer to get the job done. I think there are many ok skimmers out there, but now that the 'high efficiency' skimmers are found at almost every price point, I would strongly suggest them over anything else. Skimmers that develop a thick foam head of fine micro-bubbles without alot of turbulence are what I mean... most often these type of skimmers run on a pump like the Sicce PSK2500, but sometimes on Laguna pumps and Eheims as well. CoralVue, MSX, I-tech, Warner Marine, etc... all make some low end skimmers with high end results. The Sicce isnt my favorite pump for alot of reasons, but I respect the fact that it is cheap and efficient and it gets the job done, even if it fries after a year or so, or the mesh is hard to redo, or it starts to sputter every time you restart it. I would still take one of these over an ASM, ER, DAS, etc. IMO, Sedra, Gen-X, Oceanrunner & Octopus turbine type of skimmer pumps aren't worth the wattage they use. 'nuf said... I dont want to rant too much and get off track. My 'rule of thumb' for skimmers is 4lph of air per gallon of display volume for a lightly stocked tank. 6lph/gallon for a medium load, and up to 8lph/gallon for a heavily stocked tank (Im talkin a dozen or so fairy wrasses in a 125g with 3-4 tangs, and about 6-8 'other' fish like a cardinal or two, a few gobies, maybe a watanabe angel and a royal gramma in a SPS/LPS dominated tank that you can barely fit any more corals into).

7. Where? IMO, the best place for a new tank is the basement. If you dont have a nice basement to put a tank in, then perhaps running the tank on a first floor, and the sump in the basement is worth considering. It allows you easier access to the sump if its in the basement because you can put it up on a bench. You can make a mess and have a utility sink nearby. You can leave crap all over and not have to clean up... EVER. The only downside is that the return pump will need more wattage for the back-pressure of pumping from about 3' up to about 8' up. This really isnt too bad, and a well-matched pressure pump still only needs to provide about 2x the tank volume per hour (minimum 1.5x, but anything more than 3x is not needed... more than 5x is pretty much just wasted). You DONT need alot of flow going through your sump to have everything in it working properly. The primary flow in the tank is better done with low-wattage powerheads and prop pumps anyways. If you put the sump in the basement, it also helps with cooling of the tank in summer. If things get hot, simply blowing a table-fan over the top of the sump will likely take care of any problems.

8. Automation is needed for some things. A full blown controller isnt needed, but putting the lights on some heavy duty digital timers is a good idea. Heavy duty ones, or rather ones rated to work with inductive loads are needed when used with ballasts for T5 and halide as well as larger pumps since regular timers can get 'stuck' and even catch on fire when trying to turn on/off a high wattage halide or T5 setup. I have seen it happen first hand to some who ignored this advice at first... one guy wired up his 3x250wattHQI ballasts through one wall timer (mounted in a wall switch box, the wiring was for 20A and everything else was able to take it). After turning on and off the system a few times, the wall around the wall plate caught on fire. Yeah, they cost $30 each rather than $20, and they arent as easy to find... but dont skimp here.

Also, IMO, an auto-top-off is really something you NEED to have. Unless you have a huge system volume, and you can manually top it off every day. Otherwise, it goes with my other MVPOE (most valuble piece of equipment), an RO unit. A good Reverse Osmosis unit capable of at least 30 gallons per day, but more like 60gpd is not an option, but a standard pieve of equipment in this hobby unless you happen to have some rare soft and pure water available... not likely. To store RO water, you will need some sort of float valve in a storage container (the bigger the better, another argument for a basement sump area). I would suggest a 55g drum as a storage container... its always good to have alot of RO water on hand for whatever reason. No matter what size RO you have, you dont want to have to wait for it to fill just to get how ever many gallons you need. And, at this point, you really are just one step away from just having an automatic top-off system anyways, so why not. In the future, routing some or all of the top-off water through a kalk-mixer might help you with the dosing.

9. Dosing: Randy's 2-part, balling, etc... a good way to start. From there you can decide if you want to upgrade to an automated system with a CO2 based Calcium Reactor, or a 2-part doser. For the most part, in the start, with a large sump, just rely on LARGE water changes to make sure everything is up to what it should be, and only dose calcium chloride and alkalinity buffer. Possibly look into dosing Mg, like with mag-flakes or something like that. Other things to look into in the future will be K, Fe, Iodine, or maybe even carbon (sugar, ethanol, etc)... but you will know when the time is right to start looking into things like Prodibio, Zeovit, or Ultralith (to name a few, nott hat there arent others like Kent). Otherwise, do water changes like mad, feed lots of food, and the rest should fall into place. By 'mad', I mean an average of 50-100% per month of the display volume.

 

[johnanddawn]

this is a nice thread - here is my humble addition to the good thoughts above
i recently started over (about 10 months ago), and after more then 15 years of reefing experience with a standard 125 (and countless other tanks through the years) these were the biggest issues i wanted to fix
key points:
1) tank - my new one is 36x36x24. shape is everything, choose a nice rr tank. cubic or wide tanks are more then just cool they are functional - leave the long narrow rectangles to the fish people
2) flow - gyre type flow pattern with placement of pumps designed into the reefscape, too many people think about where they will put the power heads after the rock is in place. my flow design came first and the rock was built around it, way too few do this even today when we should know better. flow is paramount and needs to be done right
3) lighting - T5, more choices, better color, "greener" in electric consumption
4) sump - in basement, summer cooler, larger sumps plumbed together, more volume
5) scape - open yet has a large surface area done with caves, overhangs, and 6 - 12" all the way around front, back, and sides for flow, coral placement, and fish hiding spots
6) corals - choice pieces well placed with growth, shape, color, and aggresion all considered. buy from reputable dealers, hobbiest and the best source club members. avoid the latest fad corals and choose hardy, reasonably priced corals. having a good local club really helps you get nice corals at fair prices and avoid the internet hype and shipping.
7) ease - 2 part, kalk, bacteria and a good skimmer - kiss - there is no better rule to avoid that equipment failure disaster
8) nature over technology - cheato, cryptic, detritus settling areas all included in sump
9) display bb so no sand to maintain. i've had dsb, ssb, and bb tanks over the years and bb is just the easiest by far to maintain. if you want sand well... to each there own
10) fish - functional as well as nice looking combos. build a community of hardy fish, nothings worse then spending big money on a fish just to have it die or worse yet infect others with ich or whatever. remember stress is the leading cause of fish loss, so make sure your choices get along - research before purchase not after

hmm what else ??? i know there is more but that would be where i started

my build thread if it helps:
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f52/my-135-rimless-29248.html

 

[Harry_Y]

I'm glad to see others joining in with their experiances
(I'm Learning too)

 

[tangdiver]

99% I agree on, so this is the way to do it. Should write a beginner book.

But well written and easy to read, I wish I had a years ago, lot less $$ loss.

I suggest that new reefers stick to 'low tech' for several reasons. For instance, daily calcium/alk dosing gives a real 'hands on' approach to upkeep of chemistry that those who go right for the automated systems wont develop an intuitive understanding of.

My list would be as follows:
1. A drilled tank w/ overflows. Size of this isnt so important, but I would suggest something with longer or shallower proportions. A 55g is good, 75g as well. IMO, success is more likely with a 6' tank though, like a 125g... if you can afford it. The upcharge is minimal for a 125g, and the length will allow you to house some very key fish that will help with upkeep better than inverts, like tangs. Providing good flow is easier in longer tanks as well (vs. a cube).

2. two heaters of reliable make/brand. Ebo? Maybe. I had a very high failure rate with their TS line actually. I say two of smaller wattage so that if one fails, you are likely able to catch it before it melts your tank.

3. T5's for now. By 2011 I would imagine LED's will be the way to go. Right now, if the Cree XP-G's come out in fixture form, getting a combo of them in cool white with T5's to suppliment the actinic/blue is really the way to go IMO. For a 4' tank, 54 watt T5's with individual parabolic reflectors provide great bang for the buck, and dont come with the mounting drawbacks and hazards of metal halide. IMO, metal halide is just about dead. If it weren't for that Ushio/BLV/Giesemann 14,000K bulb, I would abandon it all together... and even then, depending on what I think of these XP-G's, I might take that back as well.

4. Flow: prop pumps in the tank are the way to go. Low wattage, high flow. Several cheaper makes have come out as well. If you can afford the DC/speed controlled ones, go for it. Hydor, Tunze, VorTech, SEIO Polario... you name it. Alternating flow is a good thing, but not a must.

5. Sump: If you go low tech, go large. As large as possible. Im not even talking about the refugium here... Im talkin' just a water holding area. A big blank area with nothing in it... maybe a pump or two, and maybe your skimmer goes in here. A large sump means a stable system. If you can make a seperate section that allows the system to function w/o this area, all the better... A 'dual sump' setup would go something like this: for say, a 125g, you could have a sump as small as a 40L IMO (I did). This sump could also be another 125g, but either way, having a good 60-100g stock tank or water barrel plumbed into the system is a good thing. If your heaters go out of whack, if some chemistry level starts to go off, etc... that extra volume will likely save your neck. It also makes for a nice area to add your buffers (so you dont melt the corals or something), and if you make it so you can bypass it, its also a great way to do mandatory large water changes. You can set this part to fill, then mix the salt and let it sit for a day, then put that area back into the system. If you are one of the lucky ones... you might be able to have a finished area in your basement to keep the tank, with the backside of the tank being on a divider wall that can seperate the nice area of the basement from a 'sump room' and house the whole thing in the basement, with minimal height to pump the sump water back to the tank. This helps keep the whole system cool in summer, and should you ever spill, or have a flood... its all on concrete with a floor-drain.

A refugium is nice, if nothing else, for the extra nutrient export. Chaeto is perhaps the best macro algae for this along with some sand and rock, but there is a red grassilaria macro that grows as if its a dense steel-wool pad... called 'tang-heaven' its worth a try. It grew like a weed for me, and tangs love to eat it. Otherwise, as an alternative, you can just use a 'dark' fuge loaded with sand, or maybe just live rock. This area will grow pods like mad if left unlit, and pods eat detritus, so its a win-win. Not needing another light for the sump is nice as well.

6. Skimmers are not needed, but sure do make life easier! I would say that if you plan on keeping stony corals, they are pretty much a given to keep the ORP and oxygenation up if nothing else. As for types... well, I am partial to the cones after owning them. I also prefer bubble plates. But you dont need to buy a top of the line skimmer to get the job done. I think there are many ok skimmers out there, but now that the 'high efficiency' skimmers are found at almost every price point, I would strongly suggest them over anything else. Skimmers that develop a thick foam head of fine micro-bubbles without alot of turbulence are what I mean... most often these type of skimmers run on a pump like the Sicce PSK2500, but sometimes on Laguna pumps and Eheims as well. CoralVue, MSX, I-tech, Warner Marine, etc... all make some low end skimmers with high end results. The Sicce isnt my favorite pump for alot of reasons, but I respect the fact that it is cheap and efficient and it gets the job done, even if it fries after a year or so, or the mesh is hard to redo, or it starts to sputter every time you restart it. I would still take one of these over an ASM, ER, DAS, etc. IMO, Sedra, Gen-X, Oceanrunner & Octopus turbine type of skimmer pumps aren't worth the wattage they use. 'nuf said... I dont want to rant too much and get off track. My 'rule of thumb' for skimmers is 4lph of air per gallon of display volume for a lightly stocked tank. 6lph/gallon for a medium load, and up to 8lph/gallon for a heavily stocked tank (Im talkin a dozen or so fairy wrasses in a 125g with 3-4 tangs, and about 6-8 'other' fish like a cardinal or two, a few gobies, maybe a watanabe angel and a royal gramma in a SPS/LPS dominated tank that you can barely fit any more corals into).

7. Where? IMO, the best place for a new tank is the basement. If you dont have a nice basement to put a tank in, then perhaps running the tank on a first floor, and the sump in the basement is worth considering. It allows you easier access to the sump if its in the basement because you can put it up on a bench. You can make a mess and have a utility sink nearby. You can leave crap all over and not have to clean up... EVER. The only downside is that the return pump will need more wattage for the back-pressure of pumping from about 3' up to about 8' up. This really isnt too bad, and a well-matched pressure pump still only needs to provide about 2x the tank volume per hour (minimum 1.5x, but anything more than 3x is not needed... more than 5x is pretty much just wasted). You DONT need alot of flow going through your sump to have everything in it working properly. The primary flow in the tank is better done with low-wattage powerheads and prop pumps anyways. If you put the sump in the basement, it also helps with cooling of the tank in summer. If things get hot, simply blowing a table-fan over the top of the sump will likely take care of any problems.

8. Automation is needed for some things. A full blown controller isnt needed, but putting the lights on some heavy duty digital timers is a good idea. Heavy duty ones, or rather ones rated to work with inductive loads are needed when used with ballasts for T5 and halide as well as larger pumps since regular timers can get 'stuck' and even catch on fire when trying to turn on/off a high wattage halide or T5 setup. I have seen it happen first hand to some who ignored this advice at first... one guy wired up his 3x250wattHQI ballasts through one wall timer (mounted in a wall switch box, the wiring was for 20A and everything else was able to take it). After turning on and off the system a few times, the wall around the wall plate caught on fire. Yeah, they cost $30 each rather than $20, and they arent as easy to find... but dont skimp here.

Also, IMO, an auto-top-off is really something you NEED to have. Unless you have a huge system volume, and you can manually top it off every day. Otherwise, it goes with my other MVPOE (most valuble piece of equipment), an RO unit. A good Reverse Osmosis unit capable of at least 30 gallons per day, but more like 60gpd is not an option, but a standard pieve of equipment in this hobby unless you happen to have some rare soft and pure water available... not likely. To store RO water, you will need some sort of float valve in a storage container (the bigger the better, another argument for a basement sump area). I would suggest a 55g drum as a storage container... its always good to have alot of RO water on hand for whatever reason. No matter what size RO you have, you dont want to have to wait for it to fill just to get how ever many gallons you need. And, at this point, you really are just one step away from just having an automatic top-off system anyways, so why not. In the future, routing some or all of the top-off water through a kalk-mixer might help you with the dosing.

9. Dosing: Randy's 2-part, balling, etc... a good way to start. From there you can decide if you want to upgrade to an automated system with a CO2 based Calcium Reactor, or a 2-part doser. For the most part, in the start, with a large sump, just rely on LARGE water changes to make sure everything is up to what it should be, and only dose calcium chloride and alkalinity buffer. Possibly look into dosing Mg, like with mag-flakes or something like that. Other things to look into in the future will be K, Fe, Iodine, or maybe even carbon (sugar, ethanol, etc)... but you will know when the time is right to start looking into things like Prodibio, Zeovit, or Ultralith (to name a few, nott hat there arent others like Kent). Otherwise, do water changes like mad, feed lots of food, and the rest should fall into place. By 'mad', I mean an average of 50-100% per month of the display volume.

 

[Harry_Y]

A good Book is The Conscientious Marine Aquarist.

Mabie slightly dated but still good info and a good read.