The most important build thread

Crustaceon · Feb 26, 2023

“Good Enough”. That should be our hobby’s new motto and I’ve been mulling this for months. Do I want to wade into the fray again? What I mean is, I read post after post about someone new to the hobby having difficulty because of the sheer volume of “advice” and the high expectations of “you buy this and you get this as a result” or “your tank has to be super clean and flawless in every way” or it won’t work. The reality is, we all have different ways of doing things to get to a good end result and I want to share how I achieved that with my anemone tank. This is going to be a LONG thread because i’m going to go over literally everything and not just equipment, critters and water parameters. I’m going to go over my day to day routine for this system and show you how I did it. I want you guys to have success too and hopefully you’ll get whatever tidbit of information you might be missing and fit that last puzzle piece that’s preventing you from having success. And yes, this will absolutely help you keep whatever corals you plan on keeping too. It’s all the same. I’ll start by posting one section per day so we can have a nice discussion in between.

Crustaceon · Feb 26, 2023

Section One: Equipment

For lighting, i’m running two viparspectra “165 watt” led fixtures. I haven’t done anything to them. They’re literally as-is out of the box so no lens changes, removals, etc. I’ve done that in the past and IMO, at the 16” installed height, I’m fine with the spread. PAR is 550 on top of the tank lids with a current setting of 5% white and 40% blue. I run them from 10am to 7pm. There is no ramping, etc.

I’m probably using a far bigger skimmer than I need, but I picked up the SWC skimmer used from a local reefer and it’s been great. I converted it to a newer psk pump and it’s an absolute monster. To be hones, I’d probably get a little better skimming using a smaller skimmer but I don’t seem to have excessive nutrient issues. I also only run this skimmer for 12 hours during the day with the hopes of allowing my rock flower anemones to spawn more successfully, so crazy skimming isn’t a high priority anyways.

For tank circulation, one AI Nero 3 set on its lowest speed is doing the job. Yes, that’s not a lot of flow and it absolutely doesn’t have to be. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’ll get into why that is on the day I cover maintenance.

My return pump is a simplicity dc pump. Don’t ask my how many gph because I forgot and I’m not going to look it up. I run it as slow as it’ll go anyways.

I run a siphon overflow on the system. EEEek!!! Cringe!!! “Why didn’t you drill your tank?!!” Because I didn’t want to, I didn’t have to and this is BY FAR the quietest way to drain water out of your tank and into a sump. And yes, I did modify it and that’s the key.

Here’s my little secret that every one of these single drain siphon overflow should come with: a second drain to handle a little bit of spillover from the primary siphon drain.

Notice where the water level is in the box. That’s how far that open secondary drain will allow it to slowly rise up and into. I add a few small holes to the inlet elbow to prevent it from going full siphon unless something clogs the primary drain. At that point under my testing, the water level in the box will rise to 1” over the elbow and will violently siphon until the water level drops below the secondary’s elbow.

Here’s another pro-tip for any full-siphon system. NEVER place the ends of your drains under water in your sump. This ensures the drains will always clear any trapped air and flow will remain consistent after a return pump shut down. I’ve heavily fail-tested this and it’s been extremely reliable while remaining extremely quiet. Make sure to leave 1/8-1/4” of spacing above your filter sock chamber’s height. I leave a little gap so a small percentage of water always bypasses the filter sock in order to guarantee that chamber height will never change.

As for ATO, I use a AutoAqua ATO with the automatic water change option which i’ll literally never use because I don’t trust it, lol. Here’s my custom “reservoir”.

Heating is handled by two BRS 300w titanium heater elements controlled by an ink bird controller. I like more heat rather than less and I’ve found it’s easier to keep temp more stable this way.

Last up, dosing. I use a Two Little Fishies KW 300 kalkwasser stirrer. It gets the job done and holds alk at a level so low it’ll scare most people here who don’t realize the ocean isn’t really at 9dkh. Just make sure to never put more than 1/4 of kalk in these things at a time and always have them drain into a high flow area of the sump or they won’t work very well, you’ll get disillusioned and will angrily switch to two part or all-for-reef before angrily trying kalk again.