[jthunder]

After posting a few questions already I have decided to post them all in one place to get some good input from the knowledgable canadian people here. It amazes me how different it is to source materials here than in the states like most of the DIY on RC.

Here is the plan, I would like to setup a 'small' propagation system on the cheap, that is I plan to DIY and cut corners where I can to save a few clams.

The basic concept is a shallow tray sized 48" x 36" x 12" Heigh. This will maximize the amount of light reaching the coral. The tray will also have a peice of material separating it into a raceway type system.

Water will enter and exit from the tray to a sump below from the same side of the tray. I would like to keep the number of bulkheads installed to 2, to save some plumbing cost.

The system will have approx 140 gallons of total water volume. The stand that will hold the tray and the sump below has already been built from 2x4's and plywood (it is square and level).

The lighting for the system will come from an old flourescent fixture aquired from a demo job. It is a 48" 4 bulb fixture with just simple white reflective inside. The ballasts are old and will be replaced by 2 four lamp F32T8 electronic ballasts overdriving x2 4 T8 6500k bulbs. This fixture will be suspended from the ceiling to approx 2" above the surface of the tray.

Filtration will be done by a refugium in the DIY sump in the bottom of the stand lit by some cheap HD compact flourescent floods. and also be suplimented with a DSB (and skimmer if need be). I hope to have approx 10x turnover for the water in the tray which equals 890-1000gph.


My questions:

the big one - a) For the tray should I; Construct it from acrylic (never done this before), buy a glass tank (quoted 450.00), buy a polyproplene tank (230.00) or????

b) What size of bulkheads should be used in the input output to allow for this 1000gph flow and gravity drain?

c) Will a skimmer be nessisary or will the fuge be sufficient for this (as I'm only growing coral and not feeding very much)

I would like to draw on anyones experiences with this and any advice for someone in the edmonton area.

Thanks

Mark