First time salt questions

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

Your lighting is fine. You could live with just the MH and be fine (and add one or two actinics for asthetics - for looks).

DSBs are fine as long as you don't treat them as self-sustaining systems. They need maintainance every so often. They need lots of critters to stir the sand and keep it alive. However, DSBs are far from natural since our tanks are too small to sustain DSBs for very long periods of time. That's why DSBs rarely work in small tanks and they need to be refilled with critters every so often.

BBs are one of the oldest techniques - predates plenums. The idea there is that its easy to spot fish poop and ditrus - so you can vacumm it right away and remove the waste product before it becomes nitrates. The filtration is done through other means such as live rocks, skimmers and other means.

Get a skimmer - the big skimmers from coralife are better deal than remora(prism are a waste of money in my opinion). Its only $100 - nothing compared to what you'll spend on corals, fish and animals for your DSB.

- Victor.