Reef Pilot's Undersea Oasis

[Reef Pilot]

They eat everything, pellet, flake, frozen, just like all the other fish. Having said that, I did have to train them in the QT, first frozen mysis, then freeze dried and finally pellets. But they are much easier to keep and hardier than a Copperband which I also had. And you can keep more than one in the same tank (unlike Copperbands). However, over time they did quarrel more and more, and finally separated them when I set up a 2nd tank downstairs.

[Reef Pilot]

It is a 30g acrylic sump, in the basement under the stairwell, just below the upstairs tank.



The drain goes into an input chamber with a couple baffles that holds a sponge filter and flows into the main chamber with the skimmer. The top does lift up, and I tried using a filter sock, but it was pita to clean all the time, and was much easier just to remove and squeeze out the sponge every few days. If the sponge plugs (as when away on vacation), it just lifts between the baffles and the water flows by.

The return pump was a Mag 18, and had to push water up about 12 feet or so, into the display tank upstairs. Needless to say, flow was considerably less than 1800 gph. I did measure it at the top once, and I think it was less than 200 gph at that point.

Initially there was no ATO, and had to manually top off the sump on a daily basis with RO water from a bucket. There was a line coming down from the RO (no DI) system upstairs under the kitchen sink, which was used to fill the top off bucket and the water change barrel. Needless to say, I did not like the constant attention this required, so I obtained a double float control from Canadian Springs (who maintained the RO system at the time) and connected it directly to the RO line to serve as my ATO. Worked pretty good and kept the water level constant for the skimmer. I honestly don’t know how the previous owner put up with the manual system for 10 years.

[Reef Pilot]

I could never find out exactly what brand name or model skimmer this was. No ID plate and could not find a good match with internet searches. Might have been partially DIY.



It was a dual beckett skimmer, with a gate valve outlet and a fine mesh cheese type cloth to catch the micro bubbles. The pump was a Sedra 7000 (700gph), hardly enough power to drive the two becketts. But it did produce some skimmate, and I had to occasionally empty the collection jug. What I discovered afterwards, when I took apart the pump for some cleaning, is that it had a pinwheel impeller with an air intake at the input. I guess between the pinwheel and the becketts, it did work, to some degree. Definitely not something you would ever buy off the shelf, though.

[Reef Pilot]

This is my tank overflow. Definitely no bean animal, herbie or durso... Just one drain at the bottom flowing down to the sump in the basement. No noise, though, but the flow is not that high. And the top of the overflow has a styrofoam cover and is inside a closed canopy. I clean the teeth at the top with a toothbrush every few months, to prevent any algae build-up. It's been this way for 13 years, and never a problem.

[Reef Pilot]

Right beside the sump, on the right, is a 1/3 hp chiller. It was driven by a Mag 5 (500 gph) in the sump. With the T5's and all the pumps, never needed a heater initially. But the chiller ran a lot.


Also in this pic, on the right, is my DIY carbon/gfo reactor which I added later. It is just an old Ro canister set that I converted by enlarging the ports to 3/8 lines to increase flow. The first canister is just a pre-filter, the 2nd for carbon, and the 3rd has GFO.

[Reef Pilot]

To the left is a 2nd sump that I was using for a 2nd tank that I set up downstairs. But initially, it was my QT for new fish, as well a refugium with caulerpa and chaeto.


I had it connected to the sump using this DIY overflow. It had an airline connected to the intake side of a pump in the sump which made it basically foolproof. It prevented the syphon from ever breaking, and would self prime if the power went off.

[Reef Pilot]

And oh, almost forgot about this giant MDM Sequence (not sure about the model name) 3600 gph pump which was used to to drive a closed loop system in my upstairs tank. I decommissioned it after adding some in-tank wavemaker powerheads. Anybody looking for a powerful but cheap return pump?...