basser9

What type of beckett skimmer do you have i have run different becketts on the dc pumps. Only the really big ones or duals need a high pressure pump and only then if you have a massive system. Becketts only need 600 to 1200 gph at the nozzle to run good. The new dc pump will run almost all becketts well. I have run everything from a etss 1000 modded to a small diy with dcpumps and my favorite pump for mid to small ones is a deep blue internal.

A long tank is a great candidate for a led fixture on a light mover. The cheap chain driven ones are the best as they move the light at a very slow pace. 100.00 FOR THE MOVER.......240 FOR 2 D120. A long strip of blue leds on a alum tube from HD will light the entire tank........not needed but nice. Cheap to run and all corals get great coverage.

TL does and its a great place ......best prices on fish and equipment that i can find ....very old school.

Bleach ...then LC. Acid will strip some rock down pretty bad and make it brittle but if your rock is still nasty after the bleach then a acid bath is in order.

I use a peristaltic pump reefdosing.com they are just kangeroo med pumps you can get a med pump on ebay for under 100.00. One thing you need to do is keep the LC mixed up or it settles i use a 5 gallon bucket with a pump inside. Some calcium reactors may pose a problem because where the LC enters it will form deposits my MTC enters at the top not at the pump which makes it perfect. Any duel reactor will work great just drill a inlet on top of the first reactor and you are good to go.

I will post in a little bit my setup. I have a large MTC calcium reactor setup to run LC. First chamber has bioballs for the precipitate to settle on and the 2nd reactor has very tightly packed floss. I have the effluent running thru a .5 micron bag. 2 months running and nothing has made it to the .5 micron bag the tightly packed floss works great and it appears that most of the precipitate is being contained in the first chamber. I tried a single pass reactor made from a 5 gallon bucket it did not work as i had hoped the recir reactor appears to be the way to go.

There is a difference between running a very low sps only system and a mixed reef. You are asking for a tank wipeout when you run very high levels of po/nitrates or doc. Its is possible to get away with very high nutrients levels but not wise. I had a couple of nice mixed reefs 25 years ago before we could even test for po or nitrate. But both setups over a couple of years hit a wall for the sps and started to go down hill. You dont have to get to .03 for po but letting any reef get over 1 is not wise. Same for nitrates running at 60 is possible i have done it but not wise get it to 10 fine.

Always ship fed ex and pk up at one of there places in the morn....... I have a mailman that is so bad he cant even go 1 week without giving me the neighbors mail. He old and completely unable to do his job it got so bad at christmas last year they gave him a helper and we still got the mail late at night. Me and my neighbers have tried to find someone in charge to complain to and it appears next to impossible. This is my USPS it is a nightmare........There overnight would scare me.

Here is one of many led fixtures i have built a wamas person has it now. Looking at this fixture you have no way to tell what size tank to use it on to support sps. There are no optics .......only a par meter will tell you unless you like to kill a bunch of corals to find out. VIVID aquariums tank with half leds and mh is a great place to compare the 2 lights.......they use a par meter........why......because only a par meter works.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/2/aafeature Heres a great study done with leds and different par if you notice the only way to do this study is with a par meter. As anybody with a set of eyeballs can see the higher the par the greater the growth....go figure. There have been a ton of studies on reef corals and par all these studies have used a par meter of some sort because par is the only way to measure light to your corals. If you look closely at this study the leds where just blue/rb and white which worked fine for all those corals in the study now if you look a par of 300 was much better then a par of 50 so how do you set up your leds to hit 300 and not 50 unless you have a par meter. The most important tool i have is a par meter.......

I have had one for as long as i can remember and as a reefer who had every light there ever was from mercury vapor to regular 40 watt daylight tubes to every type of mh reflecters and at least a dozen diy led builds i think its silly to even suggest there lack of value. Certain sps need at least 400 par to color up [purple monster] and most monti s have issues when exposed to 500 par and above. You can not look at any light and judge its par ......par meters are our xrays. When you have a led fixture that has a small number of leds with optics you are creating a false measurement any fixture with a cluster will give you a normal reading that is the same as mh readings. I can not imagine not having my par meter it has been the most important tool i have.......period.

Heres how you cut the packets.

http://coralux.net/ Nice new controller on this site with ldd boards. Big upgrade over the boostled crap.

A mistake alot of people make is not getting the larger pump as a return and using it on a lower setting. Getting the large pump and running at a low setting keeps the powerpack cool and the noise level is dead silent at the lower power levels. I prefer the 1st gen pumps i use the speedwave which is around for 200.00.......used at half power you will think it is off its so quit.

The power pack that comes with all the DC pumps is not waterproof just keep it away from moisture and you are fine. Love my SPEEDWAVE the best pump i have every owned. Checked the box there is a ul mark and a ul on the powerpack. The powerpack looks to be ul cert for standard computer stuff not aquarium use........I could care less but it appears to me there a good chance all the knockoffs are like this. Any pump in the water needs a gfci i dont trust any pump i have had alot of bad maxi-jets ....water and pumps dont mix well.