Integral9

If you have your tank drilled on the back wall, you have two options. I don't recommend drilling through the bottom as it's usually tempered glass and will shatter (then you get to buy a new tank.. how awesome is that!?) 1. You can install an overflow box to skim which will take up a bunch of room and / or provide a shaded area depending on if you get the kind that goes all the way down to the bottom or not. 2. You can use an elbow on each hole to reach up to the surface to skim. Most people choose the later. I would. Mainly because it's cheaper, fish don't get lost in box you can barely fit your hand into, and it doesn't take up room or cast hardly any shadow. The PVC with holes drilled in the top does two things. Inside the tank, the PVC reaches up to the surface in the tank to skim off the surface. Outside the tank, the PVC reached above the water line w/ a cap and hole drilled into it to break a siphon and eliminate the slurping / sucking noises. btw. It looks like your monkey's got his "O" face on....

I'm pretty sure he is referring to stranded wire as in wire that's like a rope as opposed to solid core wire which is just a solid piece of metal for a wire. Think of a rope vs. a solid pipe. In general the solid core can carry more current, but it's much more expensive and hard to work with because it's so stiff. Stranded wire is stronger (tensile strength), more malleable (flexible w/out breaking), but the strands get in each other's way under load and prevent as much current from moving down the cable as a solid core wire can move. In general, 15A or more is usually a solid core wire in your home, but it doesn't have to be a solid core wire to carry 15A. That depends on the gauge (thickness in 1/x of inch ie. 8 gauge = 1/8 inch thick). The higher the gauge, the more current you can run down the wire. The wire should have an Amp rating on it to help you decide which gauge to use.

55G Display - Reef 25G sump 30G Display - Reef 3G sump 9G Display - Soon to be Mantis home (gotta catch him out of my 55 first)

Potomac Falls, VA. Finally succumbed to the pressure and joined WAMAS.

Along with making sure you have a fan to cool the bulbs a bit, You need to determine the focal point within the parabola of the reflectors and place the center of the bulb there (or as close to it as you can get) to achieve maximum results. All you need to determine this is the width and height of the reflectors. If they are not a perfect curve, don't worry, you can assume a perfect parabola and still achieve similar results. My Tek II reflectors (not perfect parabolas) which are 2 1/4 " wide and tall, I believe had a focal length of 1.75" which meant I had to raise up the reflectors a 1/2" to get the focal point near the center of the bulb. My end caps had raised the bulb up too far. You can find the formula for determining this on Wikipedia. I can't remember off the top of my head. Just upgraded from PCs to T5,s whoa what a difference. Added my first SPS a couple weeks ago and so far everything looks good. Tortusa even kept it's tri color. :-)

Get a 12v DC to 120AC adapter for you cig lighter plug and plug in powerhead and heater for your fish and corals. You may need to use two of them depending on how much current your power heads and heater draw. Check the power adapter for the max current (Amps) ratings. Put plastic bags under corals to prevent them from moving too much, like you're shipping them. Seperate them from the fish. Pack the fish and corals in individual large black plastic tub with lids. locate a few fish stores on your way there and plan on doing a water change en-route.