20-55 gal reef tank design questions (1 Viewer)

[BrianPlankis]

Hey guys,

I'm continuing to plan my 20-55 gal reef tank(probably going for the bigger end of that scale) and had a couple of questions.

1. What lights do you guys use for your refuges? I'm hoping to place some of my reef plugs and small rocks in my refuge for coraline algae to grow on them in there, other than that I'll only be keeping a little bit of LR, live sand and macro algae. Refuge part of the sump should be only 5-10 gallons.

2. This tank will be mainly for mushroom propogation and other soft corals. I might try to keep a couple of the hardier SPS corals later, but the first 9months - 1 year will be softies. So to hold off on big costs I was thinking of creating a simple topoff system that I put kalkwater into. Has anyone ever tried to replicate the nurce topoff system? Seemed like a neat idea but I couldn't find a good diagram to figure out how it worked.

 

[Guest]

Whats teh nurce topoff system look like?

Nathan

 

[BrianPlankis]

Hey Nathan,

It looks kind of like this:

http://www.agualan.com/photo.html

B.

 

[Guest]

That looks like a siphon top-off, I have that on my 20 gallon tank.
5 gallon glass jug, rubber cork in the top with 2 tubes going through, one of them all the way to the bottom (thats the tube that siphons water)
Other tube just goes through the cork, but not into the water.
Other end of it attaches to where you want your water level.

Fill the glass jug, submerge the end water will come out of and blow in the other tube to start it., then attach the end of that tube where you want your water level (glass jug has to be higher than your sump water level)