I HIGHLY recommend a pre-drilled reef ready tank (a 55g is fine and
MUCH better than a 10g tank). Your incidence of flooding will be
drastically reduced going with a reef ready tank. You won’t even know to
thank me for this suggestion because you won’t have experienced the
overflow box flooding that I’m talking about.
A protein skimmer is way up on the Cast Steel Valves list of important pieces of
equipment. I would recommend the Bermuda Aquatics BPS-3C (linked
below).
20g sump is fine. Just make sure you don’t use the entire volume with
operating water. You need to leave enough ‘vacant’ volume to
accommodate water flowing out of the display above during a power
outage.
Heater – use two for redundancy. This is the #1 piece of equipment to
fail in our hobby. Use two 75w heaters. Technically all you need is one
single 150w heater, but the above statement WILL effect you at some
time in the future. If the heater fails in the ‘on’ position, it will
cook your tank. If it fails in the ‘off’ position, it will get
drastically cold. Two smaller heaters (even two 50w heaters is fine),
will not be sufficient to cook or freeze your tank individually.
Together they are more than adequate to run your system. Also consider a
Ranco temperature controller in the future.
Powerhead – You can spend a lot or a little. You can get some that
are capable of creating wave patterns or some that just move water. I
would recommend at least two in your tank. The Koralia 3 or Koralia 4
would be cool and very affordable.
Salt – the biggest debate in reefing on the planet. Instant Ocean is
widely accepted…..but not totally recommended by me. Pick one that you
can find locally. Buy the bucket for whichever you decide on. It will
contain enough to mix from 150g to 200g of saltwater. You’ll need it for
regular water changes.

MORE NEWS