Equipment

Equipment for my setup as 1 Jan 2007:

1) Skimmer

Reef Maniac (RM) 2ft Beckette skimmer running on Rio 32 high flow pump.

The Rio 32HF pump seems to be too powerful as the outlet of the skimmer has lots of microbubbles escaping,  resulting in the my mid-section of my sump to be foaming.

The waste outlet of the skimmer is connected to the (of course) waste collector....

2) Calcium Reactor (CR)

Also using Reef Maniac (RM) Calcium reactor. Awesome CR made by local hobbyist turn entrepenuer!! Products are superb!!

CO2 is fed at abt 30-40 bubbles per minute. The effluent output is set at about 50-60 drops per minute. Still fine tuning though to get the optimum calcium level.

3) Kalkwasser Reactor

Not commissioned yet. Waiting for my top-up container to be place on the left side of the cabinet. This will help in increasing the calcium content in the reef as well as pushing the pH up due to the calcium reactor.

4) pH Controller

The pH controller is used to monitor the effluent in the calcium reactor chamber. I have set the burning of calcium media at pH 6.45.

5) Lightings

Most important of all ...

I am using 2 x 250W MH and 2 x 39W ATI lights. MH bulb is at 10K while the ATI is at 14K. Photoperiod is around 9 hours for the MH and the ATIs 3 hours before MH and 3hours after MH. All the lightings are using electronic ballasts to reduce the heat a little bit...

6) Chiller

Pacific Coo chiller....

1/2 HP chiller. Bought a year ago for my 2ft tank and still works great. Need servicing though, will call our local service guy (Derek) soon...

7) Wavemaker

Utilising tunze 6060 x 2 for my water movements.

Will upgrade to Tunze 6000 with controller 7095 soon.

8) Fluidised Reactor

I am using 2 set of  fluidised reactors (FR). 1 set is filled with phosphate remover and the other is filled with GAC (granulated actived carbon) to remove any chemical due to corals excretion, water inpurities etc..

9) Electrical Distribution

I have used the distribution panel to house the 3 timers for my lightings and output MCBs for the rest of the socket outlets for my equipments.

That's about it for now...

Updates..... 28 Jan 07

10) Ozoniser Controller

This is not a new toy for me. I have had the Red Sea Ozoniser for my previous tank. I have decided to include this to maintain good water quality as well helps in skimming and killing some parasites. After installing the new ORP probe, I was shock to see the redox reading was around 120mV. I have set the value to be at 350mV. Quite please with the results and as indicated by the amount of skimate produce by the skimmer.

The smell quite obvious too. The downside of this controller is that, since the air has to be dried before passing through ozoniser, I have to regenerate the silicate gel using the microwave every 2 days. Yes, the output of this ozonised air is feed into the skimmer. I have to mod by drilling a hole and insert a tube into the beckett air input.

With modified skimmer air inlet ...

11) Another pH Controller - Milwaukee

I was skeptical about the weipro pH controller because the readings kept jumping around since it's measurement is in 2 decimal places.

So I bought another reputable brand and stick it into my calcium reactor..... Haha... it turns out that the Weipro probe is accurate after all.

So what I do now is that, the Weipro pH controller takes the tank pH values and act as an interlock for the Milwaukee pH controller. The pH setting for the Weipro conttroller is at 7.9. If the main tank pH goes below 7.9, the CO2 solenoid valve will cut off the CO2 supply to the calcium reactor.