Captain Jack Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 FWIW, I am running a 20 gallon high going on 5 years now 50lbs of Fiji live rock 20lbs of live sand seeded from lfs 20lbs of carib sand 96 w PC light (2) 10,000k (1) actinic LED moonlighting Lighting on complete 24 hour cycle Homemade Aspen black lacquer hood (2) Maxi-Jet 600 (1) Maxi-Jet 400 CPR BakPak skimmer w/Maxi-Jet 1200 HUGE 12" Brittle star 3 large 8-12" bristle worms Perc Clown (5+ years old) PJ Cardinal Stripe Damsel Yellow Damsel Coral Banded Shrimp 30-40 snails 6 blue legged hermits 50+ mini-stars Large Flower Anemone small shroom colony 2 small leathers 2 small montipora digitata 1 med. size brown polyps colony 1000+ unknown polyps....no kidding. They are thick, orange/brown in color, green center under actinics..not been able to ID them yet. Link to comment
tinyreef Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 cj, i'll take that off your hands for $200. sounds like a great setup. Link to comment
Captain Jack Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Hey Tiny, make that $205 and you got yourself a deal! I tremble at the thought of what this thing has taken out of my savings over the last 5 years! Thank God my wife loves it and she keeps passing me the credit card to get more things. We just picked up the Squid and she's online today looking for a deal on a Mag Drive 5 or 7 to make my wavemaker loop. Link to comment
tinyreef Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Hey Tiny, make that $205 and you got yourself a deal!done! I tremble at the thought of what this thing has taken out of my savings over the last 5 years!y'know? i think we're really a river biotope hobby...because we're always living in denial. ignore the register tape. it's evil. eh, i just tell my wife it's cheaper than a divorce. but otoh it's getting close! btw, get the mag-7. the swcd eats too much flow imo for a mag-5. you can always throttle down with an additional valve before the swcd. Link to comment
Captain Jack Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Thanks for the tip on the Mag 7...I am basically shooting for a dupe setup of this guy's: http://www.melevsreef.com/closedloop.html If you can, play the video, very cool. He started with the 5 and upgraded to the 7. My wife wants to bump the tank up to 30gal long and so the 7 would work better. Right now with 50lbs of rock and 40lbs of sand, there isn't much room at the top of the tank to fit this in. But if i can scrap two powerheads and replace with the SCWD then i might be able to get the fit i need. I will snap some pics tonight and post them. Link to comment
tinyreef Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 sorry for the hijack guys but hey, this is NR. it wouldn't be NR without hijacks. i didn't realize melev had a stand-alone/hot CL. i think someone here did something similar (maybe copied his design), lgreen or bkmodachi? i'd been thinking about setting a mag-driven CL too. my microjets have been driving me nuts with their incessant rattling. arrgh! i've gots loads of mags lying around (my pump of choice and i believe in backups for mission critical hardware, e.g. sump pumps, light bulbs, extra water/salt, etc.) so i'm figuring it's a trip to home depot and voila. i'll peek/cheat at your setup first. Link to comment
MarineManiac Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 TINYREEF i got 20lbs live sand, 14lbs live rock, maxi 600, media, bought my saltwater $1 per gallon, and DIY light hood for $160. I ALREADY had the tank, heater, and filter, hood. seems pretty reasonable i thought. since than i'm up to $400 total with the tank setup below. sorry bout the hijack. Link to comment
mickey85 Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 If you wanted to go cheap and ghetto, and don't mind taking some extra time cycling, do it like I would: biggest HOB filter you can get (I like milleniums, most here like aquaclears) - $55 120W PC light from Ebay - $45-$75 (depending) 20 lbs cheap sand from the pet store - $20 25-30 lbs uncured live rock - $5/lb as you can see, you're not gonna get away with it under $150, even if you're lucky. on top of that, the CHEAPEST corals I've ever gotten are single polyps for $7 (mushrooms and the like). I've probably spent $150 on my 2.5G tank, and it's still ugly and full of brown corals. *EDIT* Just thought of something - if you want to ghetto rig, and go with a 20L, you can overdrive NO flourescents. get the 24" 20W bulbs, and use 4 of them. That way, you can have 2 actinics, and a couple of 10,000K bulbs as well. If you overdrive them, they won't last as long, but they'll give you more wattage for your money. Get ballasts from a pair of $10 4-ft long shoplights. That would get you about 160 watts. Link to comment
aqh88 Posted January 18, 2006 Share Posted January 18, 2006 It's going to be hard to do it with that budget unless you already have half the supplies. Just the rock would cost me that if I hadn't ordered it off premiumaquatics.com. I also already have a 4' jebo light 4(65w), 20g long tank(shares a 4' stand under the light with a 5g tank), penguin 330, small powerhead, a heater, and half my aquarium pharm test kits I bought for freshwater will test saltwater. So all I bought was 20lbs of sand($25 for arag alive indo pacific), a bag of reef crystals $20, floating hydrometer $10, ph and alk test kit $8, and the rock which is $10/lb here so I ordered that off premiumaquatics and came out to around $6/lb with shipping. But I also decided to order the refractometer on sale on drfostersmith.com for $40 because I can't get consistent readings with the hydrometer. I've been running two 4' jebo fixtures for years and had no problems with them. They aren't anything fancy but they light the tanks so far without trouble. The fixture over the 20 was originally over my 55 when I set it up 3years ago and the light is still running fine. Link to comment
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