i cheated a bit in the move and kept all of the water that was in the tank so that everything would be kind of "at home" so to speak when they were placed back in the tank.

That monti is really taking off now, i can pretty much watch it sprout polyps. although i wish more of the pink/salmon one i got from you a while back made the trip. oh well, it will grow back

so did you completely remove the biocube hood for the sunpod or did you somehow fit it in? i have 2 50/50 bulbs in mine was there a huge difference when you swapped over?

yes i took off the hood and am running it open top with the sun pod. I like the metal halide light because you do get the shimmer effect as well as I am able to keep pretty much what ever i want in the tank compared to the stock pc bulbs.The big differences would have to be the amount of water evaporation due to the increased airflow over the surface water of the tank and the increased heat from the Halide bulb.

I did like the all in one look but i wanted to get into the sps game so the upgraded lighting was necessary. While their are lighting kits out there that let you keep the stock hood, I am not very electrically inclined yet so those weren't really an option for me yet.

over all i am happy with the sunpod. if I were to do it again i might have gone the t5 route to cute down on heat and electricity but a like the "more natural look instead of the sterile look from the pc or t5 bulbs.

cool. yeah i want to keep everything including sps but the compacts just dont pack that kind of punch.
ive thought of doing a retrofit high powered led section in the hood but still have to do some good research before i make a jump.
any suggestions of filtration setup at all?
ive got my first section with heater and skimmer
the seccond section full of live rock then a single layer of bioballs on top
and what i did was i put the black tray on top then i put a piece of egg crate angled overtop of the seccond section.
im finding it working well. if you have any good suggestions with the bc let me know!
ive had mine for about 2 weeks now and its doing great. a big change from my 75 i had 2 weeks ago!

umm. for filtration i really only have the media basket in the back with filter floss, carbon, and chemi-pure. I am going to keep it this way until i can find another tunze skimmer.

i took out all of the bio-balls so i could run the back compartment pretty much full. tried to keep cheato back there once but the lights i got weren't all that great so that idea got scrapped.

i'm keeping it simple now i guess, less can go wrong.

Nothing wrong with that simple setup... I ran Rowaphos, Chemi-pure Elite only on my 30G cube.. it did have a "sump" (10G no baffles).. As long as I kept up with 5G weekly water change, everything grew and looked awesome..

I found an Eshopps psk-75H skimmer for a decent price and caved in. I must say, build quality looks pretty good and bubble formation is top notch for the price. pics to come...

on a side note. the sps market here is little to none. I am thinking it maybe time to set up a frag tank. do a little bit of shopping while im back in Calgary for winter break and help out all of the Kelowna/ Vernon people who want this kind of stuff.

alright so here is the skimmer doing its thing

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...e/DSCN0153.jpg

Bubbles
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...e/DSCN0154.jpg


Now everyone with an all in one system eventually wants to figure out how to do a sump. there are a few options... one im on the fence about trying but built anyway.

PVC overflow:
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...e/DSCN0157.jpg

Like i said im really on the fence about this one.

Part of me want to try it. as it has worked in the testing i have done with a bucket. but part of me really doesn't want to flood my place.

"He who dares my son, he who dares" a quote from Human Traffic. might just be my inspiration to follow through

You can drill the backs of biocubes man..... why not punch a couple holes, do an external overflow with a herbie?

Oh ya! Now I got the urge to watch this tonight... good job! :lol: Awesome movie though.

Skimmer looks sweet... I think it will perform better than a Tunze 9002 as well. I tried the Tunze and found it lackluster..