I'm in a pickle!!!

[MitchM]

larger water volume=greater buffering capacity, more gradual temp changes, greater life diversity.

It's more gooder.

Mitch

[muck]

Originally Posted by Carpentersreef

It's more gooder.

haha! I second Mitch...

[Doug]

I also like the single large sump idea.

Only one top-off unit.

[Delphinus]

I'm going to go against the grain on this one and suggest that it depends a little on what are your end goals for the two tanks. If they are similar then yes it probably is better to make them one system. One skimmer, one reactor, etc. is theoretically half the cost of two skimmers and two reactors and so on.

Basically all the reasons stated so far are valid.

But if you have vastly differnet end goals then it might be better still to keep them separate. I.e., if you have a heavily laden predator tank as one and a pristine reef on the other, and if the reef can't keep up to the bioload of the other.

Or as in my case, where you have animals that don't play nice together. I had problems with too many anemones in a single system and they would impact each other without even touching. So if without touching one can impact the wellbeing of another, what's to stop that from happening just because they're in different glass boxes (but the same water)?

But not everyone will have this, so it depends on your situation.

For me, for now, it's nice to have a little redundancy. When my 24" ritteri released something into the water that killed almost all the fish in the one tank, it was nice that I had a second system going completely independent that I was able to save my one last remaining fish by moving him into there.

If you don't have ambitions for keeping high-risk animals then you probably don't have to worry as much.

So I mostly agree with the points listed above, I kinda wish I could have one system too, but I don't feel it's an option for me. Even when I move to a larger system down the road my intention is to keep the ritteri in a separate system independent of the main focal tank.