DKoKoMAN’s 305g Basement Reef

[DKoKoMan]

Originally Posted by e46er

I did 50 G every 2weeks on my 250 with a 75G sump

Your tank looks good!

Thanks for your input your tank was a bit larger than mine but very close. I’m not super lazy when it comes to WC, just wasn’t sure if it’s worse to do biweekly vs monthly.

Thanks for the compliment. The tank is coming along, since the setup all the sps have been showing great PE and growth. I will try to get some photos up of some of the mini colonies showing growth.

[DKoKoMan]

So today I ended up doing a 10% WC and decided to hook up one of the Aquamaxx media reactors to the manifold. I may hard plumb it in the future but for now I chose to use flexible hose. The ball valves make it easy to adjust the flow from the return pump in to the reactor chamber. I set this one up with GFO inside and it is throttled back to allow for a light tumble of the GFO. I may need to upgrade my return pump in the future when I add the other reactors.

[DKoKoMan]

I also installed my new clamp and grow bulb 💡 (ordered from amazon) on to the Fuge. This bulb is more of the red/purple spectrum and will hopefully boost the chaeto growth. I was looking at the Kessil H380 however the price point for a Fuge light is a little insane. I will try this light and see what happens. This has smd leds (red, blue, green and uv) compared to my old light which consisted of (red, blue, green and white). Here are a couple photos of the light and reflector clamp. I will try to get a shot when the bulb is lit at night.

[Dash]

Wow, you’re getting a lot of toys in there. And I was so proud of myself for getting these:

The hand pump is very high tech. Saves me the trouble of having to open the jug & having to tip it to pour it out. And no ugly electrical cords!

Hope the fuge light works for you. Btw, what does that silver reflector do & did it come with bulb? Now I want one too haha

[DKoKoMan]

Originally Posted by Dash

Wow, you’re getting a lot of toys in there. And I was so proud of myself for getting these:

The hand pump is very high tech. Saves me the trouble of having to open the jug & having to tip it to pour it out. And no ugly electrical cords!

Hope the fuge light works for you. Btw, what does that silver reflector do & did it come with bulb? Now I want one too haha

First of all those jugs are sweet for manual dosing as you definitely will have less chance of spilling with daily dosing . Right now I have some cheap Rubbermaid 1g containers I use for alk, cal and mag. They work wonders and these little hacks definitely make things easier.

I loved my my TLF reactors however when you double your size and get in to the larger systems you need to replace things . The silver reflector has a sweet clamp that is flexible for different mounting options. It’s supposed to reflect any light 💡 back down that in turn reflects off the water surface (who knows). Found them both on amazon, the bulb was listed with the clamp as “usually bought together” so I did exactly that lol. It only came to $50 to my door, so it’s worth a try. I have some hopes with this new light as it mimics the spectrum of the Keswick H80 and H380 “grow” setting. It is marketed as a grow light so here’s to a bountiful chaeto in the Fuge .

[DKoKoMan]

I managed to take a photo of the lit up Fuge with the new light. I removed the cover and almost went blind!!! Everything looked green in my downstairs lighting . I’m really hoping this 100w bulb does the trick on the chaeto.

[dino]

I have bought a lot of those bulbs off ebay and they work great. only issue is they don't seem to like the moisture and only last around 6 months for me. but they sure do the trick. how many watts? oh and that's why I always run a separate pump for my toys as it steals a lot of flow from the return. I also find its harder to dial in your overflow when feeding other things

[DKoKoMan]

Originally Posted by dino

I have bought a lot of those bulbs off ebay and they work great. only issue is they don't seem to like the moisture and only last around 6 months for me. but they sure do the trick. how many watts? oh and that's why I always run a separate pump for my toys as it steals a lot of flow from the return. I also find its harder to dial in your overflow when feeding other things

That’s awesome. Hopefully this sucker does it’s thing as it sure is bright. This bulb is 100w. I will have to keep an eye on this as I definitely need at least one reactor at this time for Carbon and the other one is not needed at this time. That was the other plan, I was thinking of a separate return pump to feed the manifold and isolate the return in to the tank. I may have to go this route after the second reactor is added as I still want decent output in the return lines. I also didn’t think about the overflow aspect considering less flow from the returns and dialing it in. It was hard enough to get the bean all dialed in (at least for me) . Thanks for the advice as it’s always good to hear from potential problems and what works.

[DKoKoMan]

Anyone know where to purchase schedule 80 pipe and fittings in Edmonton? I would like to get some spare 3/4” pipe and want an additional union for when I change my return pump. Did the old google search and didn’t really locate a store in Edmonton.

[DKoKoMan]

So this morning after work I came home to my Skimmer overflowing. It has been a little finicky lately with the slightest change causing it to overflow. I decided to take it apart and see what is going on.




- Found some chaeto in the pinwheel which was removed and everything is running smoothly.


I also took the time to put a couple sharpie marks on the Venturi of the pump and wedge pipe. This was done to help with tuning in the protein Skimmer as the vertex has both adjustments. This way I have a point of reference when turning the Venturi and wedge pipe. Hopefully I will be able to get it dialed in so the skimmate being produced is nice and dark. Couple photos.