Your most essential equipment!?

[taylapong]

Hey everyone...

I was just wondering what your views are on the most essential piece of equipment you use for ensuring water quality? It could be filters, sumps, wet-dry trickle filters, protein skimmers, or anything else you use... Why are they so essential?

Just wanted to find out what you guys thought!

[loster]

The essential equipments for setting up a basic marine fish or invertebrate aquarium in term of water quality:

1) Protein Skimmer

3) Filteration System with sump

4) Hydrometer

5) Thermometer

Optional equipment:

1) UV or Ozonizer

2) Chiller

3) Fluidized Reactor for removing PO4

4) De-nitrator to maintain low NO3

5) Calcium Reactor

[akahoshi]

Hahaha.. Just for your information, SRC is a forum consisting of people that are Skimmer-crazy.

Ask all the old bird for advice, Get better skimmer! You need to change skimmer! Your skimmer not good enough!! Haha..

Haha.. No offense people, cuz I myself is a skimmer-crazy member too! haha..

[taylapong]

hehe.., yeah, that's what i noticed! everyone here's using a skimme! Started a marine tank 2 years ago, but it's been inactive (dead) for a year... was wondering if my failure was due to the lack of a skimmer... or something else!!??!!

[barnacle]

not lack of skimmer...lack of research....

dats y a lot of ppl fail because they dun do

much research........ with research and knowledge,

u noe wat to keep and wat equipment to get....

[hotlemond]

Hahaha.. Just for your information, SRC is a forum consisting of people that are Skimmer-crazy.

Ask all the old bird for advice, Get better skimmer! You need to change skimmer! Your skimmer not good enough!! Haha..

Haha.. No offense people, cuz I myself is a skimmer-crazy member too! haha..

hey, me too.

everyday come home only check skimmer for "a cup a day"

unless that person had a convincing reason to go skimmerless, he is better off with using a skimmer

[loster]

actually i have extre LR, mushies, zooz, white coco worm in my 2x1x1 ft holding tank. no skimmer use. water change only occationally. water is clear cos whenever i change my carbon from my 3ft tank, i will re-used it on my 2ft holding tank. light only switch it on for about 3hrs. yet i still have coraline algea growth on my LR. no hair algea cos no fish. therefore no input of any po4 or no3. the only imput of no3 is from my tap water when i use it for top up but no issue of hair algea growth.

sometime when i do water change, i will use my 3ft tank water (when i do my water change on my 3ft tank) on my 2ft holding tank. may be there is the reason why my coraline algea growth on my LR

[taylapong]

actually i have extre LR, mushies, zooz, white coco worm in my 2x1x1 ft holding tank. no skimmer use. water change only occationally. water is clear cos whenever i change my carbon from my 3ft tank, i will re-used it on my 2ft holding tank. light only switch it on for about 3hrs. yet i still have coraline algea growth on my LR. no hair algea cos no fish. therefore no input of any po4 or no3. the only imput of no3 is from my tap water when i use it for top up but no issue of hair algea growth.

sometime when i do water change, i will use my 3ft tank water (when i do my water change on my 3ft tank) on my 2ft holding tank. may be there is the reason why my coraline algea growth on my LR

Yeah, i read before that skimming might rob the water of many essential organic matter that is good for the corals etc... that's why i decided against it and used a plenum... just wondering if i should restart my tank cos the last time it was such a failure...

[blueheaven]

For me: Skimmer

"if any aquarist who doubts that a protein skimmer is necessary is willing to drink the collected product in the cup of a protein skimmer after one week, then I am willing to accept that a protein skimmer is not necessary" --Bob Fenner

[zephyros]

i rank skimmer and light as the most important

skimmer is pretty str forward.

light does not means - die die must get MH - but rather,

the correct lighting for the corals u intend to keep

cheers

[taylapong]

Woah blueheaven, powerful quote man... i'll bear that in mind. Btw, you've got a really nice tank... saw you build it up slowly

I'm still dreaming...

[taylapong]

actually ah, I used 2 canisters instead of a sump, which in retrospect felt like a mistake. It's such a hassle to maintain. wonder if any of you have success keeping reef tanks with canisters alone. Mine's a 4X1.5X1.5, and i run 2 ehiem II canisters on it.

[blueheaven]

Woah blueheaven, powerful quote man... i'll bear that in mind. Btw, you've got a really nice tank... saw you build it up slowly

I'm still dreaming...

Thanks for the nice comment!!!

I'm totally flattered

[akahoshi]

Haiz.. see? I told you.. all the members here are skimmer-crazy.. even bro BH... hahaa..

[mUAr_cHEe]

i think most important is the tank.....

no tank, how to put fish?

dun tell me u guys gonna put yr fish in the skimmer????

[taylapong]

oh man!! hehe... okok, that's a given.. a tank is a must!!

[Eric]

Hey everyone...

I was just wondering what your views are on the most essential piece of equipment you use for ensuring water quality? It could be filters, sumps, wet-dry trickle filters, protein skimmers, or anything else you use... Why are they so essential?

Just wanted to find out what you guys thought!

My most important items..........

1) Flow - sufficent internal circulation flow to suspend the detritus,protiens to carry down to your sump and also to bring oxygen to your LS.

2)Chiller - Temp. is very crucial to the marine LS. You can use evaporation and topping up method for tank cooling purposes but be prepared to be diligent in the maintainence of water parameters stabilities eg. Salinity,DKH,Calcium......etc (any slight changes will stress your LS easily)

3)Skimmer - An effective skimmer is a great tool to help you maintain a low nutrients tank or alternatively you could have a huge matured refugium.

4)Lights - Depending on the depth of your tank and what LS you intend to keep.

Eric

[taylapong]

So, just to ask you guys,

Is FLOW more important? Or is it simply the amound of flow into the filters? OK, a little confusing, but, is the circulation inside the tank more important than the actual amount going into the filter/sump?

[gerald28]

hahah people are skimmer crazy here and got me crazy abt skimmer here too but another important point to me is huge water volume .saw one of my very good man tank running 4 ft but sump tank below also 4ft! imagine a 8ft tank water volume ,no wonder his tank so stable!