60 gal rimless on custom stainless steel stand

[vhuang168]

Beautiful build!

[sreuland]

Hello, so my tank is about 3 years old at this point, and wanted to share some additional observations on running a viable system with as little hand holding as possible.

I spend about 1 hour a week on the system. Namely to feed the tank frozen foods and clean the glass, and then once a month I clean protein skimmer cup/neck, once every two months I do a salt mix and once every 6 mo's I vacumn the tank with a canister filter which takes about 2 hours.

In the pursuit of low-maintenance/stable system, I've spent time trying out various automation technologies across the system and have learned that the best strategy in the long term is less equipment is the best approach.

Removed filter canister/reactor chambers from sump and the pump that drove them. Canisters/Media Reactors seemed really cool(who can resist bio-pellets) and looked awesome, but over time they all require media changes and cleaning and I don't think they made any difference in water quality. I've been running w/o any of that for more than a year, and the system is as good as it's ever been. I think a good refugium replaces the need for any of those medias.

Following Berlin sump style, just a porous sponge that separates the wash down chamber from the return chamber, a protein skimmer with Ozone generator, calc reactor and a refugium.

Use an RO/DI system. Set up a salt water mix station. Use an automatic water changing system. I use Genesis. This is by far the biggest game changer in having low-maintenance system. Consistent small water changes that supply trace elements with TropicMarin ReefPro salt. No dosing or chemical supplements ever.

Use an aquarium controller, get your program dialed in, especially your power failure/recovery modes.

Use at least one powerhead in display tank. Your return line won't generate enough chaotic action, get some cross flow with as big a powerhead that you can tolerate somewhere in the display tank, I use a tunze turbelle controlled from Neptune Apex to pulse it every 10 seconds.

I use a Lifereef sump and it is excellent, the LifeRefugium is really nice design that incorporates the fuge into the overall sump.

I tried many protein skimmers, recirculating models require additional pump(feed + recirc) and produce no better results. I went back to my first setup of Lifereef HVS2-24 skimmer. What I did discover though was this awesome pump from the spa/hot-tub market - Laing E10 external pumps. These pumps produce big head pressure and are small and super quiet, living room caliber silence! They are a perfect fit for mid level protein skimmers with venturis, I put a big mazzei injector on mine and the pump pushes alot of water through it, with big air draw, 1/4 air inlet howls when left unmuffled.

I tried the powered protein skimmer neck cleaner, Swabbie from Avast, it works well. Lengthened the amount of time you can go without cleaning the skimmer neck, up to about 2 months on my system, eventually you have to pull out the top and clean the whole underside which becomes caked pretty well. Since I've gone back to the Lifereef, the skimmer throat is too small a diameter to use the Swabbie, so I removed it.

The Skimz CM122 Calcium Reactor has been a pleasant surprise, It's been online for over a year, consistently quiet, solid. I did remove feed pump altogether. I mentioned this in earlier posts, use a peristaltic pump to push water through the calc reactor with wide open outlet line instead of water pump on feed side and clamp or needle valve on outlet side, those will always clog, and the reactor becomes a fizz chamber.

Radion XR30w Pro has been solid light for 2 years. No issues.

[sreuland]

It's been fun letting this system just run, In the last year, I've tried a few different fish out, have settled in on 3 cardinals, 1 clown(had him since day 1) and a Powder Blue. I feed LRS Reef Frenzy once a day, clean the skimmer once a week, and vacumn the tank once every 6 months. The Abyzz 200, is an engineering marvel, that thing has been dead silent for 4 years, I haven't touched it since I plumbed it in 4 years ago.

Here's a couple shots of the tank on a friday nite!