Overhaulin' Our Tank...Need Help With A Few Things

[Chip Douglas]

Last night our (me and my brother, kozmo02) 180 started leaking from the bottom left side, so we had to tear it down today to get it repaired.

This is giving us the opportunity to change some things that we've been debating doing for a long time.

1) New lighting:

As it stands now, the tank is lit by 4x250w 12k bulbs on dual PFO ballasts. The bulbs are in Lumenarc Mini's. We have never really been satisfied with this bulb/ballast combination, and we've tried XM 10k's, XM 20k's, etc. etc.

We like the looks of tanks lit by the Reeflux bulbs with the Reeflux magnetic ballast, and we're considering switching over to those. We'd like to know if A) The Reeflux magnetic ballast will wire up to the Lumenarc mini just like the PFO has and B) Is there a popular 250w Reeflux bulb that people have had good success with?

2) Rock Cooking + Going Barebottom

Tank has been running for a few years now and our sandbed is a disgusting mess. We learned that first hand tearing down the tank tonight. Rock was also pretty mess. We want to take this opportunity to cook the rock and probably go barebottom, but we want to make sure we're cooking the rock correctly. As of right now, the rock fills about two trash cans halfway, and each trash can has water circulating with powerheads, in complete darkness.

The garbage cans are in the garage, so the water temp will probably be around 85 degrees or so, the rock will be in complete darkness, and the pumps will keep water circulating. Is that basically it? Do we just leave it in there, and water change/rinse out the trash cans and dunk the rocks once a week or so?? Just want to make sure we do this part right, as we might also pick up some new rock and will most likely cook that too.

3) Refugium...what should we do with it?

Attached to the tank, in the sump room, is a 100 gallon refugium with a 2 or 3 inch sandbed, some live rock, and chaeto. I would imagine that the rock and the sandbed in the refugium are just as bad as the rock and sandbed that came out of the display.

My brother is in the process of increasing the flow to the refugium, which we're hoping cleans it out and gets it back on track, but I was also wondering if we should just clean it out completely. Should we keep the refugium up and running and leave the display barebottom, or should we ditch the refugium to go barebottom?

Also, since that 100 gallon is already plumbed into the system, if we were to tear down the refugium, we could still put some live rock in there and some cheato again and just have kind of like a barebottom refugium, would that be a good idea?

The downside to breaking down the refugium is we'll basically be starting the tank from scratch again, and the few fish we're keeping in there for now we'll have to be watched by a friend of ours until the tank cycles again.

Sorry for the long post, just have a lot of things to consider in a relatively short amount of time now that this happened. We appreciate any input you have to give, and are open to hearing any suggestions.

Thanks!

[Macimage]

There is a really great summary on cooking live rock in the 2nd post:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1439680

Joyce

[tkeracer619]

The coralvue ballasts are electronic. If your ballast are electronic the will run the reeflux 12k bulbs. Which are a great bulb IMO. The Reeflux bulbs dont operate properly on magnetic ballasts.

You might still need some supplementation to go along with those halides. I love the way my tank coloration is, 4x250 Reeflux 12k 250w, 4x 54w T5 Blue+, 2 x 160w VHO Super Actinics.

You might really like the radium 20k on your current setup.

I would start the fuge over. By cooking your rock you won't have any cycle when you set the new tank up.

[Chip Douglas]

Originally posted by tkeracer619
The coralvue ballasts are electronic. If your ballast are electronic the will run the reeflux 12k bulbs. Which are a great bulb IMO. The Reeflux bulbs dont operate properly on magnetic ballasts.

You might still need some supplementation to go along with those halides. I love the way my tank coloration is, 4x250 Reeflux 12k 250w, 4x 54w T5 Blue+, 2 x 160w VHO Super Actinics.

You might really like the radium 20k on your current setup.

I would start the fuge over. By cooking your rock you won't have any cycle when you set the new tank up.

If we got the Reeflux bulbs, we'd get the Coralvue ballasts to go with them and sell our magnetic ballasts. My question was whether or not the Coralvue ballasts will wire up to a Lumenarc mini the way our magnetic ballasts did, does anyone have experience with that? How do you like your growth/coloration with the 250w Reeflux 12k?

I also forgot to mention that the tank has 2x VHO super actinics, but we don't really have room for any other lights. So if we made the swap, it would be 4x250w Reeflux 12k's and the 2x VHO bulbs.

Thanks for your input so far!!