If you were to set up my reef to house sps what would you do

[Ben1]

if anything. I set it up originally to be a half sps, half mixed softies reef. I alreay had some sps and lots of softies growing in anoughter tank and wanted to carry this over to my 150. I added a tunze stream 6080 but thought it was too much for my tank so traded it in for a bunch of powerheads placed in different spots on the tank. When I had the 6080 the softies opened much less and the sps all withered away besides the frags I saved from all of them in my "frag" tank. I think they did this b/c of too much current on the polyps wouldnt let them open correctly.

This is my current set up on my 150 standard not reef ready

lighting: 2x 250 watt 10k MH in a hood with 2 x 96watt PC actinics 9 inchs from water

return pumps: mag 9.5, sen 700. The mag 9.5 returns through a y to two elbow nozzles. The sen returns to a 1/2" seaswirl.

circulation: 1 hagen 402, 2 maxi-jet 1200's in tank.

I use a double life reef overflow, and a 20 gallon sump. I run carbon pretty consistantly in a mesh bag that sits in a plastic crate the skimmer returns through.

Skimmer: PM bullet 3 w/ mak pump feeding it.

All top off and water changes done with RO/DI/DI through a litermeter that feed a GEO kalkreactor. CA/ALK are also mantained by a MRC-1 calcium reactor.

The tank has been set up in its current position for a little over a year.

I want to make sure the tank is ready before I start putting the nice SPS frags back in this tank. The 20 frag tank looks worse but does much better at growing SPS. My 150 has some cyno patchs here and there in the sand that come and go but thats it. The 20 just has some live rock, a turboflotor 1000 skimmer and a 175 10k mh and does great with the sps but has hair algae. It seems backwards to me but all well.

 

[Ben1]

hers a picture of the side I wanted to do the sps on. I would move the galaxea at the top of the picture and have added some maxi jets blowing around that rock pile since the photo. The pavona at the top was too big to go to the frag tank and has been living in this tank but not growing much. The same goes for my porites on the far top left.

 

[Modo]

Sounds good to me. You might want to add some more circulation once you start placing frags and colonies to make sure everyone gets some good flow.

Your setup sounds very similiar to mine. But, I'm running a 90g with a Blueline, a GenX and 3 Maxijet 1200s in the tank. But, mine is dedicated SPS and I've still got a ways to go to filling it.

So far sounds like a plan. Not too sure of the deminsions of a 150, but if it's deep just keep in mind light needs of each SPS. Keep the Acros at top for sure.

Check my link for tank specs.

 

[shellshocked]

I would add more circulation. I have a tunze stream and it is clearly a step above standard powerheads for circulation. I see a noticeable improvement in my sps - it might be a bit much for softies but for sps it is da bomb...