New Tank

My neighbor gave me an old 37 with an Eclipse 3 hood. I want to eventually have some non-photosynthetic and lower light corals.

I picked up about 18 lbs of LR yesterday at a couple LFS. I had about 30 lbs of old dried out LR that I had in an older reek tank. It has been sitting for about two years. I rinsed it off and put it in the tank with the new LR and 40 lbs of LS. The LS is the bagged type. Not sure if that type of sand is truly live or not.

I am not going to use the Eclipse 3 filtration. I have an old Fluval 304 I will use with Chemi-Pure, activated carbon and the ceramic Fluval pre-filter. I plan to do a 5 gallon a week water change instead of putting a skimmer on it.

Well, this is my initial setup for now. Any thoughts?

 

What are you going to light it with?

 

Currently I am using the stock dual T8 lighting. One daylight and one atinic. I will build a LED light by next month.

 

Sounds like you'll have a good set up. The only thing I'd say is that without a protein skimmer you'll need a decent amount of surface agitation to keep the gas exchange where it needs to be. If you can set the Fluval output to be right at the surface level then that may do it. Alternately, a powerhead pointed toward the surface would do it.

 

congrat on the new tank, show us pics when you have them...

I love NPS tanks