New to Salt Water.

Yep! lol

 

Hey Ryan!

Welcome to the group! I wanted to tell you that when I first started my 75 gal tank I was a bit nervous myself about a sump but after doing my research I was convinced that having a sump was the right way to go and was the right thing for having a good environment for my fish and coral. Your definitely right starting a sump is scary but there are checks in place that make it not so scary. And as one of the other members posted having your tank drilled makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE!!! But before you go and get carried away make sure you know if your tank isn't tempered glass this could cause major problems.

I did want to give you a bit of advice on heaters that I was taught to me by friends and local fish store. The advice is that if your going to put a heater in your system, such as in your case 300 watts, take that and split it into two heaters. SO buy 2 150 watt heaters and before you have any fish in your system set one at the desired temp of your system and set the other down like in min of 76 degrees. You'll learn that they hardly ever run and when they do its for such a short amount of time. As for having two of them its a back up so that your system's temp doesn't crash if one of the heaters breaks or malfunctions.

Best of luck and keep us posted and lets see some pictures!

 

Thanks for your advice! I will definately post pictures when it get up and running.

I will split my heaters .

Do you (or anyone else know) if you can plumb a sump without drilling? I think I will end up getting my tank drilled but it would be good to know some options. Can you use a hang on over flow box or something similar?

 

If i could do it again i would have even drilled the back of my tank to do an overflow, but I'm happy with my current overflow box. I have problems with tuning my pump with my overflow though, but that's nothing major. I am aware that I will be making some major upgrades in the future such as maybe a second overflow and even a larger return pump, and possibly redesigning my sump.:-/ At this time I'm happy where I am!

As for my tank it is one of my business ventures. I am going to be propagating coral frags and selling them to local fish stores so that I can do my part to help prevent as many corals from being pulled directly from the ocean. Its a tough thing to think about and it makes me sad that such a beautiful thing is being destroyed, but I wont go into much detail.

Not to take this conversation off subject. . . might I suggest the new Tek-Wave light by Sunlight Supply INC. I am picking mine up tomorrow and I'm super excited! This fixture uses a 4 lamp set up with each lamp putting out 95 watts of power per lamb and that's not even being overdrive that's the pure power. Please let me know if you have any questions.

<*Ashlee*>