Suggestions on getting back into the hobby.....

Wow that is quite the visual..... My skimmer smells more like a stink earthy smell....its black and gross.

 

Yeah, it smells that bad, and that gunk that would normally be in the water is just always on the neck instead of in the cup. In other words, that "liquid natstiness" is just "goopy nastiness".

It's because of a small design issue with the "backsump" they use. The water level fluctuates only in the small (maybe 8 gallons?) area, not the DT, and it's only 4" wide and maybe 25" tall. So when you get 1 gallons of evaporation, it fluctuates like and inch and a half, which messes up the skimmer adjustment.

 

I have had the 34g redsea max for 2 years and i am very happy with it. The skimmer works pretty well for me Ive replaced the lights twice and had too replace both power heads idk if thats normal or not but over all its a nice design theY can be a little pricey though

 

whats your stocking like?

 

I think it really comes down to what you would like to do with the tank.If you would like a tank with a few easy to keep corals and fish then a plug and go setup would probably work just fine.If you want to get into the more difficult to keep corals,like sps it would be better to research and build your own system.

 

Full of LPS (no SPS, no softies), a banggai cardinal, a hi fin red banded goby, and getting a mandarin today. You can check out my sig for a list of the corals and inverts, or look at my most recent photobucket album.

I almost have no more room for corals at this point (and of course, I'm getting a couple more today too lol), so I'd say I'm fairly full in that regard. I keep nitrates low (<5, usually near 0), and phosphates are at 0. I added a BRS GFO/carbon reactor using extra room in the back sump because I feed heavily and had phosphate issues from it, but no nitrate issues. The sun coral was the main problem with feeding, but the trachys also contribute to "reasons for feeding the corals".

 

In a RSM250, you can do pretty much everything except SPS. The only thing you'd need to do for SPS is upgrade the amount of flow (Change the returns to some stronger maxijets or throw in a couple vortechs), and put in better bulbs (the ones that come with it are crud, pick up some ATIs or something).