DIY Skimmerless 240

Discussion in 'New Tank Builds' started by DoubleSolid, Jan 6, 2017.

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  1. DoubleSolid

    DoubleSolid Plankton

    Hello everyone! I am starting a DIY 240 gallon skimmerless aquarium that I will be building over the course of several months as I save up money to buy things. Currently I am still in the design stage of my project although I do hope that I will be able to start building soon and get this thing underway. The tank will be 8 feet long by 2 feet tall by 2 feet wide. I will be running T5 lighting, and I will be running 3 cups of carbon and 1 cup of gfo in the sump, along with a marinepure brick. I will also be running a refugium with chaetomorpha and likely some other stuff maybe miracle mud or something similar. If any of you have unused equipment like 4 foot t5 light fixtures, return pumps / powerheads, I would be happy to take it off your hands for a reduced price.
     
  2. huntindoc

    huntindoc RRMAS BOD Membership Director Staff Member

    Any special reason for going skimmerless. Sounds like an awesome build!

    I have the Marine Pure Blocks in my sump and like them. Have you looked at the Brightwell ceramic bricks (their version of the Marine Pure product). I recently took one of my two Marine Pures out and added two of the Brightwell blocks.
     
    Deton8it likes this.
  3. Deton8it

    Deton8it President Staff Member

    I ran my LPS tank skimmerless for over a year. As long as you keep the bioload light it is pretty easy and I never used GFO and only did carbon occasionally. Just make sure you have a bunch of live rock and Chaeto.


    John
     
  4. DoubleSolid

    DoubleSolid Plankton

    I want to go skimmerless because I don't want to have to do constant maintenance and I want to have a higher population of microfauna and plankton in the water. I am basing my tank heavily off of a Finnish aquarium called sReef that looks absolutely amazing and runs entirely skimmerless. I think that detectable nitrates and what would be considered somewhat dirty water with lots of naturally created "food" (fish waste and particulate food) along with proper element levels to recreate as close to natural ocean environment as I can water-wise while still having beautiful color and super fast growth. You can read about his aquarium here: https://reefbuilders.com/2011/01/04/sreef-stunning-skimmerless-reef-tank-marko-haga/ I haven't looked at brightwell ceramics but I do know that the larger marinepure brick can filter huge amounts of water and keep even larger tanks biologically sated singlehandedly.
     
  5. huntindoc

    huntindoc RRMAS BOD Membership Director Staff Member

    I really haven't had any problem keeping detectable nitrates even while running an oversize skimmer. In fact I have the opposite problem and have to add addtional measures to keep nitrates manageable.

    Thankfully there are a lot more than one way "to skin a cat". Looking forward to watching this one develop!
     

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