My new hobby

yep you sure will see a ghetto diy soon. as soon as i get the light. the skimmer catches everything. i was amaze when i empty the container. nemo fish is in lilburn think, its on indian trail http://www.nemotropicalfish.com/

 

New to this. I have some questions

I have been doing alot of research, I have found this site to be VERY informative. I am planning a 90 Gallon Salt water tank. I would like to have a seperate "sump"? tank below ( 20 or 30 Gallons) in the cabinent with Protein skimmer, Heaters, Pump etc. THis seems to be a common configuration from what I have seen. I plan on drilling this tank ( I am fairly handy And I think I can accomplish this).

I have many naggin questions, two of which I present here:

1) I notice most of the PVC Plumbed tanks use white PVC, Any reason other than cost not to use clear PVC?

2) I notice that most of the returns are located at the top of the tank ( I am sure to prevent draining the tank if a power failure occurs,) Is there any reason not to use a backflow preventer or "one way" valve, and place the returns at the bottom of the tank. This I would think would provide the best flow (Assume looking at the back of the tank the overflow in the upper right corner and the return at the lower left with a back flow device, or better center the overflow at the top of the tank and use two returns one lower left and the second lower right adjust the flow with ball valves for balance with a back flow device before the tee or at each return).

I have looked at hundreds of setups and none seem to have these features, What am I missing??? or maybe I havent looked at enough tanks.

Regards,
Chris

 

1) clear PVC plumbing allows light through8) and unfortunately light means algae. It's a lot easier to scrape the inside of your display tank than it is to scrape the inside of your plumbing.
2) every valve in a plumbing system will fail eventually. check valves are even more prone to failure when any bit of growth or debris interferes with the seating of the ball or flapper. if this happens on a return line plumbed into the bottom of the tank you wind up giving new meaning to the idea of 'external overflow'.

 

Ok I had added about 25lbs of live rocks and a base rock, got a new T5 lighting system, a new ehiem 2213, and a Hydor Koralia 4. Everything is good and my parameters are constant. But my only concern is that I have to scrub my tank every 2 days due to the green algae on the glass. Is this a bad thing? It’s a good sign right?