Great upgrades!! What was a step forward for you?

[Daniel@R2R]

What is an upgrade that you made that you were really glad you did? Let's talk about things you've upgraded on your reef that have worked out well for you.

I've had a few, but one of the best for me was moving from cheap black box lighting to Radions (I run G3s currently), and it made a HUGE difference in my reef.

 

[Jekyl]

What is an upgrade that you made that you were really glad you did? Let's talk about things you've upgraded on your reef that have worked out well for you.

I've had a few, but one of the best for me was moving from cheap black box lighting to Radions (I run G3s currently), and it made a HUGE difference in my reef.

Same but black box to kessil

 

[Fishinabarrel]

Getting a SMARTaqua ATO.
Breakdown issues dropped to near zero.
Salinity always spot on.
No more sticking valves and potential flooding.

 

[MBruun]

1. Culturing and adding phytoplankton daily (by dosing machine)
- excellent for nutrient export and support of pods
- P = 8 and NO3 = 2.5 (I dose both daily to keep P and NO3 above 0)
- enables me to run a continuous rotifier culture
- dosing 12 x 40ml phyto daily, overflow in the return chamber
- primarily as food for sps corals

2. Changing socks with a BM fleece roller filter

 

[psphillies]

UV Sterilizer
Dino problems have reduced DRAMATICALLY

 

[N.Sreefer]

Going from marine orbits back to black box t5 combo.

 

[LRT]

Definetely upgrading my old reef radiance black box with burned out diodes. Although I do miss the simplicity of it sometimes.
Next would be full system upgrade. I did design and build a fully functional frag table system built out of old non reefing parts I had laying around, that after I got kinks worked out it did work like a well oiled machine. Having said that though with new tank, DC controllable pumps, wave makers. I am actually kind of bored and miss the tinkering. Probably pushing 700gph through an 80 gallon frag tank and its pretty much maintaining itself on a creepy silent level lol.

 

[Dolphins18]

External recirculating skimmer. WOW.
The ease of use and space is a huge advantage.

 

[cocoReefer]

What is an upgrade that you made that you were really glad you did? Let's talk about things you've upgraded on your reef that have worked out well for you.

I've had a few, but one of the best for me was moving from cheap black box lighting to Radions (I run G3s currently), and it made a HUGE difference in my reef.

Way back in the day (15+ or - years ago) i religiously started adding grounding probes and gfci to my setups. More than a safety measure, it seemed to change the way the fish behave, particularly with each other. Im no pro, but have many 10-15 yr old fish and inverts. I would routinely take adopted fish with lateral line erosion and hole in head from lfs and watch the fish rehab.
Also have had success adding tangs of same type without fights for years. Have 3 zebrasomas all in my display and added them years apart from each other. Most recently a very small sailfin. Still no fights.
Sure there are lots of other things attributing to the success, but probe w/ gfci especially back when a/c pumps were the only pumps around was an obvious game changer for me.