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Message: <blockquote data-quote="arking_mark" data-source="post: 7973464" data-attributes="member: 65637">So let's talk ultra low maintenance, as that really drives the rest of the tank decisions. ULM to me, means simplify, reduce, and eliminate maintenance tasks.Philosophically, all maintenance leads to your tank providing ideal conditions for your inhabitants. What exactly these parameters should be has many differing opinions. I'm old school and will make my goal to emulate natural sea water and reef conditions.A natural reef has:SandRockFlowLightTemperatureSaltwater (See <a href="http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/" target="_blank">http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/</a>)Fish and CoralStarting with sand, I believe a deep 3" sand bed helps with biological filtration and is part of the natural habitat for fish, coral, and invertebrates. It's also no maintenance with sand sifting gobies and CUC to keep it clean. I briefly looked at bare bottom...but felt it would actually be slightly harder to keep clean and looking nice. Oolitic sand is nice, but ultimately too fine and creates a mess for many years.  I have found Caribsea Pink Fiji to be my perfect mix as its very small grained and looks almost as smooth as oolitic.Rock is a definite must for a reef tank and while there are several choices out there, in the end (if you're successful) it'll all look good covered in coral. Being in the hobby for 30 years, I basically saved a couple choice pieces and accumulated enough Marco rock for the tank. I'll be going mostly negative space aquascaping. All rock has been bleached and is now being seasoned in containers. Current tanks are running fallow do to an unfortunate cross-contamination from my observation tank. Rock requires no maintenance, so no real decisions here.Flow is simple and I'll go with 10x turnover circulation pump from the sump and powerheads that can emulate reef flow. Pump maintenance consists of periodic monthly cleaning with citric acid and a brush. Minimizing maintenance means having as few pumps as needed. Additionally, I prefer not to see or hear them. It came down to the vortech MPs or a Gyre style pump. Ultimately, I ended up going Gyre (2x ReefWav 45) because I could place them high on the black back wall and get more distributed flow. I think I would have needed 4 MPs and they would best mounted on the side of the tank in plain sight. For the circulation pump I went with a Vortech L1 due to the ease of having a Vortech backup battery and the fact that I found it used at a great price.Lighting, surprisingly, ended up being a no-brainer for me. I went with 3x Kessil a360x because its the easiest to set up. Kessil lights always put out near optimal usable light for the reef.  All you need to do is set intensity and color to your eyes' liking. Also, the way it shimmers with no disco effect looks the most natural to me. For mounting, I went with the arms as it allows me to hide all the cords. Maintenance consists of periodic cleaning with isopropyl alcohol and a duster. The Kessil pucks seem to be the easiest to remove that I have found.Temperature control will be done with a Teco tk-1000. It heats, chills, has wifi control, and is one of the quietest around. I'll also throw in some backup heaters in the sump. Just requires some periodic dusting for maintenance.That takes us to sea water and maintaing that at natural levels...and then to fish and corals. Which are larger topics I'll cover later.</blockquote>

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