Sacrifice my display for a dinky frag tank?

[Jake029]

I've officially run out of room in my display and I've got 20 frags coming in tomorrow. Yea I've got a problem ;Dead

Should I shut down my display a Red Sea Reefer and pick up a standard tank from a big box shop that has a bigger footprint and just put a hOB filter and make a frag tank? Seems like a waste of a display. I tried adding another tank to my existing system but I suck at DIY and setting up an entire new 2nd tank is costly...

 

[ihavecrabs]

I've officially run out of room in my display and I've got 20 frags coming in tomorrow. Yea I've got a problem ;Dead

Should I shut down my display a Red Sea Reefer and pick up a standard tank from a big box shop that has a bigger footprint and just put a hOB filter and make a frag tank? Seems like a waste of a display. I tried adding another tank to my existing system but I suck at DIY and setting up an entire new 2nd tank is costly...

If you have room for a frag tank, I would just add a second return pump (if you dont want to diy a new manifold) and plumb the returns into the same sump as your main display. That is the least amount of effort in the scenario you outlined above..

Or stop buying frags haha

 

[Jake029]

If you have room for a frag tank, I would just add a second return pump (if you dont want to diy a new manifold) and plumb the returns into the same sump as your main display. That is the least amount of effort in the scenario you outlined above..

Or stop buying frags haha

I tried building a manifold twice...and failed both times lol. Glued prematurely, calculated wrong, and once I got it right, it wouldn't fit lol. I just tried drilling a hole in a 10 gallon tank to do what you said and cracked it lol. Suck at DIY

 

[ihavecrabs]

I have both, plumbed into the same sump.

Display can be the "pretty tank" and the frag tank is my play area.

Best of both worlds

 

[ihavecrabs]

I tried building a manifold twice...and failed both times lol. Glued prematurely, calculated wrong, and once I got it right, it wouldn't fit lol. I just tried drilling a hole in a 10 gallon tank to do what you said and cracked it lol. Suck at DIY

Oh man, 10g is too small... you just ordered 20 frags!! Haha.

Mine is a 24x48x12 but I have a fish room in the basement so room wasnt a big deal.

 

[dhuynh]

I tried building a manifold twice...and failed both times lol. Glued prematurely, calculated wrong, and once I got it right, it wouldn't fit lol. I just tried drilling a hole in a 10 gallon tank to do what you said and cracked it lol. Suck at DIY

Watch come YouTube video and keep trying. We all sucked at some point. Best to plumb into an established system.

 

[Jake029]

Do you have know of affordable tanks that are sized more of a flat cube rather than the long ones at big box stors like Petco ?

 

[Sailfinguy21]

Get a 20L from petco.. put tbh a 10g would be fine for 20 corals.. itd be packed but yea.. put a live rock or two in the tank a little bit sand a hob and a power head like a koralia 425 which is what i had with a penguin 200 and you should be good.

My 20 long had 36 corals in it and a anemone ina box for over 2 months. I lost only 1 coral from the darn seaurchins who keep turning thrm upside down. If i had some trays that stick to the glass i coulda put probly 50 corals in the tank if i wanted. I had lps sps leathers. Musjrooms. Bubble corals.. frogspawns hammer.s torch. Favia brain corals, monits acroporas. No one stung eachother and they were like half an inch from eachother.

Worked for me.. I just recently dipped em all and put em into my 135g now that hypo is done

 

[ihavecrabs]

search acrylic frag tank on ebay.. You'll find some lower cost, square frag tanks that would do really well. You can even get them with an overflow built in.

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Depending on the frags, you may be okay with HOB filtration. I'd worry about putting coral in any newly set up system though, and for that reason I'd only consider either putting the frags in your existing display (even just untill you get another system established), or tap into your existing system and piggy back off of it's filtration (what I would do myself). As mentioned before, all you would need is either to T off of your existing return pump, or add a new seperate pump and have the new tank drain into the existing sump. Then you'd have an instantly usable tank. I can't see how that would be any more complicated than setting up a new tank, unless they are not near eachother, then routing water around the house may be challenging.

I am currently working on doing something similar, but a bit bigger scale involving upgrading my existing sump into a large basement sump and adding a frag tank to the system with additional room to add several more frag tanks if I want later. It's much cheaper to filter one large volume of water than several smaller volumes. and easier to maintain as well. In the meantime, I have about 50 frags on some home made frag racks in my display tank. I'm working on selling frags to pay for the upgrade one piece at a time, but going slowly.