kona reefer

I wonder what you guys think of circular reef tanks. I remember I saw one featured in CORAL magazine once and started thinking about them a bit more. A few initial ideas I had:

• Allow fish to swim unobstructed (good for surgeonfish)
• Create great gyre flow very easily. Might create a dead spot though in the center of the tank where the rock work is.
• As long as not too big, could be lit by a single metal halide fixture (tank diameter limited to 24-30” per halide, and the edges will be dimmer)
• Image

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I was just leafing through the new Coral magazine for November/December and noticed an advertisement from Brightwell about some new products coming out. One of which is the media dealing with phosphate removal and said it is 500% more effective than GFO. Does that sound like snake oil or is it just me? I am curious what other people think.

Also, I just looked and couldn't seem to find the product on Brightwell's website even. Strange.

I will be installing baffles in a sump soon to fit my new protein skimmer and I am wondering what is the best bubble trap design. I usually see the over-under-over style, but was wondering if under-over-under would be better?

My thinking is that since the air bubbles want to float, they would be less concentrated at the bottom of the water column, so it would be most efficient to grap water from the bottom of the sump. This is the 'under' part. The water rises up 'over' a second baffle ...

I am trying to decide between a Reef Dynamics INS 180 or a SRO XP-2000.

They both appear to have the same price, so now it is just a matter of available space, performance, and quality.

I have heard that Reef Dynamics makes a great skimmer, however, something in the back of my mind keeps nagging me if it is outdated and not as great a performer as everyone says it, at least compared to newer skimmers such as the XP-2000. I have a Tunze 9010 skimmer, which several people ...

Anyone tried this before? I am thinking about cutting some of my live rock in half, so that a smooth surface is created which could then form a nice stable base, or maybe glue nicely to a back wall or overflow. I thought this might be a fun way to get more creative with the aquascaping, while at the same time keeping the structure open and off the sand bed, preventing dead spots.

I am thinking of using a hack saw and a small plastic mitre box. Place the rock in the box, line up the ...