180g Tank Build - 11 mos. and counting.

The pictures look fine, though a tad small. We are are all underfed picture devourers that like lots of large pictures, lol!

I agree with Midnight, the pictures look fine in quality... but they are small. You have quite the setup going there. How big is that fish room? I appears you have some blue reef chromis, how big are they?

Ah - good to know about the picture size. I did a resize and aimed a bit low.

I do have a single reef chromis - I'd say he's almost 3 inches long and along with the purple tang and lawnmower blenny is among the longest residents in my reef. Started out with ~6 or so of them thinking they would school like b/g chromis and be quite peaceful. They do school, but peaceful they are not. They pick on the smallest one until it dies and on up the line until there is only one left. THEN they become relatively peaceful - though he's always the first to harass a new tank addition by flipping his tail fin in the new tank mate's face. Even so, he's quite beautiful. Great coloration and such an effortless skimmer. The only more agile swimmers are the anthias and the carpenter's wrasse.

do you like the cat2e? I run on my 180 also with about 250ish total volume. I have the askol on mine with the water cooling mod. I believe you meant bubble blaster pump ( bubbleking is a different skimmer) Have you had any trouble with it I have had a few start up issues with the askol on mine. Looks good I jealous I have not been able to get my tank as well stock as your yet, we have 8 kids and it puts a serious damper on my reefing budget. I have the ugliest fishroom on here look at some of my build threads and look at the mess I started with, Your in good shape Thanks for sharing

yeah - I meant bubble blaster. Mine had the overheating problem as well - talked to Jeremy at Coralvue and he took care of me. I sent my Askol back and got the bubble blaster which I think is hands down the better pump. More air bubbles and less power consumed. I started off with a used coralife super skimmer so you can imagine how pleased I am with the hurricone. Super skimmers aren't worth the plastic they're made of. I also did the gate valve mod on the output of the 2e, so it's quite precise on water level now. The 2e is now almost set and forget - and I get a lot of gunky skimmate - and the algae growth has gone from big problem to tolerable nuisance, even with a much denser bio-load.

Yea I am going to do the gate valve also not a fan of the stand pipe adjuster that come on it way to touchy, also think that the out put could have been 2 or 3 in higher so im going to order a new metric union with the gate valve and try that the adjust on it now I have to keep almost completely closed and I have enough flow that I have to blow into the air intake to get it started. But its build like a tank and coralvue is good about customer service will diffidently continue to do business with them, I got mine new for 520 dollar from reef specialty was a great deal for that size ext skimmer

Yes - that's my only complaint about the skimmer - I can't just go to Lowe's to get plumbing parts. I also wish the exhaust was a bit taller. I guess if I was looking for a custom skimmer, I should have made one myself. Boy, that's a lot of flow if you need to 'kick start' it. Are you worried at all about a power outage? I guess so long as you have your air intake sufficiently above the water line, you're OK. ...just lose the skimming ability until you re-start. I think I paid a similar amount for my skimmer a year ago - some crazy sale at saltysupply.

What are your thoughts on the reef angel controller?

Reef angel is good if you have some C/C++ experience. The appeal for me was the ability to ramp up/dn my LED whites and blues separately and program it how I want. You can also use it as: pH protection for your Ca reactor solenoid, a rudimentary wavemaker if you have the proper powerheads, temp protection from your heaters, water level sensing, etc. It's fairly inexpensive and has a good support community with a reasonable codebase. It's not without its problems. the LED screen on mine is subject to interference so if I have a power cord too close, it will go black and need a reboot. I also wish there were more pwm ports - I had to multiplex mine by using a relay I picked up at the local radioshack. I also fused one of the relays together by gating on/off a couple of meanwell drivers. I'll chalk that one up to pilot error. If you are looking for an out of box solution that's fairly well polished, I'd probably look elsewhere - but if you have some patience, like to tinker, and want everything controlled just the way you like it, the Reef Angel might be a good option for you.