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Building A Budget Reef Aquarium: Filtration


In Part #3 of our 30-episode series on Building A Budget REEF Aquarium, I make filtration recommendations.

When you're picking out filtration for your aquarium you're going to have a whole lot of options. You're going to see UV sterilizers, ozone generators, algae Turf scrubbers, media reactors, hang-on filters, canister filters, and protein skimmers. If you're on a budget, you really, really want to go basic, and the basics are going to be a very good protein skimmer and just some kind of essential filter that lets you run some media and filter out the particulates in the water.

When you're picking the skimmer and filter, there are a few options regarding where they are placed. You can go with a sump-style filter underneath the tank where we would drill out this aquarium, or put a hang-on overflow box, and then run hoses down. That's going to be pretty complicated as well as a bit expensive. So we ruled that out for our budget series just because we're trying to keep the cost down and a lot of people on a budget are beginners who get intimidated with a lot of that plumbing. The other option you could do is you could do a hang on the back which should be things like a hang-on power filter, and hang-on protein skimmer. These also work well, but in my experience, they're much more likely to leak and get water on the floor. Lower the spouse approval factor.

What we've gone with is internal filtration, the Tunze ReefPack 250. My personal opinion is that a lot more people should consider these because they're very affordable and typically the biggest thing people are worried about is that they're going to look unattractive inside of the aquarium. People think it's going to look bad and the tank will look better with hang-on gear. But it actually is more attractive than most hang-on gear. And it can't leak because if it leaks it's in the tank and back in the water.

What I really like about this ReefPack 250 is you get a bundle that includes a very good protein skimmer, and an internal filter to let you run some mechanical filtration to catch particles. With this ReefPack kit you're going to get a Tunze Comnline Skimmer 304. This protein skimmer is probably my favorite internal protein skimmer I've used. The filter cup is very easily removed with one hand and replaced very easily. The adjustment is along the back. It's a little wheel that you can roll to control the airflow for the skimmer. And overall it's just very simple and straightforward.

The ReefPack 250 also comes with this Comline Filter 3162. There are a couple things about this filter I really like. The first thing is the little plug on the top that comes out so you can put a heater inside the filter (will add the heater in Part #4). The heater is going to look much nicer than if it's dangling in the tank. There also is a little gap designed for your automatic top-off sensor. It's kind of small so not all automatic top-off sensors could fit there, but you could do a temperature probe or some other small piece of gear to keep it out of sight. To clean it you simply open up the top and it comes with a coarse sponge and some filter floss, but you could easily customize that with some filter carbon, some bio media, some phosphate remover, or whatever else you wanted. There is also a water inlet down below. It's going to skim from the top as well as suck in some water from the bottom and that's going to allow us to get both particles from the bottom and the surface skimmed.

In the video, you can see it really blends in well with the black background. It actually looks kind of similar to an overflow box that may be in a drilled aquarium. And because everything's inside we don't have to worry about any leaks.It also comes in a bucket, and the bucket can be reused as an auto top-off container.

To sum it up, this is a very efficient filter/skimmer package with some great features. It looks very nice in the tank with a black background, and leaks will not be a problem. I think this is a great option if you're on a budget looking to get the filtration for a reef aquarium.
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