28 Gallon
Monday, August 11th, 2008 | Author: admin
JBJ 28 Gallon HQI Reef
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Here’s my JBJ 28 HQI, I ordered it from nanotuners with their upgraded canopy which adds 2x18w atinic PCs.That’s one heavy box! and no handles! The stand was also pretty heavy. |
| I bought a plastic non-porous cutting board from wallmart that I used as the bottom of the tank. I will be running this with no sand and the cutting board reflects some of the light back. It also keeps the the liverock off the glass. The board is 18×10 I had to cut it to size. |
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Here’s a photo of the cutting board bottom before the water fill-up.One tip; the board will float so place some live rock while filling the tank with water. |
| The stand that came with the tank had a defect. One of the base columns was about 1/4″ longer. I didn’t notice it while assembling so the tank would not seat evenly. Nanotuners was going to send me a replacement piece but I was able to hack-saw it myself. |
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Here’s the tank filled water. I used some spare dried rock from my previous tank and added three pieces of liverock on the front. |
| Here’s the back of the tank after the Auto-Top-Off float was installed. I’m waiting for the chiller to come in before I install I setup the fresh water reservoir. |
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You can see the Auto-Top-Off device on |
| One thing I hate about this tank is the “Three Stage” filter. As you can see its a sort of drop-in tray that holds a sponge, carbon, and there’s a spot for other media.The box is half the depth of its enclosure so water can by-pass it completetly and go around it. If this box was twice as wide it would have been perfect. One problem from this design “feature” is that if you stir anything in |
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Here is the inside on the box |
| and here’s the bottom on the box |
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I decided to remove the filtration “box” and replace
it with something that can actually filter… I used this blue filter foam
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| This is how the back of the tank looks. you can see the media basket hanging in the middle it doesn’t quite touch the bottom of the compartment.All kinds of junk goes around that filter box and makes its way back into the tank. |
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I used about 3″ of the foam block and stuff it to the
bottom until it touched the base. I then placed bags of carbon, Phosban and Zeolite.
Finally I added a ~2″ section foam.
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| I then used really fine filter mesh and placed it under the lip of the return and on top of the ~2″ section of foam. |
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Sorry about the crappy quality on the pics… Here’s how it looks from the top.I looked at it today and its full of crap I will have to rinse weekly |
| I’ve been hit with an algae bloom it on the higher rocks. I hope this new filter will take care of the excess food. I also have to purchase a real filter. |
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