I am lucky/unlucky? enough to be working as an aquarium maintenance tech. Love the work, but it is not very lucrative. Anyway, I have a couple of tanks on my route that are hugely overloaded with fish, and underfiltered. Of course the client doesn't want to spend much/any money to improve them at this time. The setup this is for is a dual tank setup, one side is a reef, the other is a fowlr. Each tank is around 150 gallons. The fo has a large lion, a gigantic vlamingi tang, a couple of other large tangs, and a 2ft snowflake eel. The reef has around 15 fish, most small, with a couple medium sized tangs and kleins butterflies, I know, I know, not reef safe. But the owner likes them in there, for now.
Filtration consists a generous amount of live rock in each tank, a filter sock, and a skimmer. The skimmer is a Euroreef model, not sure which. It uses a sedra 5000, and has a 4 inch neck. The tanks both share the same sump, which is a standard 75 gallon tank.
The screen will be lit on each side, and measures 20" x 12", I know it is a bit undersized by the recommendations made in the FAQ section. I will light it with 2 23w cfl bulbs on each side. Do you guys think that will be enough to make a significant difference on this setup? I visit there every week, and could probably pop in 2x if needed to quickly scrape the mesh. It is my understanding that more intense lighting can maximize efficiency, will additional flow help also?
That's not the sump, obviously, but just to show how it will be mounted. It will be plumbed from the return pump which has flow to spare, I will use a valve to be able to adjust the flow.