Official Solana owners thread

[BFITZ06]

Heres mine sorry for the crappy pic its from my phone

Sent from my DROID3 using Reefs

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Looks pretty good. :cheers:

 

[BFITZ06]

thanks
its getting alittle over grown i have to cut some stuff back . ill post some better pics soon

 

[JOHANNA]

Heres my Solana. Running for 4 months now.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Nice

 

[Djbetterly]

Anyone have any tips with microbubbles in a solana? I have a 9002 skimmer in 1st chamber, media basket in 2nd chamber with, in this order, filter floss, purigen, phosban, and chemipure elite. In the third chamber is the stock pump and my outlet for the ATO.

Any thoughts?

 

[BFITZ06]

Here's some pics I cut a lot of stuff back and redid the rockwork and I now have 1 sol blue instead of the t5. The growth is amazing with the leds. I have a bit of red algae in the sand but it's clearing up, I was away and tank got over feed

 

[Djbetterly]

BFitz, what skimmer do you use?

Are those zoa's or polys you have up top? Trying to figure out what to put up top on my tank.

 

[BFITZ06]

Stock skimmer... Works really well for me but thinking of going with a aquaC. I got alittle bit of both(zoas/palys) up high in the tank

 

[james1990]

has any of you crazy solana owners used an external sump? is it possible with a overflow box?

 

[Djbetterly]

Nitrate battle

I have a 34G solana and I consistently have nitrates between 20-40ppm. I do 5-10G water change at least once a week and they still stay in that range.

I need some realistic advice on how to combat nitrates to consistently keep them lower. I know that since I don't have a sump they will never be zero but I would like them to be lower than they are.

I currently have next to no algae, I feed once a day. My chambers run as follows:

Chamber 1: tunze 9002 with cup mod
Chamber 2: filter floss, purigen, CPE, phosban, chaeto. (in that order top to bottom).
Chamber 3: ATO, heater, return pump.

Any help would be awesome!!

Thank you.

 

[jackson6745]

Tunze 9002 skimmers are very weak. You have 2 choices. Either upgrade your systems ability to export waste by upgrading skimmer and increasing water change percentage, or reduce bio-load and feeding. You will need to do larger water changes initially to get the nitrates down.
FYI without a sump it is possible to have undetectable nitrates

 

[Djbetterly]

Yeah I'm trying to find a better skimmer option. I have a low bio load, only four fish so I'm guessing it's either lack of a good skimmer or something to do with DSB.

 

[noelskii]

Is it just the numbers that's bothering you or are you really "seeing" these nitrates? What test kits are you using? You said you don't have algae growing, so what's the problem? I believe chief has the nac QQ, but you might have to do a little bit of modding to fit it in the back chamber.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

has any of you crazy solana owners used an external sump? is it possible with a overflow box?

It's possible, you need to cut out the back wall which defeats the purpose of buying the solana as opposed to another cube like a deep blue rimless cube.

 

[Djbetterly]

It's the idea that the nitrates are high to be honest. I'm not seeing high amounts of algae, in fact I only have to clean the glass about once every three or four days and even at that point I can't see the algae direct on.

I think I'll look into a better skimmer. Eshopps just released a new nano skimmer that looks like it may fit without too much mod, but I can't be sure.

 

[BFITZ06]

What kind of test kit are you using?

 

[dnyce78]

Man this thread is pretty dead. Thought there would be more owners out there. Just curious but where do you guys keep your water lines? And what are you using to top-off the tank?

 

[E.intheC]

They stopped making these tanks a few years ago, unfortunately. Well.. They stopped making the AIO versions of these tanks. The Solana threads dried up pretty soon after that.

I am hopefully picking one up on Saturday. I'm going to use a JBJ ATO for now, until I figure out what I'm doing for dosing, auto-water changes, etc.

Post a pic of your tank! Lets keep this thread alive.

 

[viplok]

WEEE! big pic!