Just a general comment from my experience: In my first exploration into saltwater I set up a couple of tanks and got addicted to gadgets and equipment. I honestly thought I was pumping money into stuff that would make a great system and provide a wonderful living environment for my creatures. What I ended up with was a maintenance nightmare, the whole system became dependent on the equipment running well and being well maintained (= regularly cleaned), so my weekly/monthly tasks grew pretty big!! and to be honest I still had the same problems as everybody else = algae outbreaks, strange swings in water composition etc - in fact I might say it was worse...
As always, I was constanty reading on-line and off, but choosing what I wanted to believe and what not, so all those experienced articles about keeping systems simple were just skimmed over, because I knew best of course (and was having fun with all my equipment).
As I set up my new system (having just moved) I intend to keep it real simple. fewer bits of equipment = fewer things to go wrong! I'm going to try to keep to a few basic rules: take everything slowly, regular water changes, keep any mechanical filtration clean! set everything up for easy maintenance (everything in easy reach, not buried under piles of other stuff etc)... equipment: pumps for water circulation, lights, heater and a skimmer.
So all this translates into some simple advice: get your system cycled and stable. keep all the filters clean & simplify them (get rid of messy mechanical filtration that is difficult to clean & replace it with something that will do the job but be painless for you to remove and clean/replace - that way you will be more likely to do it on-going). Once all is working in harmony, add equipment only if you really need to, and even consider it temporary at the time (for example a UV sterlizer to eliminate and algae bloom - when clear disconnect the UV)
just my :twocents:
