Thank you!

Thanks for the kind words and tuning in!

Thanks for tuning in!

Our pleasure!

She's not very interactive with her subscribers 😂

Thick medium and fine sponges, then charcoal, then biological media then buffer

Not necessary, but is ideal

We don't need to much heat here in florida

The water level in the chamber holding the return pump is first to be affected by the evaporation. You want your ATO there. For example, if you block the intake with your hand while the pump is still running, you'll see the pump chamber's water level quickly decline before the rest of the chambers since it's now just expelling whatever water is left back there. You have to see the layout of the chambers in the back to understand how the water flow works. - Adding a heater in the return chamber next to the pump is risky. If the water level would ever get low enough to expose most or all of heater to open air it could overheat and nuke your tank. You would have to not top off the water for DAYS for that to happen though.

Only the water in the saltwater evaporates, the salt stays in the aquarium. Left untouched, or replaced with salt water this will increase salinity. RODI water is just replacing the evaporated water.

@@bentonbaker oh yeah I know, but I as they was doing it manually, how do they know where to fill up to without an auto top to show where the water level should be? I know the auto top offs have a sensor or float to initiate refilling RODI But isn’t there risky of lowering the salinity if manually filling too much RODI?

@@darkphoenx3930ah, gotcha! with the water volume in the tank vs the water's height in the return pump chamber, even eyeballing it won't make that big of a salinity swing. We're talking about the ten thousandths or hundred thousandths decimal place. Insignificant if you ask me.

@@bentonbaker thanks! That’s a relief to know, I have just got my first 20gallon tank and I’m weighing up what is priority for start up. I don’t feel so weary of manual top up to start with now :)

@@darkphoenx3930 ATOs make life so much easier though, especially if you have to leave for a couple days. Although it's not necessary it's the first thing I would get after the essentials!

Thanks for tuning in:)

We recommend it for freshwater, as with Saltwater we recommend live sand and rock

Because there is more filtration in the rock and sand opposed to smooth plastic.

Typically those are used for Freshwater

Soon!

It’s a simple setup or low tech. If you don’t have a PS, you just need to do more water changes.