ADA 45P Upgrade?
I started my reef tank on the small end simply because I wasn’t really sure if I’d be successful, and of course that is still yet to be seen. I’d personally rather start out on the difficult side of things, requires one to pay much more attention and therefore learn much more. Also, the cost of catastrophic error is much less in a five gallon tank than one significantly larger.
In any case I’ve been thinking of an upgrade path that would utilize the most equipment while still being a significant improvement.
I was initially turned off by the ADA tank offerings when considering which to go with, but I had only really looked at the 5.5 gallon, known as the Mini M, but its dimensions weren’t very compatible with my light choice. I didn’t even look at the larger tanks, unfortunately. I realized the other night though that the 45P is 18″ long, perfect for the light fixture that I have on the 5.5 gallon.
The water volume almost doubles, the tank is 1.5″ taller, 2″ longer, and 2.5″ wider.
Now, I did have a concern as to whether that light would have enough oomph on a bigger tank, but the reality is that with only being 1.5″ taller all I need to do is just add a bit more sand and the difference is significantly reduced. The length increase is no problem at all, nor should the width. I think there’d still be plenty of spread, and even then it’d be basically like giving a sand border around the rock and coral anyway. The important point being that the light intensity really should change all that much from whatever it is on the 5.5 gallon.
I was thinking of doing a very small HOB overflow to have a sump and refugium out of sight, probably using a 10 gallon, so total water volume would be about 15 gallons probably.
I think it would be amazing with one of the new Vortech MP10 pumps.
It’s something that’ll keep kicking around in my mind for a good while. I want it to be a well deserved upgrade in the future, not a “oh, I changed my mind” type thing done in a month or two.
