- Hi, I'm Thomas.
And these are my top five favorite pieces
of gear for reef aquarium maintenance.
I've used a lot of gear
over my almost 20 years of reef keeping.
And these particular pieces
of gear are the gems that just made my life a lot easier.
So in an effort to also make your life easier
I'm gonna share with you starting
with the CJ Ultra Zero utility pump.
Using a utility pump to move water
from a bucket to the aquarium
during a water change or to a hard to access
ATO reservoir is nothing new
but getting every last drop of water out
of that bucket with a standard pump just isn't very easy.
CJ completely solved that conundrum with their Ultra Zero
which is able to drain water
from a container down to a depth
of just two millimeters or 0.08 inches which is phenomenal.
It has a max blow rate of roughly 800 gallons per hour
which is plenty for most reefers
meaning you're not gonna get stuck standing there forever
as you try to refill your tank
and it uses standard garden hose style threading.
So you can attach a standard garden hose
or my personal favorite and coincidentally, the next item
on my list, the Python No Spill Clean and Fill.
Not only does this hook directly to the Ultra Zero
for refilling your tank with freshly mixed salt water
including an inline valve so that you can stop
and start the flow even while the pump is plugged in,
but more importantly, it hooks up directly to a sink
and the special T-valve uses a venturity style mechanism
to draw water from the tank through the tubing
using nothing more than the water pressure from the faucet.
And at the other end, you have a gravel vac
so you can clean up your sand bed while draining the tank.
No buckets because everything just goes
from the tank directly down the drain of your sink.
There's no mess.
It's just easy water changes.
Before I do big water changes, though,
I like to blow debris off of and from between the rocks
and coral colonies and get it suspended in the water column.
And to do that, I use the Marineland Maxi-Jet Powerhead.
These pumps are super affordable and also super flexible.
Not only do they work well to blow debris
out of crevices when it's set up as a standard powerhead
but you can also swap out the impaler
and the impaler cover for a propeller and cage
which transforms it into a propeller pump
with a wide cone of flow, like an AC wave pump.
And in this configuration, I use these powerheads
as a cheap solution for mixing up
and circulating fresh batches of salt water.
They are surprisingly robust for such cheap pumps
and do a really good job of dealing
with the salt grains while also doing a fantastic job
of just making sure they all get fully dissolved
making them a much better option
than risking using a pricier pump
for mixing up salt water, but that's not all, folks.
They also pair up perfectly with VCA's vacuum attachments.
These 3D printed attachments work incredibly well
for cleaning up debris from crevices and cracks
between corals and the rock work which is way better
if you're going to be cleaning your sand bed
during a water change, since blowing all of that stuff
into the water column will get all that crud suspended
but not get it directly out of the tank.
There's also a Detritus vacuum attachment
that is incredibly handy for cleaning out your sump.
It's wide, lays flat and does a really good job
of just creating the necessary suction
against that bottom panel to pull out
all the mulm and sandy debris directly out of the sump
and into a bucket or sink or wherever you stick
the other end of the hose.
Cleaning out a sump is so necessary,
but we often put it off for way too long
just because it is typically a big pain in the tush,
but these VCA attachments do make it a lot easier.
Plus they're super affordable.
So they're well worth grabbing a set.
But last but not least,
I am absolutely in the love with Algae Free's
long handled scraper and the blades that they make for it.
I used to go through a ton
of small flat razors that you would pick
up from a hardware store.
I even had a little plastic handle
for them to make them easier to hold
but I've switched away from them entirely
ever since I picked up Algae Free scraper, firstly,
their blades are huge by comparison.
And that means a lot less effort
because you can clean way more panel per swipe.
Secondly, these blades don't rust
when you look at them sideways near your tank, yes,
those little razor blades
from the hardware store rust really quickly
even just being near the tank in their packaging.
And it sucks because that means they're basically
a one time use and may even start rusting
before you use them which dulls the blade
which also makes them less effective.
Algae Free's blades just last
and a quick anecdote to prove my point.
I dropped this entire pack of
I don't even know how many blades are in here
like six, eight, 10, something like that.
I dropped the whole pack in my tank, fished it out.
They're covered in salt water, dispensed them all,
rinsed them off, let them dry, put them all back in.
None of them has even a spot of rust.
If I did that with the other razor blades,
I would literally just have rust everywhere, my hands,
my soul, and also the handles work really well.
They're just easy to load.
They're super comfortable.
The blades are also double-sided
so you can just swap it around
after it gets dull on the one side and keep going.
They cut through corn line and other algae like butter,
and they are just a pleasure to use.
They are definitely high on my list of maintenance tools.
And I honestly wish I found them sooner.
I would have saved myself a lot of aggravation
and sore fingers
but it's not just the inside
of our aquarium panels that need to be kept clean.
Plus there's also ways to clean the inside from the outside.
And you can check out the top tools
for keeping those panels spotless inside
and out by watching this video right here.
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