My move from Iowa City to Ankeny was not planned far in advance. I made the mistake of transfering all of my corals to Dan Hinch's table tank of death. Everything looked real bad when I took it back from him, and it took a few months to recover.
When setting up tank number 2 at my house in Ankeny I was determined to do things "right". I decided to use a sump and I ended up plumbing the new 90 gallon tank into my basement. I also decided that I should use a better skimmer than the skilter. I upgraded to a remora pro. Here was tank number 2 when i first set it up in August of 2005.
Tank number 2 August 2005
Here it is showing the room it is in.
At the end of November I upgraded the skimmer and lights. Dan Hinch built me a hood to match my stand and we installed 400 w 20k radiums on an hqi ballast. I also went with vho actinics. I upgraded the Remora to an MRC.
Here is a pic with the new canopy, lights, skimmer, and my first Tunze.
Tank number 2 December 2005
In February or March i figured out that I had monti nudis. The nudis were a very big setback, since I had planned on letting the tank become dominated by montis. The tank looked like this before removing the montis and some of the lps. Can you tell I got a new camera for christmas?
Tank 2 February 2006
In May I bought a bunch of frags from atlantis to take up the space lost by all the montis being removed. I think I was running both the mrc and my ASM G5. At this point the tank was simply starving. Looking back now I can't believe I ever thought the corals were healthy.
Tank 2 May 2006
Fast forward 7 months. My corals all looked healthy and had put down some very big bases. I was installing a prop tank in the basement and adding a new skimmer. Then, as you know, disaster struck. Here is the tank 1 day before the crash. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was getting closer.
Tank 2 December 23 2006
Brad