75g LPS/SPS log

[papagimp]

Finally, a tank all to myself!!! The 55g tank has been given to Jess to do with as she pleases while I'll be running the 75g LPS/SPS tank. I had a difficult time taking photo's in the dim room with a black stand and canopy (sorry sheryl, had to paint it ) but this shot came out okay.

As of today here is where I sit: Added 50lbs bag of Pulverized limestone, about 100lbs of LR, a Koralia #1, Seio (1500gph one) and the 6 x 54w teklight fixture hung very high above tank (sitting in opening on a very tall stand, will be replaced with retrofits at a later time).

Equpiment used and livesstock choices are still being made...so while the tank is sitting and cycling I'll gladly listen to any advice, suggestions or simple critques.



Clicking on the little red house will jump you to my RC Blog for this tank...at the bottom of that page there is a link to my 55g blog as well enjoy!

[D.G.]

How is the Seio pump doing. Were you able to trottle down the flow so you would not have the sand storm? Hope it works for you. Looking good. What kind of filtration do you have?

[Travis L. Stevens]

MORE PICTURES!!!

[papagimp]

D.G. the seio is in there for the heck of it, not going to be the powerhead for this tank though. I'll be getting either a couple #2 or #3 Koralia's for this project. But the seio is going full blast right now and no sandstorm...the occasional dust devil will pop up but nothing I'm worried about.

Filtration at the moment is none. I will be adding a fluval 405 for carbon/mechanical filtration purposes after the cycle has completed.

Travis, I know I need more, thats the only one you can really make anything out with. All the rest just show a milky white water column (love the pavestone!)

Paul Whitby, notice the cool queen conch shell to the back and right side of the tank Thanks a billion for that, I love it!

[nIx_tank]

Cool Adam!

Good luck!

[cmc0814]

How are the birdsnest frags?

[mskohl]

Did those rocks from me go in there? Looks like you'll have tons of places for corals.

[papagimp]

Chris, so far there okay. I'm still waiting to see any signs of green on them though .

Stephanie, yuppers, quite a bit of that rock came from you, some came from Travis (diy rock used on center pillar!, stuff cuts like butter with a hole saw!) and then misc here and there. But most of the big pieces were from you. Me and Jess coudln't be happier with it, looks awesome!

btw, I'll go ahead and mention, the center pillar (unfinished as shown) was made using misc flat pieces and some diy rock, a 1" hole saw, and a 1/2" masonry bit. I wasn't thinking much when I bought the masonry bit and drill last weekend, 1/2" inner diameter pvc...duh! so I had nice holes where I wanted them but had to run and get the hole saw to make the holes big enough to route the pvc through em all. Not sure if I'm happy with the stacking order, but since I still have to make a "cap" for the pillar, we'll see how I go with it.

[Travis L. Stevens]

You got DIY rock from me? How long ago was that? BTW, this is just my opinion, but I would put the widest pieces on the bottom of the stack. I know how cool it is to have some plates come out, but your particular rock looks like it shades a lof of what would be placed below it (which very well could be what you're going for)

[xpawn]

Adam, the tank looks great. Can't wait to see it stocked.
I'll go ahead and post pictures of my 110 gallon tonite.
Would have posted sooner just did'nt have the time.
When I get home the baby plays with me until we both fall sleep.

[pwhitby]

Adam, its looking good......

If I may make a comment on the stack......I like what you did there....but I would alo recommend a large piece on the bottom, to balance the look out a little.

I would love to see pictures with the water clear....do you have any?

BTW....that conch shell looks huge.

Paul.

[papagimp]

Travis, the DIY rocks I got from you I believe were from when you stuck alot of your invert livestock in my tank awhile back. Just small "frag" pieces, but a couple were decent sized. (2nd and 4th rocks from the bottom of pillar) BTW, the shaded area's underneath them is intentional. I'd like some lower light area's in the tank for both the fish and corals.

Paul, definatly plan on having a larger base rock on the bottom, just havn't "found" the right rock yet. Last night the tank was looking very clear so me and jess snapped off a few shots, if she gets them uploaded today I'll post em up.

[Travis L. Stevens]

Ah, I see. That makes sense now. I hope you like them

[papagimp]

Oh I like em , like I said, they cut like butter!

btw travis, talked with jess last night, broke the news on the longfinned anthias concerns, she then pointed out the chalk basses. Any thought's on them?

so everyone knows, while planning on the livestock here is the current "wishlist" I'm working with and editing as needed:

3-5 x chalk basses
3-5 x yellow or orange stripped cardinalfish
1-2 x jawfish (either pearly or blue spotted)
1 x golden angelfish
1 x rhomboid or lineatus wrasse
2 x H. Firefish
And naturally either my B&W Ocellaris, or a pair of skunks...maybe.

Not all these will go, obviously, but this is the selection of fish so far that we like. I would love a smaller species of anthias, one that would do well with maybe 3 members (either all female or 1M 2F)

We definatly want to achieve a "group" of smaller fishes, not neccessarily a school, but something that will at least stay close and give us that a more "busy" appearance to the tank. Peaceful and nonagreesive fish are going to be top priority, I want no aggression in this tank. We lucked out with the 55g that everything we had stuck in their minus the dominoe damsel, had gotten along marvelously.

for corals, I'm thinking a few nice euphyllia colonies, maybe some rics here and there, zoo's, and then misc montipora's and some birdnests, pocillopora, stylo's, and a couple well picked acro's. And as any reefer knowns this want list of corals is always open to change and sudden impulse buys. gotta feed that monkey on my back after all.

[bigScott]

tank lookin sweet adam.. we need more pics..


scott

[richieb]

Tanks looks awesome. Cant wait to see more pics. What kinda circulation pumps are you using, I was thinking bout getting two Hydor #2 for my 75. Enough flow ? any advice is appreciated.

Richie

[Serra]

Adam- Black is always great so I don't mind that you covered up 78 hours of my labor. Really. Just because I am going on and on about it...but really, I don't mind. Nope, not at all. I'm fine, sniff. Really.

The tank looks great! Nice job on the aquascaping. Leigh Anne has some little basslets (or something. Mind is gone from sniffing all the paint fumes during 87 hours of labor on the canopy.) They are sort of purple with blue stripes and would do nicely as a group for this tank if your angel is laid back.

My pygmy angel is the bad kid of my tank so beware there. You are on the tank tour right?

[papagimp]

Sheryl, I did sign up for the tank tour, if my tank is available at the time. The 55g is so iffy at the moment, I'm not sure if it'll still be "viewable" at the time. I"m hoping it is, I love showing off my tanks

As for your 78 hours of labor....or is it 87 hours , if it makes you feel better I had to spend a whole whopping 10 minutes to paint it all black, LOL!

Richie, I was thinking the same thing, 2 of the #2's, but I'll also have a #1 and a return pump, most likely going to be either a mag 5 or 7, not sure though. Still toying around with idea's, and since I havn't even gotten the sump built yet...still alot of variables on that. But definatly giong with koralia's for powerheads, love those things.

[papagimp]

My first livestock showed up today, lol, a small grammarus shrimp running through the entire tank like he's in pod heaven...nothing to bother him but a load of algae on the glass. I felt kinda bad since he's the only one I found, so I stuck a few more in from my 55g.....then I noticed the little bugger jumped over the edge and sat stuck on the glass drying out.. time to go pod hunting again!

fwiw, current water parameters as of Friday showed up as follows:

Ph 8.3
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrates 30ppm
Cu 0ppm
Phosphates (maxed out)
Alk and CA not tested yet (kit ran out, another opportunity to go to the fish store )

Theres a good chance I may have "missed" the cycle due to the amount of live rock from the 55g that got stuck in, even though alot of it sat dry for almost a week. I've been "feeding" the tank with a misc. variety of flakes, pellets, and cyclopeeze granules. All I see for my troubles is loads of phosphates, some nitrates and a solid green sheet of algae on the back glass already. Took my 55 alot longer to get that much green algae...maybe I should turn my lights off finally, they have been on for a few days now, lol.

[papagimp]

A few extra shots so far:

[Travis L. Stevens]

Cool. Thanks for those shots.

[papagimp]

Just wait...I've got vacation next week and plan on working on this project quite a bit. Heres the plans:

1) plumb the tank for when I get a sump. I'll be using the PVC holding the pillar as a return line. With the tall canopy, I'll extend the pillar to the surface and slightly above with my return coming down from inside the canopy. The outlets (originally used as a means to support the pillar) will be extended to the two far back corner and two front corners. The two in front will be covered with drilled rock to help them blend in, while the two in back should be fairly covered up with aquascaping. Will be using a mag 12 split into these 4 returns.

2) obtain sump...if I can, get the sump and get it baffled, drilled, and under the stand along with plumbing to return completed. Thinking of using a 20g L, but that'll depend on this next step as well.

3) Find cheap overflow if I can, this would allow me to finish settingup the sump. A refugium will be utilized but it'll be a standalone tank next to the sump, split from the return and gravity fed back to the sump. I'll probably make this a RDSB/Fuge combo tank (maybe 20g H)

4) finish up the aquascaping, get water parameters where I want em, maybe add first fish (yellow headed jawfish) if tank still looks good towards the end of my vacation time. Also will be adding another couple inches or so of livesand on top of the Pavestone. Enough to give me at a minimum 3" SB but preferably 4" towards the middle/front of tank, with back corners having slightly less.

5) either figure a way to "retrofit" my teklight fixture into this canopy or obtain a MH retrofit. I'm thinking 2 x 250w for this, most likely going 20,000k but may supplement actinics and go with 14000k MH bulbs. Not 100%...so many options.... Love my T5's people, and still extremely happy with em, but we'll be using T5's on the 55g (jess's new tank) as well as the 220g. I'd like at least one decent display setup with that MH shimmer I love so much.

All that would pretty much finish up the job.

[papagimp]

Finished the sump this past week so heres a few pictures I took.

First, this is the 20g Long sump, No modifications have been made yet, but the location for the baffles have been clearly marked for my own references. Why waste the paper.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/...e626a6f3_m.jpg

This next shows a close up of the baffles being installed. As you can tell from this photo, I took Paul T. (captnbunzo) advice on how to silicone in the baffles. This was done by first marking the location (see above photo) and then taping off the areas where I don't want the silicone after I'm done. As can be seen here.



Next I applied the silicone using my newest special tool...my finger. After making sure to smear that stuff everywhere, the tape is removed while the silicone is still wet. Heres the end result: As you can see, the seam appears more straight and even, looks much nicer than previous attempts. I'd also like to add that this seam is the only one to turn out this nice...I put the tape too wide on the other baffles and was too lazy to correct it Functionality over appearance.



This next shows the bottom seam, after tape removal.



After installing the baffles (3 used on this setup) I then painted (krylon fusion) the section for my refugium/DSB. I hear people mentioning keeping light out from the DSB , more so when refering to a remote DSB such as a DSB in a bucket method. So I applied the anti-light theory by painting the lower 6 inches around the entire fuge. This will be filled with a full 6 inches of Pavestone Pulverized Limestone, pre-seeded and well cycled stuff.

And heres the completed unit so far: well, close enough, one more baffle to go.





Next I went on to securing the return pump. I've chosen a mag12 for this, more as an experiment I hope works well for my purposes. I'm was worried about the vibration/noise associated with the return pump, after using a mag 3 on the 55 for awhile. So I constucted a simple DIY PVC cage to hold the pump secure in the return section of the sump. No other purposes than to keep the thing from wiggling around and whatnot.





Since I do not have an overflow yet, and will not be drilling this tank, I'm stuck at this point with the sump/fuge. I will however be using braided vinyl tubing as well as PVC to connect everything together. Protein Skimmer has yet to be picked out either but I plan to use one that will fit in the first section of the sump, plenty of room there for an ASM or SuperNeedleWheel, not sure which I'll get but it'll most likely be one of these two.

Feel free to ask any questions on the setup, I'm still winging it as I go.

[Travis L. Stevens]

Interesting Adam. Very different take on a typical setup. I like it!

[papagimp]

Heres a photo of the return lines I'll be using for this project.



And heres them installed in the tank



Yes I know, hard to see uh? Look at the lower right and left corners (sorry for the tiny pic), Heres a close up of the outlet in the lower right hand corner. I drilled a piece of LR and stuck this over the outlet. I'll be adding a 45 degree angle to the PVC and covering that up as well on both the front return outlets. The rear outlets are hidden well enough behind the rockwork and will be left pointing straight up until I figure something better out.



And heres one of the other side, again sorry for tiny pics. As you can plainly see, the pillar in the middle of the tank, this is where the return comes in, unfortunalty I stuck the thing right in the middle of the tank and the 75 has a center brace, so I'll have to divert the return around this and hopefully it'll hide well enough. I'll be extending the pillar up and to one side of this brace so the return is hidden under the canopy.



I may also have to upsize the PVC central pillar to 3/4" due to the size of the return pump I'm trying out. Hopefully not though, we'll see when it comes time to test out the sump portion of the tank.

Well, that's it for now. Got my first clowns in the tank last night but didn't get any photo's of it. So I'll update again later, enjoy!!!