The inwall 380 starfire reborn

[mrcrab]

the only detriment mentioned in the article for <76 was the corals stop growing at that temp.

[GreshamH]

Huh, I know more then a handfull of old salties with over grown tanks that run in the low 70's. Mine's now at 74 and growing well. It really depends on what corals you ahve, and where they came from.

[mrcrab]

only quoting an article I read. I'll try and find the resource.

[tanya72806]

Looks awesome CONGRATS

[Sparkss]

Makes sense that it would all depend on where the corals came from, etc, Gresh. Thanks for the feedback on the temperature question

Ditto to you too mrcrab. Based on the feedback from you all, and Johnathan, I think I will definitely start using the seasonal temperature tables with the AC


UPDATE

The 4 corals I put in seem to be doing fine this morning, although they were majorly stressed last night to the point that I considered postponing this weekends activities to try to track down the root casue of the distress. The zoas, cyphastrea, and 2 different kinds of montis seem to be doing ok this morning, but I will know more once the lights come on.

I am starting to regret the live sand addition. I keep finding "bad" hitchikers in the tank. I had thought that the source we got it from had been more conscientious about what went into his tank(s), but it appears not. Then again he did tell me that it was mainly a softie tank with a few fish. After a couple of hitchiker mythrax crabs (ok, not considered bad by some people), several worms that seemed to match the onoeno (sp?) worm pictures, which is a predatory, not reef safe, worm, a weird nudi/worm that I have yet to ID (and yet to catch, as it escapaed my last attempt) numerous sundials and last night a good sized (1"+)predatory whelk. I would have been livid if I had missed it and ended up finding it one morning dining on one of our clams >. So all in all generally regretting getting the sand, or at least putting it into the tank. I should have just let it all die off in the buckets and dealt with it later .

[GreshamH]

That sucks Tom. I could always get you a puffer or two while your coral less They should take care of the snails . Once your done, just give them back to me. Mmm, and maybe a big lunare wrasse

[Sparkss]

Gresh, I just don't know if I got them all or not.. and not sure if a puffer would take care ones like the larger one i found last night.

Checked closer this morning and the cyphastrea frag had started bleaching, the zoas opened up and the monti's seem ok, but possibly a little stressed still. Going to run a full set of tests on the water shortly.

I went ahead and moved a small rock with some gold laced cloves into the tank. We will see how they fare in the mean time.

[GreshamH]

The puffer I have in mind would munch it, no worries I just have to see if that puppy is still around

If Max still has it, it could do the job. The guy could take you finger off

[Sparkss]

ouch.. hehehe

Depending on how things go we are going to try to start moving corals over this weekend so that we can get the prop tank torn down, but I am unsure how that whole timeline will work out now

[Sparkss]

Well, I figured out what was causing the coral stress.. the heaters appear to have overly crappy thermostats and the thermometer we were using sucked even worse *sigh*. When I swung the temp probe from our controller over the new tank was a full 2 degrees hotter than the old tank, so when moving them over it was a huge temperature shock. Luckily we did the "test corals" before moninv everything over and found the issue. Unplugged the heaters and put some fans over the tank to bring the temp down then reset the thermostats on the heaters and started bringing the livestock over from the prop tank.


8 hours later and we finally pushed back and went to bed (well, I took a shower first because I was head to toe salty).

Not sure if we are going to have any room left for "new" corals, and we have only moved over the prop tank (then again it was a 3' X 3' prop that was pretty full). We still have the display tank to move over after the sumps are setup and we have a more appropriately sized skimmer running on it (versus the HOB remora that is propped up in the tank currently). That will hopefully be about this time next week, but it is hard to tell at this point exactly how the timeline will play out.


I am off to HD to pick up the materials to start building the walls to "define" the fish room within the garage. But in the mean time here is a quick FTS of the tank this morning after the lights came on.



I will take some more later on this evening, after the tank clears a bit more, and more closeups of the livestock of course.

[jnarowe]

Tom,

I was comiserating with Curt at Neptune about how I would really prefer a starfire tank rather than the acrylic, and he said something interesting. He said that he would love a starfire tank but couldn't use one because he is in earthquake country.

I am too, and would like to know if there were any special considerations made in the install of your tank or if the tank was assembled with any particular method for extra safety in a quake.

[jacmyoung]

Looks like a winner to me, can't wait for more pics.

BTW Tom I posted a hybrid PBT pic in MARS forum.

[Sparkss]

Johnathan
We are outside of the fault line areas where we live, although pretty much all of the West Coast is likely considered earth quake territory. When we bought our home we were assessed for earth quake and flood insurance and were told that we were not in the "zones" for either, IIRC, but that was several years ago.

Short answer is we just built it like a brick **** house, as rock solid as we could.

jacmyoung
See, now you are just teasing me

I saw the reply to that thread but had not yet read up on it. How is the hybrid temperament wise ? As bad, worse or better than a regualr PBT ? You will have to let me know . As it stands we decided against a PBT due to their reputation as being second only to a Sohal for meanness and aggression *sigh*.


Well, I am off to take the trailer back, all materials are safely here now (10' 2x4s *it is a tall ceiling in there*, green boad dryall, etc). I have already taken down the prop tank and it is catching rain in the back yard currently (our neighbors must love us for our acrylic graveyard out there )).

I hope to have the wall up and the one side of sheetrock today, then I will assess how much further I want to go tonight. We are sort of screwed because it is raining out, so I can't primer and/or paint for a while, and the sumps were going to be up against the one wall, so that means it all needs to wait for drier weather before I can even start the RO/DI filling them *sigh*.

Either way I should have more pictures later on this evening, unless I manage to nail gun my foot to the floor or something

[jacmyoung]

I feel your pain Tom, the rain sucks even without a project at hand.

The hybrids I saw were very similar in temperament to a PBT, if I have to choose then the hybrid is on the more aggressive side. But with the tank of your size I don't think PBT aggression will be an issue.

Of course if your goal is to have a naked pair dancing for you without paying admission, then I can't feel sorry for you

[Sparkss]

Hahahahahaha.. point taken jacmyoung . Thanks for the info

[jnarowe]

My PBT is a total gentleman. Nail your foot to the floor...please post pics if that happens. It would make me feel better.

I just laid a 7' x 18" plank over my tank to see if that helps keep my stomach out of the water while I am cleaning it.

[mrcrab]

Originally posted by jnarowe
My PBT is a total gentleman. Nail your foot to the floor...please post pics if that happens. It would make me feel better.

I just laid a 7' x 18" plank over my tank to see if that helps keep my stomach out of the water while I am cleaning it.

Is 7' going to be wide enough?

[jnarowe]

No. But it worked well enough and I didn't fall in. I am glad i thought of it because it let me lay in a much better position and it took much less time to scrape.

[Sparkss]

Well, something came up last night I we made zero progress on the new sumps and walls for the fish room *sigh*. But I went ahead and tool some pictures this moring to share, although they did not come out as good as I had hoped.. I guess I need to either play with the whit balance or get a better lens for our camera (or just learn to use the darned thing ).

Since the tank is far from crystal clear (hard to expect much from a Fluval canister filter and a Remora HOB skimmer in such a large tank), so it is hard to get pictures of large areas of the tank (at least until the sump, skimmers, etc get installed).

So I just took picutres basically of one rock at a time. All of these corals have been in our prop tank for at least 3 months. They were all acquired as frags, many of them un-IDable at the time of purchase (were sold by various LFS as frags that broke off of their colonies during shipping). Some have really grown into some beatiful colors and shapes. Unfortunately the "best" ones did not photograph well, so I will give that a shot again later on this evening.

Here is the left side front rock



Here is the right front rock


and here is the center front rock


and more of a closeup of the center-right back rock



I love the colors on the corals on this rock. I will need to monitor how they hold up in this location to see if we will need to move them to be able to maintain the colors

[hawaiianwargod]

Looks great Tom! How Big is that Squamosa clam?

[Sparkss]

Here is a close up of the right side and the zoa garden :



Here are some closeups of the center front rock :



This one has what was IDed by a friend as possibly being the red abrol that is going around. Most everything on this rock came from the frag rack at Atlantis Aquarium, so that is entirely possilbe. There are 2 pieces on this rock that I really need to get better pictures of to share, but as I mentioned, I will try to get thost later tonight.



Here is more of a closeup of the left side, our Birdsnest Grotto. There are 5 different birdnest over here with a 6th one waiting for us to pick it up from a local reefer. That will make 3 LEs, one ex-LE and 2 just nice birdsnests .

[Sparkss]

Originally posted by hawaiianwargod
Looks great Tom! How Big is that Squamosa clam?

I would have to measure him, but when I moved him from the prop tank to the new tank I had to use both hands to steady it. I honestly don't recall it having been that big when we got him from a fellow reefer a couple of months ago. .

[Sparkss]

Here are some closeups of the front left bottom :



Here is the pavona ? and cyphastrea (sp?). Both are being nursed back to helath. The pavona (if that is what it is ?) was purchased almsot as a throw away from an LFS for $10, and most of it has died off, but over the last month it has stabilized and started to recover. Hopefully we can keep that going in the new tank. The Cyphastrea was injured by me, I had originally put it in too much light, and have been nursing it back to health ever since. The biggest challenge is that even under perfect conditions they are not the fastest growers, but we have seen improvement and growth, so ditto to what we said about the pavona, hopefully we can keep that upward trend going on the cyphastrea also.



Here is a hot pink stylo that we bought as an itty bitty frag over 2 1/2 years ago. It has managed to stay with us through the many pests, tank crashes and tank moves



And here is one of the clams on this side. The picture doesn't do it justice, but you can sort of see the colors and designs in it's mantle

[Sparkss]

and last picture for this morning is a crappy shot of the back center-left of our pocillopora forest, with 4 different poccis. I had debated on putting them in or not, mainly due to their tendency to have a poyp bailout, but we decided to go ahead anyways. A fellow RCer enlightened us that the panda goby requires a pocci host in order to survive (much like the acro crabs do), so we decided to keep the pocci and eventually try a panda goby (or two ).




Our plans for this weekend have changed. We are going to tackle taking down our old tank and move all of the livestock over today, versus leaving it running and building the new sump and equipment setup around it. So all of the fish, corals, clams and inverts will be moved over by this evening (optimistically). This will come with it's own challenges, but it will also open the door for a much easier, cleaner implementation of the new equiptment setup that we have planned.

So if we don't get to posting any new pictures, it is becuase we are still up to our shoulders in salt water

[nasotang]

Wow Tom. Your tank is going to look amazing. When's the tank tour again?