captbunzo's 47g tank log

[captbunzo]

Ok. So I took the plunge and got the 47g tank from Petsmart. And I am REALLY excited about it. The tank has a footprint of 20x18 and is 30 inches tall. I the the tallness of the tank is going to look REALLY cool.

Here are some better pictures of the tank and stand.

   

The tank is sold by Petsmart under the brand "Top Fin", which I think is related to Tetra. As stated by the Premium Aquatics guy, all sides of this tank are tempered, so there will be no drilling, etc, of this tank.

The stand is the sort sold by Oceanic to go with their 30g cubes. I REALLY like the stand.

So far I have found a ballast and pendant for a 250W MH light (used from someone on RC). I will hang it above the tank. I haven't decided on the bulb yet. Here is the ballast on hellolights.com. What do folks recommend for the bulb, from the list on the hellolights.com site?

   http://www.hellolights.com/25unmagm58ba.html

Here is the reflector:

   

Anyhow, plans so far include making this into a predator oriented tank. On this list for fish possibilities include:

   2 - Pink skunk clowns
   1 - Valentini Puffer
   1 - Fu Manchu Lionfish
   1 - Some Kind of Hawkfish
   1 - Snowflake Eel
   1 - Flame or Coral Beauty Angelfish

Of course, ALL of those fish would be too much, probably, so I will have to narrow the list down, methinks. Any thoughts, comments, etc?

As for corals, I plan to do mostly SPS and then perhaps a couple LPS (branching Alveopora, specifically). With 250W of light above this sucker, I suspect that a clam would do well.

So, any thoughts, comments, etc?

[captbunzo]

Ok, question here. I am deciding on what sort of bulb to put in my 250 Watt Metal Halide Pendant. I have narrowed it down to the following choices:

   10,000K Ushio
   10,000K XM
   20,000K XM

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Russ Braaten]

I have the 175watt 15,000K XM bulb over a 30 cube and I like it. It is a great middle ground.

Try to setup the pendent so you can raise and lower it. I have mine a little high and it will be a bear fo lower it.

[captbunzo]

I will check out the 15,000K bulb. And good tip on the height adjustable-ness.... I will have to work something out...

[chris4693]

The 10k XM is very white, from what I have heard the 250watt 20k is too blue.

I will most likely get the 15k XM's when I get new bulbs.

[VCoo71]

the PAR rating on the 15K's is very low from what i have read....i run the 20K DE's on HQI ballasts and the color is only slightly blue the new frag tank i set up is running a 10K DE XM on an M80 and it is blinding white! should be intresting to see how the frags do compared to the mothers under diffrent lighting

a great link to comparing bulbs and ballasts

http://www.reeflightinginfo.arvixe.com/index.htm

charlie

[captbunzo]

Originally posted by VCoo71
the PAR rating on the 15K's is very low from what i have read....

I did end up getting the 15K bulb. But even if it does have a lower PAR rating, that shouldn't be a problem since we typically overlight our tanks anyhow. I think 250W of a 15000K XM bulb will do nicely for pretty much anything I want to put in the tank....

Thank you all for the input. And that link is great, Charlie, thanks for posting!!!

[captbunzo]

And a good PAR meter is on my to-buy list as well. I can't wait t o run some test on my various systems. You hear so much about what kind of PAR different things are supposed to provide, etc. It'll be fun to see some REAL values...

[captbunzo]

Ok, so I HAD a ballast on order from someone on Reef Central. They informed me today that the ballast was for 220V power, not 110V. That sucks and they refunded my money.

So, I have a Pendant for a single ended bulb on order. And I have a 15000K XM bulb on order. Now I need to order a ballast to power it all. What would you all recommend?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!

[captbunzo]

For anyone interested, I have a thread over in the plant forum questioning any nice tall accent plants that I can use in this tank. Here is a link:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=923036

[captbunzo]

The good news - I bought 20g of RODI water from a LFS and filled the tank up halfway. Woot!



The bad news - I found a chip in this brand new tank. The funny thing is you can actually see it as that bright spot on the left side of the tank picture in the first post of this thread. I cut out that portion of the pic, which you can see here:



So tomorrow I will be calling Petsmart to make sure they will allow me to bring this in and trade it out for a new version of the same tank. If so, I will then bring it in and trade it out. Grrrr.....

[bjonesjr1]

Hey paul cool beans, that your starting a new tank, where will this be located at you home or work spot in dallas... That sucks about the crack in the new tank, I'm sure petsmart will allow you to change it out with no problem, Its a good thing that you found that right, could of it got any worse to where the tank would break will all the water in the tank ???

I'll pm you details about are trip, to see what works out... Were going right threw dallas, from shreport... So I'll see where your located along the way and see which one is better for the stop...

talk to you soon, and good luck with changing out the tank.

[captbunzo]

Thanks for checking in, Bobby! This tank will be in my "computer geek apartment" in Dallas.

And I did get the 20 gallons of RODI water out of the tank, the tank back to the store, exchanged, brought home, and refilled with the 20g of RODI water. Phew! I was tired after all that, especially since I had to go to Home Depot first to get a hose for siphoning.

On the bright side, I found some BLACK vinyl tubing that will look great inside the tank. I will be using a short piece to connect a Maxijet powerhead to the PhosBan reactor hanging off the back of the tank.

Anyhow, most of my tank supplies should be arriving today from the various shippers. I am annoyed, however, at Drs. Foster & Smith for delaying the shipment of my buckets O salt. Those won't arrive until tomorrow - Grrr!!!!

I may have to go by fish store tonight and buy enough salt to get the tank initially filled. Grrrr!!!!!!!!! I'll have to think about that.

[captbunzo]

Oh yeah - one more thing. I have heard from a fellow Reef Centralite and from Petsmart that both the bottom and sides of this tank are made out of tempered glass. But considering my recent experience with the chipped tank, question arises:

Is it possible to CHIP tempered glass???

I would think, especially based on previous experiences that tempered glass typically responds explosively to such encounters.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[nIx_tank]

I have never chipped tempered glass.

I unfortunately have tried to cut tempered glass by accident while doing some stained glass projects, and man, does that leave a mess.

But I have never actually chipped it.

I kind of find that a bit odd. Makes me really wonder if it is actually tempered.

[eddybabyhd]

did you decide on a halide bulb yet. Look into the Coralvue Reeflux 10k's

they look just like the aqualine 10k's. they are the most white i have ever seen without any yellow look to them. I recently just put two on my tank, i switched from the standard coralvues which are very blue

[eddybabyhd]

opps didnt read where you ordered your bulb

[captbunzo]

Yeah - with T5s or MH plus actinic supplementation I would go about half 10000K bulbs and have actinic. But with such a small footprint (headprint?) on the tank, I really can't nicely fit more then just the one 250W Metal Halide bulb.... So 15K it is for a mix between better growth (10000K) and better color (actinic).

I am sure it will work. I mean, 250W for 47 gallons. With the (horrible) W/Gal rule, thats 5W per gallon, which should be fine.

And, woot!

The rest of my tank supplies should be waiting at my apartment complex. By the end of the day I should have the tank salted (It's got 40+ gallons of RODI water in it now), sand added (I washed a 50# bag of Pavestone last night), and all of the equipment added.

Give me another paycheck later (or at the end) of the month, and I should be adding rock. Woot!

[MyMonkey]

Nice Paul. Interesting dimensions.

[captbunzo]

Ok, so I got the RODI water in the tank salted and then added my Pavestone Pulverized Limestone for my substrate. The 50# bag gave me about 3 inches total, which I am pleased.

Then I went back and forth from Ardmore over the weekend. I was disappointed when I returned to find the tank still horribly cloudy. I have a couple of ideas on this:

   1. Since I have no rock, etc, in there yet, sufficient seed bacteria was NOT present to coat the dust and cause it to settle.

   2. Maybe I should get a power or canister filter and run it for a while to try and get the finer dust reduced faster.

   3. Maybe I should just be patient.

Whatever the case, I have made a plan concerning rock and aquascaping. If I can find some recycled live rock for sale in the DFW area, I'll get a pile of that. Otherwise, I will go with about a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of dead rock (base rock, etc) to new live rock from a fish store.

As for aquascaping, I am going to build a piller like Paul Whitby has done for his 600 gallon tank:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...19#post7806819



Of course, I will be doing 1 pillar and on a much smaller scale. But that's ok. Anyhow, I plan to place it somewhere in the back left or right corner of the tank sort of extending forward and to the side with some shelves and stuff. I want the tank to be pretty open, byt have some nice room for multiple levels of corals, etc.

Concerning corals, I am leaning more and more towards the mostly SPS category. Sort of as an experiment. And I want to keep the count of total corals to abouyt 5-7 or so. I want to leave it very natural and not too overcrowded.

Oh, and I want to get a clam...

[captbunzo]

Well, I got an amazing pile of rock from Youngsilver @ Aquatic Design Aquariums in Plano, TX. I got a great deal on it and it is BEAUTIFUL rock! Thanks a million, Jonathan!!!

http://lfs.mycomas.com/index.html?StoreGroup=DFW

If you are ever in the area, check out the store. It was really nice. And the guy in charge of the place was a crackup.

Today I need to aquire a small list of items:

   1. 3 1/2 inch PVC tees
   2. appropriately sized hole saw
   3. 12V transformer to run the fan in the MH pendant
   4. 2 hooks for my pendant hanging contraption
   5. digital & grounded light timer

Sunday I picked up a nice pile of supplies for hanging the pendant from the sealing. I am using 3/16" inch coated wire rope and am going to try and work up this pulley setup for raising and lowering the light.

I will post some pics...

[MyMonkey]

I would run a filter to help clear the silt. You can save the patience for other things.

[captbunzo]

Originally posted by MyMonkey
I would run a filter to help clear the silt. You can save the patience for other things.

Yeah, I'd go with you on that. But I hate to spend the extra money on one since I have one in Ardmore that would work. Grrr!!! This would be a good time to have a H.O.T. Magnum canister filter. Grrr!!!

Ok, I got some work done tonight, but not as much as I hoped due to complications with a cable installer. ANYHOW.... Here are some pics. And as always, click on the pics for bigger versions, and a couple more...

First, from a couple of days ago, here is a pic of newly arrived and unpacked reef goodies. Fun, fun fun!!!



And here are some pics of my lighting setup, setup. I got a nice little pulley system rigged up for raising and lowering it. I AM going to have to put some sort of faux canopy around the top so that I am not blinded by the light when watching TV nearby.



I am going to have 2 eyes in the wall for hooking the light at normal or raised up level.



And lastly, the skeleton for my pillar. By the time I go to bed tomorrow, this sucker will be in the tank and stacked with rock.



And at least I can see the rock a bit through the dust in the water. I am amazed at how adding rock to the tank helped the water clear. I think adding a nice pile of bacteria into the water helped a lot.

Anyhow, I better go to bed now.

[captbunzo]

Worked on the pillar tonight. Of course, after I did so and put it in the tank, the tank was all nasty cloudy again. Anyhow, here are some resulting pics.

Here are some pics of the rock in the tank before I disturbed everything again.


And for my first official coral in the tank, here are some hitchhikers - some big zoanthids, protopalythoa or palythoa of some sort. Travis probably knows the real name.


Here is a shot of all the rock right after I pulled it out of the tank, before I started drilling holes, etc.


I ended up using all of the rocks for the pillar except for the second rock in the top row. It is a really nice dead coral specimen. Take a look at a closeup and extreme closeup here.


And here are some pics of the pillar halfway and almost complete. Of course, I forgot to take a pic after it was all the way complete. For the last piece, I only drilled halfway through and then trimmed the PVC so that the last piece can sit nicely on top of the pile. I will get a shot when the tank clears up again.


And lastly, here is the silly cloudy tank. I will bring a power filter back with me over the weekend and stick it on the tank. It might be clear by then. But I am sure that it won't hurt to run it for a month or so.


And in this flickr photo set, check out some more pics of the rock. Live rock is so cool...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/captbun...7594261988730/

[JR719]

Looks like everything is coming along. If it were me, I would have a canister filter running on that. I borrowed Slone's once and that thing was great.
So far so good it appears. Keep us updated.

JR