thanks,

im not shure why im still surprised when things dont go as planned with this tank but at least i was less surprised this time.
anyway yesterday i put the ushio bulb in, i had a bit of trouble with it going deep enough to click in, a small chunk of the case porcelain maybe broke off and nolonger stoped it from going in far enough whell the bulb lit up and worked all day but this morning it wouldnt start it just made some noise and flickered a bit so after a bit of fooling around i took down the light again and pulled the bulb out which i must have broke pushing in just not enough that it didnt work yesterday the glass holding the prongs broke off, i also broke the original bulb the same way trying to get it out which was kinda a ****er since it was only a couple months old,
so obviously it was my fault i broke the bulb and not a warranty issue, i ended up getting a no name brand 20k bulb which was brand new so i figured id try it untill i feel like spending more money, im not shure where this bulb is from but the color looks identical to the 20k ushio 20k as far as i can tell without being able to compare them side by side, so i figured id better test the numbers and see how much of a drop this time.
i got 550 top left and 345 middle right which is more like a 10% drop compared to the 35% loss with the ushio bulb so things mite be better off this way, if the numbers dropp off in the next month or two ill change it out for a 20k giesmann bulb since i think the clips are a bit deeper than regular and hopfully i wont have issues with the clips again cause id rather not break a couple bulbs every time i want to change them

Wow nice tank. Keep this thread going I am learning a bunch:clap2:

I almost wish that back wall DIDN'T look so kickass now that it's all purple and sexy. I'm considering your method now especially since my painted overflow still looks like crap after all the care I took in siliconing a new pane over my black paint. Water somehow got in!

Also be great never having to scrape the back glass. Anyways the look of your back wall impresses the hell out of me and I see you've mounted some corals to it now too. Do you think a mitre saw could cut rock like you've done?

thanks, im really happy with how it worked out, the pics dont do it much justice either, and its gettin more purple all the time.
i actuall havnt mounted anything on the back, theres just been some type of macro growin in the tank and thers patches all over.
the saw i used was a 8"miter with a masonry blade, it was a real pain with that small of a blade but it cut fine,i now have a 14" chop saw that im gonna use when i do my 300g in the next couple months, im probably gonna order a bunch of rock from bulkreefsupply instead of using live rock again though,

Yeah I'm upping my dry rock order from 100 to 150 lbs and I'll see where that takes me. I think dry rock and silicone alone would work. What do you think?

ok ive been really slackin on the updates so i guess i should,
basically the mantis wrecked my tank, i helped but im blaming him,
i hadnt seen the dam mantis for a long time even though im always lookin and i was startin to think maybe hes dead or somethin, so i was at golds and saw some peppermint shrimp and thought ok if the shrimp lives the mantis has to be a gonner, well soon as the peppermint floated from the top of the tank down to the closes coral guess who shows up for dinner, boom gone about 3-5 seconds in the tank, i was a bit ****ed but how mad could i really be,
so after stewing about this at work all the next day i though whatever im gonna pull that rock out and get that sob and if i have to ill rip out every rock, guess what... ya i ripped out every rock,did a little fresh water dipping, did a little coral smashing too. no mantis
so the next day i loaded up on soda water,kalkwasser,hot water ect.. ripped out every rock again,basicly did some bad stuff to some good rock and guess what... no mantis
however i did get to practice restacking rock in a cloudy tank which dosent go well when every rock is 10-15 lbs ea and covered on corals ya ya i know never touch the rock..
well 90% of the coral got broken off the rocks during this and some were out of water for a while so i wasnt expecting good things when i got home, the tank was still quite cloudy, corals wernt looking good, and the rocks didnt even come close to fitting back in the tank, i did some waterchanges, move as many corals down into my other reef which was already packed without another 10 corals and a bunch of frags, i was so mad at this point that i just left the tank for close to a week,
i was really thinking about selling the dam thing or putting it in a closet for a while but once i quit being so mad i feel better,i tried to get the rocks back to where they were but even with pictures i couldnt do it, so there almost the same but i took out 1 10lbs rock that i couldnt get to fit anywhere so the tanks not so full but im ok with how it looks,
just tonight i moved a couple corals back into the tank, i havnt remounted any but i set them in there to make shure everything goes ok,
i also bought another pepermint shrink and put him in a bottle with holes in the lid, i was tryin to see if i could catch the mantis watching him but no luck, the shrimp escaped through a hole in the lid on day 3 and was spotted in the tank at night still alive after a couple days so thats a good sign,

was that long enough for ya, ill get some pics up soon

on the test ones i did it held ok but after a day in water i riped it off, the crumbs from the rock were still stuck to the sillicone but it wasnt holding enough that i was ok with it,
i totaly covered the back of the rocks with a layer of epoxy but i dont think they need that much on them, around the edges or where the rock will make contact would be fine im shure
i also went up fairly high and i keep having hermits dropping into the overflow, kinda annoying, maybe i should build them a ladder

Like I so often have during this build...changed my mind.

I think as far as keeping my clean look and mostly just playing it safe, a rock wall is out. I'd love to cover up my ugly overflow but might just have to create a nice large ledge that extends in front of it to distract the eye some.

Reading about your ordeal made me ****ed off...i can't imagine what you felt and how you're still in the game after that! Your last pic you posted looked awesome btw.

well i figure this little ordeal set me back about 6 months or so which is basicly the life of the tank since corals were added, i really expected a big cycle when i seen how cloudy the water was, i didnt have a amonia test kit so i didnt bother but i did a couple waterchanges and everything seemed to calm down during the week i was ignoring the tank due to my anger,
at least i know my sandbed is doing some work, after a day or two a big black ring showed up halfway down the sandbed due to the whole biological thing that im not about to type out a book over, i still havnt but ill probably give a little mix to a few areas over a few areas to release anything in there just to be safe but im shure its nothing to be concerned with.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v508/djdirtyc/030.jpg

this is the last pic i had before i trashed everything,
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rtyc/005-2.jpg

and where i am now, the corals are not mounted, i just placed them in there, they seem good but the milli isnt back to 100% yet.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rtyc/001-4.jpg

i was having trouble with the colors browning/darkening up and im not shure what i needed to do to fix it,dont really matter now but im shure ill have to deal with it again,

i added a couple more fish a bit ago also, a tomini tang, coral beauty and the mystery wrasse is still in there and doing well, dont give me greef about the tang hes small and i have lots of other tanks for him, hes in there to eat some algae which he has been doing.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rtyc/013-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rtyc/020-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...rtyc/027-1.jpg

Sucks to hear about the losses. :(

The SPS could have been darkening up from having nutrients a bit high. Try cutting back on dosing any foods, and try to polish the water up nice and clean.