Is it okay to use just a couple of big rubbermaid rectangular tubs for TTM? Or do I need actual aquarium tanks to do it?

Yup, anything that'll hold water and is easy to disinfect between runs.

I love ridiculous reefs. Especially really ridiculous pens! :biggrin:

Ridiculous tank in progress! :biggrin:

Will arrive later this upcoming week. Pizza and beer party for the move-in crew straight from COQ-mpton! :lol:

*black trim on top to be removed

http://i.imgur.com/Z84zfjEl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OizOVgMl.jpg

Things are getting real
 

Daniel (target) delivered the stand today. With the help of a dolly, the two of us got it inside the house relatively easily. My worries were unfounded.

The stand looks absolutely amazing, great handiwork and feels extremely sturdy.

http://i.imgur.com/ddk0LrDl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/tbU4unql.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jvG9PXFl.jpg

The doors have yet to be installed yet due to time constraints but that works out well since tomorrow is the big setup day and I don't need any doors getting in the way at the moment.

And here's the "living" room. :lol:

http://i.imgur.com/QVc2mZxl.jpg

(several unpictured tubs for more saltwater ready for tomorrow)

Nice! You going to be able to sleep tonight? :biggrin:

Looking good. I've always been partial to white stands :)

Thank you sir, it does look very good.

Also looking good is today's weather, thank God for the sunshine, would hate to do the move in with raincouver weather, could have been dangerous.

Rented suction cups this morning, just waiting for the call now, any minute. :biggrin:

The tank is here!
 

So... this morning, a bit of an adventure.

In the morning I went to grab some tools and rented a couple of the large 8" suction cups (I would have rented four but they only had 3 so..).

Joe (Wretch) arrived at about 10am and we chatted for a bit, before the truck driver showed up. I called up Andrew (Piscez) who also dragged his son Matthew out for the move.

Unfortunately, the freight company miscalculated the length of the crate slightly, its tailgate was NOT 8' at all, so it ended up like this:

http://i.imgur.com/8D8O36yl.jpg

The tank was literally hanging off into the air for a while when he lowered the tailgate. The driver was nice enough to use his jack to "deliver" it close to my patio entrance, up until a gravel section. We uncrated it there, used the suction cups, and carried it all the way in. The cups really helped with the lifting itself, with four of us guys (me being the weak one), we had no trouble moving the tank onto the stand.

Andrew and his son had to leave afterwards, so they couldn't enjoy the pizza party: :redface: Thanks so much for coming to help, you guys really made my life easier!

http://i.imgur.com/HCbGR1vl.jpg

(boxed up pizza was Hawaiian. Eew pineapples, amiright?)

After we got the tank up onto the stand, however, we realized the sump could not be fitted in "normally" and had to be slipped in from the open end of the stand, which was already flushed against the wall. With that in mind, we (Joe, Joanne, and I) had to lift the tank off onto the floor, move the stand, move the sump in, and lift the tank back onto the stand. Not cool. :twised:

The end result, though, was a worthy sight to behold. See Happy the Octopus invading our tank and drinking a Steamworks pilsner.

http://i.imgur.com/3QKyVW8l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/idrgz9yl.jpg

So now the tank is getting wet for the leak test. Plumbing will be done tomorrow. I'm going to install the lights later today.

Thank you so much to Joe. The guy even helped me throw away all the garbage (smashing the pallet was sorta fun) and ate many of my pizza and beer :wink: Thank you to Andrew and Matthew for your grunt work too. There was absolutely no way I could have done this without help.

And now, onto the rest of the work.

Looks really good Brian! Sorry I couldn't be there to help load the tank into place, but had a painting job to do. Can't wait to see it filled up.

Brian pleasure to meet you and Joanne. Thanks for the pizza and beer. Gad I could help. Enjoy the new tank. Looks real nice.

Looks great, I really like the stand that was made for it.

Time to get the tank wet!! :multi: :multi:

Tank is 3/4 full, unplumbed. Doing aquascape at the moment. Will post pics/update later.

Tomorrow it will be plumbed. :biggrin:

Question: what can I use to hold down cable wires flush on top of the eurobrace? The Radions need somewhere to go to, and running along the brace seems to be the best option I have (do not want to run the wires on the ceiling), considering all things like length of wire, outlet location, aesthetics.

Hey Brian, great to meet you and Joanne, Joe too! Glad my son and I were able to help you out, that was a heavy beast, but great looking, can't wait to see it up and running, guess I should get my act together and start publishing my build too! Glad everything worked out well, even the weather, have fun!

Sorry I've been so busy trying to catch up with work after taking off for 5 days last week to spend time with family in Leavenworth, WA. Awesome vacation but now I'm crazy busy all week. Glad it went well.

Anthony

Thanks to Ryan (neoh), my plumbing has been completed! Well, it was 90% completed on Tuesday, but I had to go grab an extra tee to finish the job yesterday. He came all the way from the other side of town and didn't ask for anything in return. Faith in humanity restored! :biggrin:

The plumbing is very straightforward: herbie style 1.5" drains, with a gate valve on the main line and the emergency is in the front of the picture. The return is 1" which tees off to another gate valve into the refugium (with the loc-lines for adjustment), powered by a Jebao DCT12000.

http://i.imgur.com/5OX4lvOl.jpg

As you can see, the skimmer is still over foaming like a rabid dog. I expect it to break in within the next few days, it should be fine after I start feeding when the corals go in. It's a Bubble Magus Curve 9 that we bareeeely fit into the skimmer chamber. :redface: Had to ask for Joanne's small hands and magic touch to re-attach the skimmer body.

The other side of the stand:

http://i.imgur.com/yrXeRq7l.jpg

Currently housing two empty 10g tanks. I'll be using them for TTM. Eventually these tanks will make way for a permanent QT and an ATO bucket/tank. Originally I had thoughts of running the electronics board on this end, but after deliberation I have switched gears and will be running the wires in a cabinet (yet to be bought) outside the stand. Safer and more convenient, and don't have to worry about wire management inside the stand.

FTS:

http://i.imgur.com/1Uf0rxKl.jpg

Tank has been wet since Monday night and a few inverts have been in since then, and have been doing fine (couple of hermit crabs, a turbo snail, a featherduster, and some spag worms/brittle stars). Even the zoas that are attached on the LR have been opening up quite nicely.

Sand should be going in today and if time allows, Joanne will finish the aquascaping tonight and I can put up the lights afterwards (didn't want to install lights yet as it would hinder aquascaping, moving rocks and such).

That also means corals will be able to go in (depending on water params, will test tonight) soon, and the 72 days fallow period will begin. The fish in the RSM will go through their TTM period and afterwards will go back to the RSM until the 72, at which time they will be able to enjoy the big tank, finally! :biggrin:

Following along...it's looking good. Sump visually looks small for that tank...how big is it?

Thanks for the compliment. :biggrin:

The picture may be deceiving, the sump is a 4 footer (minus the four dosing chambers) with similar footprint as a standard 55g, so I'd estimate the actual volume around 45g.

Brian now that I see the tank up and running and the sump full what happens when the power goes out? will the sump be able to hold all the water that drains from the main tank? Looks good by the way. Cant wait to see the lights up.

Joe, I ran a couple of tests by turning off the return pump. The sump has abundant volume to hold excess back-siphon water, which is not a lot since the check valve stops much of it anyway. At the moment I'd venture to say there is about 1/3 of the sump being empty. Still figuring out where to draw the line as far as max/min water level is for my ATO.

Looking good Brian keep up the good work! Funny I stopped by Ryan's to grab corals on Tuesday the day after we moved your tank and he said he was heading over there, another coincidence but when I got out of the game 5 years back it was Ryan who bought my 120gal system, so he gave me a great deal on his corals.. "what goes around comes around" :biggrin:

Haha yeah it's a deceiving pic , we're all seeing the Refugium from our view , behind that the compartments have a lot more room to them :)

Looks great Brian I told ya the plumbing was a piece of cake :)

Cheers buddy

Denny

It was a piece of cake because I had help :wink:

Sand is in, after 2.5 hours of laborious rinsing (thank God for Netflix to keep me company!). Tank is rather cloudy at the moment so waiting for that to pass. I do like the look of the Natural Ocean's Samoa pink sand. Hopefully my critters will like it too.

Wow small world, eh? As he told me, you picked up some nice pieces for a steal of a deal. Lucky you! :biggrin:

In regards to your curve 9 foaming, it looks like it's in 11-12 inches of water.recommended water depth is 9-11' but I have yet to have a skimmer work well in deep water. I would have it between 8-9 inches. That's what my 9 will be in. Might need to build a stand.

Yikes!

Nice to see you and Jo tonight Brian! Good start on the tank... love the length!

So where are the pictures of the lights?

Ya :boink:

Lights will be coming up after aquascaping. It's still happening at the moment, and also coral migration. :biggrin:

Lights up, corals in:

http://i.imgur.com/qv1b7w4l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rwG36lUl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oMuFrzpl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/cCFxI0ml.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/qP2p4OEl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4C1t5b2l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/0Exlturl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CV16MFSl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/y5Xl1E7l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/268AvQtl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oA5ItTdl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HLC7vQjl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wkMY9VRl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9nqiucNl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4rfe4wol.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Zt0dOucl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3lW767Bl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/S7HKszdl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/xVroGpyl.jpg

so nice, guess new always is better. That long shape sure have lots of floor space for you to add coral.

Beautiful

Random stuff about our aquascaping/pics posted/corals :blabla::

For anyone that's been following along, clearly you'll notice that my original aquascape model went out the window. I knew it was :crazy: from the beginning but it was something to do while we waited for the tank.

Even though the rock work is very different, the model was helpful for wrapping our heads around coral placement. We had so many cool rocks to use, but they're so unpredictable in how they fit together and how stable (or not) they are, we had to wing-it. For the first hour I experimented with fiji crete...and then I gave up.

I'm sure I did something wrong...but the fiji crete didn't work for me at all. We couldn't assemble the rocks out of water for fear of die-off. But as soon as the crete touched water it dissolved. From our google searches it seemed that other reefers found that it worked fine even in water. But no matter what consistency I mixed it to or how many minutes I waited, it would hit water and start dissolving and make a cloudy mess. We got one piece to halfway stick but whilst fitting the structures together, it got knocked loose. Soooo yeah fiji crete did not want to be my friend :sad:

Anyway.

Aquascape plan was roughly to fulfill these points:
- rule of thirds
- negative space to balance out rockwork
- have varying height and make sure the entrance corals/rocks allow for background corals to peek through
- set foundation bearing in mind corals will fill in space
- lots of hidey-holes for fish
- prepare specific sections with corals in mind (a shaded area for brains, easy to reach/feed area for dendro colonies, area with porous rock for zoa frags etc.)

I found it to be quite a challenge aquascaping a penny tank. Every little section I have to climb up and down the stepladder and go to each side to check. Brian tried holding up a front facing camera and a mirror for me - both options were useless.

It was about a 3-day process to get the tank to look how it does now. Day 1, Throw the plan out the window. Sort through the rock and improvise the foundation. Day 2, fill with sand and wait for it to settle. Fit in the corals we have in our care. Day 3, add in corals kind reefers have been taking care of for us and fit those in.

The white tonga branches look a little jarring at the moment, but they're great pieces...just have to have patience while it colours up. I don't know if I am entirely satisfied with the aquascaping at the moment...I guess it is one of those things that is a constant work in progress - until we stop buying coral :laugh: (yeah right). Does anyone have any notes or tips they think I could improve on our current aquascape?


We picked up a bright 5" RBTA for our entrance side 'show piece'. But the darn bugger keeps moving around because we don't have enough flow reaching that end of the tank. (We're looking into getting a gyre to solve the issue. It isn't ideal to have a powerhead at the front...but at least the gyre is a bit more discreet than the traditional.) Hopefully it'll eventually settle down. As you see in the pics posted by Brian, it is currently hosting a porcelain crab. I'm hoping once the tank is ready for fish, we can find a pair of black clowns. It would make quite a dramatic contrast against the RBTA.

Our euphyllia looks a little sad in the pics. Haven't fully extended yet, still adjusting I suppose. But even so, the wall hammer is looking pretty darn good :biggrin:

I'm pretty excited about our little zoa garden..can't wait for them to start growing off their plugs and cover the LR :razz:

As we don't have any fish in the tank we've been observing our inverts explore the new tank and it's quite interesting actually. We have the standard hermit crab and snail clean up crew. We also have a cleaner shrimp, 3 peppermints, a fire shrimp, aforementioned porcelain crab, 3 tiger stripped serpent sea stars, a crap ton of brittle stars hiding in the rocks everywhere, 1 anemone shrimp and 1 pistol shrimp. Our anemone shrimp is really strange...despite having 3 anemones in the tank, it has taken to swimming laps around the tank rather than hang out with any of the anems. We've had it for a little under 6 months and it has never been interested in anems for some reason. The pistol shrimp also did something strange tonight, it was also doing laps around the tank. It has been very shy for the entire 3 months we've had it and everything I've read about them says that they tend to stay safely around their burrow. I guess ours decided to be a rebel.

In general, I'm the more rational/practical one and I do the nagging to keep us in check. But I think I'm losing my grip and may need an intervention as it is 3am now and I am posting about our tank.

oi vey.

:sleeping:

Wow
 

Looking really good.

Thanks Jesse, especially for the macro and xenia! Let me know when you're in the area and I'll share you some of the mushrooms. :biggrin:

This is off to a great start you two :)

Very nice clean look. Mybe get 1 more radion?

Things to note:

- right now the skimmer is OFF due to the lack of bioload (goes wild and overflows after a few hours), think it'll be okay to run it skimmerless for 72 days, with just regular WCs?
- waiting to buy a Gyre for the other end of the tank, will be scouring the B&S for now, not in a hurry
- refugium is filled with LR and some chaeto/red macro
- still need to set up the Apex/ATO, thinking of DIYing a cabinet for the electronics next weekend
- for now, will hold off on a doser until at least after 72, and probably wait for next frag swap which is our next milestone date for adding SPS
- need to DIY a mesh top eventually for jumpers
- RBTA is walking like stupid far lol. It's hosting a porcelain crab we got at OC yesterday
- had to remove a hermit crab because it was attacking snails and rampaging over the zoas
- moved down the torch and it seems much happier
- happy with the aquascape/coral placement, just need the tonga branches to colour up and it'll look good

Thanks bud, especially thank you for holding our corals. The wall hammer is an amazing piece.

Have them about 12" AWL and no shadowing atm, so will probably be fine.