Well my big move and associated upgrades are essentially complete. Phew! Still a few minor loose ends to deal with, in time. I'm ground floor now, so weight and flooding neighbours below are no longer an issue. Here are some after move pics.

This is a 180g Seastar tank that was previously my Reef tank at my previous residence. On the right is the 90g Auto Top-Off tank.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0408.jpg

Here's a shot of the 70g sump. That's a Euro-Reef RS 250 skimmer. The 10g 'fuge is lit by a Coralife Aqualight 1 x 150W 10,000K DE used MH. (Still have to get some Chaeto in the 'fuge). Return is a Hagen Aquaclear 901 powerhead. Float valve for the Top-Off is a Laguna (Hagen pond product).
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0426.jpg

More pics....

Here's a shot with the foam board facades in place.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0398.jpg

More pics....

This is the SpectraPure 180GPD RO/DI unit. I still have to hook this up. Thus, it goes without saying that I've used tapwater so far. (I was too impatient and wanted to get things going).
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0455.jpg

And finally a shot of the display tank itself. Lighting is a Coralife Lunar Aqualight 2 x 96W PC's and 2 x 96W Actinics. Water circulation is provided by 2 Seio M1500s, which were in my previous Reef set up, and 2 MaxiJet 1200s. I have a Bluechin, Blackbelly, Clown, Humuhumu and Pinktail Triggerfish in this tank. I lost my Cleaner Wrasse in the move...my one and only casualty. I'm going to try keeping Zoanthids in here to spruce it up some. Hopefully the Triggers will leave them alone.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0435.jpg

Thanx to all who helped in this endeavour.

Cheers,

Looks great!

Tank looks good, Mark. Along with zoos, which can be quite expensive, why not try green star polyps? Had them in my 120g before we upgraded lighting and livestock. Lighting back then were 2 x 65w PCs and a 40w actinic. Man, those green star polyps like crazy and had very long tentacles. We fragged them extensively and they grew everywhere. It sort of began to look like a super lush lawn in places :)

I was in the LFS today and that very thought crossed my mind. I'll look into it. Thanx for the suggestion and thanx for the compliment.

Cheers,

Looking really good. You put a lot of thought and work into this project. So do you now have a FOWLR and a reef tank? I would love to see some more pictures of your fish. I particularly like the pink tail trigger.

Looks good, I have a similar tank (5' 108gal FOWLR ) started in Aug/ 06 . You might want to try, which I introduced, a coral banded shrimp & 5 starfish (choc. chip , red choc. chip & green star) . I had 2 really nice cleaner shrimp for about 4 months until the lion fish ate them. Good luck & keep updating so I know what I'm in for. Thanks Mark.

I've had a Reef for close to two years now and a FOWLR for just over one year, the history of which is in this thread :neutral:. One of my favorite pictures of all is a pan shot of the Pink Tail on page 3. I'll see what I can do about getting more up.

Thanx for the compliment and cheers,

I tried a couple of Green Brittle Stars a number of months ago and the Triggers made quick lunch of them. I will not put inverts of that sort in this tank again, other than nasty crabs for working on the clean-up crew. Thanx for your input, though, and thanx for the compliment. I picked up a Protopalythoa vestitus today and it's acclimating in the sump. Updates will follow :wink:.

Cheers,

My triggers (although they are very docile blue chins) haven't bothered zoos, green star polyps, red blasto, SPS, or any shrooms at all...they are model citizens...however the "reef-safe" rabbit fish made a nice light snack of most every coral in the tank after eating all the algae....GSP are just like algae I am sure!:sad:

Well I put the Paly in the display tank a couple of days ago and it's lookin' good. The Triggers aren't touching it. The Bluechin took a curious taste test nip right away but nothing since. Looking forward to placing more....and shrooms....and giving some GSP a try too. Then I guess I'll have to rename the thread and drop the FOWLR :smile:.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0504.jpg

Cheers,

Major disappointment. Looks like Palys aren't going to work in this tank. The one paly has whittled down to a quarter it's original size. I'm guessing a crab (or crabs) is/are eating it at night. This is a big bummer as I was very much hoping to aquascape this tank with zoos and palys. I'll be moving this one into the reef tank tonight. :sad:

Cheers,

Mark,

Palys and zoos like a moderate amount of water flow. I lost several frags a few months ago when I mistakenly placed them in low flow areas. Since increasing flow to the zoo and paly areas, I'm no longer losing polyps and my zoos and palys are spreading nicely.

Some pics. I am growing very fond of this fish.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...artholomew.jpg
I call him Bartholomew, aka Blackbelly Bart.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...rtholomew4.jpg

More....

Bozo.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...fer3/Bozo2.jpg
Pinky and Bart.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3.../PinkyBart.jpg

More...

Pinky and Chinwag.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...nkyChinwag.jpg

And finally, in my quest to succeed with corals in this system, here is my latest attempt. Actinodiscus sp. mushroom. Was in the sump for approx 5 days and I put it in the display tank two days ago. So far, so good....but then....that's what I said about the paly :smile:.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...er3/Shroom.jpg

Cheers,

I'm not sure if I can call this a FOWLR anymore. In an attempt to give the tank some character, I've been adding a few more corals over the last few weeks or so. Some of them were added just today.

Left side.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...WLRwCorals.jpg

Centre.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...LRwCorals3.jpg

Right.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...LRwCorals4.jpg

Hopefully they settle in and colour up soon.

Cheers,

Full Tank Shot. Ignore the cyano http://tgvas.com/Forum/images/smilies/wink.gif.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/IMG_0806.jpg

Cheers,

Hey Mark! Looks good....... I know, I attepted a FOWLR and ended up with corals too....it's just so hard not to! It looks really good, I still REALLY like your Pink Tail Trigger! Very nice fish!

How about an update on this tank. I am curious how all of the Triggers are co-existing now that they are getting bigger?

Thanx for asking.
Water parameters as of yesterday:
Temp: 80.6F
pH: 8.15
Alk: 10.2 dKH
NO3: 20 ppm
PO4: .25 ppm (Time to replace the RowaPhos).
SG: 1.022

The Toadstool and Colt corals didn’t make it. Most likely due to high Alk. I use ReefBuilder in my top-off tank to try to maintain it. A previous Reef set up I had had a 45g top-off tank. I would use 12 Tbsp of ReefBuilder in that tank and it would maintain the Alk at around 10 dKH. The top off for this FOWLR is a 90g. So it would stand to reason that 24 Tbsp would do the trick. But the FOWLR Alk was dropping. It got down to 6.4 dKH. Well, since I moved and am now in a different environment, the evaporation rate is less than expected. So I bumped the ReefBuilder dose for the top off tank to 36 Tbsp. Wrong thing to do, I guess. As summer came, the evaporation increased. That and the fact that while doing a water change one time, I forgot to close the top off valve. Thus when I was pumping water out of the sump, the top off was putting water in. Not much. Probably only about 5g…10g at the most. But it certainly didn’t help. Long story short, the Alk went up to 17.6 dKH. I think the Toadstool and Colt didn’t like that very much. All things being good….Zoas do not do well in this tank. It appears to me that something eats them. They just slowly disappear. Palys in this tank don’t do well either. They stick around, but they do not thrive. Mushrooms, on the other hand, do great. Most of them, save one, are full and robust. Not sure why the one isn’t fairing well, because it once was full and robust as well. Needless to say, I’ll be getting more ‘shrooms for this tank. Now that the Alk is back down, I’d like to try a Toad and a Colt again also.

As for the fish….I guess they are growing???? Haven’t really noticed any growth other than the Clown. It is definitely bigger, but not by a substantial amount. It’s disposition is still the same. Haven’t noticed any berserk behaviour yet, as I’ve read Clowns are prone to do when they get older. All 5 Triggers still are getting along.

Other than that…not much change.

Edit: The Pink Tail is bigger also, but not by much.

Cheers,

One of the reasons I asked was because of the Clown Trigger. I recently got a 2 inch Clown Trigger for my FOWLR and was concerned about the aggressive behavior that these fish are known for as they get bigger. I am hoping that by introducing this fish last and when it is small that this will reduce the chance of this fish eventually becoming a bully.

I'd say the Clown is 6" now.

Cheers,

Well I see I've neglected this thread for close to 1.5 years now, so I figure I should update it. The following few posts are a copy/paste from another board I frequent. For anyone that is interested, please forgive me if some of it doesn't make sense, chronologically. I have paid a bit more attention to the other board thread, but here there is a big gap.

Wow, no update since March/08. I guess it's time. I haven't been happy with the progress of this tank, but more on that later.

Recent changes to the sump. Refugium out, ZeoVit in. EuroReef out, BK in. No more canisters. No more Nitrate Sponge. No more RowaPhos. Running carbon passively. I also added a grounding probe.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...fer3/Sump1.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...fer3/Sump2.jpg
Very happy with the skimmer, although it is taking a while to break in and is still skimming quite wet. The cup was cleaned late this morning.

Tank shot, left side.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...efer3/Left.jpg

Tank shot, middle.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...3/Middle-1.jpg

Tank shot, right side.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...fer3/Right.jpg

I lost the Clown Trigger in late April due to unknown causes. Perhaps cyanide? Then again, I had it for 2.5 years so perhaps not.

The giant mushrooms did not work out. They slowly disintegrated. Not sure why. Might try a smaller one again when I think the time is right.

In August/08 I introduced four new fish. Blue Ring Angel, Niger Trigger, Yellow Tang, and a Cleaner Wrasse. The Angel and Niger are twice the size now. The Tang is not entirely happy, hence the grounding probe. I think it has improved. The body anyway (HLLE), but fins are still ragged.

Did the annual major sump cleaning in November. Going to increase this task to semi-annually. In December/January I did 13 x 20% water changes. This was to bring the NO3 and PO4 down. Last year the sump cleaning was enough for that, but not this time. ZeoVit didn't do it for me either (wishful thinking). NO3 is now 5 and PO4 is still up at 0.1. Okay Zeo...you can now do your thing.

As you can see, this tank is still dull and brown. Mushrooms have no colour whatsoever. Zeo is supposed to help that too, but I'm not expecting any dramatic colour improvement on that alone. What I think this tank really needs is a lighting upgrade. So that's the plan. I have a scoop on a good condition CoraLife Aqualight Pro 3 x 150W MH unit for an awesomely reasonable price. Looking forward to getting it on there. Just waiting for the seller to receive his new lights.

Stay tooned and cheers,

Here's a couple of pics of some interesting sponges that have grown in over the last 3 months, or so.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...r3/Sponge2.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...r3/Sponge1.jpg

Stay tooned and cheers,