Looking good. The wall and ledges are very nice. Cant wait to see what you put in there.

Thanks Nick, it was a pleasure doing business with you.

Likewise, i look forward to seeing your tank progress (and am curious what you will come up with for the legs).

Love your glass top. This def has me thinking

Over the past week I have been scratching my head about what to do about legs for the light. Scroll back and you'll read that my wife didn't want it hanging from the supplied cables in the living room. I just needed something to raise it up off the glass about an inch or so. I tried cutting some wood - looked like crap. I tried cutting some plastic pipe - looked like crap. I tried wedge shaped door stops - wife said it looked like crap. So I find myself at the dollar store and another rather dim light bulb :idea: went off in my head when I saw these baby head savers or whatever they are called.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...an007/legs.jpg

For $1.25 I couldn't go wrong so I bought two sets. This is what they look like out of the package. They're rounded on the corners too just like the light - it was like a match made in heaven.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...man007/leg.jpg

I liked the look of just one set under the light but I wanted just a titch more spread so I ended up going with two on each corner for the extra height. Looks like this.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...07/front-1.jpg

So now I just need to align them properly and glue them together so they look a little neater. Leg problem solved until I see something better. :biggrin:

The tank is just finishing the awkward first algae bloom stage that has lasted about 5 days. The clean up crew of 3 hermits and a dozen large mixed snails are gaining the upper hand without me having to pull out the old toothbrush. I've had a self sustaining population of margarita snails for about 6 years and as soon as the algae started to grow they had a mass spawning event - pretty cool. I expect to start seeing small snails everywhere soon of which a few will grow to adulthood which has been the typical cycle for them in the past.

My first try with LED lighting is proving to be a learning experience. I originally had the unit maxing out at 60 percent for 4 hrs and tapering on/off for the other 4hrs on both ends of a 12 hr cycle. I took some ugly old frags from another tank that were sitting under a 250w MH and placed them around the tank in the bottom 6 inches or so. Within 2 days some had faded badly to the point of looking bleached. Within a week others that were no more than brown lumps showed remarkable colour change and growth. By trial and error I have found my areas of highest par (no meter for this poor boy), moved the corals accordingly, and ramped the lights down to 40 percent max for now. My plan is to ramp up 5% per week until I find the sweet spot. Overall I'm really pleased with the LED light and at this point in time couldn't imagine going back to MH or fluorescent bulbs.

A post isn't complete without pictures so here's a good thing from this week. I received a great box from whatcaneyedo:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/002-1.jpg

No sooner had they been unpacked and I had to go to work for 8 hours. So I left strict instructions and a turkey baster with the better half and the corals had a 9 hour acclimation until I got home close to midnight.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/004-2.jpg

The most fun was comparing the size of the bristle worms that were hidden under each piece of styrofoam. Must of ended up with about 50 of the buggers plus a few small stars.

I haven't got the hang of the shooting through the glass AND getting the right colours yet but here's a few of my better shots of some of my existing pieces and the corals that shipped in.

http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...man007/009.jpg

I think this is a green cactus coral that has encrusted but hasn't sent up its "leaves" yet.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/011-2.jpg

Purple Pocillapora
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/012-2.jpg

Red monti (got a green and purple as well)
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...man007/014.jpg

Green with purple tips acropora
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...man007/016.jpg

It is starting to look really good in there. Nice additions. I have found in my own learning experience that the montis need very slow ramp up as i have bleached both that i added with all the other corals that seem to be loving the high light.

Really enjoyed reading through this thread Cubeman! Very well done on that rock wall, I was pretty impressed with the epoxy/sand and then taking it a step further by sand coating the powerhead wire. Very clever and well thought out.

Can't wait to see the coral grow out and see some fish get in there. Well done man, lots of ideas now for my next one!

+1 on the monti's Nick - that has been my experience too

Thanks Mike - I see you've made the rounds and filled your new build with frags too :biggrin: Be eating mac n cheese for a month!

More of a progress report than anything this week. The CUC has done its job and taken care of the algae on the rocks. I am still getting a generous green film on the glass that needs to be cleaned daily but this too shall pass.

One of my scarlet hermits crawled out of the water and sat on top of the rock wall until he dessicated. Literally within an inch of the waters edge and he chose to sit still and die. The intelligence of hermits went down a notch in my estimation with this event. Anyway I pulled him out of his shell and fed the cleaner shrimps with it. This may not have been a smart thing to do as now the larger shrimp is grabbing at the remaining living hermit thinking it would make a good meal. I'm guessing the shrimp will give up once he loses a leg.

Slowly getting a handle on how much Calcium and Alk to add to my two fresh water top offs so that the levels remain constant. The worst part about this dialing in stage is the time it takes to do multiple water tests each week as you track the changes you make in concentration against the results.

I have close to 20 sps frags in the tank now, 9 from my other systems and 11 that are new. I have another 7 being shipped in on Friday from Fragalot. Other than 2 encrusting monti's that bleached under the LED's and haven't regained their colour the rest are doing fantastic. Couldn't be happier with the colour and polyp extension.

The rock wall is no longer gleaming white and sterile but it has not gained any coralline to speak of yet. The live rocks however are purpling up nicely. The wall is however home to a magnificent number of organisms that come out under the moon lights.

I'll end with a FTS just so I can mark the progress of the tank. I should call this one "How to hide 20 frags in a 37 gallon tank" :biggrin:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/004-3.jpg

Received some frags through overnight shipping today (thanks Thomas). I ordered 7 and received 2 extras so that was a pretty nice surprise.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/002-2.jpg

One almost DOA was a purple hairy acropora that had fouled its water badly - man did it smell rank. I gave it a quick acclimation and dip and it shed about 80 percent of its flesh - into the shade with it and we'll see if it recovers at all. Also one montipora had this nasty little bugger with it and a second one dropped out during the dip.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...n007/005-4.jpg

Also upgraded the skimmer today from the Prizm Pro which was just too noisy to remain in the front room to the Tunze 9004. So far so good on its performance but it has only been running for a couple of hours - it is definitely almost silent though which was the main reason for the change.

Looks great! I've done two rock walls, a 2.5 nano with carved styrofoam, and a 10 gallon nub reef tank. Used the foam method as you did for my reef tank, but i didn't use the epoxy sand stage unfortunately. In the end it was a mess of algae due to inexperience and imbalanced light so i ripped it out. look forward to seeing more FTS when its done

Just in case u should check that monti for eggs cause that looks like a monti eating nudi

Thanks neven - I've never really had an algae problem in any of my previous tanks so if I get overrun by algae in this one I'll deduce that the wall had something to do with it.

Yes, good eyes, that's what it was alright; that's why I pulled out the glasses and toothbrush. The frag was quite small so it was pretty easy to check.

Lost 4 frags in that last shipment (1 DOA and 3 due to the monti eating nudi's). Rest of the tank is doing well but am beginning to think I will not be turning the light up past 50 percent as there is significant coral colour lightening occurring for anything not in the shade regardless of where it is height wise. I will leave the "white" channel at 50 percent and play with the blue channel to gain a blend that is pleasing to my eye.

My Tunze 9004 skimmer has reacted badly only once and overflowed but other than that has behaved admirably for a small skimmer. Within 2 days of it running I stopped getting daily algae on the glass and am now having to use the cleaning magnet 1-2 times per week instead of every day. Still giving me some microbubbles but not a lot of tweaking can be done with this model so am hoping it sorts itself out as it matures. If anyone with the same model has any advice please chime up!

No fish yet but I added a couple of porcelain crabs this week. One was the standard colour and the other is a blue/purple colour. I've only seen the regular one a couple of times but the blue one is out in the open all the time actively straining the water column so I snapped this picture today.

http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...eporcelain.jpg