Really looking forward to seeing what this bad boy looks like in a year or so.

I don't know how I missed this thread.....but looking good so far man!

That thing is HUGE!!

thanks Lance....I know its not as fancy as some peoples plumbing, but I tend to lean towards the KISS approach.....I did add a bunch of unions to this build for ease of cleaning (or de-snailifying) and dis-assembly....


thanks Greg......I didnt really spend money I didnt have....I had it saved up and was waiting until Dave got some more units in.....

thanks mang!.....I cant wait either....its killing me that this tank is sitting in E-town and Im in C-town chomping at the bit to get it scaped and the cycle started....


you just werent looking hard enough:razz:......

and were you talking about the tank or the skimmer?:mrgreen:



so its taking some time to get the thing full of water because Laurie has to balance her weekly water change schedule with making RO for my tank......her RO unit and water storage tank are in a crawl space about 36' away from my tank, so here is what she came up with so she wouldnt have to hump water out of the crawl space.....I imagine that this is what I will use to get water back in the tank after a w/c...


follow the hose, it always knows:mrgreen:

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0237.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0236.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0234.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0235.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0231.jpg


and finally where it ends up and where the tank sits water wise ATM

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0230.jpg

Ya it's going to take awhile to fill with only RO but I'm working on it. The 40 foot hose definitely helps!

It's not full yet?! :cry:

This thing just emanates with a TOTM aura and its not even full of water yet!! Great job mang, I'm stoked to see this set up and running.

have you thought of taking some of the water from teh weekly water change and throwing that in the tankto help with reduced the cycle... or do you not want the tanks to swap spit so to speak.

I know!.....



thanks Levi....I must admit that the thought of being the first person (I think) to get TOTM on two different tanks would be cool.....Im just gonna have to work my arse off of this tank like I did with V1 of the 110g....maybe even dose and stuff:mrgreen:....


swapping spit with Lauries tanks is not an option.....her phosphates are off the chart and I dont really want to start my tank off on the wrong foot.....she actually wanted to fill my tank with tap water and a garden hose and I had to put the kibosh on that too, for the same reason....

That was my first question for ya :wink: are you going to be setting up some form of dosing pump on this tank? not saying your current setup isn't stellar....but inquiring minds want to know LOL

well I do have a profilux stand alone dosser that has been collecting dust for two years.....I just may set it up and use it on this tank:mrgreen:.....we'll see:wink:

Let there be salt!
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...t/1A28178B.jpg

Yeah ! :smile:

LOL that sucker's so grainy I swear I'm seeing the salt itself =) Awesome news guys I'm excited to see this sucker scaped now.

Sweet

:lol: ya sorry I took a quick pic with my cell phone right after I dumped the salt in. The glass kept showing my reflection in the pic so I had to crouch down and hold the phone up at an odd angle so you could see into the tank instead of the reflections.

Finally emptied Doug's extra live rock (that had been cycling in 3 rubbermaid containers) into his tank. Must say some of the rocks were ridiculously heavy and wouldn't really even fit into the 5g bucket to carry it to the tank

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0274.jpg

thanks baby, for getting the rock in and taking the pics:biggrin:......seeing the pic and how full the tank appears without the 150-ish pound I still have hear in Ctown, makes me think I will have more that enough rock for this thing.....the years of picking through nearly every rock shipment Ive come across and hoarding the sweet pieces are finally paying off:mrgreen:......

Folks now's a great time to visit your Calgary Red Coral. They'll consistently have a fine selection of live rock available for purchase!

your probably right!:wink:.....one thing tho....you wont get the pleasure of my witty banter:mrgreen:

Or the occasional wrasse slap :biggrin:

I told you when you asked me, "no!"....now stop spreading rumors:mrgreen:

call tlc we have a reef rock hoarders...

Guilty as charged.... But I've got some of the nicest "sump rock" you've probably ever seen:wink:

Is there anything wrong with having hundreds of pounds of primo live rock in your sump? It has to be good for something besides hoarder value. not sure what though.

these guys that never built skirts around their tanks need to make sure their sump rocks are always looking their best :lol:

:lol:

it has value.....like when you want to stuff more coral in the tank and need to build up the rock:mrgreen:


Im just gonna leave that one alone:wink:


well the tank is finally full and the sump is operational....skimmer is fired up and frothing away.....man this beast of a skimmer is every bit as quiet as my BK mini 180!....I kinda thought that with the pumps being bigger and the fact that there is two of them that there would be a noticeable increase.....well, there aint......and now I can answer the questions about the water blaster return pump, it really quiet too.....mind you I am running a quiet one for a return on the 110 and we all know that quiet one" is just a name, so it may all just be relative ....also got the Tunze ATO hooked up with a brand spakin new 15g tank for a reservoir....


http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0295.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0294.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0293.jpg

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0292.jpg

got some preliminary aquascaping done on the tank this last w/e....I knew I wanted to do a massive over hang in this tank so I picked up a few fittings and a length of 1" pvc...the bulk of the structure is done with two huge pices of rock, one massive piece at the bottom of the structure for ballast and another big piece forms the start of the overhang.....the top surface of the structure measures about 22' long and the over hang is about 10" off the sand......I have to do some epoxying to firm things up a bit, but I wanna wait and see if Im happy with it.....one thing I think it needs is a small piece attached to the bottom of the overhang to break up the straight line that is sorta has.....that ought to be fun:wink:


http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0342.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0343.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0344.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0345.jpg


we then rinsed 90lbs of sand.....40 lbs in the middle then piled all the rock in the center of the tank to add the other 50 lbs to the ends


http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0346.jpg


the tank tested out at zero last week....I added about 30lbs of rock from the sump of the 100g on Friday(transported in water) and Laurie tested the tank today....ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and nitrates were 2....so I gave girly the go ahead to put in a "canary" chromis......if the tank still reads similarly on Thursday then the first of my fish will be going in this w/e.....

Lookin forward to the final shots of the scape
I agree the overhang needs something to break it up, but the concept is awesome
Nice job

This tank has be coming on the forums everyday now, looking for an update. :lol: Interesting overhang.. How much more rock do you plan on adding to the tank?

thanks man.....ya, I think it needs a little something on the bottom.....I think I have a plan to make it happen......gonna find a suitable piece goop it up with some "Orca" underwater glue, then cut a length of pvc the wedge it up against the overhang while it cures.....the theory is sound, so we will see if it works:lol:....I will likely fill it in a bit on the sandbed as well to get it looking more natural.....



Im not sure man.....I will be doing a couple piles in each corner to try and hide the overflows a bit.....one thing for sure, I have waaaay too much rock.....it looks as though I have almost enough for the piles in the tank right now and I still have all the rock in the 110g plus another 30-40lbs in the sump....some of the rock in the 110g has some undesirables on it (like aptaisia and palys) so I may decide not to use that stuff....it will kinda be a shame not to use it as some of it has some really cool shapes....I do have the option of sticking the aptaisia rocks in Lauries tank for a few minutes to let her copperband go at it......and I do mean minutes....I put one rock in there on the w/e and the copperband barely let me put the rock down and he had the two aptaisia stripped off the rock.....he is a machine!:mrgreen:

A copperband that eats aphasia in a tank?!?!? Lies!!! :lol:

not all CBBs are created equal.....Ive heard of a couple that didnt eat a dang thing

I've been out of the game so long I don't even remember how to spell "aptaisia" apparently. haha I'll just blame it on my iphone spellcheck.

Nope..........guess again...........it's aiptasia

and yes my CBB eats it very well. To bad I can't tellaport him back and forth to my 80g.

I just copied Mr. Fishytimes spelling! haha ;)

ya ya ya....anyway you spell it, it spells "PITA":mrgreen:


so the big move is done.....all of my coral, fish and LR made the trip to E-town on Saturday....you wanna talk about stressful.....I started tearing things down at about 10:30 am....I ended up using bags in coolers to transport the livestock and rubbermaid bins to transport the rock in water......it ended up taking 3 hours to get everything torn down, packed and loaded....I was on the road to E-town at 1:30.....3 hour drive and a quick stop at RCE to drop of a couple more corals and the fish that Steve is so graciously babysitting.....only a few of the fish are staying with Steve, the chromis, hawkfish, royal gramma and yellow assessor( I donated a couple others to Steve)....I couldnt bring myself to put my tangs in the smallish tanks at RC....in the end I thought it would be more stressful for them to be in cramped quarters.....I rolled the dice and put all my faith in "a bottle"(prodibio start).....the tangs (chevron, powder blue and yellow) along with my sand needing fish(melanarus wrasse, leopard wrasse and "Winky" the one eyed shrimp goby) made it in the tank at about 6pm.....I then proceeded to dump a bunch of the live rock in and finished the aquascape at about 8:30 and then dosed the "start" :eek:.....Sunday rolled around and Im happy to report that the three amigos(the tangs) are all doing well.....I spent the day getting the vortechs and tunzes in the tank, assembling the light rack and placing and wiring the radions and then programming the lights......whew:faint:...... it now in Girlys hands to monitor things and make sure nothing goes south (no pressure honey:wink:)......

enough of the chit chat and on to the pics


these are for all of you that poke fun at me for being a finishing carpenter that never makes anything for his tank:p


light rack for the radions:mrgreen:


http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0364.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0363.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0362.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0361.jpg

the three amigos

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0374.jpg


and a FTS

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...g/DSC_0347.jpg

Glad to hear man, I must admit I was sort of waiting on this update!

:lol: I guess so, you posted minutes after the update. Must admit I like having a tank right next to the couch to stare at, it's especially cool to see the way the radion's change colours :mrgreen: