Time for some pictures!
Ok, so, it's been a few weeks of working on the rockwork now. I think it's finally at a point where I'll be leaving it (at least for now). Still some features to it that I'm not completely loving, but it's good enough. There are a few features that I really do like though. So time to toss up a few pictures since next I'll be dumping the sand in and who knows when you'll be able to see into the tank again after that, at least a few days I imagine or maybe longer.
FTS
The main design idea was to get a few shelves, some arms, some ravines, some caves, some bommies, and some open lagoon type spots; and then to try to not be too uniform about it. The shelf rock in particular has been a thorn to work with, it's been redone several times now, and in fact came close to just being nixed altogether. But I'm glad I kept it, it's no bonsai tree but nevertheless I'm liking the shelf now.
Right hand side bommie/caves:
Unfortunately it doesn't show up in the photo well but there is a 3" wide ravine here that opens up into the inside of the bommie which is essentially hollow.
Might be hard to pick out in the photo but there is a really neat overhang here. I took a page out of Kien's book to build that particular corner of the bommie, in order to stabilize it, it is permanently mounted to some scrap acrylic (the flange lid to one of my earlier DIY calcium reactor jobs).
End view looking to the left side of the tank:
The left side shelf/bommie/island:
I really wanted to get two levels of shelves going but it kept coming back to either looking contrived and fake, or a bit just "too much" for the tank. I came up with a few tries that would look great in a FOWLR tank and/or a tank larger than this one, but just didn't fit into this overall schema of THIS tank. So away with the second shelf and just went with a "cap". This sucker is a bear weight-wise and had to constructed outside the tank and lifted into the tank in two separate layers. The base rock is probably 60 lbs on its own.
The hole to the lower left is a rock I found in my holding tank that had the hole. I melded it to a curved rock and leaned it up against the base of the shelf rock on account the base rock really needed some more texture to it in order to fit in, plus I wanted a cave of this nature since my trigger currently sleeps in a very similar rock in the base of the bommie in my 115g cube right now. Hopefully she finds this spot, but if not, I'm sure someone will and hopefully likes it.
And then there's this nightmare of wiring:
This is actually the "clean" look. Man there are a lot of things to plug in. Some of the wires were too heavy for the cable holds so they are just dangling. I'll probably replace the cable mounts with some threaded S hooks in the ceiling.
The orange extension cords that run off the right there are for the two existing tanks in another part of the basement. I can't wait to shut them down and get the rest of the basement development work going.
You can also see a "hole" where there should be a second Tunze driver box (above the one by itself and below the two Wavysea controllers). I figured out what's wrong with it, and I should be able to fix it so long as I can actually find my stupid soldering iron. I haven't done any soldering on electronics in like 6 or 7 years so I can't find it at all. So I just went out and bought a new one.
But stupid me, I bought a butane based soldering iron and no butane. DUH. So off to Home Depot to correct that little oversight and hopefully get my one not-running Tunze back into a running state again.
I did a quick calculation earlier tonight and with the Dart return, the two 6100's, and the two 6080's, I figure I'm right at about 40x turnover with the 6100's at peak. This is before the waveboxes fit in (not sure how they would factor into a volume turnover calculation). I am hoping this will be enough for SPS for starters but I guess I'll have to see, might have to toss a few more flow generation things in there I suppose..
Next up, the sand, and then starting the cycling in earnest. I liberally estimate maybe another month from this point before the tank is ready to start having fished moved over, but we'll see how things go.
For the most part the fish load is already complete since I'll be shutting down the other tanks. I have been dreaming up "what else's" and one option that keeps speaking to me is a small group of lyretail/squamipinnis anthias. I saw two such groupings today at Red Coral and it's really solidified in my mind that I would like to try, wow, they are really beautiful fish. I have some time to do some more research on them in the meantime.