Puff's 24 Gallon Aquapod Reef (December 10th Update)

[Puff]

I decided to start a thread to keep track of my reef tank and everything that it puts me through.lol

So here are the specs:

- 24 gallon Aquapod
- 150W HQI MH Sunpod
- 100W visi-therm heater
- 2 Maxijet 900s
- 2 Hydor Flo attachments
- Sapphire Aquatics HOB Refugium and Skimmer

- 21lbs Jakarta liverock
- roughly 30lbs arag-alive substrate (fiji pink)

the first thing i did was mod the aquapod. i did this by removing the sponges and bio balls and drilling a hole on the right of the overflow. then i used a 1/2" slip bulkhead. i then slid in a Maxijet 900 in the right chamber and hooked it up to the bulkhead with some 1/2" tubing. In the left chamber i removed the stock pump and inserted another maxijet 900. the two maxijets combined equal more flow than the stock pump, but with less energy consumption. i was expecting temperature problems with the sunpod on top, so i figure the lower the amount of watts the better. to the bulkhead i attached a hydor flo.

I bought the sapphire aquatics HOB fuge and skimmer combo. that fit in very easily into the back chambers, even with the added maxijets. all i had to do was trim one of the fittings.

First pic, from the top looking at the added bulkhead with the hydor flo and locline thingie


Birdseye view of the overflow


Side view of the refugium


This will be where the tank is. it's in a shoot-off of my room that used to hold my 55 gallon rhom tank.



Skimmer...in the box...


So on saturday i drove an hour across town and picked up some very nice jakarta live rock. I came home and added the liverock and aragalive to the tank. i filled the tank up partway then tried to slide the aragalive in...but it was still cloudy as hell.lol. so i hooked up a magnum HOB filter w/ micron filter to the tank and let it run for a few hours to clear the tank.

Still a bit cloudy


that night i was reading that i should have scrubbed the dead sponges off the liverock, so i went home and spent 3 hours making sure every bit was off of it. that morning i woke up and rescaped the tank. this is what i came up with.


With the blue and white LEDs on at night



when i looked at the liverock under the blue LEDs i noticed some very bright orange and pinky colours coming from some pieces. i also saw a little worm thing cruising around, and a few pods.

this pic is way out of focus, but you can kind of see the bright orange in the center(ish)-left of the pic


the tank with the MH on


this is the top piece of liverock, and also has the most life on it. today i found 2 tubeworms and some other thingies. it also has some cool planty bits on it, but they are very hard to get pics of.



FTS w/ flash



unfortunately today i also found an aiptasia. it's on a piece of the foundation rock though, so i have no friggin clue how to go about getting rid of it!