New 110 Gallon Reef

[LifeIsGreat]

110 Gallon Reef setup day 1:

[LifeIsGreat]

Got a used tank off Kijiji and resealed it. Size is 48W, 18D, 30T. Built a 2x4 and plywood stand and bedded the tank on 1" white foam. The tank came with a Fluval FX5, so I'll give it a try. I grow macro inside the display, so the dark sealed FX5 won't hamper me unless it comes time to use a skimmer. Rocks are ClearDeep, chose them because I like the shapes available. I set this tank up because I was moving to a new house and I wanted to have a stable tank already running before I moved the life.

[Skimmerking]

looks good man I like. The rock structures look like the apes from jungle book hahahaha

[LifeIsGreat]

Lol! I was thinking garden gnomes.

[LifeIsGreat]

I came home from a 6 week absence to find the new rock covered in hair algae and cyanobacteria. The old live rock I had transferred from my previous system was nearly clean. One of the little clown fish decided that the cyano was his host, and I find him in the same patch of the stuff all the time.

[Skimmerking]

Oh I hate that stuff. that almost sucked me into giving up i went through that stage for 9 months and bam it all went away

[WarDog]

Sweet mountains! That's going to look great with a bunch of grown out colonies on it!

[LifeIsGreat]

Thanks, I'm hoping so. It'll be a bit of a wait though, right now my only colour comes from my crop of slime.

[LifeIsGreat]

I added 6 inches of cheap fine play sand to one of the ends of the tank for my melanurus wrasse to play in, and to add a bit of biofilter. The sand looked brown under sun light but is a pleasant lunar-surface grey under the reef lights. I didn't do 6 inches over the entire tank because I wanted to preserve the visual impact of the tall rock work, and I like the look of the sand slope on the one side.

SUNLIGHT



REEF LIGHT

[LifeIsGreat]

I added 4x 6500K LED strip lights since I've read zooxanthellae respond well to that spectrum. The tank brightened up a lot and the algae in the tank really started bubbling. 6500K boosts the vibrancy of the green coloured stuff in the tank. Not everyone's cup of tea for viewing, but I only run the 6500K's during the day and the reef lights slowly fade to actinic during the course of the evening. I think the changing spectrum throughout the day is pretty cool and it highlights different things in the tank.