New reef in the works, 225g

[Dave C]

Night is falling on the reef. I love this light fixture.

[woodcarver]

Drooling is a very descriptive word !!!! It may be my advancing years but your tank has this affect
Wonderful thread with great pictures and oodles of info.
Wow! And to think we had to rely on books in the old days...................
Check in every day to see your progress, cabinet,aquascaping and lighting unbelievable.
Appreciate the time you spend to upkeep this thread.
Thanks................................Dave

[dirtyreefer]

Originally Posted by Dave C

Apparently you'll be equally lucky very soon. If you get your lights first I look forward to reading about them.

Just posted a review on RC, I plan on posting some pics on there soon as well I can tell you like yours

This is probably the coolest thing for my reef I have ever bought. Most things aren't so exciting since you can't actually see any results immediately after adding (e.g. skimmer, reactor etc), but this is something that you see right away.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=979562

[Dave C]

Ok, here's some shots. I jumped the gun on this tank I guess. I was patient for a couple of months during the build process and when I finally had water in the tank I lost it. The water never did register ammonia or nitrite though it did when I was cooking the rocks. So I assumed they were cured and the tank would be ok. So far that has paid off. There is still no nitrates so I hope I'm right. Either way the fish load is pretty minimal with just the 3 fish (Sailfin Tang, Yellow Tang & Copperband Butterfly). I started by moving some mushrooms & ricordia from my 67g tank to this one. They handled it well and settled in nicely so I moved a few more. Then all hell broke loose and I started buying stuff for the tank. The clams were placed in my 67g tank for a week until I was confident they'd do ok and they are. Most of this could fit back into my 67g if I absolutely had to but it's not been necessary yet. Here's some pics...

Here's my equipment side under the stand. It's pretty crowded but all fits. When I was planning this I didn't account for all of the hoses and the space taken by the hang on recirculating pumps. I might be able to fit a 10lb co2 tank in the middle and that's all I need. Until then the ca reactor sits idle. The skimmer started removing crap the second I turned it on and had 2" of brown/green crap in the cup in 2 hours. It has since settled down.



Here's an overall shot of the tank.



And left side closeup.



Middle.



And right side.



As you can see the algae is really rockin'. I'm sure it will settle down in a month or so. I just got the magnets for the two Tunze 6100s yesterday so the ones on the front/sides of the tank are newly placed. All of the 6100s are operating switching from 30% to about 50%. I also have two Nanostream 6025s at the back of the tank on each side of the overflow box pointed straight down. They blow all of the crap out from under the rocks. I was starting to get some cyano back there but it doesn't stand a chance now. I may put the 6025s on a timer and turn them on/off throughout the day and leave them off at night.

[Dave C]

Some closeups...

[Flusher]

The tank looks awesome. You've got some nice riccs in there.

How well do clams do in a BB tank? I don't know much about them at all, but I always figured they liked to sit in a sandbed.
________
PREGNANT LATINA

[Joe Reefer]

Great tank, I like the kalk reactor stand.

[Dave C]

Originally Posted by Flusher

The tank looks awesome. You've got some nice riccs in there.

How well do clams do in a BB tank? I don't know much about them at all, but I always figured they liked to sit in a sandbed.

Yeah, I really like ricordia/yuma. The clams seem ok. Even in my other tank that has sand I put a piece of rock under the clam to attach to and these clams are on rocks so i don't think they notice the difference. I assume they'll like the MH lighting better then T5. Everything else seems to.

[Dave C]

Originally Posted by Joe Reefer

Great tank, I like the kalk reactor stand.

That's pretty ghetto eh? It's all I had. I'd like to get a nice acrylic stand to put it on because I know if I get much water spilled in there the mag box will start to droop. It works for now.

On the kalk subject, that AQT controller sure makes it easy to dose kalk. I have a solenoid on my water top off line and then a T that branches off to my kalk mixer and straight to the sump. Each of those lines also has a solenoid on it. When the float in the sump drops the controller checks the pH and if it's below 8.4 it opens the master & the kalk solenoid, otherwise it opens the master and the fresh solenoid. Now my pH hovers between 8.35 and 8.42 all day long.

AQT is supposed to come out with a calcium probe and that will allow me to do the same thing with my co2 solenoid and the ca reactor. That will be sweet.

[Delphinus]

Looks good so far. Should look really nice once the coraline starts to take hold on the rocks.

Why put the calcium reactor on a controller though? I'd just have the thing run all the time. Otherwise you'd also have to have a CO2 controller on the reactor (I'm guessing you probably already have this) but what's going to happen is that it will just be constantly cycling on and off whereas usually it's pretty easy to dial it into a steady-state operation. I don't mean to dissuade you out of buying toys if you really want to buy them but I'm just thinking that this is one you don't really *really* need if you know what I mean?

Originally Posted by Flusher

How well do clams do in a BB tank? I don't know much about them at all, but I always figured they liked to sit in a sandbed.

Truth be told, you won't find clams in the sand out on the real reef, at least not maximas or croceas. People like to put them on the sand for a variety of reasons, some of it is aesthetic, some of it is that they can't "fall off" the sand, etc. But in the real reef, these guys live on (or more accurately, "in") the rock of the reef. They actually can burrow into the rock and all you see of them is their mantle (looks a little like a nudibranch until they see a shadow and zip in).