120g build

[sharuq1]

I like taking pictures
Online Album


Just a few samples from the album above...

[karazy]

looks great. i love the way the rockwork turned out

[sharuq1]

Well it's been quite some time since I posted an update. I've been living and breathing clinical practicum (I'm a nursing student) for the last while and have just had no spare time to speak of. We had quite a bit of a change the last couple of months. The landlord raised our rent somewhere in the vicinity of "utterly ridiculous" considering we were living in a dump so we said, "hey if we're going to pay that much, may as well live in a nicer place", and so the decision to move was made. I really did not want to move that tank.

Well, moving day came and so with it the problems. It was pretty much the day from hell. Some heaters I had lent out were found to be broken due to getting sw in them, so I thought I would have enough and was wrong. The 250W Jager heater decided today would be a good day to stay on and never turn off....and a whole 20g garbage bin of LR got fried. The sump cracked on the bottom. Bins got cold, corals died or browned out to look almost dead...it was NOT a good day.

We put everything into rubbermaids and took it to the new place, two of them were set up with heaters, air stones and a very small powerhead each, while the rock went into the tank after we'd taken the time to refill it. The ammonia in the tank went so high the test for it was off the scale. Needless to say I was bummed and I almost gave up.
my sw "tank" for 1.5 mo.
the chaeto bin
sump (and "repair")
Later on in the week I came home to find my freshwater tanks cold as ice. The 72g looked cloudy and gross. Everything but three "trooper" paracyp. nigrippnis in my 33g freshwater died, including my gorgeous breeding iceburgs, rotkeil severums, ottos & the loaches. The only other fish to live were my iceburg fry, of which I had 9, who were in a different tank and my cherry shrimp, who I later sold all of except 5. I ordered two new heaters from a great guy on albertaaquatica.
RIP my cichlid buddies
After about a couple weeks, with alot of encouragement and oh...nagging...from my fiance Adley, I finally mended the sump with a piece of glass to the bottom and silicone. With luck that will hold it. In all for the sw tank, we lost our two signal gobies, the cleaner wrasse, a cleaner shrimp, several sps from Snappy a beautiful yellow acro, several corals and the lawnmower blenny over the last month and a half of waiting and waiting for the water in the tank to finish cycling and the heater fiasco. I tried everything to speed up the cycle, including using the product "cycle".

The longer we had to wait the more I felt like giving up as I saw thing after thing die or look terrible. With every water test I wanted to pull my hair out. We also couldn't figure out how we were going to hang the lights as we didn't have the option this time of drilling into the ceiling. First, Adley made a..."contraption" that is...well...probably one of the ugliest ways to hang a light I have ever seen in my life. I really did not want it to stay looking that way, so I searched out a "prettier" method to hang the lights over the next couple weeks. Eventually I "borrowed it" and precariously put it over the bins to hang one mH for the sps in the blue bin.
"the contraption"

Finally after a month and a half of waiting, the water was safe enough for life. Adley and I put everything thing in with much swearing and sweating and breaking of sps. As I was examining the water in the bin for any more life, I saw a darting small "thing". At first I was like, "oh crap, and that must be a frigging flatworm, perfect!" (We didn't have fw but I figured after all that's gone wrong so far that would just be the icing on the cake). I reached in to pluck it out and to my surprise, it was the bee shrimp! Later that day I also saw the pom-pom crab come out of a rock to wave his poms. Finally, the tank looks like a tank again.

Well, going to go upload some pics, cus I like pics!

[sharuq1]

This is how my idea worked out for hanging the lights. It's a couple of those clothes hanger rods and two curved ones from "no-one-knows anything Depot" with a chain and holes drilled in them etc. Could have cut them a bit shorter, but left them long just in case we want to add more lights or something in the future.

The lights are hanging at different heights in this pic as the lamp on the left is newer than the one on the right. the left is an aquaconnect 14k, the right is a 15K XM. The zoos really blanch out with the the AC lamp as it is quite bright. I do like the blue of the XM but the sps prefers the AC. We'll see how this works out as time goes on. The GBTA hid under a rock this morning (I changed the bulb last night as he kept moving up the rock getting too close to the sps)




Sump shot, the green bin is for top off water


water change "bucket"




half-dead coral island


This gorg looks pretty darn happy

FTS

My favorite birdsnest, I am so happy this pulled through! (bought from Snappy)

[sharuq1]

What on earth IS this thing? It moves, it's covered in a mucous shroud and inside it looks like a curled up armadillo, spiney. never seen anything like it.










The tips are coming back, they had died in the bin due to the water level dropping at times.So cool they are coming back purple on the yellow one!




The zoo tower


I left the dead coral skeletons in the tank. After the story I read on how someone had polyps come back after 6 months of it being dead, I thought why not. There are several dead coral skeletons in the tank. I left the yellow acro in there just in case. I swear I could see a 3mm area of fluorescence on it, maybe it will come to life again.....



Eventually I may get around to covering up the pvc structure a bit, but just don't have the time right now.