Our 1st Reef Tank build ever - 70 gal AGA tall

[jrgilles]

cool. I have some zoanthids already fragged you can test out and I can give you some xenia's and maybe frag a piece of sps to see how it all does.

I have some LPS too that are growing well. Maybe I can break off a piece of a candycane coral I have a lot of.

Then if all that works, we can do more

 

[eww]

How does your Saturday look Rob and Todd? We might be able to make another trip north during the morning and day and back to the ranch in the afternoon.

 

[eww]

And now some pics of the new inhabitants

Clowns

Tail Spot Goby - hard little guy to photograph

Flame Hawk

The murdering Fire Shrimp

One of the CUC with the mushrooms

And it seems we have found a little unwelcome friend. We will need to get rid of this soon.

And finally another FTS

Thank you Becca for all the pics.

 

[iroll253]

That scape is sweet. Im glad you decided to paint the overflow too. Nice work!

 

[noworries]

We are running 4 36" T5's. 2 on an Icecap 660 and 2 on a standard ballast. We have lots of light even at the bottom of the tank at 30". We will be adding blue and white LEDs for dawn dusk and moon lights soon.

We would love to take you up on your offer Rob as long as the lighting will work. We plan on this tank being full of beautiful corals. The fish are just an added bonus. Maybe this weekend or next we can pay you a visit and meet you in person finally. Thank you so very much for the offer.

I may have skipped over it, but just curious why you are running two ballasts? Do you have two daylight two actinics on seperate ballasts? Only reason I ask is the icecap is capable of running all four and will almost for sure push more light out of the other two bulbs as well.

 

[eww]

I may have skipped over it, but just curious why you are running two ballasts? Do you have two daylight two actinics on seperate ballasts? Only reason I ask is the icecap is capable of running all four and will almost for sure push more light out of the other two bulbs as well.

We are running it that way so we can stagger the lighting schedule. The Pure Actinic and one Aquablue+ turn on an hour before and turn off an hour after a Midday 6000K and another Aquablue+. This way the lights ease on and off a little more for the inhabitants of the tank, instead of just being all on or all off. We are also adding white and blue LED's to do even more variations and night lights. We do plan on changing out the standard ballast to another Icecap once we obtain one. I really don't think we have light issues though as I have the TekII reflectors on all bulbs and they seem really bright, even at the bottom of the tank. I have looked at many peoples tanks and most have MH and this T5 setup seems brighter to the untrained eye than any of those have been. Just IMO though. We will see how thing go once we start putting some more corals in. The ones we have seem to be liking things rather well except for maybe the Cabbage Coral. It is right at the top for lots of light but isn't opening like it was when it was deeper in the tank. I don't know if its the light or the fact that it was moved several times in, out and around the tank a few days ago when we redid all the rock work to secure everything.

 

[TJL]

Hey Eric & Becca,

Everything looks great, now just need a few easy corals to start out with so you'll be content to let it mature for a few more weeks before adding additional fish. I think Saturday is good but will need to check with the Boss. You could definately move the Cabbage coral down mid way and glue onto a small shelf. They are agressive enough to kill Montipora & Pocillopora which would be good SPS choices for the upper part of your aquascape.

Todd

 

[eww]

Thank you to everyone we went and saw today. Todd (TJL), Rob (jrgilles) and Andy (WA coral) Your generosity never ceases to amaze us. We are collecting an assortment of mixed corals for what should be the good start to an interesting tank. We didn't get home until after 8:00 tonight after starting at 10:00am. Long day on the freeway on the best weather day of the year but it was worth it. I struggled just to get everything dipped, acclimated and in the tank. A few pieces are glued down to their new home but many are still on plugs in the sand bed for the night. More to do tomorrow . I'll tell you what, I now know what people were talking about with the headache of a 30" deep tank. Difficult to say the least, especially for a noob like me. A special THANK YOU to my beautiful wife who so easily puts up with my grumpiness while I am getting the entire dining room soaking wet at 10:00 at night and we have the entire family coming for a birthday party tomorrow afternoon. How did I get so lucky . Pics will follow soon.

 

[SRWoodcock]

Your tank looks really nice.

 

[TJL]

Come on Eric, throw us a bone already ! lol

Todd

 

[eww]

Here are a few pics but we were tied up with a birthday party here at the house today and wasn't able to work on placements of any more corals than what we did last night.

I apologize for the pic quality. I obviously need to contact Adam for some lessons on how to use our really nice Nikon D60 camera. I know it can do better but I have no idea how to make it do it.

Peek-a-poo

An unidentified SPS (thanks Rob)

A finger leather (thanks Todd) that looks good then retracts then looks good then retracts. We can't wait until it gets comfortable with it's new home and keeps looking nice.

Some Seahawks Blues (thanks Andy)

A nice new fuge light (thanks Todd)

Another shot of the fuge light. We will be making acrylic cover for the sump to limit evaporation and mount the light into it.

 

[eww]

This time the unidentified SPS...

 

[noworries]

Lookin good! With the pics, tripods go a long way for through the glass shots, for stationary pictures (if you don't have a remote) set it for a 2 second delay in the shutter it will help to settle any vibrations your finger would produce hitting the shutter button.

 

[TJL]

OK, so place the rest of the corals and give us a FTS. We'll just hang out here and wait for you... tic...tic...tic

Todd

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Just noticed this thread. Man you guys have come a long ways real fast!

Tank is looking great. On a side note, my hawk ate all my shrimp once he developed the taste and learned how to stretch his mouth. Crabs are safe, shrimp are at risk...

No more hawks for me except perhaps a long-nose

 

[noworries]

Just noticed this thread. Man you guys have come a long ways real fast!

Tank is looking great. On a side note, my hawk ate all my shrimp once he developed the taste and learned how to stretch his mouth. Crabs are safe, shrimp are at risk...

No more hawks for me except perhaps a long-nose

Ditto that! The shrimp are as irresistable to the hawks as the hawks' personalities are to us. I have had success with falco's as well. Always hard to pass up a good hawkfish.

 

[eww]

Thanks Mike. We have one Fire Shrimp in the tank now and will be adding a second one later this week. We were supposed to have the two already except for the murder of one in the bag on the way home. The one we have right now never shows his face. He hides back behind the rock work 24/7 since the time he was introduced. We think he is hiding out form the authorities for his crime.

 

[eww]

Here are a few pics from this afternoon.

 

[SRWoodcock]

WOW. Very nice so far. Have you planned on putting any clean up crew in there? if so, what?

 

[eww]

Yep. We have 15 various hermits and a dozen snails or so as well as a Conch and one Fire Shrimp. We will be adding more Hermits and snails in the next few weeks as well as another shrimp or two. Thank you for the comments.