Adam's 46 Bow

[hotshot619]

Hello, This is my tank

FTS:

December 2011

 

 

This is a 46 Bow Front Reef Tank.

-4 Rapid LED Par 38 Bulbs mounts on a custom track light

-2 Current Power Brite Royal Blue LED Actinic lighting (not set up yet)

-Vortech MP10

-Super Reef Octopus Skimmer 1000 int

-Reef Keeper Lite with SL1, ATO, and Net Module (not set up yet)

-BRS Dual Reactor with Carbon and High Capacity GFO (not set up yet)

-Current USA 1/15 Chiller (not set up yet)

-5 inch Deep Sand Bed

-Large CPR Aquafuge filled with Miracle Mud and Cheato

-Eshoops Overflow PF-300 with Hofer Gurgle Buster

-Via Aqua 1800 pump with 4ft of head

-10 Gallon Sump

 

Living critters within it:

- Orange Ocellaris Clown fish (not yet but will be moving in soon)

-Black Ocellaris Clown fish (not yet but will be moving in soon)

-Blood shrimp

-Two Tiger Conch

-Emerald Crab

-Red, White, and Blue legged Hermits

-Nass. Florida and Dwarf Cerith, Mexican Turbo, and Nerites Snails

-Pods, Brittle Stars, Bristle worm

 

Coral:

Sprouting babies of Dragon Soul Favia

War Favia

(Unknown) Red and Green Favia

Neon Green Candy Cane

Wall Torch Coral

Branching Frog Spawn

Green Tipped Branching Frog Spawn

Aussie Duncans

Fuzzy Mushroom

Pulsing Xenias

Green Polyp Toadstool

(Unknown) Branching Salmon SPS coral

Green Cover Polp

Blue Clover Polys

Green Pocillopora

Green Star Polys

Zoa:

Rainbow Rapids

Nuclear Greens/Green Implosion

Pink Zippers

Radioactive Dragon Eye

Unknown Orange

unknown Green zoas

Unknown Other

Organism Palys (or) Orange Ring of Toxins

My Clementine's (or) Orange Explosion (or) Bam Bams (or) Solar

(Different tank)

Green Ricordia

GSP

 

 

 

Kia:

Blue Ricordia

4 heads frogspawn

Unknown Zoa

Green Birds nest SPS frag

 

 

I'll update this list later I'm tired :-P

[hotshot619]

Now that the FTS 1st post is on top, I can go into detail about the tank. I had bought a 46 Bow with TONS of Rock, and a bunch of extras a while back. The actual tank was scratched to all hell.

and the rock loaded with Majano. After I sold off all the coral, fish, and excess rock I went hunting for a new 46 tank. My plan building this tank was to get very good equipment thus when I have to more (I am in college and will be finishing in a year or so and will be moving from my rented house) I can sell all the fish, coral, live rock/sand and the tank, but keep all the gear so when I move to where ever I can just start from scratch. Some might think that kinda sucks but I think starting fresh helps you get your perfect tank since this is my 2nd tank now and I have made HUGE improvements.

 

I would like to first give a shout out to BRS and Reef Cleaners for their Amazing customer service and quality. After that for all the great people who have sold me items used at great deals to help me build this tank.

 

 

Much more to come just need to start writing term paper then I'll come back to this and update with more build story and pictures galore.

 

Thanks

[hotshot619]

Well this all starts with a VERY Scratched tank

 

This tank had probably around 100lbs of Live rock, two toadstool, two clowns that were hosting the toadstools >.< SO AWESOME btw, a yellow tang (I know a 46 is way to small for one, tang police :-P), a blood shrimp, and four full grown engineering gobies (which are really REALLY cool and dig little tunnels in the sand everywhere and are like eels but not as hard or testy), a blue crocea clam, a sea apple, some green palys, some unknown anemones that were interesting looking and TONS of Majano anemones. All that plus the tank, stand, power heads, a power compact light, and some random bits for $125. When we broke down the tank there was a crushed coral substrate which the eng gobies had turned into a ant farm look alike from the bottom.

Well after moving this beast we went to work selling off the live stock, since I wanted to start fresh and didn't want any of the livestock to suffer a huge ordeal, but I did keep the blood shrimp, he is my little buddy :-P

 

My buddy swimming around.

Beautiful Clam

I was a little worried when it closed fast that It would hit the light so I aimed the clam right under the brace. :-)

Engineer Gobie Swimming in front of the Toadstool

Yellow Tang and Toadstool

Eng. Gobie and Toadstool

One of millions and millions of Pods of all kinds. This tank had SO MANY PODS, and so now does the new one.

The Clowns loved the toadstools and hosted both, they would sleep in one, and then the next night the other.

When the tang would....relieve itself it would do it sometimes over the toadstool and the clowns spent hours cleaning up the mess :-P

Clown

Toadstool and clown

Everyone playing nice

Toad & Clowns

Everyone playing nice again

Hosting

Hosting

Eng Gobie

In the morning for some reason all of the Eng Gobies would come out from their tunnel networks and swim laps at the top of the tank for about an hour or so then swim back to their homes. Sometimes they would splash a little on the top if I stepped up to the tank to fast and scared them.

Everyone and the Sea apple still in the container we transferred it in since we didn't want to upset it by pulling it off and have it nuke all the live stock. We brought that to the fish store first thing the next day.

Apple up close, cool but too scary as its a time bomb if it gets sick or dies.

Bottom View of the bare bottom with the Eng. Gobies

What a cute face, I love the way these guys would just slither out and stare at me :-P they knew I was the food god and if they acted cute enough I would drop more in for them :-P

Playing hide and seek :-P

Another Bottom view.

 

 

 

Well those are all the photos of the tank that seeded my tank and the fish sold off to help fun the new tank.

I need to write another post to show the Majano and the new tank as I have hit my photo max for one post :-P Please continue...

[hotshot619]

Here are just some of the anemones I had all over the rock...Some vinegar and a large gauge needle and BAM all melted away. Took about a week and 2 large water changes but well worth it and I have absolutely no sign of Majano left on my rock-work.

 

While I was selling off all the livestock and dealing with that Majano I was buying gear and equipment to start my new tank and I wanted to run a Hang on the Back Refugem full of Miracle Mud as I have head Great things about it as well as with the HOB I can get a good Pod Population going on in there and them some naturally fall out if it into my tank feeding corals, fish, and whatever is hungry. (My rock is also loaded with mini Brittle starfish and I have seem one wrap its tentacle around a pod and drag it into a hole, pretty cool) I also put a huge hunk of cheato algae and run the light counter to the day lights so the PH is more stable and there is good nutrient exportation. While all this was great I had bought a large CPR aqaufuge off eBay and unfortunately it was delivered in many pieces as the guy had no idea how to pack acrylic. The bottom was cracked and all along the side it was broken and I didn't want to risk trying to fix it with over 50 lb and 5 gallons of saltwater hanging on the back over electrical wires.

 

SOOO I bought another one.....still came broken. This time I was smart and told the guy to pack it well and insure it. We got 100% refund and I kept the item and the money so I went out and bought Weldon 16 which actually melt and then bonds 2 pieces of acrylic and is what people use to build sumps and fixed and super reinforced all the weak spots with extra bracing and bonded acrylic to make it super strong just in case. So after a lot of hassle and stress it turned out okay since I got basically a expensive HOB fuge for just the price of the used light. :-P

[hotshot619]

This is The tank with ALOT of sand in it, I bought live sand a HUGE discount and wanted to run a Deep Sand Bed (DSB) as after they mature they are great at processing excess nutrients all the way though the bed and de-nitrifying bacteria taking the nitrates and turning them into Nitrogen gas thus meaning with a very light bioload I should be safe with no doing any water changes. I still might do some every now and again if I feel they are needed but its kinda an awesome thought to no have to change water every week. The DSB and Miricle mud refugem and Cheato should keep my tank nice and happy.

 

About half way up with water :-)

Full! Viewing from the corner of my bed.

View from the bed.

If you look closely you can see all the live on this rock, pods, snails, and mini brittle stars.

Oldish Front Tank shot. I think this might be the First one I ever took :-P

FTS with only the Power Brites on. I'm using them as my sunset and rise lights.

Front Tank shot

This is the front view of my lighting set up. I used a track lighting bar cut to 3ft long, ordered these fixtures off eBay since no one had them locally or the online stores wanted to charge me 23$ per fixture. For 24 I got 4 shipped off eBay :-P

Side view of my lights. I am going to cut the wood I have on top to length and paint it black and mount the Power Brite lights to the bottom and most likely just keep fish stuff on top of the shelf...OR I might put my Chiller up there...Or have a gravity fed top off system. I'm not 100% on anything yet for that.

My BRAND NEW (This makes me happy since most everything I have bought was used which is fine but sometimes owning something Brand new is nice too) BRS 5 stage RO/DI filter. No more going to the fish store that only sold RO that didn't change its filters often, lugging buckets, driving all the way to the store just for water only to leave buying some other bit or piece I convinced myself I needed. :-P I have low will power.

Its stashed under my sink and I'm getting GREAT pressure, about 90 PSI which is crazy and about 1 tds going into the DI and 0 TDS coming out. I credit our water supply though which is the great lakes and NY has pretty high water standards :-)

This is a bunch of stuff I picked up on the SUPER Black friday sale BRS had which was very lucky for me. Carbon, High Capacity GFO, and a refill kit for the RO/DI whenever I need to use them :-)

This is the sump I am setting up this week. Its only a 10 gallon but that's really all I could fit, and since it only need to have space for my Skimmer, a return and hopefully two heaters it should work out just fine.

This is my skimmer. Its a Super Reef Octopus 1000 internal which I was lucky enough to get used for 100$ which is a CRAZY DEAL, and the best part is its exactly what I wanted and is dead silent :-)

Finally I picked this Reef Keeper set up with brand new PH and Temp Probs for 75$ from a local guy, it took me about 3 months and 10 canceled pick up from either me or him but I FINALLY got it and I mean a BRAND NEW RKL with PH prob and SL1 for 75$ that's ridiculousness. :-P

 

I love to scavenge for the great deals, and I think I have done quite well. I will be setting up the sump once my water is fully mixed and I get back from the SABRES game tonight !!!! I think I have finally caught up on my tank :-0 Took most of all night but hey, there is no need for sleep when you have a tank as sweet as this is gonna be. Thanks for looking and updates soon to come.

[hotshot619]

Just a quick update, no photos this time...My sump broke. It was most likely my fault, I was moving in with water still in in and the floor of my stand is apparently bubbled in some spots so the bottom glass crack in two. I grabbed a Majijet with some tubing and got 80% of the water out, but still a lot of water got everywhere. Went the the fish store, got another 10 gallon and decided it was worth the 7$ for some ridged foam so I don't repeat this catastrophic weekend :-P

Re-tuning the skimmer and such then I should be back to where I was, oh and I also picked up a emrald crab and 2 tiger conch to help with the algae problem I'm having.

[hotshot619]

Really over 150 views and nobody wants to even say hi? ;-) I don't bite....Someone say something. I replaced my broken sump for a new one, went to home depot and got this foam and the skimmer is re-tuned. Everything seems to be working well now. I wanted to try and set up a baffle or two but since I will be leaving my tank for about 10 days I was not sure how much water would be lost to evap and dont wanna have to be worried about burning out the pump if it runs dry before I set up an ATO. I think tomorrow I will be setting up my Reef keeper with 2 PC4s and ph, temp, SL1, and net module as well as my BRS Carbon GFO reactor. If I get the ambition I might try and set up an ATO but I doubt it will actually happen. Here are some pics of my sump and of the skimmate I have pulled so far. I would like to get it a little darker but still very pleased with its performance. You may also notice there is some foam sandwiched on top of the skimmer. The foam under the water floats the skimmer so I just wedge in some foam to keep it from flying up out of the water. :-P

 

[hotshot619]

I spent my time with the tank today manually scrubbing away the Green Hair algae because I just didnt wantt to wait for my emerald crab and turbos to get it all which would of taken at least a week. I placed a fine mesh net where my overflow pipe comes out into my sump to catch the GHA while it was free floating. I got a little concerned though because my overflow box almost flooded while I was working because I forgot the gargle buster limits the flow rate, just something to keep in mind I guess. The rock work is now nice and clean and my conch should be able to clean up the RSA I have on my sand bed.

I emptied out my skimmer today, HOLY GOD!!~!! I have never smelt such a rancid disgusting smell in my whole life, WAY beats out a decomposing deer I used to think was the worst thing.(I live near woods and it happens sometimes) This smell was so horrible I feel i could package it up and sell it on the back of those old style magazines with x-ray specks. After I cleaned up the mess I made and whipped down the tank it looks so much better. I'll have to update my FTS. I just wanna take a stab at setting up the RKL tonight first.