The lawnmower blenny is my favorite fish. Mine used to "feed" on my hand. It's the weirdest sensation. He used to sit in my hand when I would put it in the tank. By far the most personality of all my fish.

You need a beautiful purple wrasse! Just my opinion

Edit: BTW, fantastic tank!!

Yea, I am pretty excited about the frags. I got them from one of the best place's in canada for SPS frags IMO. www.coralmaster.com Great guy to deal with, and his corals speak for themselves.

Kush is pretty much settled in... trying to train him to eat nori from my hand, as he was doing it at the LFS, but that's also how we tried tricking him to catch him... so he is a still a bit leary, but I'll get him eating from my hand soon enough.




Yea, I'd actually like something red or blue... I've got a royal gramma so I already have a bit of purple in the tank, same with my coral beauty..

A Ruby Red Flasher Wrasse would be nice... or maybe a Mandarin near the end of the year... we'll see how it goes... i think I am getting close to max bio-load for this tank..


Thanks guys!

hmmm maybe i missed it... but if the power fails, will your tank drain out??

Nope.. I got a true union check valve on the return line.. the overflow would drain down to the top of the stand pipe, but that's not more than 1-2 gallons...

lookin great so far, just a few questions

how far above the top of the water do you have your lights?

what size tank are you using for a sump?

Thanks, The lights are about 6" off the water surface. The sump is a 54G tank, which will be close to 30G volume whenever I get the refuge online...

i was thinking you had to have a check valve somewhere... lol

Yea, I test it every week when I do a water change and shut off the return pump...

Must have been my lucky day, as I was in there today when a fish shipment came in...... Surprise Surprise, couple Aussie Black Perc's.

When I added the smaller guy first, my PBT, Coral Beauty and Foxface thought he was food for about 3secs... then left him alone, I added the 2nd bigger one, and she didn't didn't get charged the same way, but the copperband was sure checking her out.

Anyways, couple pics.

They seem to have paired up almost instantly... Hopefully the "female" doesn't attack the male, time with tell.


And because "she" wouldn't get out of the frame for any shot, I figured I might as well snap her portrait as well.

Bit of a system upgrade earlier this week. Finally got a chance to add a Tunze ATO to my system. 77 liter reservoir with a Seio 620 power-head suctioned to the bottom pointing vertically to the water surface to circulate. Would really like to get the 2 stands skinned someday soon so it doesn't look so ghetto.





FTS shot for March.

lookin' great! that tank is going to be incredible when it's all filled in!

Now that you've had them for awhile, has your butterfly, foxface, or angel attacked any of your clams or corals. I wanna get a flame angel but I'm warry of it attacking my corals (would also love a copperband and a foxface as well).

generally well fed fish dont attack corals, for the majority the angelfish that do attack corals are either under fed or fed the wrong food, same goes with moorish idols
it was in an advanced aquarist or something i read a while back

Interesting...I'll keep that in mind...Thanks

Yea, Im looking forward to seeing it myself in a 6months-year. Thanks!



I haven't seen anything when I'm around the tank. I feed once a day, with a great food mix from a local reefer, it's got everything possible in it I think. The CBB is eating mysis and does "her" daily hunting of the rocks, the foxface and angel get their fill of the same food plus nori clips. I tend to feed heavily which does yield slightly quicker film algae production on the glass, but I believe fat fish are happy/healthy fish. So I roll with the negatives of heavy feeding. Fingers crossed though that none of them snap and go postal on any of the corals (except the GSP maybe.. )

New addition to the tank today, and some misc. top down frag pics.

Picked up a Blue Tuxedo Urchin today:


Pink Mille:


Green Digitata:


Green Acropora.. still trying to get an ID:


Alien Freckles:


Blue Stag:

Excellent shots the tank is looking wonderful

Thanks Gerber... I added a few frags of Zoas today... LFS got in a great shipment on thursday and put them on sale this weekend, so couldn't pass them up.

I'll get some photos of them once they open up..

tank is looking amazing!!! im always freakin JEALOUS everytime i look at this thread. your pictures are absolutely amazing!!! are you gonna hide the right loc-line?? dont even notice the left one. great great job!!!

hahahaa... Thanks ALOT jerzsky... The right loc-line got slighty disguised today actually... I decided to bust up a large 10lbs piece of LR today out of my fuge, and with the great Zoa frags at my LFS got in on thursday, I made a "Zoa Island" rock.. as well as added a larger piece of the LR just to the left, which has opened up a lot more room for frags/coral. Also took a local reefers advise after loosing my last perculas, and am trying 2 normal, bone-head, occelaris clowns. Gave them a slow acclimation, added them and within 10-15mins they were hosting my Torch... both ate tonight as well with everyone.

Here is Zoa Island, I will get some close ups once they start opening up fully:


and 2 shots of the clowns, just incase anyone in curious, the butterfly doesn't bother the clams, just picks critters off the shell:

Going through a bit of a Clown/Zoa photo frenzy lately.. haha..

Beautiful shots - gotta love that powder brown!

why oh why do you get all the great deals in calgary we never get nice zoas like that up here in edmonton.

Very nice stuff!

Thanks MSU... I gotta agree with you..






It's rare that the LFS has zoas like that in as well.. We just got really lucky.. Price was unbeatable... 5 or more for $20/each..






Thanks reefman...


My LFS, Red Coral Aquarium, got some new SPS colonies in yesterday, and when I went in to do my weekly photos for the store, I ended up coming home with one. I gotta admit, I HATE the rocks/cement that most of these colonies come in on, so I decided to remove the colony from the rock and mount it on 3 frag stones.

It's a deep water acro, but I'm still working on the proper ID..





Here's a few more misc. SPS photos... I've had LOTS of time to sit around and take pictures of my tank this week, hope nobody minds the pics.










Quick shot of Zac and Miri..

Great pictures of great fish!



This tends to happen in a lot of tanks. I have 10 fish (I think) and all but 2 (sixline, blue/green chromis) have yellow on them.

Thanks skillz!

So I added some new lighting to my tank today... I've added a 2x54W retro kit to supplement my MH's (Ushio 14K). I am running the 2x54W Hagen GLO retro ballast with TEK2 T5 Retro Reflectors, and I went with the Giessemann Actinic+ and the Giessemann True Actinic for bulb choices.

Pretty impressed with the look of them when the halides are off, will have to wait till tomorrow to see how they look with the halides on.

Anyways, a couple Actinic photos for you guys... (Sorry, I REALLY suck at actinic photography, still working to get the right "white" balance...)









VOILA!!!!!!!





















Thanks for looking.

There is a discussion on another forum I am on, regarding the best 2 bulb T5 combo for supplemental light. Seeing how I just added supplemental lighting to my system yesterday, I posted this FTS comparison for them, and figured I would add it to my thread here just to give everyone an idea of the difference.

I shot these with IDENTICAL camera settings.

My Lighting Info:

Metal Halides: Bulbs - Ushio 14K (5 months old) powered by a Galaxy Electronic Ballast w/ Lumenmax3 Reflectors.

T5's: Bulbs - 1x Giessmann Actinic+ & 1x Giessmann True Actinic powered by Hagen GLO Retro Ballast w/ TEKII Retro Reflectors.



As you can see, a dramatic difference. Even more than I was expecting, but it actually provided me with the color I was hoping to get.

The actinics make it look so much better imo

Man once this baby gets filled in you're gonna have a really nice reef. May the ''Reef Gods'' be with you.

I never realised just how yellow the 14k Ushio looks on its own until that... dang.

Yea I agree... it's given me the color I wanted for the tank. Everything has been responding very well too.



hahah.. Thanks, I need faster growth..




Me neither really.. haha, I never complained about the color of my 14K's before yesterday.. now I don't think I could ever go 10K..

Thanks, now I'm having second thoughts about whether or not I need supplemental lighting to go with a pair of 14000K Geisemanns Ahhhh, I guess I'll see on the day eh?


EDIT: Screw that, I just found I can actually get the XMs like I wanted so that's not really a problem now...

So I have been starting to plan for the future...

I went into Red Coral Aquarium (my LFS) and dropped off a tank design for a quote. This picture is missing a few holes, specifically, the 2x2" overflow holes, 2x 1-1/2" returns thru the floor, and 6x 1" CL holes in the floor. The only hole I did add will be for the CL intake. It was my first time using this design program, so took it easy. As you can see the glass thickness is a bit out of wack.. haha.

I am planning this now as it would probably take the rest of the year to get "built" (stand, plumb, purchase gear, etc). It is my planned upgrade for the 75G, as long as the price is right.

Tank Dimensions: 60"x36"x20"
Tank Volume: 187G

Damnnnnn, that looks like it'll be a sweet tank What made you decide on that style for the overflow?

Beautiful tank!! Your photography is just breathtaking.....

Well, first off, I modified that overflow again today so I can eliminate the Sump returns through the floor, and I am going to narrow the overflow from 36" (full width) to 24", So i have 6" on either side of the overflow for my sump returns. I wanted them higher in the tank to avoid a catastrophe if the power goes out.

The reason I decided to go with the angled style is so I would have a space for my closed loop intake high enough off the sand bed (the only hole in that design pic).. Plus I hope it will help is keeping detritus from settling on the bottom (of a traditional flat bottom style overflow), that's the idea anyways.

The tank with be 3 sides viewable as well so no plumbing can be drilled on any other panel..



Thanks hazmat... I appreciate the kind words!

Ah yes, it all makes sense. Good luck with it, here's hoping the beauty of this tank carries over

that's quite an amazing tank, hopefully one day I might have something like that LOL, it's nice to dream, but I'm just starting up in Calgary and was wondering what your thoughts were on the LFS around here, I went to red coral last night and got alot of questions answered, ocean city and gold aquariums seem all right too but I think I'll stay away from big al's for livestock, they tried to sell me a sand dollar after 1 month for a 15g with only 10 Lbs of sand I would appreciate the opinion of someone around here who obviously knows what they're doing

Hey! Nice to see a local on this board!

I am pretty bias for the LFS's here in calgary... I buy 97% of my stuff from Red Coral (Kevin and Doug are stellar guys to talk to and learn from)... Ocean City for the other 3%.. Was only at Gold's once and never liked it... Personal reasons for not shopping at Wai's and Elite Aquatics.

Spent a good amount of time at my local LFS this afternoon, 1) Drooling over some new livestock, 2) debated about bringing home this.



After about 2.5 hours of drooling and thinking, I ended up bringing it home. The full package I got consists of the following.

- Aquacontroller Jr Base Unit
- Direct Connect 8 (DC8) Unit
- Temp. Probe
- pH Probe
- PC Serial Interface Cable (which I hope to rig up to hook to my Macbook)

Hoping I can get this setup today and tomorrow before I go back to work for 2 weeks.

Huge Thanks to Kevin @ Red Coral! He really knows how to take care of his customers!

What're you looking at controlling off of the ACjr? It's an awesome unit, from everything I've heard about it. =]

Well since I got a 187G build in the near future, this is more for that system, but I will fire it up on this tank to mainly run my lighting, refuge lighting, heaters, perhaps the single powerhead I had to add. Ca Reactor maybe, CO2 injector to possibly to keep pH in check.. I'm still debating between a dosing pump and reactor..

It's got some really great features for light timing and simulating yearly lighting cycles and moon cycles (might get some coral and fish spawning as a result). Also controls temperature to simulate the yearly temperature changes of the water. Some pretty cool stuff to help make it more natural.

Aye, the AC line have awesome functionality when it comes to their lighting control. I'm kinda frustrated because they're not made for the Australian market and about the closest thing you can get is a Profilux which is about $500 more expensive in relative pricing points...

Love this tank! I can live vicariously through your tank pictures while my 75 sits waiting to get wet.

witch seup is that? im looking around online to buy one and the ones that include the DC8 doesn't say anything about a PH probe.....it comes with??

or are the temp/ph in one probe?

pH probe and PC serial cable were seperate/extra.. This kit was the AC Jr, DC8, Temp Probe.

so did you set it up yet???

thoughts? reviews?? i have a bit of extra money and i wanted one to run my RSM....lemme know how it is

Nope, I haven't set it up yet... Holding off until I get my new tank running.. 187G of goodness!

you bastard!!!


i want pics already!!!