Thanks man! The wavemaker is in the process, I just need to find a powerhead that can tolerate turning on and off that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg, I have already found a suitable controller that will turn the pumps on and off from in intervals of 1sec.-20sec. I am for sure gonna get a wave maker on it though.

Ok, I made up some plans for the wavemaker. it will consist of 3 maxijet powerheads faced at the front of the glass. They will all turn on at the same time for 4-5sec. then they will be off for 4-5 seconds. I'm hoping that that will create a wave-like pulse, your comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated
ILLISTRATION:

very cool, id say you acheived wat you wanted to.

Very cool!

Thanks for the complements guys! My next buy will be to replace the crappy stock bulbs with 4 UVL AquaSun 10000K bulbs and 2 Giesemann Midday 6000k bulbs, I think these new bulbs will give the Gorgs and macroalgaes a more accurate spectrum to there natural environment plus the quality and intensity of the light will be spectacular

I thought I might as well show you the pics that inspired the aquascape and design of this tank.























My next livestock purchase will be a couple good sized Venus Sea Fans

Very very nice!!!!

Thanks!

youre doin great. and the tank will be friggin aweshome with the wave maker!

I think I've tracked down a venus sea fan at my LFS, it's a brownish color and it has the branching pattern that Gorgonia Ventalina has and I read that Gorgonia Ventalina can come in an orangish-brownish variety so hopefully its the real deal

This is definintely one of my new favorite tanks here on NR. I love that you are doing the best you can to mimic nature. Where have you been finding these wonderful inspirational pictures? I am very impressed with what you are doing with this tank. Great job!

its VERY unique

Thanks for all your very kind comments Ok so I bought the Sea fan, and It has the exact branching structure that Gorgonia Flabellum has but it has a orangish reddish color, The fish store has been getting alot of caribbean fish shipments lately so I'm pretty sure that it is a rarer color form of G. Flabellum but only time will tell weather it is G. Flabellum or a non-photosynthetic gorg.
PIC

I have been getting alot of my inspiration from http://www.oceanfootage.com/ They have tons of diving vids from different marine habitats, and I got the pics from Google image search

Well it turns out that this is not a caribbean species so I'll probably resell it at the fish store that I work at.

DUDE.....i thot that was one of the actual caribean flat photos.....i think youve achieved biotope status.

Lol, thanks!

If any of you guys know where I can get a caribbean purple sea fan that would be awesome and would help me greatly, cause I've been searching everywhere for one and I cant seem to find one

Well it seems that the DT's Phytoplankton has bred in the water so the water has a light green haze in it, so I put some carbon in the sump and pulled a little Chaeto from my NC12 and put it in the 40. It would be cool to have an endless source of phytoplankton in the water but it would probably become too dense.
GREEN PHYTO WATER PICS (the phyto in the water actually looks pretty cool)

I put the 10 tubes of super glue gel that I got yesterday for my birthday to work and totally re-arranged the whole thing and boy does it look awesome!! I'll post pics once it clears up.

UPDATE
The Sea Fan has healed over all the exposed skeleton that it had when i got it from the store, which is probably due to the recent phyto bloom lol!. All of the gorgs look fantastic since they have been moved. I'm keeping the phyto controlled with carbon in the sump. I think the phyto is actually making the tank look even more like the natural environment it gives it that ''hazed'' look which IMHO looks pretty cool. I pulled the frag rack out of the tank so it doesn't make the tank look ''Super Getto'' and moved the coral and clam into the NC12.
PICS




I'll post some better quality pics tonight when there's no glare

More awesomeness.

Awesome. I love this tank. Needs blue chromis, IMO.

That was what I was thinking! The only thing that was holding me back was the fact that they get 5'' long and I wasn't sure if that was too much. Overall I think that would be a truly awesome addition to my tank!

Yea, me too! Awesome job.

Thanks! I really couldn't have done it without my friends at NR

Lol the polyp extension on these gorgonians is awesome!

Do you think that some blue reef chromis would be ok in a 40br?

here's a bunch of new pics since the last aquascape
PICS





















More Pics

lil cloudy still but a great example of marco in the main tank done right! You don't see much marco in dt's

Thanks!

UPDATE :
I put some fresh carbon into the sump to help clear the water of some of the phyto. I'll post another vid of the tank tonight.

Oh shoot I didn't know you were adding phyto...thats why it was so green and now silty cloudy. Let the filter feeders have their breakfast, brunch, lunch, supper, dinner, and midnight snacks!

Lol don't worry, I'm not wiping out all the phyto just a little bit that way I can see things a little better

UPDATE:
The phyto has got so thick that I decided to postpone the vid till it clears up a bit.

haha its probably reproducing in the tank . Any means of mech filtration that would kill it, because it if so it doesn't seem to be doing it. Those scallops and gong are probably loving it though

I don't understand what your saying

Any protein skimmer to remove the phyto?

If not that could be why there is so much and it seems like its multiplying

You could just run a UV filter for a few hours to help control the phyto population. I'm sure you don't want to kill it all just drive it down a bit.

I'm gonna ask my boss (i work at a fish store) if I can borrow a UV sterilizer for a few days, I'll probably only run it a few hours a day till I get it under control, then I'll make up a plan of how I'm gonna manage it more accurately so this doesn't happen again.

UPDATE:
The phytoplankton has finally started to clear up and it looks like I'll be able to shoot a new vid of my tank soon

This is gonna be just my opinion, the tank looks awesome, i was doing some thing similar but i couldnt just stick with caribbean corals ha so good job. I think you should add a bunch of sailfin blennies(Emblemaria pandionis) (www.fishbase.org/summary/speciessummary.php?id=3718) and different types of mated gobies(green banded, tiger, red masked, trimma?) you could watch them all skip, scoot and dart around ^^ i hate that there is a clown in there though it ruins the awesome biotopeness

Gorgeous can't wait till it's clearer lol.

Cool tank! I live in PR so you know, I'm surrounded by this type of reefs and the beach is like 30 mins from me. This is a small island so you can really visit like 3-4 beaches same day. I vote for the school of blue chromis. At least 3 or 4. I see they run very pricey there but they are local here and very cheap! Like $3 each. You could also get some carpets, rics, sun coral, feather dusters, elkhorn coral and theres a variety of zoas and palys here. Another very nice Caribbean fish is red banded goby, royal gramma, red lip blenny, spanish hog, pigmy angel. Also You see here lots of coral banded shrimp and urchins. I'll be following this one! Nice tank. Very different

+1 to everything they just said.

I am loving this tank!

-Prof

Thanks for all your kind comments

UPDATE:
The phyto in the water is all gone so the tank is crystal clear. I trimmed up some of the macro algaes and needless to say, it looks awesome! I'll post pics either tonight or tomarrow

I had some time to snap some pics




















(sorry bout the blurry and dark pics, it is really clear and bright but my camera isn't that great)
if any of you guys have tips for me to tweak my camera with that would be great, my camera is a Canon PowerShot S2 IS

yum much cleaner!

I like it really clean too

I posted another vid on youtube of my tank, I'll post a link when it finishes uploading