Backround

My buddy Matt and I are joining in on this contest together as a team. I am a poor full time student and I have a full time job, but somehow I am still poor. He has all of the equipment and most of the livestock already. I am always lurking around nanoreef.com and he hates posting on forums. So a beautiful relationship was born. I do all the posting and he supplies all the equipment. Since we work together this tank will be set up at a work where we can both work on and enjoy the tank at the same time.

Since this is a budget contest i believe the best strategy is K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid). So following along those lines we will not be having any filter, protein skimmer, controller, chiller, heater, overflow, or even ATO.

The plan is to keep it as natural as possible. Meaning high power light, lots of water circulation, plenty of live rock, and some cheato for some extra nutrient export. We plan for no...ok maybe one fish to keep the tank interesting. With only one fish max in the tank the bio load will be almost nonexistent.

Hopefully this will work out and in the end we will crush the competition like what Denise Richards did to my dreams when she got married.

Thanks for looking and good luck to the rest of the competition!

Equipment

10g Hex - $25 with the $10 discount
70w Viper - $148.49
Koralia 1 - $23.99
Cheapo Walmart soap dish - $2.00

Livestock

12lbs. of Live Rock - $48.00
Ball of Cheato - $2.00
2 Heads of Frogspawn - $10.00
Pom Pom Xenia Stalk x 2 - $10.00
10 Common Zoas - $10.00
Common Redish Chalice 4 eyes - $20.00
ORA Electric Green Birdsnest - $20.00
Orange Ricordea - $10.00
GSP - $10.00

Fish

Pajama Cardinal - $9.00

Amount Spent so far - $348.48

Budget still left over - $1.52

nice

I'm starting to get the pieces together now and we just got a great idea for what fish to put in it. It's a surprise and I doubt anyone else will have the same fish.

On a different note I am now getting worried because LucidProp is now in the contest and he was got so many awesome looking corals it will be hard to compete with him. We won't just give up though so LucidProp get ready you got some determined competition.

Oh snap! that would make a nice seahorse tank
Good Luck!!

Good guess! But your as cold as penguin poo.

ARG!!! The tank is leaking!!

We can't get a new one till sometime next week. Guess I will have to pull the old switcharoo. Take the required pic of a aga 10g the when the hex comes in take pic and start over. I'm already behind the pack.

Good thing I water tested it before putting in rock tomorrow.

That sucks! Definitely glad you found the leak before you had livestock in there. Good luck with a replacement!

Leaking tanks always suck, but that's what silicone is for!
Good luck!

Ok spend the day aquascaping and I am very happy with the results. I promise tomorrow I will have plenty of pics up. It looks sick. Picture about a dozen caves with overhangs and high rise shelves. Oh and one primo hitchhiker. It's like neon pink/purple. All will be explained tomorrow.

The tank is still a little cloudy but here are some shots. I haven't quite figured out how to take good pictures of the hex yet. Still need to fiddle around with lighting.

Nice stack! 10g hex ws my second choice, I'm glad someone decided to use one.

Keep the pix coming!

Here are some more pics of the scape. I think I will use these for best aquascape. It is in sequence starting from the front and then moving left.

I do like the scape its a nice stack with nice ledges and what not... whats next for the tank looking foward to the progress good luck...

One thing we are going to have for sure is a dendro under that big shady ledge. Other than that it is up in the air. We are going to start stocking this week so hopefully I will have more pics this weekend.

My buddy has been insisting that we put a baby copperband in there. For the six months of the contest it will stay small and its not like we don't have other tanks to transfer him into when the time comes. I just can't get comfortable with the idea, copperbands need bigger tanks even though it will only be about an inch long. I was suggesting a bangii cardnal, he would look awesome in there.

Any suggestions on coral or fish?

for the aquascape shots if you did'nt like the one you had PM me a new one

The new scape with tonga branch.

Picture Update

FTS Due today

This tank is a little different from some I've seen, but it reminds me of a dive I took last year. I was on Siquijor Island in the Philippines, and I asked the divemaster to show me some mandarin fish. He took me to what looked like a pile of dead staghorn branches. There were lots of small corals attached to the dead branched rock., with the living staghorn growing on top, kind of like a blackberry thicket!
I did see the mandarins, they like to stay up in the middle of the thicket, but would come out hunting.
Unfortunatley I did not get any pictures of them, but I did take a shot of some Xenia (the only time I saw it off that island) growing on the dead branches.


After I got home realized I could convert a tank I already had into some similar rendition. I had set up this tank to house a goby/shrimp pair. They were so messy, shoveling sand constantly, that I was unable to do much but throw branches into the bottom of the tank so they could make tunnels. I began collecting branches from any lfs I could find and ended up with this tank. It's been set up for three years, but only in the last has it had the piles of branches and the green slimer. And I never would have thought a shrimp could live that long!
Home you don't mind the story, but I think what you are doing is similar to that underwater scene, and does it better than this little ten.

That tank looks awesome yardboy! Thats a cool idea the whole rubble reef thing. I bet it makes moving things around a breeze.

The reason why we went with the tonga branch was mostly because of the tall hex. It looked horrible with just stacks of rock piled up. It needed more space for growth and what not.

What we did not factor in was the area behind the rock that I like to call DAVY JONES' LOCKER. Everything that falls back there is trapped and will never come out. Its a huge area too thanks to the tonga branch.

I think there is a baby frogspawn, a blue mushroom, some GSP polyps, and some very unhappy zoas. I don't count them on the stock list well because they are in the locker.

Some of the new additions!



ORA Birdsnest!



Chalice!

Check out this awesome frogspawn that is growing like crazy!