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5g ADA Rimless - 24 Months in


dapellegrini

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This is my pipe bender:

 

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You can get one at Lowes or Home Depot. Unfortunately they will not bend the pipe for you - you have to buy the thing - but you could always take it back when you are done...

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Got the Desk Grommet in the mail to finish it off (impossible to find a 1 1/2" black grommet locally):

 

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And I finally figured out how to measure things out with a 3/4" EMT bend. Basically, once you have decided how long you want the top bar to be, put the pipe in the bender with the top length minus 6" lined up on the arrow and out the front:

 

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Your tanks are gorgeous, I'm really looking foward to seeing what you do with your first salty tank.

 

I have that finnex heater and I love it. So far, it's been very accurate and I like having the controller on the outside of the tank.

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Tip:

 

The azoo 50W titanium heater is cheapest on fish.com

1 or 2 ppl have said that it rusted on them after a month, but it has worked fine for me and keeps the temp within .5 degrees of 78F all of the time. It is very small

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Looks awesome!

 

And I love your freshwater tanks (and typically, I don't like FW at all - they always look dirty to me). They're really full, which makes them look nicer, too!

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dapellegrini

I am looking forward to getting home this weekend to start adding lr and ls. The pendant is Aqua Medic' 70w HQI with AB 13k light.

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dapellegrini

OK - just finished adding LS/LR and building the hardscape. I picked up 10lbs of LS at the LFS, a 5-gallon bucket of Reef Crystals and then drove 1 hour to get some nice LR. I ended up with 90% cured "tank rock" from their display tank(s) and 10% Fiji Premium that they have been curing for "a long time" (whatever that means).

 

After hours of screwing with things, here is where I am at so far:

 

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As I started to put things together I decided that both of my powerheads (tunze and Microjet) were just to weak, so I picked up a Rio 90 and that is working a lot better.

 

I also decided to further reduce clutter I would drill the back of the drawer and put my powerstrip in there:

 

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Still not finished arranging wires, etc, but moving along:

 

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dapellegrini

Stocking ideas welcome. Definitely some brightly colored zoos. I would also like to have some sort of a center-piece coral.

 

What would you put in there? (please include pics or link, since I most likely won't know what you are talking about).

 

CUC ideas also welcome.

 

I would like rare, colorful, and small as the general theme. Light and nutrient demands should not be a problem.

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I really like your rockwork! Very aesthetically pleasing.

 

How clever to put the power strip in a drawer! I'm going to have to remember hints like that...

 

As far as corals go, I like rics--Ricordea. Not exactly rare, but they can be very colorful:

 

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Blastomussa merletti, an lps, also has nice proportions for a smaller tank...

 

--Diane

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NH3/4 and NO2 have been 0 for a couple of days now, so I decided to do a water change. Probably closer to 60% or so. I still plan on fiddling with the placement of the heater and PH. Problem is having them on the side doesn't look that good in photos, but looks better in person, as the black bar up that side kind of blends with it.

 

Anyways, here is how it is right now. I am getting good flow and a consistent 78-79 degree temperature at all moments of the day and night.

 

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Here are a few more shoots with clear water.

 

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I really like the open top tanks like this for the top down view as much as anything, though there is quite a bit of evaporation. Seemed to be about 3/4 of a gallon this week.

 

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And here are a few with a black t-shirt behind the tank.

 

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CUC will probably start going in next weekend...

 

 

 

 

 

.

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stoney waters

Beauteous.

 

The nicest rimless I've seen.

It would have nice if you could have ran the lamp cord own the inside of the pipe, but I imagine the plugs were too large.

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Thanks! The Rio 90 gives a good amount of flow throughout -- and I did try and figure out how to run the wires down the inside of the pipe, but I would have had to cut the end off of each wire and spliced on the other end. Seemed a little too frivolous...

 

I am thinking of perhaps arranging the heater horizontally behind the rocks. I just can't seem to get enough slack in the wire.

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Thanks. I think I am killing my Coraline with the light. The green coraline went white and now a lot of the purple coraline also appears to be bleaching out.... Not much that I think I can do for that right?

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Update - 2 weeks in

 

All parameters seem to have stabilized and the tank is doing well - err rather I am seeing a lot of algae, spreading coraline, some small pieces of macro algae popping, up, etc. I added 8 Nassarius Snails and a couple of small zoos that a friend at work gave me. Some pictures and some questions:

 

I really like these little snails:

 

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Is it a good sign when your rocks are "pearling" all of the time? I am assuming this is the algae growing in:

 

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I should have a better CUC in place by the end of this coming week...

 

Also, what's the deal with this coraline near the top of the tank? It was green when I bought it, bleached out with my light and how there are actually parts that look burned/scorched???

 

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Is this yellow stuff a sponge of some sort?

 

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And any guesses on what this thing is? If you touch it, it closes up solidly against the rock. A barnacle of some sort???

 

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Finally, is it normal for zoo's to have some forking tentacles? I was told that these fell off of some LR that the previous owner was getting rid of and when he found them rolling around his tank, he attached them to these plugs. I will be removing them from the plugs sometime soon, but wanted to make sure they are ok in the tank first:

 

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very nice start, hardware-wise, and aesthetically.

 

the pearling you're wondering about is probably free nitrogen in my opinion.

 

and yeah, you're probably bleaching out your coraline by going full-on lighting straight off. the rock i got for my tank was very colorful and i wanted to avoid this so i slowly added light starting off with a short photoperiod and gradually increasing it. so far this had worked really well and none of the coraline has bleached, i've kept all color variants, and they've spread quite a lot in the month and a half i've had my new tank up.

 

take special care to "drive" your tank, biologically. by this i mean study the effect your various parameters have on the organisms, and adjust acordingly and frequently; like driving a car, one makes constant adjustments. if you see your coraline bleaching - try to adjust things to avoid that if you'd like to keep what you have. since you don't have any demanding corals yet, you'd probably harmlessly avoid bleaching your coraline by screening your light a bit, or shortening your photoperiod. people say that the coraline comes back after bleaching under intense light, but in my opinion it actually selects for certain variants over others.

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That is the best hardscape of a reef tank I have ever seen. I see you have brought your planted tank aquascaping knowledge to this reef...

 

I tried it for a 2 gallon but it didn't work :-P.

 

Can't wait to see it mature and stocked up! (scared the corals will ruin the hardscape lol)

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