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16 High - Arc Du Triomphe


cocojakes

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I've had a post in beginners forum, but have decided my tank and skills have progressed enough now to make a real post in the members aquariums.

 

I started this hoby with honest intentions, getting a 30 gallon long to start, it seemed like a good size, big enough to reduce the cost of my inevitable errors, but small enough to not break the bank. I was wrong on the second part.

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I then bought a 5 gallon tank to store some frags while I impatiently waited for the 30 to be stable, it turned into a second nano with a clown, and i know the police will be knocking down my door for this, but a rose BTA (has since been sold to a lovely couple with a 90).

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I finally got rid of the 30, and the 5, and replaced them with a more manageable 16 tall. I wish I had taken more pictures as I put it together. I was fed up with the forever wrinkled plastic backings on my other tanks, so I decided to spray paint the back of this one, so far I love the look. I had a seio prop 320gph and a maxi-jet 400 set to about 110gph giving me water flow, and a 50W marineland heater. I have about 2-3 inches of ocean direct live sand, and about 20lbs of live rock from my 30.

 

I started with a custom LED fixture, its a bit whiter than I was planning, but because of its awesome programability that wasn't an issue.

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I eventually got bold and took out the soldering iron, ordered 10 new LEDs and changed up the spectrum, just in time to sell it to make way for a beautiful reef breeder photon 16.

 

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I'm hoping with about half the live rock and sheer space to fill, I can get it looking beautiful and full the way I want, without hurting my wallet too bad. I've gone through a few scapes, starting with this:

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which turned into this:

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and finally graduated to the nice minimalistic arch look you see today:

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in the tank right now are

 

CUC

1 turbo snail

3 nassarius snails,

4 blue legged hermit crabs

1 peppermint shrimp

1 skunk cleaner shrimp

 

Fish

small TB occelaris clown

fire goby - recently disappeared without a trace :(

 

Coral

4 small misc zoa colonies that i have been splitting

purple tipped green branching frogspawn

duncan

firecracker

torch

 

 

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Right now I have two Hydor nanos providing circulation along with an API HOB filter that is "supposed" to do surface skimming, with some chemi-pure and filter floss which I change every other day. Every morning when I feed the fish, I do a manual top off, and use the mag-float to clean the front and side glass. I do a 2 gallon (15%) water change every weekend, and dose two part + trace minerals on wednesdays. Other than that, the tank takes care of itself.

 

The next step for me is a custom sump. I just ordered the 10 Tall tank (only size that will fit in my cabinet) and will order my glass for baffles and such shortly. Here is the sump plan:

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the first section is for a skimmer and heater, front middle will possibly become a bit of a fugue while the back middle section will be a 2 gallon RO water reservoir so that I can implement a custom ATO (I'm gonna set up a cheap altera board with a float switch and relay to turn the pump on and off, that way I can code in some simple state logic to make sure it won't ever overfill). I want to drill the tank, but don't think I have the stones to try drilling it with livestock in it, so that will be a big undertaking tearing down to drill the tank after christmas. I think everything will stay pretty much the same until after christmas, at which point hopefully I'll have more to show :D

 

 

Thank you so much to everyone here at Nano-Reef for all the amazing posts I lurked before even starting, and all the great advice I got as I went. My tank is nowhere near mature, but I feel like I've learnt so much (although I'm not above making the odd post in beginners forum when the next unknown problem pops up XD) This has been a great start to what will hopefully be a life long adventure :D

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

So yesterday I went to the LFS to get some filterfloss and phos-zorb since my nitrates are at 0 yet I have little tufts of gha popping up. While I was there they had some fire fish, which I knew I wanted, so I decided to get one, and they also had little tiny yellow clown gobys on sale, so I picked up one of them too :) so far everyone is doing fine, the fire fish has settled right in, and the clown goby is just doing its thing, sitting on rocks, and sleeping on the tank wall :P


Sadly the clown has still been hiding under the arch, he's getting more ballsy, and at first the fire fish was chasing the clown a little whenever he got bold, now the clown gets bold and scares the fire fish, which flinches and scares the clown back into hiding :P I think they'll slowly establish themselves and hopefully the clown will come out swimming more like he used to. I think he was lonely lol only time will tell :) gonna keep a close eye on them, but my main concern that the tiny clown goby would get bullied was a non issue as no one seems to even notice him :P

 

here's some pics :D

 

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the last fire fish was the clown's swimming buddy (before it disappeared off the face of the earth-still no clue what happened), they acted like a mated pair haha I'm sure things will settle down in a few days and everyone will be happy :D and incase anyone's wondering, I like to name my animals (I have two crested geckos, rico and lucy) and the fish are as follows:

 

Cleaner Shrimp - Jaque

Clownfish - Marlin

FireFish - Lola

Yellow Clown Goby - Liz Lemon (I'm so clever haha, get it, cus its yellow, like a lemon :haha: )

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  • 1 month later...

okay, so I finally got in my 10 gallon tall (16x8x20) really tall and skinny tank for my sump, I ordered my glass for baffles, and for anyone else out there as stupid as me, don't go based off the manufacturers specs for interior dimensions. measure your own tank, I ordered my glass about a quarter inch too small, so I have a LOT of silicone keeping those two baffles in place. Here are some quick pics of the sump, and of the custom corner overflow I built. Can you tell which I spent more time making look pretty? :P

 

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custom blue acrylic overflow box, 5 inches wide, 5 inches tall, 2 inches deep. Ordered it blue to match my painted background.

 

 

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the sump is, something else. messiest piece of work I think I've ever done. HUGE amounts of silicone. the bottom right corner is a 2.5 gallon RO reservoir or top off, the left side is where the overflow feeds into, and where the heater and skimmer will be. then goes over the first baffle, under the second baffle, and along behind the RO reservoir to where the return pump will be. I might put in some kind of screening and make that into a small fugue, not sure yet.

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I also ordered the glass drill bit and other miscilanious parts to finish the build. One thing I want to ask people, if anyone has any experience. Could I just buy like, a 3/4 inch garden hose, and use that to soft plumb? Then its more flexible (will put less strain on the thin 4mm glass) but is strong enough not to kink. What do people think? bad idea? theres gotta be a reason other people don't do it. i just haven't figured it out yet

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

updated FTS

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I think I'm gonna try and pick up an emerald crab when I go to the LFS tomorrow to start battling back against that green macro algae growing on the right hand side there. There are a few tufts of GHA too (wasn't having any problems until I left the tank unattended for 2 weeks over christmas break, slowly winning against the algae, but its a battle)

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As far as soft plumbing I would purchase some clear hose from your local hardware store or Homedepot.It is sometimes cheaper to purchase the clear hose by the foot than a garden hose that is strong enough to not kink. That is what I use in my aquariums if I don't put in PVC first. Hope this helped.

 

Nice tank by the way. I like the way the LR on the right makes it look like steps.

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Thanks, my main concern is with algae growth in a clear tube, and i find that the clear tube they sell by the foot often comes pre kinked, and is difficult to bend the way you want without putting unneeded stress on the thin glass I have on my small tank, where garden hose is a lot more flexible while staying unkinked.

As stated last night, I picked up an emerald crab while at the LFS today, also grabbed a candy cane coral frag, and a nice small tank bread occelaris clown. I have the clown in quarantine, then in two weeks will be swapping them (put the current clown in quarantine while the new clown gets adjusted to the new home without the current clown bullying him) for a week, then move the old clown back in and hope they get along. For now the crab is now in the tank, chilling in a nook in the live rock. hopefully she starts eating those tufts of hair algae that won't go away.

 

I also grabbed a thing of phos-zorb to try and lower phosphates until I get the sump with skimmer up and running, which should hopefully be in a week or two.

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so the scary part is over, everything has been switched over to the new tank, and everyone survived. I'll be posting pics soon of the whole ordeal. but I'm glad to finally have the sump running with no leaks (for about two days I've been fighting a leak in the high pressure return hose right where the hose connects to the elbow at the bulkhead) so I've been running the HOB filter with the water just below the return (so like 3 inches below normal water level, so it sounded like niagara falls in my room with the HOB dropping water into the tank)

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So, I was too busy being scared while drilling the tank to remember to take pictures, but needless to say, I was sitting there with my "stealth goggles" from first year chem labs shaking to the core as my girlfriend sprayed water on the drill while I slowly bored my wall through the glass, THREE TIMES! I felt like a champ at the end, it really wasn't as bad as I thought. Here is a pic after drilling, painting, and installing bulkheads with connectors for the tubing:

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I next attached my hack stand pipe so that the water level in the overflow box isn't too far below the top of the box, to minimize splashing:

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And here we go, attaching the custom overflow box you saw me build over a month ago :P looks pretty slick on that blue background:

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The black washing machine drain hose that I bought came nice and tightly coiled, so I gave it a hot bath to soften it up so that it would bend how I want before cooling into the perfect shape to put as little stress on the bulkheads as possible:

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Here is how the drains work, its a herbie overflow, so the main drain has a ball valve so that I can throttle it back to a full syphon, while the second drain which has the small standpipe on it is an emergency drain with no restrictions:

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Here you can see the return line too. I HAD bought a ball valve for it as well, which I decided not to use since the pump has a throttle on it, what I didn't consider is how hard it is to get to that throttle valve once the pump is at the bottom of my unnaturally tall and skinny sump :P

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Here we go, got the sand in, and ready to start filling:

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Half full, waiting for the silt to settle a bit so I can put the rocks back in before filling it the rest of the way:

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Everything is finally settled and done, but the lights are off so I'll take some full tank shots tomorrow (I did the transfer on sunday, and finally got everything working properly today, 3 days later :P Let me tell you, it looks slick, all I have left to do is build a screen top, and I'm good to let it sit and grow out for a while before I throw any more money at it :P This has been quite the fun experience let me tell you!

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  • 1 month later...

new pictures to come soon! just switched to the kessil 15,000k and getting used to the blue, going to add a white stunner strip though I think, for mid day, and maybe a light blue for before and after the kessil is on. Got a few SPS in there now, the CAD light skimmer is doing AMAZING pulling out gunk. everything is really starting to come together. Quick teaser pic in my new sig

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