My 40B after 16 months

[calrissian]

I thought I'd throw some pictures of my tank up for anyone interested. Not the best shots ever. All I own is a cell phone camera.

It's a standard 40 breeder display tank with a standard 29 gallon sump. I custom build the stand (which I'll include pictures of later) 42" tall because I hate having to always sit or bend over to look into a tank. The extra height above the sump is pretty nice too.

It's been running for about 16 months I think. Everything seems to be happy. All of my params seem to be very stable. I added a Jebao dosing pump about 5 months ago, so that has definitely helped. I do daily 1 gallon water changes with a large 50% water change every 2 months. I started this WC method about 3 months ago and it has been working really well. It takes about 60 seconds to change water daily after feeding the fish.

What else do you guys want to know...uhh...I have a SCA-301 protein skimmer I've been running for since July. Very nice skimmer for the money. At least I think it is. Never had a skimmer before so nothing to compare it to. There's a Jebao DC6000 return pump and 2 Jebao RW4 powerheads for circulation. Uhhmm...BeanAnimal overflow...about 60lbs of rock - half dry rock the other half live rock from KP Aquatics.

OK...enough of that. Here's a few pics. If you have any questions, just ask. I'll put some more pics up tomorrow after I take more.

 

 

 

 

Wow! That last one really looks like crap. Haha. More, and hopefully better pics tomorrow.

[WV Reefer]

I was wondering if there were any fellow Mountaineers on here!

The tank looks great.

[Droy008]

Looks good!

Really interested in seeing the stand and sump setup as well!

[ajmckay]

Hey wow we have similar tanks. I also have a 40br with a 30br sump. I also have a tall stand (48") but it's 3 tier so the sump is actually a 2nd display area.

 

Anyways I like the tank a lot. Lately it seems I've been a fan of the more minimalist scape but honestly you pull off this scape well - I'm impressed you got the rock work to get so high on the one side and still leave room in the front for some sand bed to show. Care to take a side shot? I also like the "flow" the rocks have going top left to bottom right. Nice job having a "drop off" on one side and a gentler slope on the right. Makes for an interesting scape and somehow you tied it all in such that it doesn't look like a pile of rocks.

 

Great selection of corals too - I like that brain on the lower right! It just has a nice texture. Also liking the RFA garden.

 

Interesting idea on the 1g water changes... Care to elaborate on how you do it? When I do a WC normally I use a siphon and blow off rocks and try to make the water I take out as dirty as possible. Not sure I could do that with 1g changes, but then again I'm not saying it's completely necessary either.

 

Is that an external coast 2 coast? How are you liking the 2x RW-4 for flow? I have an RW-8 but it's on the lowest setting otherwise it irritates my frogspawn (the king coral in my tank). I'm considering an RW-4 for the other side of the tank and possibly taking the RW-8 to a 12v power supply to help tune the output more.

 

Thx for sharing.

[calrissian]

Thanks everyone! This is my first adventure in saltwater after years of planted freshwater tanks. Not to sound cocky, bit it's turned oit to be surprisingly easier than I thought. I avoided SW for years because I thought it was going to be very difficult. Turns out FW planted tanks are way more time consuming. I'll get some more pics when I get home and post them for y'all tomorrow.

 

And WV Reefer...LET'S GO...MOUNTAINEERS. 6-0 baby!

[akashi]

hey how did you drill your 40 breeder, i have a 40 breeder i wanna use and plumb it but im a total newbie to that, i currently have a biocube 29 and want to use my 40 breeder as a tank and turn my 29 biocube into a qtank

[calrissian]

akashi

Get yourself a cordless drill with adjustable torque settings, the right size diamond bits, a spray bottle, some play-doh (or some similar substance), and a piece of scrap glass. Lay the glass on a clean flat surface, make a ring of play-doh to hold a small pool of water, put that drill on a setting that gives you about 200-400 rpms,start at about 45 degrees and let 'er rip. Haha. Actually start at 45 degrees and after the bit makes a nice indentation, slowly move it to a vertical postion. Unless you want to spend the extra money for a drill jig which holds the bit at a perpendicular angle to the glass. Nice, but not necessary. I've drilled a lot of glass, so I spent the 25 bones for a jig. It's scary at first, but surprisingly easy. Do NOT apply pressure to the drill. Let the weight of the drill push thru the glass. It'll take you about 10-15 minutes to go thru 1/4" of glass, so make sure that drill's charged and your trigger finger's on point. Haha. Hopefully that all made sense. I'm 4 beers down and typing on a cell phone, so....

Forgot the spray bottle. Fill it with water and spray the bit/pool every few seconds. It lubricates and cools the bit. You're grinding the glass not actually cutting...so to speak.

[calrissian]

Hey wow we have similar tanks. I also have a 40br with a 30br sump. I also have a tall stand (48") but it's 3 tier so the sump is actually a 2nd display area.

 

Anyways I like the tank a lot. Lately it seems I've been a fan of the more minimalist scape but honestly you pull off this scape well - I'm impressed you got the rock work to get so high on the one side and still leave room in the front for some sand bed to show. Care to take a side shot? I also like the "flow" the rocks have going top left to bottom right. Nice job having a "drop off" on one side and a gentler slope on the right. Makes for an interesting scape and somehow you tied it all in such that it doesn't look like a pile of rocks.

 

Great selection of corals too - I like that brain on the lower right! It just has a nice texture. Also liking the RFA garden.

 

Interesting idea on the 1g water changes... Care to elaborate on how you do it? When I do a WC normally I use a siphon and blow off rocks and try to make the water I take out as dirty as possible. Not sure I could do that with 1g changes, but then again I'm not saying it's completely necessary either.

 

Is that an external coast 2 coast? How are you liking the 2x RW-4 for flow? I have an RW-8 but it's on the lowest setting otherwise it irritates my frogspawn (the king coral in my tank). I'm considering an RW-4 for the other side of the tank and possibly taking the RW-8 to a 12v power supply to help tune the output more.

 

Thx for sharing.

 

 

ajmckay,

Thanks for the compliments! Much appreciated. I, personally, have never been a fan of the minimalist style that seems to be popular these days. Granted, it has many advantages - easy to clean around the scape & cheaper to buy the live rock for example. I always liked the old school rock wall style. I tried to alter the rock wall style slightly to allow better flow behind the rock and to create something more 3 dimensional. I stole the 2 peaks idea from the FW planted guys and created the small channel where I plan to grow a huge acan patch. I have a few back there now.

The 1 gallon water change is pretty simple really. I just take a quart mason jar and scoop it out of the fuge and pour a gallon back in the skimmer section. By pouring it in the skimmer section, it stirs up the detritus and lets the skimmer remove the particulates. Seems to work. Every 2 months (or when my nitrates start to creep up past 10-15) i do a 50% +/- water change and siphon the sand too. Weekly, I turkey baste the rocks or take an old powerhead to them and let that gunk collect in a fresh filter sock. I change that filter sock out after a few hours to keep the gunk from breaking down in the sock. I actually like this WC method a lot because it's easy and quick. I keep a 5 gallon bucket beside the tank that has fresh SW in it and dip out of that. I was doing 5 gallon water changes every Sunday evening. Now I'm doing 7 gallons a week. Nitrates stay around 5-10 fairly consistently, but after a couple months they start to creep a little higher and that's when I do a big water change.

I run one of the RW4s on 4 (4 leds lit up) that creates circulation around the front of the tank. It's on the right side. The second RW4 runs on 5 or 6. It's set to blow across the back of the rocks to keep detritus from settling back there. It's mounted on the left, just below the overflow. The overflow is an internal almost-coast-tocoast. It stops about 3 or 4 inches shy of the left side to allow for the return line. The whole BeanAnimal and overflow work almost perfectly. I made the lines a little bit too big (1-1/4") and sometimes it takes a while for the air to purge and start the full siphon like it's supposed to. I just attribute that to the piping being too large. In hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with 3/4" or 1".

I have some more pictures to follow of everything. Thanks for stopping by everyone.

[calrissian]

Stand with front attached.

 

The entire front panel attaches with magnets and a lil friction. Pulls completely off for easy access.

 

The sump with cat for size comparison. Haha. Not really, he's just a nosey little shit.

 

Another shot of the sump.

 

Skimmer section.

[calrissian]

Fuge. I have a mantis shrimp in there but he/she wouldn't pose for the shot.

 

Jabeo doser and dosing containers. The led strips were a nice addition so I can see what I'm doing in there. Plus it creates enough ambient light in the fuge for the mantis shrimp.

 

Cord management at its finest! Don't hate.

[calrissian]

 

Right side

 

Left side.

 

[calrissian]

Almost forgot this one. He might be my favorite thing in the tank. Anemone crab and sexy shrimp share the RFA garden together.

[ajmckay]

The valley is certainly more noticeable in the last pic of post #11. Overall I really like how the scape is large, but still feels like it has enough depth. Again really like it.

 

Also like those duncans - I didn't see them previously. I've wanted to get some duncans for a while now but I'm waiting for some good ones to show up which will likely be at a frag swap in Feb.

[calrissian]

Thanks ajmckay. Again, I picked up a lot of aquascaping tips from the FW planted world. That world is always trying to make small scapes and tanks appear much larger than what they are. Study some of the winners of FW aquascaping contests, the things they do are insane. They'll make a 10 gallon tank look 10x larger than what it really is.

[HarryPotter]

Pretty!

[vlangel]

Nice tank calrissian. I have a SCA 302 skimmer and it skims great. It big weakness is a cheaply made pump. I have seahorses so I do 3 WCs a week and turned it off. It quit on me in 6 months so now I let the skimmer run when I do WCs. That seems to be working well.

 

Is that an Aquatic life t5 fixture? I also had one of them and loved it, especially the built in timer. Eventually it quit and my lfs was carrying Coralife then. The Coralife fixture has bulbs the length of the fixture which is nice but no built in time and 3 cords to deal with. My Aquatic life fixture was a 30" but only used 24" bulbs.

[calrissian]

Nice tank calrissian. I have a SCA 302 skimmer and it skims great. It big weakness is a cheaply made pump. I have seahorses so I do 3 WCs a week and turned it off. It quit on me in 6 months so now I let the skimmer run when I do WCs. That seems to be working well.

 

Is that an Aquatic life t5 fixture? I also had one of them and loved it, especially the built in timer. Eventually it quit and my lfs was carrying Coralife then. The Coralife fixture has bulbs the length of the fixture which is nice but no built in time and 3 cords to deal with. My Aquatic life fixture was a 30" but only used 24" bulbs.

Busted! It is an AquaticLife fixture. It's the 36" 4 bulb programmable fixture. I replaced all the bulbs with ATIs and, personally, I think it does a fine job for the price. I really wanted an ATI or Giesemann, but had trouble justifying the cost on my first tank. If (when) I do another tank, I think I might try a T5/halide combo. This tank is all softies and LPS and isn't very tall, so the AquaticLife fixture works great. Plus, the programmability and 1 cord is really nice.

[akashi]

How did you derim your 40 gallon? I think we have the same tank I have black trim on the top and bottom and the center brace is on top

[calrissian]

How did you derim your 40 gallon? I think we have the same tank I have black trim on the top and bottom and the center brace is on top

I didn't actually. I used a piece of moulding around the top of the stand to hide the black plastic on the tank. You can still see the top trim piece in the full tank/stand picture. I really don't like it. I may build a canopy some day to hide it...or I may just let it go. Haha. I don't really like the look of the light fixture sitting on the rim of the tank either. Thanks...now I'm really thinking about building a canopy to hide everything. Haha

[akashi]

I didn't actually. I used a piece of moulding around the top of the stand to hide the black plastic on the tank. You can still see the top trim piece in the full tank/stand picture. I really don't like it. I may build a canopy some day to hide it...or I may just let it go. Haha. I don't really like the look of the light fixture sitting on the rim of the tank either. Thanks...now I'm really thinking about building a canopy to hide everything. Haha

I was thinking the same for the 40 gallon im starting a canopy would look decent on it, and for the drilling does it matter where the hole goes or is there like a default position to drill the hole

[calrissian]

akashi,

The only real considerations as far as hole placement goes are to make sure the hole is at the very least 1x the diameter away from the edge of the glass. For example - if you are drilling a 1" diameter hole, make sure the edge of the hole is at least 1" away from any edge. 1.5x the diameter away from an edge is really preferred, but 1x is usually considered safe. Remember that is from the outer edge of the hole - not the center. That goes for distance between holes as well

The only other thing is making sure the routing of your plumbing all works with your hole placement. If you're going to do a BeanAnimal style drain system, read, read, read! There are some really informative websites and forum threads out there that helped me. I researched that design for many months before ever jumping into anything.

One other thing that just occurred to me is making sure your holes are placed so they will work with your overflow. You don't want to end up with an overflow that is too deep or shallow because your drain holes are in a bad spot. Same goes for your return line. If you place it too low, too much water could drain from the display to the sump during a power loss.

If you want, I can get some measurements from my tank for you. Everything works great, but like i said earlier, I probably should have went with 1" drains instead of 1-1/4". Other than that, all of my hole locations should work for you if you're planning a similar setup.