Outofstock Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 The Build: Tank: Marineland Silhouette Tank with plastic tank holder removed (3 gallon AIO rimless) Stand: Ikea Lixhult cabinet, painted and pack metal panel cut to allow cords to be ran Filtration: AIO media removed, Marineland filter pad and chaeto reactor Heater: Cobalt Neotherm 50w Lighting: Nanobox Tide Plus M Controller: Reef Keeper Lite Rock: 3ish pounds of BRS rock seeded with 1lb of LR from LFS Sand: Caribsea Special Grade Reef Sand Livestock: Corals 5-6: mixed zoa frags, 3 acan frags, 4 florida riccs, 1 ricc yuma Macro Algae: Dragons Breath Fish: Red head goby, gold line goby Inverts: 2 blue leg hermits, 3 ceriths, 1 astrea, 2 nassarius, 1 tiny cleaner shrimp Maintenance: Weekly 1 Gallon water changes ATO: Smart Micro ATO with IM Tittanium 5 gallon reservoir January 2017 December 2016 Background/NON FTS Info: Stand, and rockwork done. All other parts are ordered, so waiting on stuff to move from here. Dont mind the mess of the tank stand, just snagged quick pics earlier. After roughly a year and a half hiatus from reefkeeping i'm back. The past: Started off with a 40 breeder reef tank that I slowly Frankenstein'd together over the course of two years. Which eventually was converted to a planted tank due to never recovering from a feather duster spawning and the params never recovering. Eventually the reef bug snuck up on me and I started an 8 gallon cube. 8 gallon cube didnt last long, and was upgraded to a 70 gallon cube. This cube moved between two homes and was great, until a power outage over memorial day weekend with nobody home to notice. This too became a planted tank, and eventually pulled down and sold due to a move to Florida. 6 months later moved back to PA (yay living with parents) and two planted betta bowls later the reef bug has became too much to resist. Tank is leftover from one a I bought my gf for her betta, she upgraded to a 5.5 so I took this one back. Figured a smaller tank would be easier to move since im hoping to buy a house within the next year. edit: attached pics of the stand and old tanks. Link to comment
Alfredo da reef guy 85 Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 Awesome.. Link to comment
ajmckay Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Some pretty slick tanks you have there. I like the reefs and also the planted tanks. The piece(s) of driftwood you put into the cube was particularly awesome. Do you have a pic of that build at it's prime? Also like the 40b. I may be using your scape as inspiration should I get bored of my current setup. What are your plans for this thing? I have a similar tank - a fluval spec 3. Currently stocked with 2 sexy shrimp (may add a third), a hermit, and a pom pom crab. For some reason my snails haven't done very well - I had a trochus and hitchhiker mini nassarius and stomatella but they all died for some reason. I'm suspecting the hermit - so it may get moved to the 40b. Corals are simple softies ATM. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 9, 2016 Author Share Posted December 9, 2016 I really need to host the pictures and embed them into the post. Eh lazy. The 40 Breeder was my first reef and I LOVED the thing. Being single at the time and having a tank bed level was a great pick up line/tool too. "Wanna see my fish tank?" I can throw some more pics of the 40 breeder scape up later. As for the planted 70, it never hit its prime. It was taken down after a few months when I accepted a job 1000 miles away. Plan for the tank is hopefully some nicer small frags, sort of want to push for a mixed reef but am envisioning a mainly zoas, riccs, acans and hopefully a single Euph of some kind. Maybe a monti or two if things work out nicely. Gonna try for a single small fish and maybe a few small shrimp. Thinking if I can get my hands on a nice piece of dragons breath for the back corner of the tank too. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 12, 2016 Author Share Posted December 12, 2016 Realized I never posted any images of the scape. Here it is before the light and dirty glass. Updated the scape this morning. Raised it up maybe an inch or so and I think it looks MUCH better and more dramatic. Too bad the sand will take it back down a bit. Whats everyone think? Oh and my light came in yesterday Link to comment
ABC Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I like the scape looks good Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Thanks...ended up rescaping it after trying to attach the base rocks I added and file down a bit of the point so it fit in the tank. Think I like this better. Just need my sand to come in and I can get this thing wet. Link to comment
ajmckay Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Thanks...ended up rescaping it after trying to attach the base rocks I added and file down a bit of the point so it fit in the tank. Think I like this better. Just need my sand to come in and I can get this thing wet. Nice scape! Are the rocks friction fit or did you epoxy/glue them together? As soon as the multi branch tonga comes back in stock at BRS I'm going to order a few LBS and try a "pile of sticks" type scape. I've always been interested in that look but haven't had good rock to do it with, or a tank small enough to experiment in for reasonable $$. You're definitely going all out on this tank - more than most 3g tanks I would say! Not a bad thing though since you have items you can repurpose from prior builds. Unfortunately most of my stuff isn't really repurposeable so I'm buying a few things. Just yesterday I ordered a Hydor centrifugal 200 pump, about 100gph. Should be quite a bit better than the current 35gph pump that comes with the Spec 3... What's the stock flow like in that tank? IME you might be wanting to upgrade the pump at some point - I'll let you know how I like the Hydor. The other contenders were the Eheim compact 300, the Sicce Micra, Sicce Syncra Nano, and an Aquatop. I ended up choosing the Hydor based on price since it's so much cheaper than the other pumps and gets pretty good reviews. I also ordered a nano-mag from TwoLittleFishies - though I almost got the Tunze Care pico. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 Nice scape! Are the rocks friction fit or did you epoxy/glue them together? As soon as the multi branch tonga comes back in stock at BRS I'm going to order a few LBS and try a "pile of sticks" type scape. I've always been interested in that look but haven't had good rock to do it with, or a tank small enough to experiment in for reasonable $$. You're definitely going all out on this tank - more than most 3g tanks I would say! Not a bad thing though since you have items you can repurpose from prior builds. Unfortunately most of my stuff isn't really repurposeable so I'm buying a few things. Just yesterday I ordered a Hydor centrifugal 200 pump, about 100gph. Should be quite a bit better than the current 35gph pump that comes with the Spec 3... What's the stock flow like in that tank? IME you might be wanting to upgrade the pump at some point - I'll let you know how I like the Hydor. The other contenders were the Eheim compact 300, the Sicce Micra, Sicce Syncra Nano, and an Aquatop. I ended up choosing the Hydor based on price since it's so much cheaper than the other pumps and gets pretty good reviews. I also ordered a nano-mag from TwoLittleFishies - though I almost got the Tunze Care pico. I figured I can just repurpose the stuff since I bought most of it for that reason. Its all brand new, besides the tank. Even though I may end up buying back my old 70 cube since the buyer never set it up. Itll go into storage wtih my new 75 gallon tank (long story of failed rental that I didnt end up moving into)Stock pump is 80 gph and creates surprisingly nice flow. I have an MJ400 and an Mj900 as well, one will be used to run the chaeto reactor and will be plumed into the output and ill be able to pull the stock pump. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 19, 2016 Author Share Posted December 19, 2016 Added sand and water over the weekend. Picked up some LR rubble from my favorite LFS in the area (Aquarium Specialties in Malvern PA), and happened to get an almost perfect piece for attaching to the back wall. A light grind on the back and it was flush and ready to mount. It was too perfect to not mount it. Whats everyone think? Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 21, 2016 Author Share Posted December 21, 2016 FW Update. Moved one of the planted bowls to an ikea cabinet, same style as the one i have the reef on but horizontal. Dont mind the towel, always a little spillage when moving things. Love how it looks and more storage for fish crap! Link to comment
aquarium Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 I love the scape, you can never go wrong with an arch. Do the Ikea cabinets come in larger sizes? I may move my tank to one. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 21, 2016 Author Share Posted December 21, 2016 I love the scape, you can never go wrong with an arch. Do the Ikea cabinets come in larger sizes? I may move my tank to one. Depends how big your tank is. The one the bowl is on is just shy of 24" across, bowl is almost 8 gallons. They do have an even larger almost TV stand like one that would work for a larger tank. The smaller one I braced the top of the stand with a piece of wood, the larger I did not ( I sat on it and it was fine). They are metal which drew me to them. Here is the larger one. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80100190/#/10251451 And these are the two I have: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70328669/ http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50328670/ Link to comment
aquarium Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 Thanks! I may wind up getting one. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted December 29, 2016 Author Share Posted December 29, 2016 Threw an Mj400 on to see how it would work over the stock 80gph pump. Way too much flow for the tank without restricting it. Gonna stick with the stock one, seems like the perfect amount of flow for a reef. Unfortunatley my plans to replace the stock pump with something larger and have it run through the chaetor reactor and out to provide single flow for the tank failed. Even an Mj1200 isnt strong enough for double duty. Really dont want to spend a bunch more on an inline pump that id have to leave in the stand (running out of room). Instead im gonna run the stock 80 gph and the Mj1200 for the reactor. Those back chambers are FULL after that but lucikly I dont see anything else id have to jam back their anyhow. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted January 6, 2017 Author Share Posted January 6, 2017 So....who else has an ATO larger than their display? Link to comment
Outofstock Posted January 17, 2017 Author Share Posted January 17, 2017 Tank cycled pretty quickly. I ended up seeding the base rock with LR from the LFS. Grabbed some live sand and tank water from a friend to help seed everything as well. I think the biggest thing that helped with the cycle was throwing in a sponge I had sitting for two weeks in a friends sump. Anyway cycled in about 11ish days, added within the past two weeks a CUC, a few small zoa frags, 3 acan frags, a bit of dragons breath macro alage and a red headed goby. Link to comment
Outofstock Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 Blah blah blah...goby went surfing when I was doing maintenance and I didnt notice. Goby jerky found the next day. Tiny RFA, maybe an inch and a half across max. How long until I upgrade to the empty Mr Aqua 13 gallon bow I have sitting? Link to comment
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