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Current USA Solana Build Up thread...lots of photos


Dirt4dinner

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Well,

The new tank is finally cycling. I got the water and sand put in yesterday, screwed around with the skimmer and pumps to make sure everything was good, and added 30lbs. of live rock today! I opted for black sand...which was a tough call. But I think it will look good...so far I am happy with the choice!

 

This is the new Current USA Solana tank, the stand and light are bought seperate but designed for this tank. It is a 20 gallon glass all-in-one tank, with skimmer, media chamber, and auto top off system (more on that later).

 

The light is the part that attracted me...people either love it or hate. I like it because it's different! It looks really nice in our house. The stand is decent quality, it's sturdy...reminds me of a piece of IKEA furniture. I love the built in drawer!

 

The only other thing I added to the tank was the Koraline #1 powerhead, a thermometer, and a DJ light switch box to turn things on and off.

 

The "hair dryer" light is a HQI 150W metal halide. 15K is a little to blue for me, so the next bulb will be a 10K I think. I have two 1 watt moon lights on order from Coralife and I will place them on the back edge of the tank, and shine them towards the front of the tank (I think...we will see when I get them).

 

So for those of you who don't know much about this tank...it is pretty new to the market, so not a lot of reviews or info out there yet. Current USA just updated their website this week with a LOT more information on it. I didn't have that luxury, I had to go with hope when I made the order!

 

The auto top off system is to small bottles that are placed upside down into the back of the tank. The lids of the two bottles have small holes in them and they rest just under the water surface of the return chamber, when the water drops below the cap it allows a bubble into the bottles and water comes out. It's that simple! We will see how long the two small bottles last before they go empty...I am guessing two days. But then you just take them out and fill them back up. Easier than pouring out of a 5 gallon jug into the tank!

 

Here are photos of the tank when it was dry, and then with the rock I just added today. The rock has already been rearranged 3 times today...and I still am not happy with it. So I will figure that out while it cycles.

 

Solana001.jpg

 

Solana003.jpg

 

Solana009.jpg

 

Solana008.jpg

 

Solana005.jpg

 

Solana006.jpg

 

11-10-07DAY1.jpg

 

11-10-07DAY12.jpg

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Yeah the drawer is terrific! I keep some testing stuff in there, refractometer and my Tank Log.

 

There are a few other Solanas set up on this site, and there is one fish store here in Phoenix who has sold about 8 of them. They aren't super easy to come by...but they can be found.

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I am going to go with mostly VERY VERY colorful rics, zoas, and acans. The sand is CaribSea, Super Naturals. It comes in a variety of colors, but the LFS stocks the black all the time.

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Glad to see someone else has this awesome tank too, and I love the rocks you picked

 

I love my tank, I've had it just about two months now and am finally starting to stock it. My BF gave me a bunch of frags from a rock slide that I've been housing for a month or so now and a clown fish (but he committed suicide, jumped out with the glass top on), but bought my first Zoos for the tank yesterday and a Firefish. I also went with the Black sand and it looks awesome. Careful with the light being close to the tank, my tank runs at an awesome 87 degrees with the top off. I've had to lift the light all the way to the arm to make it run at 81. Haven't gotten my chiller yet or ACJR. once that happens I'll be dropping the light back down and letting them do their jobs.

 

I kind of adopted two forums for my build on the site:

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...7&hl=solana

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...9&hl=solana

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snowlancer2720

aww, puppies and kittens :D

 

nice aquascape you have going there, and nice tank, that ATO is a pretty good idea; even if it does top off for only 2 days, still beats twice a day! GL!

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Glad to see someone else has this awesome tank too, and I love the rocks you picked

 

I love my tank, I've had it just about two months now and am finally starting to stock it. My BF gave me a bunch of frags from a rock slide that I've been housing for a month or so now and a clown fish (but he committed suicide, jumped out with the glass top on), but bought my first Zoos for the tank yesterday and a Firefish. I also went with the Black sand and it looks awesome. Careful with the light being close to the tank, my tank runs at an awesome 87 degrees with the top off. I've had to lift the light all the way to the arm to make it run at 81. Haven't gotten my chiller yet or ACJR. once that happens I'll be dropping the light back down and letting them do their jobs.

 

Thanks Cristina. I saw your tank long ago! I stared at the photos of your tank for weeks before I pulled the trigger. There wasn't enough info out there on this tank....so your photos were important!

 

Heat is already a problem with mine as well...I have the light fixture about 1" from the top of the arm. My tank seems to peak out at about 83. I am going to add the fan from Finnex (that comes with their 34g M tank signature series), they sell it as an accessory for about $30, and it will keep the clean sleek look hopefully.

 

I also ordered two 1 watt moon lights from Coralife, and we will see how those turn out. Other than that it's stock...I did add the Koralina #1 power head.

 

I look forward to seeing how yours comes along, and hopefully exchanging some info about what works and what doesn't.

 

One think I really want to do, is build a custom black plastic top for the back section....to cover it all up and to quiet it down. More on that project later!

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Things are coming along nicely, it's been 4 days now, and I am starting to see a little brown algea up high on the rocks. Sometime in the middle of the night the skimmer started to REALLY kick out some NASTY skim. I smelt it when I walked by the tank this morning. All good signs! I also found a plastic fabrication company locally who is going to give me some scrap of black Styrene sheet so I can build a top for the back, and also build an adjustment for the overflow teeth so I can raise the water level in the display all the way to the top for a better look. Those are the two big "TO DO" things before I get a clean up crew in there. Photos to come when I get my styrene sheets.

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Glad to hear your tank is coming along, if you don't have anything in there and really want to speed up the time it takes to get that diatom outbreak over with, drop the light, you'll have a massive bloom, then raise it and get your clean up crew. I'm glad the skimmer started making skimmate, it took mine a few days also. But once it really started going, we were on a roll, there are still day's where it doesn't do much, but then the next day it seems to kick into over drive. I skim mine pretty dry too...so unless I do a good feed of frozen there really isn't much, but it sure does stink. The BF has a Reeflow and when cleaning out his I gag, this one isn't that bad, but it does smell bad and if I let it go for two days like I did the last two, it can be overwhelming in the house. I'm reaquascaping my rocks, I didn't get a chance to take pics last night, but will soon. Let me know how that project on caping the back goes...I might be interested in something like that...would probably reduce evaporation too...i loose about 1/2 gallon a day. Florida and the humidity sucks. i also run with out the glass top, I noticed that the temp is much higher when i run with the top on. a diffence of about 5 degrees.

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I will defintely keep you updated via this thread, and probably through PM as well. I never took the glass top out of the package. I LOVE to look down into the tank...it's something I have never had with my last two large tanks, both of which had full canopies. I don't miss the canopies, I like the look without a top on them.

 

I am going to try and pick up the piece of black Styrene today...but it might be tomorrow. I will have that knocked out in no time. I will just cut it with heavy duty sheers, and then notch out spots for the cords to pass through it. I don't know if it will help evap...but I am sure it will raise the temps.

 

I ordered a Jebo fan for the tank that should be here this week. They can be found on Ebay pretty easily, for about $25-$30. It should look pretty clean too, as they mount on the back of the tank and can be angled anywhere you want.

 

I will get photos of the styrene cover when it's done and post them here.

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I'd also like to see the moonlights when you get them in, I've looked into the same ones but wasn't sure what it would look like...right now if lights are off, I just turn on the overhead lights in the room and can see well, but most the time, my house is kept pretty dark as we have a 265 display, 400g total, a 12g pest tank, and my solana. So there is lots of power being used...do you have a acjr to control the fan so that it doesn't run all the time? i hate when i have my glass top on, only do it for the first few days after getting a new fish, just in case they get freaked out.

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I am trying to avoid the ACJR in an effort to not bring the total cost of the tank up over $1000! I am going to run the fan on the same timer as the light and see what that does. If I am not getting the results I want, I will start looking for an ACJR. I have a tough time sinking the money into one for such a small tank...but it might be more useful on a tank that has heat fluctuations like this one. Moon lights should be around early next week.

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Alright, I have an update finally! I got my new Jebo fan. There are several ways I can set it up it looks like. Right now I have it aimed across the surface of the tank, it has already dropped the temp over 1 degree in about 10 minutes. However, I don't like the way it looks standing up...it looks much better pointed down into the media chamber. I will play around with it and see if I can get good temp control with it pointing down into the back of the tank.

 

Here are photos of how it looks in both positions.

 

Option 1 - air blowing across the surface of the tank.

JeboFan004.jpg

 

JeboFan001.jpg

 

Option 2 - air either blowing down into the back, or sucking air out of the back...I haven't really tried this one yet. but it sure looks better!

JeboFan003.jpg

 

JeboFan002.jpg

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A VERY slick tank... but I just can't get over the MH disco ball- it's actually growing on me though

-_-

 

Diatoms are pretty, huh? :lol: They look awesome- swarming masses of crawling creepy things.!

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smoke some weed and the disco ball will start spinning and lighted up. ahhh reminds me of my hippie years, hmm maybe thats what happened one day in the Current USA designers office :)

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The "disco ball" or "hair dryer" is what sold me. People either love it or hate it, I think it looks TERRIFIC! It's also nice, that you can swing it out of the way when you need to get your arm in the tank.

 

The algae bloom hit full swing over the last two days, and I added two Black Mexican Turbo snails to see if they would survive...they are making nice trails all through the algae but I think I might need to call in reinforcements. These two are eating like champs, but there is a LOT of algae left.

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Time for an update. I got my two Coralife 1 Watt Moon Lights yesterday. They are bigger than I recalled them being in the store, but I think they will work out. I am quickly loosing that "super clean" look I was shooting for...but it's all for the better I suppose.

 

Here are some photos with the two moon lights mounted in the back corners as out of sight as I could get them.

 

On a side note, I broke down last night and ordered the AquaController Jr. w/ DC8 and temp probe. I'm super excited...and have exceeded the $1000 mark on this project now (even with a wholesaler discount on all the equipment except the controller)!

 

Forgive the algae outbreak, the cycle is going well, and the snails can't keep up.

MoonLights001.jpg

 

MoonLights002.jpg

 

MoonLights003.jpg

 

MoonLights004.jpg

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wow, seeing that light with the tank like that makes the light look huge

the solana im setting up is already over 1000, closer to 1500 now but its almost done

nice setup

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