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Cultivated Reef

30x18x15 Custom Reef Build


zhubbell

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Wow very nice. Dont worry. I have tagged along for the ride. Keep your post coming.

 

Good to hear - ya Im pretty impressed with my filtration, especially considering that theres absolutely nothing filtering the water machine-wise, the only thing tahts filtering water that I didn't design is carbon.

other than that the only machines I have running on the tanks are:

heater

return

powerheads

 

Ive always loved the idea of a tank that is as close to natural as possible - i.e, not having canister filters, and protein skimmers, etc., just all biological filtration, mimicing nature

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fattynatty
Current Picture (06/02/08)

1212430232.jpg

 

I'm in the car on a 13 hour drive, so I can't post pictures right now, but I just finished drawing the plans for my new prop tank.

The display tank will be 24"x18"x14", about 26G. I hae a small business building custom acrylic aquariums, so of course, I'll custom build this from 3/8" acrylic, and I'm probably going to do the base and back wall out of black acrylic. The overflow will be out of 1/8" black, mayyyybe 1/4", but I don't know yet for sure.

I'm also building a custom stand for it, which will house one the shoebox sump/fuge models with built in ATO resvoir, as well as a dozing chamber for a calcium drop system (don't be surprised if you haven't heard of this line, its another small company out of California, the tanks are designed by an engineer, and built by me. This will serve as one of the prototype models.)

Another feature that I'm incorporating in this tank that I've been wanting to do, is a seperate hole drilled in the display, with a ball valve attached to it, which will serve as an extremely simple, no hassle way of draining water for water changes.

This will replace my current prop tank, which consists of two parts - the display, which is 23.5x16x10, and the fuge that sits along side of it, which is 23.5x8x8, this I'll post some pics of, and will be going up for sale in the near future.

 

Here are the plans for equiptment:

lighting: either 1 250w MH

or 1 196w current pc, and my 150W viper HQI

skimmer will be a tunze skimmer in the sump/fuge (which I still need, if anyone has one that they'd wanna trade...)

Carbon will be incorporated into the baffle system of the fuge

pump, I'm still looking for, possibly a mag5 or 7.

a couple asst. Powerheads

I have to look into the best ATO, and dozing system

anyadvice on any aspect of this set up would be welcome..

 

More info to come.

 

Equipment list:

250W Pendent with 14k bulb

mag3 Return (soon to be mag5)

Stealth 200W heater

Koralina nano

Koralina 1

Soon to come:

Tunze 9002

another Koralina nano

JBJ ATO

 

Livestock:

asst. CUC, including new, and old (from a diff setup), made up of astreas, nassarius, turbo margarita, cerith snails, and red/blue legged and zebra hermits - enough for at least a 75G

4 Emerald Green Crabs

Lg. Tiger Serpent Star

Pencil Urchin

Royal urchin (blue/gold)

4 Peppermint Shrimp

Sea Hare

Sebae Anemeone

Condylactus Anemone

Long Tentacle anemone (about the size of a quarter)

T. Deresa

Tons of coral - Zoas, polyps, shrooms, Xenia, Acro, Traychs, favia, gorgonian, etc.

Purple fishfish

2 Bangaii Cardinals

2 True Percs

2 Chromiis Damsels

2 Domino Damsels

Leopard Wrasse

 

Your tank is beautiful!! :D

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Your tank is beautiful!! :D

 

Thank you, however, after returning from a week of scuba and snorkeling in Aruba, it feels somewhat......insignificant....of course I guess thats probably bound to happen

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alright, added a new zoa colony, and rearranged a ton of stuff.

Everything looks amazing, my millepora looks amazing, and I have fragged 4 of my zoa colonies, my gsp 3 times, and my purple gorgonian....and Id say it all looks pretty sweet, frags and mother colonies as well

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Alright, well you may have noticed in the lighting forum, my 250W mh (only thing lighting this guy) was on the fritz, so I sent in the ballast to Icecap, they have mailed a replacement to me - it went out today!

so thats good...I'll be back up and running soon.

Right now I have a Current 24" 130W (i think) PC light on it right now...

 

Heres what I was also thinking about doing....

as a cost affective way of gettin some pumped up actinic lighting, I thought perhaps I would invest in two of these fixtures, and put them facing from front to back on either end of hte tank.

http://www.fishneedit.com/t5ho-24quot-2-lamp-aquarium-l.html

 

Anyone got anythoughtss??

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Alright, well you may have noticed in the lighting forum, my 250W mh (only thing lighting this guy) was on the fritz, so I sent in the ballast to Icecap, they have mailed a replacement to me - it went out today!

so thats good...I'll be back up and running soon.

Right now I have a Current 24" 130W (i think) PC light on it right now...

 

Heres what I was also thinking about doing....

as a cost affective way of gettin some pumped up actinic lighting, I thought perhaps I would invest in two of these fixtures, and put them facing from front to back on either end of hte tank.

http://www.fishneedit.com/t5ho-24quot-2-lamp-aquarium-l.html

 

Anyone got anythoughtss??

Nice lights and great way to supplement your set up.

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Alright...when I come across some extra cash, i'll do it...itll be awhile though...I got alot of projects in the works, and I already need to get a couple mh pendents for my dwarf lionfish reef, and for the tidepool refuge on that system.

 

I also just started building my propogation system...

 

itll happen....sooner or later....

I did however add a couple inhabitants to my reef...

A madaring Dragonette:

photo-60.jpg

And a yellow watchman goby:

photo-58.jpg

photo-59.jpg

 

photo-61.jpg

 

photo-62.jpg

 

all of these were taken right when the light came on, so not all the corals are 100% out...

otherwise, trust me, they would be

everything is growing like crazy in here!

I'm so happy with this tank it ridiculous!

I pulled out something like 15 asst. frags the otherday, not to mention moving like, 12 frags, and even a couple whole colonies over to my new dwarf lionfish reef.

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Just worked out the trade btw!

My new Prizm Red Sea skimmer will be here prob early next week!

I cant wait!

I know its a HOB, but I"m ganna put it in the ATO resevoir....tahtll work, right?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Whenever I get the funds to start my reef, I want to get a setup close to what you have. It looks amazing and I think thats about as natural as you can get without putting an acrylic box in the ocean.

 

Keep the pics and updates coming. Im following it.

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