My new tank

[SaltyMist]

So while trying to rearange my liverock today in my Eclipse 12, I managed to put a huge gauge 3/4 across the front pane of acrylic.

 

Vowing never to buy another acrylic tank I went to my really local fish store to see what he had in stock. (This guy is so so helpfull, and is always trying to save me money).

 

Anyhow, he showed me my options, it was either going to be a 15 gallon or a 20 High gallon tank. I finally opted for the 20H because it would allow me to get a powered protein skimmer in the future to hang on the back as well as having 5 more gallons of water to displace with liverock, livesand, critters etc.

 

So I brought it home, equalized the temperature of the freshly bought salt water so that it matched my tank, and started pumping water from the old tank to the new tank, until it was about half way.

 

Then the liverock went in, and the snails, and finally after all the liverock went in I was able to catch the serpent starfish and transfer him over. Then I pumped almost all the remaining water over to the new tank.

 

Removed the intake of my canister filter to the new tank. Then slid the old tank off my desk, and slid my new tank backwards into its spot (God I hope this Ikea desk doesnt fall apart - I may just cut a 2x4 to height and insert it under the desk, under the right corner of the aquarium to give it extra support just incase, but so far so good, and no sagging). Then I used the newly bought saltwater that had been soaking in my tub (to get it up the few degrees difference between it and my tank) and filled it up the rest of the way.

 

I must say that I like this tank much better than the Eclipse (though I love my 2 JBJ nanocubes in my living room), because I can add on to it. Easy to get better lighting, and if I want to add a HOB skimmer I have the room to do it.

 

In this shot (shown below), the lighting got messed up, it's not blue like in the photo at all, but yet it's not yellow either, it's just sort of whitish, but Im looking to find some more powerfull lights for it and will go check out the LFS on friday when he gets in some high output T5 lights on Friday.

 

The one powerhead is in there right now just for a test (I hate cluttering my tanks with powerheads, thats why I've always, in the past anyway, kept to the cannister filters and just rinsed out the prefilter in discarded water change water to rid it of the particulate matter that I dont want in my tank), so since this canister pumps 285/gph it's got really good flow, but I wanted to see what happens when I added a swingarm powerfilter. That is to say, I wanted to see what it did to the flow in the tank, whether it made it turbulant or not.

 

The tank really cleared up fast. with this kind of flow going on, so Im thankfull for that. And strangely enough it cleared up faster than the eclipse did after moving the liverock around, yet the same canister was hooked up to the eclipse too, so Im not sure whats going on, but it's pretty darn clear right now, even looking at it from the side, though it's still a ways away from being crystal clear.

 

Now I've got to find lighting that i like and maybe a lowcost, lightweight hood for the top so that I can just hide the lighting alltogether, as I hate the strip light that comes with these glass tanks.

 

Okay Im done babbling, here is the new tank.

[bleedinorange]

That is some nice looking rock, is it marshall or Tonga??

[SaltyMist]

Actually, it was suppose to be fiji, but then I found out from another LFS that fiji can be spotted by all the little bubble like surface on it. So now Im lost as to what the heck this is. The original LFS that I got it from said it was fiji, but it doesnt look like the fiji that I got from another store that was covered in the bubble like appearance.

 

I should admit that it doesnt look all that great in person, I think that the bluelighting of the camera (gotta solve the white balance on this Sony F717 camera sometime son), makes it look like it's got more coralline growth than it really has. It does indeed have some nice coralline growth, but it's rather spread out and Im just waiting for it to start growing all over the place.

 

My biggest fear of getting new liverock from my local stores is that it's going to bring the dreaded brown diatom algea to this tank, which so far has never occured, even when this LR was in the eclipse.

[chiliaddik]

I think your tank looks great! Is that a Lee's Protein Skimmer in the corner? Just looked familiar, that's all!

[SaltyMist]

Yup, thats the medium sized Lee's skimmer, that I cut down to size to fit in the old eclipse 12 tank (sorry I did that now, would like ot have the extra length to it now that the tank could handle an extra 2 inches to the tube).

 

Some people said that I probably wouldnt notice it working at all, and wouldnt get anything out of it, but I have to say that for the price that I paid for it ($9.99 on a closeout sale at my local petco), Im quite pleased, the first day it removed some pretty foul black skimmate, and this was on a tank that was only like a little over a month old.

 

I asked my LFS owner if this meanth that I was overfeeding, he said probably not, and that it was probably just coming from the liverock.

 

It works very strange, sometimes it's really pushing up the foam into the cup, and other times, the foam is barely reaching the designated line on the skimmer. Go figure.