Whitten's 30 Oceanic...Money Pit.

[Kogut]

Haha. I so know what you mean, Whitten. I love your tank, though. It looks great. Whenever people say stuff about my tank I just shrug... Guess the "aaawwwwww" factor goes away when you see it every day and put so much work into it. Sorry about the loss of Ole' One-Eye. I really hoped he would pull through....

[TheCheat]

Whit-- Your tank is looking hot brotha!

~B

[Whitten]

You and me both Kogut. I guess he is with the Lord now...which is a kick ass place to be.

 

The Cheat,...I thought about you yesterday when I sat down for some pizza. Thanks guys.

 

I really try to put up lots of pics so that people can have alot to look at. I know that when I look at these threads I love having tons of pics to occupy me.

[DarkXerox]

That tricolor acro looks a LOT like a cali blue tort. Tank is lookin good after the upgrade from the nanocube!

[yoshiod9]

loving the new pics, man. very nice pieces!

[Babycakes]

wow, nice rockwork! i'm doing a tall rockwork too, but that's because i have a tall tank. did you use epoxy or zip ties to hold your rocks together?

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Babycakes

wow, nice rockwork! i'm doing a tall rockwork too, but that's because i have a tall tank. did you use epoxy or zip ties to hold your rocks together?

 

Ya'll are going to laugh/make fun of me, I actually just sloped the rock in enough of an angle that they don't move. I then took the heavy stuff at the bottom and then just fit all the rocks together like puzzle pieces.

[SSMangrove]

whitten,

 

thanks for stoppin by my thread. just gathering some inspiration from yours.. looks great! I too used to have a handicapped yellow tang, only.. mine had no eyes and somehow managed to survive for a few months after, picking at rocks that he couldnt even see, gathering food! haha! check my avatar animation, thats how i feel about them now (yellow tangs that is)

 

SS

[Kogut]

Hey Whitten, how much did you pay for your cube? I'm craving an upgrade and am debating between your 30gal or a 40 breeder... Can't decide if I want to keep w/ the panorama or go w/ the taller slope look. Was envisioning a copy of your aquascape, but with a nice carpet anemone at the bottom... Get back to me w/ what you paid and what you use for your pumps and such (since I didn't see them) if you would. Thanks in advance, dude!

[Whitten]

Hey Kogut, sorry I was gone over the weekend, had to work in Atlanta. Anyway, I paid about 100 dollars for it while it was on sale at Petsmart. I love my tank alot...but if I were to give anyone advise as to what to get I would suggest the 40 gallon breeder like Hughjas's. His setup is what I would suggest ideally to anyone that wanted to have the ultimate nano, with the ability to upgrade.

 

My tank is really nice, and I love the black silicone and maple surround, I also like the quality of the glass. I would be flattered if you were to use my tank as inspiration as well. I just hope that I can help with anything you need.

 

Hey SS whats up man, yeah saw you back and had to stop in and say hi. I am about as irritated at that Tang as anyone can be...but honestly it was my own fault for being mad at him. It seems as though he has given my Royal Gramma Ich...so hopefully I won't loose him too. Here again I am flatered that you used my tank as inspiration I just hope that I can live up to the hype.

[DRZL-sauras]

Dayuum homie!

I like your cube alot, very dapper. I like how you freed up swimming space for your fish by making a vertical slope, good idea. Im not sure if you still have a gym sock for your overflow, but have you ever tried women knee highs? for your tank;) Ive got one on my overflow pipe and its very much the same size hole as the micron soocks. After every WC i just throw em out and put a new clean one as it fills up with crud into the cloth. Its cheap, almost as cheap as the looks i get when i go to walgreens and get 20 of them from the cashier. gotta love this hobby!

[Whitten]

Ahaha, that is a great idea..I will be going to the store today to get some knee stockings. Thanks for that little remedy man, I was thinking of buying a dedicated filter sock but that will be a great deal.

[Kogut]

Do you have any shrimp, Whitten? Perhaps you could pick up an emergency scarlet cleaner shrimp... They've been known to save fish from ich and all sorts of stuff... : Hopefully you don't lose him... Especially since you only took the tang in because you're such a nice guy. Hehe. I'll have to see how my orchid dotty works out for me... Sooo many people have been having bad luck w/ fish lately that it kinda scares me. :x

[Whitten]

To answer your question I have to, I have a scarlet cleaner, and a peperment shrimp. The cleaner was great with the tang, he and the tang would hang out and he would clean the tang all the time. I think he is cleaning my Gramma as well because he is back to full healthy status and actively eating again. I think there were some dominance issues as well as the ich. In retrospec I would never have done that volunarily but the poor guy needed a chance and I felt like I was his only hope.

 

Big message here kids, big tanks really help. I really feel like if the fish had a larger tank then there may not have been an issue. Everyone could have had their own space, but my cube just doesn't allow for that.

 

At any rate I am saving currently to do several things. After my unsucessful attempt at trying to sell the 150, I decided that I would be better off keeping it...and building a new light myself. My plan is to pull all of the components out of the 150 and use those components on a shallow grow out tank....yeah I know like I need another tank right?

 

So here is the order of things to come.

1. Saving for an ASM Skimmer right now. Should have enough by the end of summer saying that I get more work.

2. Buying or Building a 20x20 Grow out tank and plumbing it into the other tank. My plan is to do a series of baffles at the back of the tank to put all my macro in and that become my fuge.

3.Building a proper overflow box, the elbow just is working out like I had hoped.

4. Re doing my sump with a rubber maid container, and building in all of of the things I have wanted to do for quite some time like, auto-top off, Calcium reactor, Skimmer.

[szesteve]

Great job Whitten.

 

I had a question about your 10 gallon sump. Does it fit under the oceanic stand?

[tigerarmy40]

that tank is calling for a clam!!

[Breaker4show]

WOW your tank looks great! I am setting up a custom 20 gallon ( 20 x 15 x 17.25 ) and your tank is helping me decide on equipment! with a 10 gallon refugium, 700 gph running through it wasnt to much? I am looking at the Quiet One 300o ( 780 gph ) but I think that is going to be way to much flow through the fuge and I am only keeping softies,lps, maybe 1 or 2 sps and a few clams! Also, for lighting, I was planning on a 175 watt Coralvue Electronic ballast so that if I decide to go DE , I can use the same ballast for a 150 watt bulb? Do those plans sound good? I am sooo nervous about the pump being to powerful for the fuge though!

 

THanks,

Nick

[Whitten]

Originally posted by szesteve

Great job Whitten.

 

I had a question about your 10 gallon sump. Does it fit under the oceanic stand?

 

Sorry it took so long to respond...was in Pensacola for the 4th.

 

You know I think the a ten gallon will fit...but I have not clue. You might want to try it out at the store if you can. I built my stand in a way that wasn't 10 gallon friendly so it ended up that I had to pull the black plastic off to get it in the stand and then put it back on in the stand...kind of a pain if you ask me.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by tigerarmy40

that tank is calling for a clam!!

 

I hear that. First thing first is the ASM skimmer though. I want a clam really badly but I am gearing up for some major sump changes. I will be building my first ever tank, so look for a 1/2 Acrylic 24x24x7 bin style tank next to the big main tank as well as a tupper ware container instead of the ten gallon.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Breaker4show

WOW your tank looks great! I am setting up a custom 20 gallon ( 20 x 15 x 17.25 ) and your tank is helping me decide on equipment! with a 10 gallon refugium, 700 gph running through it wasnt to much? I am looking at the Quiet One 300o ( 780 gph ) but I think that is going to be way to much flow through the fuge and I am only keeping softies,lps, maybe 1 or 2 sps and a few clams! Also, for lighting, I was planning on a 175 watt Coralvue Electronic  ballast so that if I decide to go DE , I can use the same ballast for a 150 watt bulb? Do those plans sound good? I am sooo nervous about the pump being to powerful for the fuge though!

 

THanks,

Nick

 

Nick, I hope that I can keep you from being nervous with some advice.

 

I am going to try and separate all of your post down to eqipment.

 

Lighting: I am not certain about the verstilty of your ballast and the ablity to run DE lamps you might want to ask about that in lighting either here or at Reefcentral. Now as far as options go I have a suggestion, buy either the aquamedic 150-250 Ocean light from Hellolights.com They are small, light and mount very easily. They are indeed Magnetic ballasts but they do a great job and aleviate the issues of mounting and wiring. At this point ease is a great way to ensure your longevity in the hobby. Let me know if this is not an option and maybe I can figure something else out.

 

The Quiet One pump that you have picked is a great unit. I would say that you have one heck of a unit for water movement and if you are not going to be running a wave maker like a SCWD, then it might be way more than you need for LPS and Softies. If you were to stick to SPS and maybe a few shrooms and Rics and zoos you would be fine, but I would definately recomend getting a SCWD wave maker to alternate the flow and also lower the ammount.

 

Honestly the way I would go with your tank is to drill the tank in three places. One for an overflow to the fuge, and then two at either side of the back for return. That would give you a great ammount of water movement and random current. A build your sump with with the baffles about 7 inches high to allow room for fuge and not section off the tank too much, and then let er rip. With a sump you will be able to keep all of your equipment out of site and if you have your tank drilled it will make it that much more clean to do. If you decide not to do three holes just do what I have done and do one for an overflow. Build a little overflow box out of acrylic if you can and that will save you some money. They just use the hang on returns like I bought and voila there you go. Remmber to put some small holes in the base of the return nozzles on the side that is in the water so that if the power is turned off it doesn't create a siphon and flood your sump.

 

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Breaker4show]

Thanks for the great advice! I actually am in the process of buying a NIB pump for someone on reefcentral! It is an Iwaki MD20RXLT ( 540 GPH at 4 feet head, so I think that should be the right amount of flow! I am trying to decide between the Oceanlight 150 with no canopy or the 175 retro with a canopy! I plan to bring this tank to college so I cant decide what I could bring into a dorm. Also, how did you and your dad construct your stand? MY dimensions are similar 20 X 15?? and I like how yours looks! Do I see 2X2's in the corners and 3/4 plywood on the outside?

 

thanks,

nick

[Whitten]

Nick you are right on the Money man, but instead of 2x2's in the corners it is actually 1x material. I over built my stand by a major ammount. I could have just used the 3/4 inch Birch Plywood alone.

 

As for moving it back and forth if you could make little stand out of Plant Hangers that could either mount on the wall or maybe just stand up behind the tank you could very easily mount the Ocean light with it's hanger. Housing usually isn't very keen about holes in the ceiling..and somtimes it isn't possible but if you can do to holes with no prob, or you have a suspended ceiling you could hang the pendant. The hood would be a good easy way to get it over your tank, but you might run into heat issues, that would be easily cured with a fan though. Where are you going to school next year?

[Whitten]

So I go away for the 4th of July and and come home to find the tank in not so good shape. I had asked a friend of mine to take care of the tank and it just so happens that he did just that...except he came over to show his drunk roomie the tank one night and decided to turn on the lights by switching the timer to on. He also decided that he added to much water to the tank and that it would be better for him to remove a gallon and half of tank water and replace it with two gallons of fresh...so that totally messed up the salinity.

 

I walk in the door on Tuesday to find a tank in major stress. Temp is at 95 Degrees, salinity at 1.020 and all my corals fish, and other inhabitants are totally ####ed off.

 

Note to all that have this problem if this happens to you the worst thing you can do is immediately get everything back to normal.

 

Realizing that I might loose everything I didn't do much to the tank except turn the lights off, add some salt water to the tank, and place a fan blowing infront of the refugium.

 

By morning things weren't looking much better but the temp had stabalized to a normal level of 79. I check the salinity which was up a tad since I had added some salt to 1.022. I decided to go for the gold and just bring the salinity up more by taking some water out of the tank and adding more of my premixed stuff. After that my Salinity was at 1.023 and things were getting better slowly. As the tank evaped off water I add the left over salt water that I had drained to eventually get me back to 1.026 and back to normal.

 

With tank temps stable, and the sump light off for a few days I saw my PH come back down from the 8.7 that it was back to a more exceptable 8.3.

 

Through all of this I see only my clownfish swimming around. Expecting that the anemone was dead I write him off and work to save everything else. Slowly most of the critters come back out and get comfortable...that is ofcoarse until Hurrican Dennis the Menace decides to pop up. Long story short crisis avoided no power outages, and things are normal until I see this.

 

Two completely separate twins from my anemone. It appears that it split. I can only assume that it did so in reaction to the stress. At any rate I will now be nurseing two anemones so that I can trade one in for some corals or so or maybe sell.

 

Anyway, sorry for the long post.

 

I will have my monthly update after this weekend and after my Structures test.

[BRISK495]

Sorry to hear about your set back Whitten...i have been following your thread and the tank looks great....I m sure that in a few weeks you will be back to normal....maybe some good came about with the split anenome....

[Whitten]

Well I did some moving around tonight and noticed that I have some fairly good growth in all of my SPS. I was amazed to see how much my tri color has grown and my Blue Tort has even shown signs of a little verticla growth. All in all the only SPS that I am still trying to get comfortable is my Millepora, it just can't seem to get to place that it likes.

 

Checked on the twins (anemones and both are healthy just hiding from me right now. I moved the rocks around to try and give them a better place to come to the top and still feel secure hopefully it work out better.

 

Next looking at doing an ASM G1X skimmer after I get some money saved up and have the time to build a new little grow out tank.

 

This hobby continues to humble me at just how much attention to detail as well as patience and trial and error it takes.

 

On a good note all of my stuff looks like it is very healthy.