72 Build/Documentary Thread

cloakerpoked · May 28, 2009

Figured I'd document my 72 bowfront build here...although now it's all up and running. Nothing all that exciting, but I'm very happy with how everything has turned out...

Built a riser for my tank to sit on. Now it sits up high which I like for the most part. One of the unintended problems with this is that the lights are now well above eye level, and since the canopy is currently floating, the lights sort of shine into your eyes a bit. Didn't realize how spoiled I was by having an enclosed canopy.

The riser houses my electrical systems, all my test kits, suppliments, etc and my chiller. This keeps the horizontal footprint of this tank to a minimum. It could stand alone on 4' of wallspace with all this equipment, and room for a lot more if I needed it, which I'm a fan of.

I also polyed the stock all glass stand, which not only made it look nicer color-wise, but has really helped with keeping it cleaner looking.

cloakerpoked · May 29, 2009

Full system view...On the right, my anenome tank. I don't want my RBTA to interfere with my SPS/zoas, so I have its own tank for it. I'm going to keep some zoa frags in there as well under PC lighting. On the right is my kalkwasser reactor. Its the same one that crashed my 120 system, so I'm trying to be careful with this one. I'm going to run it as an ATO, but also have that ATO run on a timer, so that no matter whether the timer or the floats fail, it should take a while for a catastrophic failure to occur.

The sump is a 29 gallon with a 2" bulkhead on the left side. The skimmer compartment is in the middle. I run way too much current through this thing (using a Dart as my manifold pump, so probably moves 2000+ gph through the sump) resulting in a lot of microbubbles. I need to try to come up with a way to inhibit them. Filter socks have helped, but aren't a solution in and of themselves.

revhtree · May 29, 2009

Looks great! I like the 2 islands!

cloakerpoked · May 29, 2009

The DJ powerstrips are hinged down, so they actually swing down so that I can access the plugs behind a lot easier. They aren't working like they should, I don't know why, so they'll need replaced at some point.

The Dart pumps into a manifold that has 5 outputs. One splits and goes to the 20 gallon which gravity feeds back into the sump or through the chiller and back into the sump. The 2nd line is an expansion line. I can open it if I want to release pressure in the manifold for some reason. The other 3 lines are returns. They are all split so there is a total of 6 return points, but one is split in a "y" locline, so there are actually 7 nozzles from the return in addition to my 2 Koralia 3's that circulate water on either side of the tank. Because my returns come over the back, both holes in the weir are drains at this point. The 1" drain has no standpipe and operates under a syphon. The 3/4" drain has a 1" durso style standpipe that keeps the weir pretty much full at all times.

I'm currently working on an idea for a fuge, but haven't finalized one yet. The sump is out just because of the flow rate in there, and the 20 I'd like to not have to use so the current idea is to just use a tupperware containter as a fuge and set it on top of the sump and run it off a powerhead and gravity.

cloakerpoked · May 29, 2009

revhtree said:
Looks great! I like the 2 islands!

Thanks. I like an a symmetrical look to a tank, and have never been a huge fan of the rock wall myself. I wanted a more open feel than my last tank, so I intentionally left a lot of rock out of this one. There are only 5 pieces of rock in this tank, I got really fortunate and had some really nice sized ones from various tanks I've bought in the past. :bigsmile:

revhtree · May 29, 2009

I am with you on that. My current tank is a 2 island aquascape as well.

cloakerpoked · May 29, 2009

Some livestock pics: Some are survivors of my kalkwasser disaster, a lot I just got the other day as a part of a big frag pack purchase. Ended up with 11 different types of zoas and 15 SPS frags to get the new tank broken in. With all my zoas from before and a few other frags of stuff, the tank is already filling out pretty nicely, although there's plenty of room for more

Tiger Open Brain (survivor)

Some kind of RPE morph and my hammer (both survivors)

Safecrackers and what might be spiderman zoas, or some other blue and red zoa (new)

Green Cossettes I believe (new)...

My zoa garden (new and old) The plan is to use the bottom parts of all the rockwork as zoanthid/paly gardens, and use the substrate and maybe a few smallish rocks for Acans and chalices eventually. The top will be pretty much all SPS, except for these stupid button polyps I'll never get rid of now.

Frogspawn (survivor)

cloakerpoked · May 29, 2009

ORA Green pocillipora (one of the two SPS colonies that survived my kalk nuking with relatively small amount of damage...is starting to get the brighter green back now in the tips after being pretty brown for a while...)

My Arc Eyed Hawk--he's got a lot of personality. I'd like some anthias I think eventually. I need to be careful not to get any jumpers since the top is opened all the time. Right now I have a black cardinal, the hawk, a watchman goby, and a midas blenny in the tank. The Midas blenny is about 5-6" and I got him at the LFS for $30 since he's missing an eye. Eats like a pig, and the wife, who is normally apathetic about my tank, has taken an interest as she loves to watch "Uno" do his thing.

Whammin Watermelon morph. I have two different kinds, these are a darker color, while the others are a lot more flourescent

ID Anyone???

The other SPS colony to survive...a large orange/red monticap colony. The thing must be bulletproof because it didn't even lose its color at all.

Tswifty · Jun 1, 2009

Looking good Nate.

cloakerpoked · Jun 2, 2009

Thanks TJ. Its coming along.

cloakerpoked · Aug 12, 2009

Some very very long overdue updates:

Full Tank Shot

Noticed that my chalice had all its sweeper tentacles out today. I think I may have put an Acan too close to it, and it stung the crap out of one of the polyps. It was brutal.

A lot of my zoas went into a severe decline, so I'm thinking about whether I want to keep them in the tank or not. The ones in there now are flourishing, but about 7 colonies just went downhill for no reason. Checked the parameters, and everything was fine for zoas. Alk was low (about 6.5 dKh) so I'm adding part 2 of the 2 part system to boost it slowly back up to about 9 or 10, but the calcium is still good. Growth from the SPS was a little slow, but once I hit the tank with Interceptor, that cleared out all the red bugs, and now its doing good. Only other problem I had is I bought a ton of coral from a guy out in OH on another message board, and I got a lot of nuissance algea with it. Thinking about getting a yellow tang to take care of the problem. I need more fish anyway.

cloakerpoked · Aug 12, 2009

A few more shots...

A lot of the SPS is looking kinda brown, and I'm thinking that its a nutrient poor system problem. I'm in the process of slowly boosting my fish population to try to deal with this. Also thinking about changing my bulbs in about 3 months or so, and I think I'm going to go to a higher quality bulb than I'm currently using. Any recommendations? I already suppliment actinic (although I could switch them to 10,000k) with 2x110 VHO bulbs.

Stray32 · Aug 13, 2009

Looks good man, lots of coralline on that rock!

cloakerpoked · Aug 13, 2009

Yeah...I think the insane coraline growth I'm having in the tank is actually inhibiting the SPS to some degree because of all the Ca uptake. It's close to not having anywhere else to grow, and a lot of the SPS is starting to grow up now, so I think that those two events are corresponding to each other.