Hi R2R! I have been a silent reader on this forum for so long and I want to share my tank journey before things get too late ;Dead.
Little intro about myself, Im an Art Director in an art agency/production house. I have been in this hobby since I was in high school which was about 11 years ago. I was always on and off in this hobby, but since the Covid started I have been back on aquarium hobbies building both freshwater and saltwater aquariums.
I am Indonesian with Japanese descendance, this makes me goes back and forth between this country. Most of my aquariums are located in Indonesia, and luckily one of my house keeper here is also experienced reefers (super lucky to have him ). So, we both been maintaining this tank together especially when I have to go back to Japan.
----
So, lets go straight to my tank
Its a custom order tank with optic clear glasses, size are 60cm x 55cm x 35cm, its about 40 gallons tank excluding the sump.
I always thought they made the overflow box way too big, but whatever, it has been done anyway ;Blackeye
As a designer, I treated this aquarium just like my design project (a bit more serious i think ), it needs to have goals and function.
my first goal is, this aquariums need to look good on 4 different sides which is front, left side, right side and more importantly from top down view.
2nd goal is, it needs to have a good flow, so I have to think about spacing in the middle and how my wave maker can reach all the caves and still have proper flow between the rock.
3rd goal is, this tank need to be easy to clean. I dont want any rock that goes to close to the wall and I need to have easy access to almost all the sand bed area (I have bad experience with nitrate build up on the sands on my previous build ;Hurting)
With all that in mind, I came up with this design
eg. front view, left side, right side and top down.
From the top down view, I came up with a big X composition which I really love ;Happy
this is how it looks like after i filled with water and sand
I cycled this tank using Dr Tims program hoping it can be done quicker, however for family reasons I have to be in Japan for about 3 months .
So, I let this tank cycled during that time which actually turned out to be amazing lol.
After running for a month, I asked my guy to test the nitrate, and ammonia, which came out really good. 0 ammonia and 5 on nitrate.
Time to turn on the skimmer and get some chaeto running in the sump. Also, we bought bunch of CUC like turbo snails, nassarius snails, and some sand shifter starfish. We also bought one gold torch and one trachy to see how well the water quality was. Plus I managed to get proper light, my choice was Noopsyche K7 II because its soo dang cheap compare to radions and hydra. They have pretty good review here in Indonesia. I saw some successful reefer using this light to grow sps.
At the end of the 3rd month, I managed to be back in Indonesia and start to fill some coral in. Here is how it looks at the moment.
My favorite view ;Happy,
All this photo taken after about a month after I placed about all the corals. They all seems pretty healthy at the moment.
I will update with more video of this tank, and incase you guys asking, this all the details about equipment I use
Light: Noopscyche k7 II, Spectra V2
Fan: 5 fans with autorun system, (it runs when the temperature reach over 27.5C and it stopped when it reach 26C
Wavemaker: Jebao SLW
Skimmer: Bubble magus 3.5
Manual Dosing using Red Sea program
will post my sump later!!
Thanks for reading!
Little intro about myself, Im an Art Director in an art agency/production house. I have been in this hobby since I was in high school which was about 11 years ago. I was always on and off in this hobby, but since the Covid started I have been back on aquarium hobbies building both freshwater and saltwater aquariums.
I am Indonesian with Japanese descendance, this makes me goes back and forth between this country. Most of my aquariums are located in Indonesia, and luckily one of my house keeper here is also experienced reefers (super lucky to have him ). So, we both been maintaining this tank together especially when I have to go back to Japan.
----
So, lets go straight to my tank
Its a custom order tank with optic clear glasses, size are 60cm x 55cm x 35cm, its about 40 gallons tank excluding the sump.
I always thought they made the overflow box way too big, but whatever, it has been done anyway ;Blackeye
As a designer, I treated this aquarium just like my design project (a bit more serious i think ), it needs to have goals and function.
my first goal is, this aquariums need to look good on 4 different sides which is front, left side, right side and more importantly from top down view.
2nd goal is, it needs to have a good flow, so I have to think about spacing in the middle and how my wave maker can reach all the caves and still have proper flow between the rock.
3rd goal is, this tank need to be easy to clean. I dont want any rock that goes to close to the wall and I need to have easy access to almost all the sand bed area (I have bad experience with nitrate build up on the sands on my previous build ;Hurting)
With all that in mind, I came up with this design
eg. front view, left side, right side and top down.
From the top down view, I came up with a big X composition which I really love ;Happy
this is how it looks like after i filled with water and sand
I cycled this tank using Dr Tims program hoping it can be done quicker, however for family reasons I have to be in Japan for about 3 months .
So, I let this tank cycled during that time which actually turned out to be amazing lol.
After running for a month, I asked my guy to test the nitrate, and ammonia, which came out really good. 0 ammonia and 5 on nitrate.
Time to turn on the skimmer and get some chaeto running in the sump. Also, we bought bunch of CUC like turbo snails, nassarius snails, and some sand shifter starfish. We also bought one gold torch and one trachy to see how well the water quality was. Plus I managed to get proper light, my choice was Noopsyche K7 II because its soo dang cheap compare to radions and hydra. They have pretty good review here in Indonesia. I saw some successful reefer using this light to grow sps.
At the end of the 3rd month, I managed to be back in Indonesia and start to fill some coral in. Here is how it looks at the moment.
My favorite view ;Happy,
All this photo taken after about a month after I placed about all the corals. They all seems pretty healthy at the moment.
I will update with more video of this tank, and incase you guys asking, this all the details about equipment I use
Light: Noopscyche k7 II, Spectra V2
Fan: 5 fans with autorun system, (it runs when the temperature reach over 27.5C and it stopped when it reach 26C
Wavemaker: Jebao SLW
Skimmer: Bubble magus 3.5
Manual Dosing using Red Sea program
will post my sump later!!
Thanks for reading!