Gill the 3rd
Well-Known Member
So here goes my first build thread. Here's some background as to why I have this tank (sorry in advance for the long story) - I'm not new to saltwater, I started with a 180 gallon display and have upgraded to a 300 gallon display. Unfortunately that upgrade did not get off to a great start. To join my fish that I had at the time, I purchased some additional fish from a newer LFS that told me they qt'd with copper and prazi. I was qt'ing fish myself after suffering from an ich outbreak several years ago, but was getting tired of running an additional tank in my basement so I broke it down. I thought this is perfect so I purchased a few fish. Well turns out the fish store just ran enough copper to suppress any parasites and I got hit with a velvet outbreak. It wiped out 75% of my livestock over 2 days. All the new fish died and I was able to save a few of my current fish. I lost many fish that I had for years. My fault, I should have known better. Anyway did the whole copper power hospital tank/fallow period for the 2nd time in my reefing career.
The time came to start restocking my tank and I placed an order from an online vendor who has a known qt process, has a lot of great reviews, and is well known in these forums. Got my first order and was very pleased with the health of my fish, but they came in very small. This was going to be an issue throwing them in my 300 gallon with larger fish. I have another larger order coming from the same vendor, and I suspect some of those fish will also come in small. I've always liked those shallow reef tank design so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to set up that style of tank and use it to to grow out my fish for the 300 gallon. It just so happened I found someone selling a pretty new frag tank on Facebook marketplace for a great price.
The tank is a Seapora 25 gallon frag tank with the following dimensions : 36" x 18" x 9". The previous owner build a AIO box out of black acrylic. I had some black acrylic lying around so I made some minor modifications and made a lid. I will have rock rubble in the overflow chamber and a sicce return pump in the pump section. I currently have marco dry rock sitting in my 300 gallon tanks sump to help jump start the cycle and will be using a combination of live sand and dry sand for the substrate. Lighting will be a noopsyche K7 pro III that I just purchased. My goal is make it look like a rock pool type aqua scape. I haven't decided which corals I'm going to keep, but I'm definitely going to try some mangroves.
The short term goal of this tank is a grow out tank, but I'm thinking of making it a pipefish tank in the long run since this will be a lower flow tank. The current stock list that will go in is a bicolor blenny, perc clown, royal gramm and porcupine puffer. All the fish are 1.5 inches or less at the moment and are currently in a 10 gallon observation tank in my basement. As they reach the appropriate size I will move them to the 300 gallon.
Here is a pic of the tank with the stand that I build over the weekend. The AIO acrylic box is loose and still needs to be siliconed to the glass. Will update once I get the equipment in and start aquascaping.
The time came to start restocking my tank and I placed an order from an online vendor who has a known qt process, has a lot of great reviews, and is well known in these forums. Got my first order and was very pleased with the health of my fish, but they came in very small. This was going to be an issue throwing them in my 300 gallon with larger fish. I have another larger order coming from the same vendor, and I suspect some of those fish will also come in small. I've always liked those shallow reef tank design so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to set up that style of tank and use it to to grow out my fish for the 300 gallon. It just so happened I found someone selling a pretty new frag tank on Facebook marketplace for a great price.
The tank is a Seapora 25 gallon frag tank with the following dimensions : 36" x 18" x 9". The previous owner build a AIO box out of black acrylic. I had some black acrylic lying around so I made some minor modifications and made a lid. I will have rock rubble in the overflow chamber and a sicce return pump in the pump section. I currently have marco dry rock sitting in my 300 gallon tanks sump to help jump start the cycle and will be using a combination of live sand and dry sand for the substrate. Lighting will be a noopsyche K7 pro III that I just purchased. My goal is make it look like a rock pool type aqua scape. I haven't decided which corals I'm going to keep, but I'm definitely going to try some mangroves.
The short term goal of this tank is a grow out tank, but I'm thinking of making it a pipefish tank in the long run since this will be a lower flow tank. The current stock list that will go in is a bicolor blenny, perc clown, royal gramm and porcupine puffer. All the fish are 1.5 inches or less at the moment and are currently in a 10 gallon observation tank in my basement. As they reach the appropriate size I will move them to the 300 gallon.
Here is a pic of the tank with the stand that I build over the weekend. The AIO acrylic box is loose and still needs to be siliconed to the glass. Will update once I get the equipment in and start aquascaping.
