120g Upgrade- A year in the making

[eederise]

Thought I'd show off a bit. I've been working on the stand/canopy for almost a year now. Just got a little tied up with work the past few months. I still haven't taken a look at photobucket to try that out, so the pics are very low quality here. It's only been set up about a week and a half so I'm still work out some bugs. I have some minor salt creep around the bottom edge of the sump, though I cannot find any leaks anywhere. I'm hoping this is just the acrylic settling in(I didn't put anything under the sump for leveling, so I guess I'm paying for that.) Another problem is with a high temp(between 83 and 84 at it's hottest). I already have fans circulating air through the canopy and the stand but it's still too hot. May need to get a small chiller, which I hoped to avoid by using T5's. I didn't take pics of the light setup yet; it's an 8 bulb 4ft TEK fixture. Before anyone tells me that I shouldn't have this fixture in a canopy, I have already ruled out the lights as a major source of heat. The fixture runs slightly warm to the touch, so I think I'm OK. The only other problem besides those is that I don't like the way the doors came out and will probably have someone remake them as raised panels. The design came from Marino420TD which, in turn, came from sonofgaladriel(credit where its due). On to the pics!

FTS

Next to the old 40g, I'll be moving everything in there over to the 120 over the next few weeks.

Under the stand

and the fuge...

 

[Phyxius]

Looks real nice. Great job on the woodwork !!!!

 

[Muggle]

Nice tank! I love the woodwork on the stand and hood, they look so elegant.

 

[mg426]

Sweet set up you got going. Nice work !!!

 

[Bax]

Very nice tank and stand

 

[msuzuki126]

I think I see a check valve after the black ball valve. You might want to check that out because some of the ones I have seen like that actually have a metal spring on the inside.

 

[uscharalph]

Nice.

 

[eederise]

6 month update

6 month update

Thought I'd do a quick update. A lot has been adjusted/changed/added in the last 6 months. I've re-arranged my aquascaping, removed the check valve from my return pump and tee'd my chiller off of the return(plan on tee'ing some other things in the near future as well, changed out some of the T5 bulbs(didn't like the colors I had), and started running Phosban and Purigen.

The main benefit so far has been the re-aquascaping. This inadvertently gave me the opportunity to scrub a lot of detritus off of every rock and was able to siphon out a good amount from the tank as well. The amount of junk I removed amazed me and it made a lot of sense as to why I was constantly fighting hair algae for much of the first few months. If I were to set up a new tank in the future I would automatically plan on doing this after a couple of months from inception.

I'm thinking about starting to inject Ozone, but not quite convinced that it will be all that beneficial at this point.

Anyway, I'll start with a few growth shots (most of these were bought while I was still running my 40g, but the most significant growth has occurred in the last 6 months even with the hair algae problem).

Toadstool

Toadstool(about 1 year)

Candy Coral

Candy Coral (about 1 year)

Torch

Torch (just over a year)

Frogspawn

Frogspawn (over a year)

Horn

Horn (about a year)

 

[nancymccall]

envy, pure envy

 

[eederise]

more stuff

more stuff

Some newer additions (excuse any spelling mistakes, please):



Red Cynarina

Acropora (small frag, not sure of SP just yet)

Pink Pocillopora

Orange Rics

Green Zoas

Orange Digi

Duncans (these are unreal in person)

Orange Zoas

Acan

 

[eederise]

Also just added the new Koralia wave maker with two 4's. Looks to be doing a great job! Just hard to mount the pumps the way I'd like. I think I'll move them to overflow box and point them out toward the front corners pretty soon.

and a FTS