180 Reef Upgrade

raidendex said:
Never had many monties, but few I did have I glued to the back wall... eventually they all fell down and died in the sand lol. I do have one of the overflow box. Also fished out two pieces of jf guac cyphasteriasomething, so that will just sit on the floor now. Maybe I'll get rid of the three flat islands that have Acans, Pallys, and Favias and just spread them around the floor instead now for a nicer coverage. Mainly did those flat islands so they would not get lost in the sand, while keeping them away form main rock work, but not it's pretty easy to just throw them all over lol.
Click to expand...

I meant to type that, I was in a hurry. For me I leave the rock work to grow the branching/plating corals and the bare bottom is great for the favias, montis, acans and such that just need a good spot to hang out. With enough of those you can cover a bare bottom pretty fully and the fact that there's no sand will IMO not be very noticeable.

A lot of the LPS prefer the lower PAR levels of the bottom of the tank and are perfectly fine with some shading from the higher up branching corals.

At the end of the day it's a preference thing. I've seen some gorgeous sand bottom tanks that I've been very envious of. If I could have perfect flow, detritus removal and colors with sand I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm not sure how they do it without sand storms, nutrient problems and such. I guess they're better reefers than me because I've only been successful with a BB tank.


Great tank build btw. Everything looks really nice
 
Smashed up two of the flat island rocks today and glued acans and favias to them. Littered them all over. Will probably do the same with pallys, but they are more attached to the rock so will have to smash it with them on it, hopefully none of the cracks will go through the middle of colonies, but nicely in between them lol. I know I could cut it, but bashing it with hammer is more fun :)
 
Quick update video. Marvel at bad video quality lol. Guess I need to spend more time with settings. Pictures I can do pretty decent this way, but video is definitely still quite a bit behind in quality ><

 
Nothing special, BRS Alk, Ca, Mag. Run BRS GFO and Carbon although not sure what those do... And just feed fish frozen stuff.
 
Or laziness :) I don't like to do too much hehe. Same reason I do not run filter socks often. Ran them for past few weeks as I was messing with the sand bed, was a pain to wash them!
 
Been using high cap one, but bought gallon of regular, will stop using it after that runs out or maybe even sooner.

For gfo i do 1 cup, for carbon 2 cups, change once a month. Don't really do water changes, although did about 30 gallons when I took out the sand bed recently. I wouldn't say I noticed any difference when I started using gfo and carbon, maybe water gets a little whiter with carbon, but that's about it.
 
Broke apart the pally rock today and moved few chalices that I have down to the.. glass bed. Arranged everything nicely all over the place to have each coral type evenly spread out.

...And then clownfish came. Stupid female is sliding the rocks with corals away from her area. Such an annoying fish ! lol
 
Another try at bad video quality lol, YouTube sure is not helping when it converts what I upload to even worse quality version heh.

 
River flooded into my tank and washed away the reef! The end! Will see you all in a few years when I decide to switch back to salt :)

 
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