Diamond Jack's 90 gallon 3x2x2

[Diamond Jack]

Hey everyone. First off happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone is having a great day. I haven't been busy making turkey dinner, but rather setting up my new reef tank. Due to work travels, my good friend Mike could no longer keep his reef tank. So he hooked me up with it and we having been setting it up since last night.

Here are some pics. We set the drains up with 2 bulkheads draining into the sump. After filling with tap water one time we found a small leak. So we drained and fixed and filled again. Finally.. no leaks!

After making sure the pump and flow ran good and with no leaks, we drained out the tap water. My buddy took off and now I have been working on my rockscape.

I wanted to have an island on the right side and a canyon in the middle of the tank surrounded by wall with lots of cave on the right and back of tank. I wanted something a little different and lots of holes/caves for fish to swim in. I laid it out on the floor as follows.

After that, I cut egg crate bases for the rocks trying to keep them as small as possible to not make excessive dead spots in the sand bed. Here is what it looks like in the tank.

With all the done its time to eat some food. If im not in a turkey coma later, I'm going to get some ro/di water and start filling this thing.

As equipment goes I have a Tunze 9410 skimmer, Tunze pump and an Led fixture with 126 Led's made from a store called fish collection down south where my friend is from. More to follow...

 

[Bdimas]

Nice tank man! I like the dimensions.

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

Sweet deal Diamond Jack. I like the look of your aquascape. Keep us tuned in.

 

[Diamond Jack]

Thanks for the comments. I managed to get water in the tank the other day, but was too tired to post. Here is a pic of the tank. I added salt and fired up the protien skimmer. Lots of nasty stuff in filter sock and skimmer....

Here is a picture of my cleaner shrimp Piere waiting in the nano for his new home to be ready....

:wave:

So now I play the waiting game. Checking salinity. Tank temp is good. Just waiting for things to die off.

 

[Bdimas]

Awww yeah! Looks great!

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

Is the return on a Sea Swirl? If not, you may want to beef up the flow some, especially in a tank with SPS.

I love the way you did the rocks for sure. Rarely you see tanks with Tonga rock it them anymore. Good stuff

 

[Diamond Jack]

Thanks for the replys. I am going to get some sort of flow accelerator to fit into the 3/4" inch return pipe in tank. I just ran out of time to find one and set that up temporarily. I'm going to look around for something locally today. If not sucessful then it will be marine depot order time.

Any luck with one flow accelerator vs another? The sea swirl looks nice, but I want to get an mp 40 or 60 down the line and would rather save for that.

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

Hmmm, well you can used something like this:

http://www.marinedepot.com/Pacific_Coast_Flow_Accelerator_Flexible_Ball_Socket_Tubing_Plumbing_Parts-Pacific_Coast_Imports-FT0033-FIFTFB-vi.html

I know there are some DIY of penductors in the DIY forum for Loc-Line also.

Also if you're trying to beef up your turnover rate in ways of flow in the tank. There are usually some selling Koralia 3 or 4s. Might want to hit up the "Good lookin' out" thread for those. I know of a few members that have these possibly hoarding at their house Vortechs are really nice :thumbsup:

 

[Diamond Jack]

Man I have been waiting for this tank to cycle and it is killing me. I'm not sure if this thing is going to cycle or not. I used established live rock from my friend's system that was in the tank about six months. He put it in a rubbermaid and kept it moist driving it up here. I rinsed each piece off and then put it in the tank. After a week no ammonia, nitrites, or nitraites. I'm starting to get some diatom on the rocks. I put a few dead snails that I found in the rubbermaid in the tank and now have small amounts of ammonia. I figure I will keep testing every few days and go from there. Would like to see some nitrates before proceeding to add clean up crew.

I also went on Big Al's website and filled out the form for a customer clean up crew. Just waiting to hear back about the cuc. He has such amazing prices!

Finally I went to Your Reef and picked up a clownfish to pair with the current one I have. I acclimated him and put him in the nano. After about 30 mins of my original clownfish doing some very wierd semi attacks and half seizure shakes, they seemed to work out their differences. I'm also happy to say my 6 line didn't try to kill my new clown. Here is a pic.

Other than that I keep playing the waiting game... :bounce3:

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

Did you use all live rock and sand? If so, you may not get a complete full cycle as seen in brand new tank setups. When I was upgrading from my 29gal to 90gal and with my current tank I didn't have any big spikes, just did a couple water changes after the initial setup and that was it to settle the little traceable readings.

I just added all the rock from the established tank to the new dead rock.

 

[Diamond Jack]

I used all live rock from an established tank. I did have to use new sand. I'm going to add some live sand from my nano tank to the new sandbed in the 90 to seed it. I think I will do that today or tomorrow.
I'm going to keep monitoring levels. I figured since I added detectable amounts of ammonia to the tank with dead snails that if those levels go away something is eating up the ammonia. I'm also going to turn the skimmer off for a day or two. It was pulling some good junk out for the first week, but after cleaning out the collection cup yesterday I have nothing but clean bubbles. We shall see. If things continue to seem settled I'm going to add a few crabs and snails next week and see what happens.

 

[Bamm Bamm]

Looks good

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

How's the tank coming along?

 

[Diamond Jack]

Diatom boom.

Tester crab and snail have been alive a week. Had small spike in ammonia for a few days, but really not a major cycle. Everything is testing good. Tank has been running for about 3 weeks. Just did a 10 gallon waterchange. Changed cleaner sock and added some chemi pure elite. Going to change 10 more gallons tomorrow.

Other than that... Clean up crew is coming in from Reefcleaners tomorrow to save the day. Will post pics after thay have arrived. Should be a lot of crabs and snails. I'm ready to get some life in the tank! I hate waiting.

 

[Diamond Jack]

Making progress on tank. Cleaner crew was delayed in mail for a few days and as a result all hermit crabs were doa and some of the snails. John at reefcleaners was awesome. He was very quick to respond to emails and sent replacements to me as requested.

Here is what I went with for my starter CUC.

20 Assorted Hermit Crabs
50 Dwarf Ceriths
10 Nassarius
30 Cerith
5 Large Nerite
10 Medium Nerite

I just got the Hermits in and they are going to work on the diatom/ hair algae that has been building up. Thank goodness!

Last week I couldn't wait any longer and put a few corals in to test things out. Everything seems to be looking good and the LED's are making things "pop". Now I just need a new camera ( or that camera workshop Ryan was talking about).

I also scored a Red Sea Max wavemaker off craigslist for a great price. With some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket, I couldn't turn it down. Debating between getting and Koralia Evolution 1050 or 1400.... Not sure. I am going to run the older style Koralia 2 I have full time due to start up noise. I have a Koralia 1 in there I will have running on wavemaker because it is a lot quieter on start up. I think I will see how it goes from there.

On a final note. My clownfish is evil. I have now failed to pair it with another clown twice! The first clown I got was small, didn't eat, and died within 24 hours. I figured it was a sick fish.
The next one I got was a little bigger. He got chased around a lot by my clown and nipped at. I ended up separating them for a few hours. After that, the new clown would hide in a corner of the tank and my old clown would only periodically chase it as opposed to constantly chasing it. Two days later they had stopped fighting and were hanging out relativly peacefully... Then he died. I think I'm done trying to pair her. I hate it when things die under my watch. Thats all for now.

 

[cjscott]

Looks really nice man can't wait to see it fill in.

 

[hugo209]

nice tank!!!

 

[Bdimas]

I hate the diatom stage. It'll all be over soon

 

[Diamond Jack]

Ok, so having a week off has given me a great amount of time to work on the tank. I added a few things.

First my friend Mike and my wife Tami confronted me about a problem... A hair algae problem. I tried to tell them it was just diatom/ new tank cycle problems and I had it under control. Nobody would listen. My friend Mike instead gave me this for Christmas.

Coincidentally enough when I bought my wavemaker off craigslist, the lady I bought it from gave me a free can of Phosban. I figured why fight everyone anymore, I have a hair algae probelm. I think that's the first step towards recovery. I hooked this bad boy up and the rest is history.

I also bought a hydor koralia evolution at Twins today. Since he had the 1400gph model and not the 1000gph model it made the decision easy. It has a great but not overpowering amount of flow so I'm happy with it. Im running it on the wavemaker. It has one click on startup but nothing like the old model koralia's. I'm running the old style #2 on constantly due to startup noise. The #1 isn't very loud so I have that on the wavemarker as well pointed towards the surface.

I also added a used Tunze ato system. I put a 5 gallon tank behind the sump. This bad boy will cut some daily maint time. I like it.

It's amazing how quick a sump fills up.

I feel like I'm finally getting this tank set where I want it to be. Will be adding some coral and trying to take some decent pics of them later this week.

 

[RiOnRoxXx]

Very awesome Marius! Sumps are a beast of their own. It's interesting to see how different people setup their sumps. GL with the GHA.