my turn - 525
- Thread starter porthios
- Start date
well thanks for the compliments all. 
it's really a lot of fun when non reefkeepers see it and like it but it means that much more to hear from you guys. i appreciate it.
i haven't skinned the stand yet lol.. my wife and i just picked out our dining room furniture so now i can build the stand to match (or at least compliment) the rest of the room. that'll be my project for the summer for sure..
it's really a lot of fun when non reefkeepers see it and like it but it means that much more to hear from you guys. i appreciate it.
i haven't skinned the stand yet lol.. my wife and i just picked out our dining room furniture so now i can build the stand to match (or at least compliment) the rest of the room. that'll be my project for the summer for sure..
Awsome shot Jason! Tank looks great :thumbsup:.
alright. wanted to wait til i had some good photos to show you guys and here we go..
i'd pegged this spot for a tank when my wife and i first looked at this house. it will nicely divide my living/dining rooms and a great attention grabber as guests come through the front door. the planets aligned and we're finally able to build the tank we wanted.
the tank we had built is 96x42x30 and made of 1.25" acrylic. it has 4" eurobracing and no crossbracing. it will be viewable on 3 sides and the internal overflow contains two dry boxes which will house vortech motors and hide their cables. the tank will be plumbed to a fish room located directly below it, in the basement.
equipment so far
lights - 4 400w reeflux 12k bulbs in lumen bright pendants driven by dimmable coralvue ballasts
flow - 4-6 mp40w
return pump - reeflo xxx. planned on a barracuda but have since moved the fish room closer to the tank so i might not need quite that much..
the substrate will be made up of a 5" dsb (probly), marco rock, marshall island and pohnpei live rock. about 200lbs live, the rest dry.
here are some of the pics i have so far..
this is the stand my uncle and i built. woodworking is another hobby for me so i'm looking forward to skinning it.
my wife and kids, stress testing the frame..
the buds getting ready to lift the beast onto the stand. the tank weighs 900lbs+ and the builder showed up nearly an hour early so there were only five of us there to get it off the truck. fortunately, no one was killed, but most importantly, the tank wasn't damaged.
the crew's all done!
next on the agenda is building the new fish room. i'd originally planned to just plumb the tank to the existing fish room, but it's at the other end of the house. building a new one, closer to the tank, will pay off in the long run and let me learn from a few mistakes i made on the first. i'll try to keep up with pics as i go but here's a first draft - sketchup style..
please give any feedback you'd care to share and thanks for watching..
Go UCONN!!!! (class of '04)
PSU REEFER
New member
Any new updates?
nothing too interesting.
back in feb i started running a skimmer (etss 1400) on the tank full time to see what effect it would have on the system. i can't say i notice a difference in the display and my no3/po4 tests the same when i bother to check. i was interested to see if it had an effect on tank ph but it hasn't seemed to. i don't have to harvest the fuge as often.
the goby is doing an excellent job of keeping the sand bed clean.
i've recently stopped using kalk altogether. the ca reactor is shouldering the entire ca/alk load atm. the ph has dropped to the 7.9 range (from 8.25-8.35 with kalk) and i'm trying to decide if kalk is worth the hassle for me. corals are still growing at a good clip but perhaps not as fast as with the kalk. hard to tell.
i have a melanarus wrasse, niger trigger and yellow tang in the 58 (frag tank) that i may move to the display sometime soon. unless i find something i absolutely HAVE to have, i'm pretty much done with fish. the powder blue eats out of my hand now which is fun.
kinda just cruisin along. growin
back in feb i started running a skimmer (etss 1400) on the tank full time to see what effect it would have on the system. i can't say i notice a difference in the display and my no3/po4 tests the same when i bother to check. i was interested to see if it had an effect on tank ph but it hasn't seemed to. i don't have to harvest the fuge as often.
the goby is doing an excellent job of keeping the sand bed clean.
i've recently stopped using kalk altogether. the ca reactor is shouldering the entire ca/alk load atm. the ph has dropped to the 7.9 range (from 8.25-8.35 with kalk) and i'm trying to decide if kalk is worth the hassle for me. corals are still growing at a good clip but perhaps not as fast as with the kalk. hard to tell.
i have a melanarus wrasse, niger trigger and yellow tang in the 58 (frag tank) that i may move to the display sometime soon. unless i find something i absolutely HAVE to have, i'm pretty much done with fish. the powder blue eats out of my hand now which is fun.
kinda just cruisin along. growin
sps aquaria
New member
looks great
PSU REEFER
New member
Updates?
reeftanknewbie
New member
Man I hope he keeps this thread going. I love this setup
hello again..
thought i'd close this thread out with some thoughts on my successes and failures over the last 5yrs with this build.
first the wins..
the fishroom was awesome. you all are familiar with the reasons why. i enjoyed them immensely. maintaining a system of this size without it would have been rediculous.
the large system size and the ability to add/remove subsystems at will was a lot of fun. plugging in acclimation, quarantine, seagrass, refugium systems let me play with a bunch of different systems and observe their effects on the main display. i learned a lot.
having the space to let coral colonies grow to basketball size and beyond was a lot of fun as well. i intentionally went for fewer/larger colonies and i still underestimated how overcrowded it would get after the first couple of years.
the second and third year of the tank's life were spectacular in my eyes. i had a gorgeous system right next to our dining room table and it was enjoyed by many friends and family. my first large, successful reef aquarium.
the failures..
the tank design was horrible. the dry boxes that i'd incorporated to allow the vortechs a mounting surface swallowed more fish than i want to remember. i tried several solutions to block them off but none worked all that well and still afforded the air flow needed to keep the vortechs cool enough. nor did it protect them from splashes and i ended up going through several. there are several more intelligent solutions available..
the eurobracing and 1.25" thick acrylic proved to be insufficient and eventually all four corners of the bracing failed. clearly, cross bracing would have been a good idea as i ended up with a canopy anyway.
speaking of which, i never came up with a canopy design that made in tank access convenient enough. this was a huge contributor to me becoming lazy about in tank maintenance and i was way too slow to remove coraline, trim overgrowth, etc.. which is seriously bad news for..
an acrylic tank! i don't see ever owning one again as a display. wasn't 'horrible' but combined with the failure above, it just became too discouraging to watch the scratches accumulate. it's really difficult to be super careful about scraping coraline off of that much acrylic that's that difficult to access.
mushrooms. i was so careful about not letting any pests in the tank. quarantined ALL my liverock, fish, frags, etc.. and in the end, it was mushrooms that did the tank in. over a period of a couple of months, they spread through the tank like the plague killing everything they touched. the mushrooms engulfed or stung to death nearly every coral in the system. i tried to fend them off for a while but gave up completely when the integrity of the tank was so clearly failing.
i've pretty much been running the system as a fowlr for the last 1.5yrs though i do have some digitata, euphyllia, a squamosa and 43,234,543 mushrooms that are still going strong.
the new build..
my wife and i have discussed the teardown for a while now and we've decided we'd like to keep the fish that remain (12) so we're setting up a new 144g reef in my office. i'm anxious to get my feet wet again and play with some new equipment and strategies.
happy to answer any questions and thanks for all the encouragement and support along the way. this build was quite a ride
thought i'd close this thread out with some thoughts on my successes and failures over the last 5yrs with this build.
first the wins..
the fishroom was awesome. you all are familiar with the reasons why. i enjoyed them immensely. maintaining a system of this size without it would have been rediculous.
the large system size and the ability to add/remove subsystems at will was a lot of fun. plugging in acclimation, quarantine, seagrass, refugium systems let me play with a bunch of different systems and observe their effects on the main display. i learned a lot.
having the space to let coral colonies grow to basketball size and beyond was a lot of fun as well. i intentionally went for fewer/larger colonies and i still underestimated how overcrowded it would get after the first couple of years.
the second and third year of the tank's life were spectacular in my eyes. i had a gorgeous system right next to our dining room table and it was enjoyed by many friends and family. my first large, successful reef aquarium.
the failures..
the tank design was horrible. the dry boxes that i'd incorporated to allow the vortechs a mounting surface swallowed more fish than i want to remember. i tried several solutions to block them off but none worked all that well and still afforded the air flow needed to keep the vortechs cool enough. nor did it protect them from splashes and i ended up going through several. there are several more intelligent solutions available..
the eurobracing and 1.25" thick acrylic proved to be insufficient and eventually all four corners of the bracing failed. clearly, cross bracing would have been a good idea as i ended up with a canopy anyway.
speaking of which, i never came up with a canopy design that made in tank access convenient enough. this was a huge contributor to me becoming lazy about in tank maintenance and i was way too slow to remove coraline, trim overgrowth, etc.. which is seriously bad news for..
an acrylic tank! i don't see ever owning one again as a display. wasn't 'horrible' but combined with the failure above, it just became too discouraging to watch the scratches accumulate. it's really difficult to be super careful about scraping coraline off of that much acrylic that's that difficult to access.
mushrooms. i was so careful about not letting any pests in the tank. quarantined ALL my liverock, fish, frags, etc.. and in the end, it was mushrooms that did the tank in. over a period of a couple of months, they spread through the tank like the plague killing everything they touched. the mushrooms engulfed or stung to death nearly every coral in the system. i tried to fend them off for a while but gave up completely when the integrity of the tank was so clearly failing.
i've pretty much been running the system as a fowlr for the last 1.5yrs though i do have some digitata, euphyllia, a squamosa and 43,234,543 mushrooms that are still going strong.
the new build..
my wife and i have discussed the teardown for a while now and we've decided we'd like to keep the fish that remain (12) so we're setting up a new 144g reef in my office. i'm anxious to get my feet wet again and play with some new equipment and strategies.
happy to answer any questions and thanks for all the encouragement and support along the way. this build was quite a ride
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