Ryshark's SPS Peninsula Tank

Thank glaukos, nice avatar. I had an Achilles Tang in my last tank for over 2-years. Very cool fish.

I'm already realizing a few PVC pieces I forgot to buy.....
 
Glad you like it ryshark:)
I love all tangs but these guys have something unique,at least in my own eyes:)
Couldn't agree more with you!

Yeah,i know!
Every sinlge time,i had the same thing happen to me too and i had to go back to the store:)
I hope your's isn't so far away!lol
 
Unfortunately, I won't have an Achilles in this tank because I think they need at least a 6-foot tank. But I may talk myself into a PBT.

Luckily home depot is close to me.
 
Really like the tank and stand, I like when it looks like furniture. Nice build, good luck.
 
I like the whole concept of how it's the first thing you see as you enter the house. Gives it a warm feeling(haha). Like stated above ^^ I also like how it looks like a piece of furniture. Will be following. Keep the posts comming.
 
Tripdad & Its.Evannn, thanks :beer: I can't remember if I said this already or not, but my original plan was to go rimless with maybe a floating canopy, but I'm now glad that my wife said she wanted a full canopy for the furniture look. I actually had to take my canopy back to the manufacture today...which was 146-miles round trip. :headwally: As soon as I got it home I noticed that they didn't leave one side open for the wires and ventilation plus I ordered doors on both sides and they made it with doors on one side only. They are going to fix it for me and I should have it back in about a week.
 
After SEVERAL times going to Home Depot and LFS for more parts, I completed plumbing my tank yesterday. This was my first time plumbing a tank completely on my own and my first time working with PVC for that matter. After giving the PVC glue more than enough time to dry, I decided to test the plumbing for leaks tonight. I thought for sure there would be at least one leak somewhere. Especially considering I decided to use Double Threaded bulkheads. I got the more expensive "Heavy Duty" bulkheads hoping they would give me a better chance of no leaks in the threads below the tank. I did only a partial test, I filled up the overflow until the water drained below and filled up the sump(to test my drain pipes). Then I turned the return pump on and put the water from the sump into the tank (to test my return pipes). Luckily everything is looking dry and I didn't see any leaks! I decided to do the Herbie style drain with a gate valve. The black flex pvc is attached to my emergency drain standpipe. I also used black flexable pvc for the last part of my return before it goes into the bulkhead.
 
The manifold was a good idea, ill have to bookmark this for my upcoming 70 build. I love SPS, so i feel like this tank may be my tank porn once its all ready to go. Those shots on the first post were gorgeous.
 
pmrossetti- Me too, I sure hope it is going to be 1. Reliable 2. Quiet. In that order.

tabasco122- Thank you. I decided that I wanted the manifold to be directly inline with the return and not a separate branch with a cap on the end. My reasoning was the separate branch would lead to more loss in GPH and also the cap may collect a little detritus.

Here is a picture of what I put inside my overflow box. My ovreflow has 2-holes built into either side for the loclines to exit, so I needed to Y off the return inside the box. I wasn't sure what to do, finally after much wasted time with bad ideas, I came up with this. After the Y I put vinyl tubing which went to elbows with barbs and then 3/4" bulkheads then locline out of the overflow box and into the tank on each side of the box.
 
This was not figured into my initial expenses I had planned in my head before the build, but I did pick it up today. It should be more efficient than my old RODI unit.
 
I am SOOOO far behind in this thread. I will update it soon with some pictures I have taken along the way. All is going well, I've got a bunch of sps frags in there now. Thanks for the reminder sahin.
 
Okay, so I'm FINALLY getting around to updating this build and will do my best to keep on top of it going forward. Here is the short, very short version of where I left off...just to get up to speed.

When going to mount my ballasts in the stand I realized that the "skin" that they used to put around the 2"x4" in my stand was so thin, there was no way I could mount anything to it. So I made a few more runs to home depot to get some plywood cut to fit.


Finally after that I did a small fresh water test just enough to make sure my pluming wasn't leaking, maybe about 20-gallons or so. To my surprise, there wasn't anything major so it was time to get saltwater in there and some Live Rock.

for LR I wanted lightweight and porous rock. I was able to find some nice size pieces of premium Indonesian live rock and hand pick them myself, which was actually pretty fun.


I wasn't sure if the rock was cured or not. I started off slow by throwing in fish food and watched for ammonia/nitrite....nothing. So then I chucked in a big 'ol cocktail shrimp and again waited a week or so for ammonia/nitirte...still nothing. At this point I said the heck with it and pulled the shrimp out and got some fish which was a pair of Onyx Clowns. I still to this day have not seen any ammonia/nitrite or even nitrate test above 0 in my tank.



I wanted to test to see if it was coral ready at this point. As much as I wanted to go straight for SPS, I resisted and purchased a Purple/Green Aussie Hammer which was thriving for a couple weeks. At this point a fellow reefer hooked me up with a free piece of Red Dragon (Thanks again!) which was a great way for me to see if I could handle SPS yet. SPS is my main priority for this tank, in fact I may go 100% SPS..... Does anybody want to buy Purple/Green Hammer!?!?!


After the Red Dragon looked like it was doing well for a couple weeks I decided to make a couple purchases. The first 3-were corals w have a long history of being Aquacultured and then the 4th is a RR AOA Majesta. The guy at AOA called in the AOA Avatar, but I saw it on another forum in his vendor section and he called in the RR AOA Majesta there, whatever.



After those pieces did well, I purchased a couple more frags from a local hobbyist, the Sniper sps bubblegum milli and the RR yellow flaming orchard. (Not picture post worthy yet, but they will be someday for sure!)

Then came my favorite purchase yet. I had been eyeballing this piece at Reef Raft USA for a little while. When I saw they were doing a live sale, I knew it would sell online in a second so before the live sale I went back to Reef Raft and picked up the RR Orange Passion. This is BOTH the Smallest and most Expensive frag I have purchased to date.
the original Reef Raft Orange Passion Acro
 
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