The inwall 380 starfire reborn

[Sparkss]

here is where it stands now.. with all but 3 of the large ones (and none of the smaller ones) in the tank.

It is cloudy from all of the smutz that I couldn't get off of the rocks (unless I wanted to break out the big pressure washer and chance breaking the rocks) and darker because I don't have the lights hooked up (I am working a little on the lighting to add from VHOs to it). There were lots of little crab pieces parts that came floating out of the rock.. this puppy is going have a pretty big cycle hit.. and likely sooner than later. I still have 50+ lbs of live rock in there already for seeding and I will add another half gallon of aged live sand from our curren tank either tonight or tomorrow morning (after everything has settled down). I will probably just put the rest of the rock in so that they can get "the nasty" out of the way then focus on designing the aquascaping, after it all settles down. It's not like I don't have enough other stuff to keep me occupied now.. adding VHOs for lengthening the viewing times (for us humans) without overly lengthening our electric bill, planning out the two new sumps and getting the racks for them built, finishing up the trim and getting a door installed (which also includes major paint touch up on that wall).

 

[Sparkss]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9024279#post9024279 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
I wish I had some that large!

Hehehe, yea, they aren't small . They aren't that hard to come by either... www.marcorocks.com. The owner, Marc, is great to work with. Started the process the first of last week, finalized the order the end of last week and put the rocks into our tank today... not too bad when you consider the coast to coast action that had to take place. And I had tracking the entire way, even though I had it come freight. It was not scheduled for pick up until next Monday, but I saw on the tracking that it arrived in CA yesterday afternoon and up to West Sac last night, so I called and went and picked it up today .

I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for good, quality base rock for their tank (and don't like buying sight unseen from these online vendors, and/or don't like buying that solid, land quarried rock that some sell as base rock.) As you can see from the pictures, this stuff is majorly pourous

 

[TOURKID]

i had 2 rocks as big as yours in my 50 pound order. i smashed em up with a hammer. here was my end result. remember, this is 90 gallons with only 50 pounds of rocks. super light!!!

 

[jnarowe]

very very nice, and may I make one recommendation? Don't drop them in the tank!! :lol:

 

[Sparkss]

We had a bit more than a 50# order

Nice aquascaping , very open, that is more or less what we are shooting for, which will likely mean a couple of our local reefers will be able to score some nice rock

 

[zemuron114]

looking nice Tom! I bet your glad you went with mark now! those are some sweet pieces

 

[joshuasamuels]

Just ordered some base rock from marc...those look awesome. I wasn't sure how they'd look in a more modest sized tank until I saw the pics from Tourkid. Now I can't wait to make myself a nice cave....

 

[Bax]

Wow that's some awesome looking base rock!

 

[Sparkss]

Well, woke up this morning to an overflowing skimmer and a tank full of green water.. pretty much expected, just not this fast . I'll bet the pods are having a smorgasborg field day.... I definitely don't need to dose any more phytofeast for a while... must have been some left over from the dose I did over a week ago.. doesn't take much . So, if it turned to green water overnight, that prtty much means that the tank had already cycled, with the little bit of rock and sand that I put in a couple of weeks ago, doesn't it ? Definitely not enough to support the bioload of moving all of our livestock over, but at least it had something established. Either way I will be adding more LS today from our currect tank, just for good measure .

I thought and thought and am still not sure how I am going to aquascape this. The biggest challenge is that the starfire makes everything look so close to the front of the glass, so there is no real sense of depth. Looking from the front the tank looks crowded right now (but then again I did just pile everything in yesterday, so crowded is what it is ), but if you look down from the top it is rather "open", with lots of space to the front and back. I think we will end up moving the rock to the back and sides, more so than I did initially, and see how things look after that. As I was placing some of those rocks in I had the thought of all of those threads about building rock pillars... when I stood most of these up they were their own pillars, reaching above 3/4 of the way to the top of the tank.

Well, today wil likely be taken up with the paint, trim and maybe even door, I don't have any plans to touch the rocks/tank so far... I think I will just let it settle in and see what transpires .

If I have time I will finish up adding the VHOs to the lighting rack, although running any lights right now is not in my plan (outside of moving the LS over, which is a small, quick task).. the green water gets plenty of spill over light from our fuge and propr tanks to feed it's light need... more than maybe I would like

 

[GreshamH]

Tom if your worried about the "lack of depth" sensation, put some actinics on the very back area of your tank, and align you MH as so they don't hit that area as much. We used to use that trick in the LFS I worked at ages ago.

FWIW< I highly doubt that was only Phyto-Feast that was pulled out :lol: But your right though, there is no need to feed while cycling. You get enough blooms from the process alone to make any copepods happy

 

[Sparkss]

I was just surprised to see such a large bloom so soon after adding the rock. It was so thick at first that I could not see the back wall of the tank clearly (if at all). But it is slowly clearing.. in a couple of days it should clear up. Do you think it is OK to add some more pods ? (I kept one bottle of tiger pods out for after the rock went in ). I just don't know if they would be affected by the spikes in ammonia, nitrites, etc while it cycles. Even though I am trying to minimize those spikes, I know that some will happen.

Thanks

 

[zemuron114]

Tom, whats the fish list going to be? So many options.. hehe

 

[GreshamH]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9030806#post9030806 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sparkss
I was just surprised to see such a large bloom so soon after adding the rock. It was so thick at first that I could not see the back wall of the tank clearly (if at all). But it is slowly clearing.. in a couple of days it should clear up. Do you think it is OK to add some more pods ? (I kept one bottle of tiger pods out for after the rock went in ). I just don't know if they would be affected by the spikes in ammonia, nitrites, etc while it cycles. Even though I am trying to minimize those spikes, I know that some will happen.

Thanks

If you saw what some upper splash pools looked like (ie. 90 degress, with PILES of bird poo and other decompossing organic matter, etc) where these guys are found, you wouldn't be worried with the minor bloom your seeing No worries, add away

 

[Sparkss]

DJ
No stock list yet, although there are obviously a few fish/inverts in my head that we would like, but nothing concrete yet. As you said, so many choices . We are working on getting a mate for our mandarin, other than that I am not sure about any fish additions for a while until we get things all settled in (after the cycles are completed and we move our current livestock over, I mean). Other than that there are a few wrasses (would like to repalce the ones we lost during the "drain incident/tank crash" in our current tank), some tangs (really liking the orange shoulder tangs) to go along with our current sailfin and purple tangs. Then maybe a tomini or kole (some sort of a bristletooth). I still need to do some more reading on the various tangs, hostility levels, compatibility with other fish, and what not. We would like some sort of a schooling fish, especially with the size of this tank, but that is still up in the air. Once we get closer to time to actually stock, then we will start really focusing on our options. Right now it seems to darned far away that I don't want to lose focus on the tasks at hand still to be completed. And I don't want to get rushed on getting everything set up because I get a wild hair about wanting a specific fish (which has happened before ).

Gresh
The tank has been running for a couple of weeks, with the old base rock from our back yard and plenty of LR and LS from our current tank, so I guess I just didn't expect to see the algae bloom that quickly. I am not really worried, just surprised . All of the rock is added, there are only a few of the smaller pieces that I left out, and those, if we do decide to add them later, shouldn't make any sort of a deiscernable difference in the tank chemistry. At least with the smaller pieces and the rubble, there are alot less places for dead organic matter to be stuck/wedged/hiding, what there is present, is alot easier to wash/spray away .

 

[Sparkss]

Last night I put another gallon and a half of mature tank water and another 1/2 - 1 gallon of LS from our current tank into the new one. I did notice that the bloom is noticably less each day, and the little HOB Remora skimmer needs to be emptied every couple of hours (because I am too cheap to buy a bigger skimmer to put on there.. I already had the remora from our QT tank ). But teh skimmer is only pulling out murky green water, nothing majorly "nasty".

I stopped into PetSmart this morning for some dog essentials and picked up one of those Seachem hang in tank ammonia indicators. Oddly enough it is still showing as "safe", even after being in the tank for a couple of hours. If I really get motivated I will break out the old test kit and check ammonia, trites and trates.

If it clears up a bit more I will try to take some pictures, to give an idea about the rockwork and some of our aquascaping options (or challenges, depending on how you look at it ).

 

[TOURKID]

yep. mine had a diatom bloom that was horendous. came at the 9th day, gone on day 11. now i have lil tufts of green algea. cycling away! I dident think the blooms would be so big either lol

 

[zemuron114]

Tom, think about anthias. They actually school Bartletts are my favorites and the hardiest anthias you can get!

slow and steady makes a perfect tank no need to rush!

 

[Sparkss]

Tourkid
It is not that the blooms are big, I just didn't expect it this soon after putting the rock in. That was basically 12 hours after the rock hitting the water. It is alot clearer now though, and oddly enough no traces of ammonia (that the little Seachem "tag" is reporting).

DJ
Anthias are colorful and flashy and may be the way we go for a schooling fish. One thing I was reading about was that some species school near the bottom (like rainford gobies) and some near the top (like chromis) and then others more towards the center of the water column (I guess like anthias ?). So the bigger decision is do we choose which "region" to populate with the schooling fish ? Or do we populate each region with a different species.

Our sump and skimmer setup will allow us to stock almost any number of fish, but the biggest concern is what happens during a power outage, or other even where the sumps and skimmer are not doing their jobs. That is just asking for a tank crash. So although we can (and would like to) stock heavy, we will probably hit the high water mark for # of fish for a tank our size then go one or two over (if I know myself ). But not too many over, if we can help it, for the reasons listed above.

And yea, slow and steady at this point. I have mapped out a month+ long migration plan that can't even start until the tank finishes cycling, or at least gets close.

In a nutshell, the new sumps are going to go where the old sump and prop tank are currently. And I want to build a wall there as part of the fish room segregation from the rest of the garage. That cannot even start until I tear down the prop tank. That cannot happen until the main tank is ready for us to move all of the livestock (corals, clams, shrimp, snails and 2 fish) from the prop tank to the main tank. That won't happen until I tie the new tank in with the existing sump/skimmer, etc. *sigh* and so on.... needless to say there are alot of "baby" steps leading up to the tearing down of the old tank and cutting over to the new sumps and skimmer. That event will be a seriously long weekend, to be sure, and it is several weeks off, at least.

 

[Sparkss]

Well, finished insultaing the garage door today (ran out of foam yesterday ). and put the front access door up. Here is a picture of the wall, patched and painted, with the trim up and the unpainted door. I will be painting it with the white 2 part epoxy paint, but am waiting as I am trying to decide if I want to route an edge wround the bottom and/or sides, to add some "flair" to the otherwise plain door. If I do go ahead with putting an edge on it (once I decide on the edge itself and make sure I have the router bit ) then afterwards I will paint it. Once painted I have weather stripping for the bottom edge, to hopefully eliminate light seepage from the MHs. And I also will be attaching some 3/4" foam to the back of the door, cut to fit the actual opening, This will hopefully help minimize any temperature and noise transfer through the door. With the piece I have wedged in there now there is no noticable noise or temperature bleed through, so I hope to maintain that once the door is permanent in place.

You can also see a little bit how the rocks fill it up (since we have not done any aquascaping yet) and how the water clarity is currently.

As I noted in a previous post, I am still undecided if the trim is too thin or not, but that is a really subjective question. We are still contemplating that one... but until I get the door painted (and possibly routed) it will be hard to tell. For now it is good enough, especially since we only have about $35 invested in all of it, which is less than 10% of the materials quotes we got for a professional door and trim (then add shipping and installation on top of that). So all things considered, I am not too terribly upset with how it has turned out so far.

Plus that just means more money later for fish and corals !!!

EDIT : The tank water level is about an inch below the overflows. I won't top it off until we are ready to start water flowing through it into the sump

 

[strittmatter]

very nice. Man those are some big rocks!!!

I personally think the trim is a littile thins. But if it was me I would just leave it. Once the tank is all up and running no one will ever even know what color the trim is.