Travis and Jessica's 400G Build

I think we all hear you olddude on that one! Which is hard to imagine with how beautiful your tank is.

At least it looks like a positive outcome here. The tank even got bigger! Those are pretty close to the dimensions I'd love to have someday.

One thing on those plans though. Why don't they make the internal overflow just a box at the top instead of having it take up a full 6" of your tank?
 
Not sure if you have already but any chance you could explain your QT process? Thanks in advance.

Fairly simple really. First thing's first, when we got the fish via FedEx we made sure our qt tank water matched the salinity of the bag water they were shipped in (1.018 iirc). We poked a pinhole in the bottom of one bag to check salinity so we didn't have to open the bag. This allowed us to get the fish out of the bags and dump them right into the qt tanks without having to open up the bag and let the air turn the waste/crap in the bag water over to toxic ammonia (only takes about 30 minutes of air exposure for that ammonia reaction to take place). Then we just treat with cupramine (seachem copper) for 28 days. And after that they go through 2 rounds of prazi pro for 5 days at a time.

We would have done 1 round of prazi in the beginning and 1 round after the cupramine treatment but the achilles had ick so bad that we had to go straight to the cupramine. So fairly simple methods medication wise.

Also for feeding in QT we feed twice a day. Nori, omega mini algae pellets, and hiakari algae pellets in the morning. The pellets are soaked directly in selcon no water added. I throw a mix of the pellets in a cup and tip it so they all go into one area, and then drop the selcon right on top of the pellets so the pellets soak it up directly (this way I KNOW the fish are getting a good amount of selcon). And at night we just feed them the hiakari algae pellets. Everyone of the fish seem to be getting FAT :lolspin:

I'm glad to hear that things are being made right! I don't think you will have a problem with the new design. It sounds like they are doing everything I said that should have been done :D Expect it to be at least 400 pounds more than your last one!

I actually sent Ian at AGE a copy of your previous post to get this whole ball rolling ;)

I'm not going to lie, I have no idea how we are going to lift this one! Going to need some extra guys for sure.

Just a thought as I have been down this path with such a large tank. I would let them make the stand to match and then have your carpenter put false cabinetry around the stand. It will give you more room inside and will be very easy to level. It also insures your tank in the event of issues down the road...they made the matching stand.

You can also make a pan at the bottom to capture any possible spillage in the stand and protect your floors.

Since this is on the first floor with a basement underneath, we decided against a metal stand. You have only a few adjustable feet locations putting all that weight down to the plywood floor. With the wood stand all the weight it distributed along the whole length of the stand, the lower frame basically becomes one giant foot IMO. If this was located on concrete it would be metal stand all the way.

We also sent your previous post about the 1/2" vs 3/4" to AGE, to help with the decision making process :thumbsup:

Very sorry to read about your tank troubles. Sometimes it seems like this hobby is often an exercise in frustration rather than the hours of peaceful tranquility it is supposed to be. Good luck with the tank.

Couldn't have said it better myself. We are getting very good at practicing self control over here. I have realized going negative only leads to negative outcomes, so its time to stay positive. Thanks!

I think we all hear you olddude on that one! Which is hard to imagine with how beautiful your tank is.

At least it looks like a positive outcome here. The tank even got bigger! Those are pretty close to the dimensions I'd love to have someday.

One thing on those plans though. Why don't they make the internal overflow just a box at the top instead of having it take up a full 6" of your tank?

The internal overflow was our choice. I just don't like the look of long boxes inside a tank giving the shadow effect to the lower back wall under the box. It makes for poor coral placement anywhere under it and also turns into an obstacle when trying to clean down there. IMO it looks cleaner to have a nice flat back wall. Since the tank is going to be 42" wide instead of 36" like the first design, we really shouldn't loose too much, if any space.

Plus I wouldn't enjoy getting asked the question "is the tank 3/4's full?", about a million times like D2mini does... :lol::lmao::p
 
Well that would explain it. I actually see that shadow you speak of on my tank right now. Funny it never bothered me! Lol
 
Oh it still doesn't bother me. I still like the additional real estate. Especially in a 90 gallon tank. Just funny I had never even noticed it before.
 
Ok good! You had me feeling a little bad for a second LOL... With boxes that are short it doesn't seem to bother me as much either, its those long overflow boxes that go from one end of the tank to the other that I just can't seem to get used to. I remember we had a 55g with an internal overflow box that worked just fine and didn't to bother me at all, but it was around 10-12" wide. When they are smaller they are much easier to work/clean around I think.
 
Thanks a lot for the info on your QT routine. I've been looking at getting a Achilles and powder blue tang and want to make sure I do things properly.
 
Thanks a lot for the info on your QT routine. I've been looking at getting a Achilles and powder blue tang and want to make sure I do things properly.

No problem!

One other thing I forgot to mention. Before we started the cupramine we waited a few days to get everyone eating and made sure they were eating. Also all we use on the qt for filtration is a aquaclear hob filter and a hydor 750gph powerhead for flow. Simple stuff. Make sure and pick up a seachem ammonia alert badge also, super easy to tell if your having any ammonia spikes with those.
 
Oh I have thicker skin than that! I don't think it detracts from my tank at all!
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Thank you. I made the overflow box as small as possible. The drawback is if I need to work on a bulkhead or something I have to take the box apart. You can see the shadow in the photo though! Lol. It doesn't block the light on any of the rock high up though.

I'll stop hijacking your thread though now. Your build is what everyone is really here for!
 
Oh you built that yourself? Nice work! The placement up high helps big time with your box IMO. The higher they are the easier they are to work around and less light gets blocked.

Hey no worries! We are all here to talk about reef tanks :)
 
Yeah I don't remember who I stole the I stole the idea from but I'm happy with how it turned out.
Drilled the tank and everything (something I would never attempt with a tank the size you're building.)

I do love the design phase of setting up a tank though!
 
Materials for the new build showed up at AGE. We signed off on the CAD drawing and AGE is going to start construction of the new tank asap. Shouldn't be too long now. :fish2:
 
So this has probably been covered already but the thread is a bit long. What type of reef are you planning on doing? SPS dominant or mixed?
 
So this has probably been covered already but the thread is a bit long. What type of reef are you planning on doing? SPS dominant or mixed?

Well at the moment it will be Rainbow Acan dominated from what I can tell, that's because we have a ton of them. I'm guessing around 30-40 colonies/6+ polyp frags :crazy1: :lmao:. If I had to guess, I would say it will slowly turn into an SPS dominate aquascape though. Momma really likes colorful SPS.

We also have a good variety of gem favias like anti-venom, darth maul, candy corn, war n peace, iron man etc., so there will be quite a bit of variety mixed in. Haven't decided if we are going to put any of our zoas and palys in the display either, they just grow so fast and take over the aquascape so quickly that they may have to be confined to the frag tank. We may have a few nice chalices mixed in too, but we haven't really decided/talked about coral stocking too much yet. Unfortunately we slowly lost all but one of our chalices in the two 100g fish and coral holding tanks (return pump over to the 2nd 100g had the impeller jam up and for some reason I just didn't notice it for WAY too long) :headwally:, while all of our SPS did fine except for 4 of them and they were all located in that 2nd 100g. So we may just keep the one big chalice we have and move forward, to SPS land. Chalices are just so sensitive to parameter swings that its hard to justify the $$ people are charging. Its seems like they can be fine one day, and melting away the next. Chalices would rank as the #1 hardest coral to keep in my book.

If I can find time I will take a few photos of some gem corals down in the holding tanks for everyone. I am sure it would help to add a little eye candy to this thread.
 
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