120 gallon heading toward SPS

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

I know its not as fun as some of the other threads that start with an empty tank, but over the coming who knows how long, I will be trying to transition from a predominantly softies tank into a predominantly SPS tank with LPS and zoas. The transition actually began in the beginning of the year but is a slow process as I need to find buyers for large pieces of rocks covered in mushrooms and zoas.

This tank was born from my 90 gallon tank which had been started in 2004 under PC lights. Those lights were upgraded to 2x250 watt PFO DE MH lights running phoenix 14k from 2005 until 2015 when I found a deal on a 120 and decided it was time to upgrade.

Since the upgrade, I started with a reefbreeders photon 48 which has since been upgraded to 2x radion g2 pros and 2x54w t5 ho

I will start this off with some pictures I still have on my computer from my upgrade from the 90 to the 120

I hope you enjoy it!

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

Lets see if i can figure pictures out on this site.

So the tank I had purchased for the upgrade was used and came with a tall custom made wood stand, and a 29g glass tank with baffles for the sump.

Here's the equipment littering the floors as I set up and modified the stand.

I added a partial back wall to mount reactors and such to. I never ended up painting and sealing it as it is not structural in any way, and its can't be seen from the outside.

Mounted up the 2 BRS reactors with an attempt at a manifold which turned out to be a very poor decision because of how unflexible the tubing was for the reactors and because of their location. So that was quickly changed out (thank god for union fittings)

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

So water finally enters the tank on 6/11/15 and everything is moved over from the 90 to the 120.

I kept the few small fish i had left in the 90 gallon into a 10 gallon for a few days just to be sure the biologic system was back up to 100% being that i trashed all my old sand. The rocks were still all the same though. I used 2 bottles of bio spira in the tank and let it sit about 2 days before putting the fish into the tank.

Here's the tank the day after the move then things had cleared out a bit. Had a friend drop off a new anemone which had split and he didnt have any room for a second one.

Full shot... You will never imagine exactly how heavy a coral like that toadstool weighs when you get it out of the water and need to lift it over your head.

Left side

Right side, I decided to take 3 of the larger pieces of rock I had and set up an arch. Change of pace from the usual rock mound look that I tend to like.

This is looking in from the right side pane. You can note the white blob. that's the remains of one of the rocks I had to cut the toadstool off of during the transfer because over the years he had decided to attach to 4 different rocks.

Top down (wasnt smart enough to turn the pumps off at the time)

Another left side

Shot looking in from the left side pane

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

Got the fish into the tank

Trying to solve an issue on water splashing out of the corner over flow and leaving salt spray on the wall

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

Upgraded my powerheads to something a little more controllable. Also picked up some new fish (wrasses) and was introduced to LPS and SPS corals, you can see some littering the sand as well as having introduced a frag rack... *this was the beginning of the end*. Also you can see the toadstool just keeps growing. This picture was taken on October 6, 2015.

chromis eggs, the six line wrasse rather enjoyed picking these off the glass one by one in between being chashed away by the dominant female chromis.

As I got more and more into SPS, I began learning about chemical warfare and how leather corals were pretty much king at that game. So it had to go. But to make up for that, I decided to buy some more SPS coral and because of that decided to re-purpose an old magfloat.

Reefiness · Nov 18, 2016

Winter came along and with that crisp winter air came a Petco dollar per gallon sale... whoops

Putting some water in this tank now

I decided to run the tanks off the same sump to allow easy transfer of frags between tanks when i eventually was able to have SPS colonies in the DT.

HOB Overflow on one side with the return coming in on the far side. I kept the overflow as close to the sump as I could to allow the least amount of horizontal tubing

plumbing heading into the stand

return flow tee off

stretched the flex tube to dump water heading to the sump right into the outlet of the skimmer

build a frag stand, and put some rock in the frag tank with the idea of getting it alive that way I can replace rocks I end up selling from the DT.

Side by Side

I wanted the frag tank to be low to allow easy viewing from the top and easy access in and out of the tank. Unfortunately it still ended up way higher than I had wanted it to be because the stand from the DT is just so tall and I wanted to mostly cover the opening in the side of the stand from where the right access door used to be.

The top of the frag tank comes up to 58 inches. I would have loved it to sit right at around 50 inches.

Reefiness · Nov 24, 2016

Here are just some samples of corals in my tank I was able to find in my file. I try taking top down pics every so often to compare growth and color.

Reefiness · Nov 24, 2016

Recently purchased a macro lens which I connected to an old canon DSLR. I cant figure out what im doing wrong. Here is the best picture I was able to get.

And heres some more of the lesser quality ones.

manuel732 · Nov 27, 2016

Your tank is alsome

Reefiness · Nov 29, 2016

manuel732 said:
Your tank is alsome

Thanks!

Reefiness · Dec 1, 2016

Built a hood to put unto of the 120. Also found a nice picture taken with my camera top down in the frag tank.

Reefiness · May 9, 2017

I got myself an avast top down picture taking thing since my last post here long ago. Here come some more pics once I reformat them a bit smaller. If anyone has any clue how to make a folder full of images smaller at the same time, please share. Right now i open them all in paint and reduce to 20% of the original size, and its a painstakingly long process.

Reefiness · May 9, 2017

Reefiness · May 9, 2017

Reefiness · May 9, 2017

Here are the 2 gems of my collection now living happily in a zenreef shroom box

This is a red cap I'm actually in the process of selling, which turns out the picture came out incredibly for. Unfortunately my tank sits on a high stand and I can only appreciate the white bottom of this piece hence the reason I didnt know it was so nice.