jtf74
Well-Known Member
5' X 3'6" Approx. 280 gallons plus 20 gallon sump/refugium- pondliner ply box- running two 300 watt viperspectra- may move these to back and add kessil spot to minimize the middle light glare though its worse in photo than in person.
My little yellow tang needed more space than in my 55 after about a year and a half so rather than make a temporary upgrade, I decided to build a large ply/pondliner tank that would support all the fish I wanted for my ultimate build, which will be a 4’x4’ acrylic lagoon once I’ve remodeled my basement.
My plans are to establish a community of fish before I setup the lagoon tank in a few years so all fish going in are healthy and coexisting peacefully so I can setup without any troubles. That way I don’t have to make big livestock purchases after the big tank purchase.
Using an in tank Jebao and getting about 10 complete water cycles per hour and a RIO pump with about 2 tank cycles per hour plumbed to a DIY wet/dry sump with a bubble magus Curve 5 skimmer which overflows into a deep sand bed chaeto/mangrove refugium that gravity feeds back into the look down.
Stock list: (plus how long I’ve had each fish)
Royal Gramma- 7 years
Gold stripe maroon female- 6 years
Gold Stripe maroon male- 1 year
Yellow tang- 2.5 years
Copperband butterfly- 1 month
Lemon chromis- 6 months
Bicolor angel- 6 months
Hippo tang – 2 weeks in QT
Foxface- to be added
Striped goby- 6 months
Blue Mandarin – to be added
Trio of anthias- maybe in the new acrylic
Flame angel- to be added
Corals:
10 RBTA’s, xenia, star polyp, ricordea, zoas, frogspawn, kenya tree, staghorn
Currently I have it divided while I get my copperband used to hand feeding and give time to establish without the tang harassing. Planning to add the hippo and foxface to the right side with the butterfly and then one morning the yellow tang will wake up to a bunch of new large fish. The yellow has chased the CBB a bit when together for a day when I could observe them but the second day the CBB decided it wasn’t going to run anymore and raised his top fins to fight back so I separated until I can add some more distractions.
I love the way the fish swim around more naturally when there is no glass and more tank width rather than back and forth against the glass on most long and narrow aquariums I've seen. The gramma is rarely upright anymore and spends most of his time swimming sideways against the solid walls. The bicolor has an opening in the grate and visits both sides. The large maroon won't stop tail fanning the sand bed away from her nems.
I feed frozen mysis, frozen omnivore mix, and live black worms.
