We had a rough start, the first tank was a used 24x24x18 cube from a LFS but it had a leak and the LFS's suggestion was to just slap some silicone on top of the existing seals and call it a day. My wife and I weren't happy with that answer since we have hard wood floors and didn't want to put them at risk over a $200 tank so we wound up buying a new 24 x 24 x 24 reef ready cube from a different LFS and they happened to also sell a cube sump that would fit perfectly in the stand for about half of the cost of the acrylic cube sump from Trigger Systems that I was eyeing and it happened to be designed for the Reef Octopus 110INT that I'd purchased for the 47 cube. Once we had the tank in hand and plumbed it was time to get get started on aquascaping. My wife and I spent a few hours trying to get the aquascape just right and then we were worn out and went to bed thinking we'd pick it up in the morning. She woke up at 4 am and wanted to get back to work on the aquascape because she was dreaming of stacking rocks and didn't feel like she was getting rest anyways. After another hour or so we had it figured out on the floor:
Then we had to figure out how to move it to the tank and make sure that we stacked it exactly the same way since it had taken us so long to figure out exactly what we wanted, once we got it in the tank it wasn't quite as stable as we'd hoped for so we had to play with it a little and make a few minor adjustments to get it just the way we wanted, but we eventually got to a point where my wife and I were happy. That took a while, but we're pretty happy with how it turned out:
Once the aquascape was completed it was time to start filling the tank. It took a while to make.mix the two batches of salt water in a 40 breeder we picked up while Petco was running their $1/per gallon sale last month. Once we had the tank filled we did something that will probably evoke some controversy, but we started the cycle with some StartSmart and put in a couple of clowns(the one with the spot on it's head is a Gladiator clown according to the LFS and the other is a Picasso):
Then we had to figure out how to move it to the tank and make sure that we stacked it exactly the same way since it had taken us so long to figure out exactly what we wanted, once we got it in the tank it wasn't quite as stable as we'd hoped for so we had to play with it a little and make a few minor adjustments to get it just the way we wanted, but we eventually got to a point where my wife and I were happy. That took a while, but we're pretty happy with how it turned out:
Once the aquascape was completed it was time to start filling the tank. It took a while to make.mix the two batches of salt water in a 40 breeder we picked up while Petco was running their $1/per gallon sale last month. Once we had the tank filled we did something that will probably evoke some controversy, but we started the cycle with some StartSmart and put in a couple of clowns(the one with the spot on it's head is a Gladiator clown according to the LFS and the other is a Picasso):