EnLight's 75g reef, transfer + build

[EnLight]

Hey everyone! Some may remember my old 75g thread, but here I am with a new one. You're probably wondering why I got a new tank, especially if it's the same size and nearly the same dimensions. Here's my list:

• Free stand with the tank. I'm now able to have my sump and equipment hidden away instead of in plain view
• Acrylic and rimless, very clean look compared to my old tank
• The stand is taller than my previous one, and gives a better view all around
• Noise. With all of the extra tubing and equipment I needed to reach my old sump, it generated quite a bit of noise. I don't hear anything anymore! No more random vibrating noises all night :D

We'll start with my old tank! Here's my last FTS of it and a shot of my ghetto equipment setup

And now for the transfer! Here's my old tank half drained, I'm going to miss my coralline algae the most :( I've read that I can scrape it off the back of the tank and throw it into my new tank to seed it, so I may try that.

Temporary home for my fish and coral. Not pictured is 4 other smaller buckets holding various coral/rock. Thank you to my LFS for this tub!

Time to switch out the stands and tanks! As you may notice...I suddenly don't have a carpet anymore, at least not all of it. I was taking things apart in the garage and one of the giant trash bins I used to siphon water out of my old tank ended up cracking somehow. That was one wet mess. Thankfully it's just a carpet that is only held down to the ground by double sided sticky tape, and not a permanent carpet. I now have a hardwood floor which I don't mind much either :)

Time to fill her up and start transferring things over!

Temporary scape, but I got everything back in it! No lost corals, and no lost fish :D pretty successful if you ask me!

 

[EnLight]

Hmm..so last night I went to some odd noises, but I didn't think much of it. It sounded like some sort of banging noise. It happened a good number of times. I woke up this morning and put my hand in my water to move some corals and I got shocked! All of my fish were (and are) alive, but the water was giving me a pretty good shock whenever I attempted to put my hand in. I thought it was the powerhead at first because that's the only cord in the tank (until I get a new powerhead) and after reaching my hand in after taking the powerhead out, I get shocked again. Then I remember I had the heater in the built in overflow..and then it clicked what that banging noise was. I quickly unplugged the heater and pulled it out, here's what I found.

Bottom of the heater blown out, and black scarring along the side, inside of the heater missing:

Reached back into the overflow and found the rest of the inside of the heater..pretty badly burnt too.

Here's the two together

Pretty crazy. Im very lucky not to have any real damage! No dead fish, overflow still working as intended, and my house is still intact. definitely freaky though! Aquascaping update coming within the next couple days as I rearrange things a million times until im happy with it :)

 

[EnLight]

Alright, I've reached the point where I can finally start to kick back and relax a bit! Things are stable, all fish and coral still alive, and my aquascape is set up to how I like it! Here's some pics, I'm a bit unsure if I like the shelf rock in the middle right now. It looks a bit unnatural because both the back of the tank is too clean, and my gsp I had on it never encrusted and fell off during the transfer, but I'll probably re-glue it or add some different corals onto the rock eventually.

FTS

Left island (still trying to figure out what I want on the top - any ideas? Was thinking a toadstool)

Right side of the tank:

I think it's time to start focusing on my sandbed and get some corals filled out in there, maybe a nice plate coral or two :)

 

[drstratton]

I'm glad you didn't lose anything when your heater blew out! I had one do that in a tub where I was keeping live rock, snails & crabs until I finished my tank build. It killed everything in there except some bristle worms & Aptaisia.

 

[EnLight]

I'm glad you didn't lose anything when your heater blew out! I had one do that in a tub where I was keeping live rock, snails & crabs until I finished my tank build. It killed everything in there except some bristle worms & Aptaisia.

Ouch, the only things you don't want to live! lol, that's a bummer though. Yeah once I saw the damage to the heater I was surprised everything lived. All of my snails and crabs still seem to be around surprisingly. The shock from the water was pretty strong too! Sorry about your loss, it could always be worse though :)