FTS from middle of summer, hence the fan lol. Temps of the tank would hit 82 degrees with no fan. But with this fan it kept it in the 79-80 degree range. So when I make my permanent canopy I am going to gut the fan and put 1 fan on each side of the tank. That should make it look a lot cleaner and have better flow across the top of the tank so it might even be cooler then.


ORA Red Planet loving the halides! This thing just doesn't stop! I had to cut off 2 mini colonies because it was starting to grow up and over my D-Day piece. lol


RR Pink Floyd progression. It grew 2 new nice branches very quickly.


JFox Flame Acro sprouting some new vertical growth


A little zoa action here, I mostly posted this because my Yasha goby made an appearance. He is never out long enough for me to get a pic of him.

 

This was the pic I wanted to post on the last one of the RR Pink Floyd, not sure why that one posted again. whoops lol


A little more zoa action coming up


Red Hornets


Purple Rains


Utter Chaos and Goochsters

 

Meteor Shower Cyphastrea. This pic doesn't do it justice. The sheer size of this piece is crazy. I'll have to get a better pic of it here soon


JFox My Miami. I got this a couple years ago from a friend who basically thought it was going to die because it was a very tiny 1 eye frag. I didn't think it would last either. I guess it had other plans lol


Turbo21's Rainbow Acans. I guess I have done a good job with these, because Bob has told me he has never seen them so colorful before.


ORA Pearlberry. Silly snail wouldn't get out of the way lol


JFox Flame Acro is def happy! This pic is from maybe a month or so ago.

 

So up to this point it has been all metal halides. The next updates will be after I have added 2 36" ATI Blue+ bulbs which look pretty good IMO. Updated pics to come soon.

 

I forgot to mention that fall of 2014 I had to battle monti eating nudis. It wasn't very serious IMO because they were all isolated to only attacking my pokerstar monti that I had growing on the arch in the middle of the tank. None of my other montis were effected by these little critters. But I still did a bayer dip every other day for 5 weeks to make sure I got them all. I also ripped out the entire arch in my tank and just killing what was left of my pokerstar monti in the process. A small price to pay to get rid of these things. All my other montis to this date are growing and thriving. So I think it is safe to say that they are no longer in the tank. Here is a pic of my tank with the arch and then after I pulled it out


If you zoom in on the left side of the arch you can see where they were starting to eat away at the monti. Its a white little arch on the bottom part of it.


A FTS right after I mounted the T5's and ripped out the arch. Looks pretty nice. But a sad story came from me ripping the arch out. While I was taking it out the lights when off. And apparently my cleaner wrasse that I have had for 9 years must like to hide under the arch after lights out and I didn't know. So needless to say I took the arch out and the next morning I found my cleaner wrasse on the sand dead and with his whole body basically crushed. I was pretty upset with this because I have had him for a while and he ate everything and was a very healthy fish. He even ate algae off the clip with my tangs. I fold up the sheets before I put them on the clip and he would actually swim into the folds and eat the algae from the inside out, it was awesome. I miss that little guy.




Sexy Corals Orange Passion. This thing has been a really slow grower for me. But after I added the t5's I noticed new growth on it pretty quickly. The whole time under metal halides it just encrusted a little bit. Now a couple new branches have sprouted.



Here is a pic my wife took with her cell phone while my daughter and myself enjoy the tank a bit. She loves this tank

 

Front glass shot of the Orange Passion. I wish it would grow up already lol


Tyree Setosa growing great


FEED ME NOM! NOM! NOM!

 

So I added a couple new items a couple weeks ago. They seem like they are settling in quite well


My new clam. I think its a maxima but not sure. Maybe skinz78 can ID it for me? Also my JFox Jack-O-Latern Lepto doing great!


For anyone who knows me that this is a storage addition to the tank. I don't care for shrooms much, if at all. But I a friend of mine wanted me to take it and grow it out and to sell the first frag for him then I get to keep this one. And or course its a jawbreaker shroom



Here is my daughter again looking at the tank. She always wants to come look when the lights come on. I have a step stool next to the tank so I can get in and out and she always uses it to look closely at the tank. Sorry for the green look, my wife took the pic and her phone auto white balanced it to green for some reason. And if you look closely you can see a WWC I survived the 24hr sale t shirt in the reflection of the tank. I wonder who that is? mdbannister lol!

 

Ha ha! I stealth photobombed your thread!

 

You did, I figured you would get your grubby little paws in here somehow hahaha

 

Thanks! Yea I plan on taking more and better pics than I did in the beginning of the build.

 

Thanks man! That's what I was thinking but wanted to make sure.

 

Ok so I just realized that I never posted pics of my sump. Probably because its not fancy or pretty. But it gets the job done haha.


Here is the drain/fuge part of the tank. The filtration consists of 2 200 micron filter socks, dual BRS reactor with Seachem Phosguard and ROX carbon and a 18w Emperor Aquatics UV. The reactor and UV are run off of 2 separate maxi jets. But this will change in the near future. The fuge light is a 15" ReefBrite Reef Tech LED.


Here is the return section of the sump. I put a couple nice size rock from the display when I redid the scape to make the 2 islands a little smaller and have more real estate for across. You can see the sensors for the Tunze ATO and probes for my Apex.


Here is my "fuge" which consists of mostly LPS and softies that I don't want in the display. Some purple tip frogspawn, duncans and some echinata. There is also some Dragons Breath algae so there is some algae in there lol. This is also where I keep my Naked Ocellaris pair. They have been together for a lot of years.

 

So this is the start of something new for me. I've grown tired of frag racks in my display, so enough is enough. I had this 40 breeder laying around for quite some time so I decided to set up a separate frag system.


So I drilled the tank for a drain and return. I am using a 500gph glass-holes overflow box and a 1/2" return. I put the blue glow racks that will be in the tank permanently and a few other racks that I will take with me to frag swaps to display in my shallow frag tank I use for swaps. These black racks fit perfectly into a 5 gallon bucket, so its load them up and unload them when you get there. Easy as pie.


Front view of the new frag tank setup


Started building the stand today but then ran out of screws lol. My daughter was napping so I was unable to finish it. But I will skin it in oak to match the stand for the 180. I used a bunch of 2x4's that i had laying around the garage from other projects haha. I want to try and get this done sometime this week, but with work finding time will be a little tough.


Here is the light that I will be using on the frag system. Galaxy select a watt ballast and LumenMax Elite DE pendant. This is from the first set of lights I had on the tank when I first set it up.


I will be using a Phoenix 14k bulb for this.

 

Just saw that my build was shared on R2R's Facebook page, thanks guys!