Littlebigreef's 220

[littlebigreef]

So that first group of pics takes us through August of 2024. I let the tank run another few weeks and then I started moving sps over from the trough en mass. I’d accrued a large collection of sticks from friends both near and afar. They ate up nearly an entire bay and many had browned/greened out due to the low par and higher nutrients.

Rather than gluing plugs down I make holders out of epoxy. It’s modular (until the corals grow down) and you can make surface specific shapes - ie slanted bottoms, lips to glue to edges. I settled on the rockwork pretty early on and, using more rocks from the trough, built out an open latticed pile. I also started adding in my chalices.




This brings me to November of 2024. The opportunity came a long to get a golden Angel. I’d always appreciated my buddy’s and it was an Angel I’d wanted but never had the opportunity to own. At this point I’d moved over a Tomini tang and a few gobies but that was all. I went ahead and pulled the trigger.




Thing got a little quiet in December. I was laid off a week before Christmas after 7+ years. I’m not bitter, just an unfortunate casualty of automation + cost cutting moves. It’d turn out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. From December through early spring the tank just cruised along.



By early June the tank had largely filled out.

 

[lubeck]

looks awesome

 

[mfollen]

I bet the golden Angel adds a ton of mystery / intrigue when viewing the tank.

The sticks appear to be shooting off and filling out. looking great!!

 

[littlebigreef]

@mfollen these pics are almost year old!

Picking up where I left off. June of 2025 saw a bunch of changes. A friend gave me his beloved black tang and golden Angel as well as a number of various sps colonies. As the black tang is older I decided to remove the Tomini and purple tangs to make life a bit easier. The golden Angel, when introduced, paired off immediately with my existing one.




By august of 2025 things were filling in pretty well.






While not actively going after sps I happened to grab a few I’d long wanted including home wrecker, Oregon tort, bubble bath unicorn as well as grafted setosa.

I also made the move to add a copperband and a mag fox face (a fish I’d always wanted and never had).



Which brings us to about last November.

 

[littlebigreef]

Had the good fortune to acquire Chicago Discus’ display tank due to their retiring. It’s 8x2x2.5 - so I’m in the 300 club! This will replace the 125 gal in our great room. Looking back at the last update I didn’t even discuss the 125. In short the tank is fine after doing a soft reset on some of the rock work this past spring. I am now, however, looking forward to the future! Anyone happen to know a structural engineer in the western Chicago burbs lol?