Moving day !

Andy Bliss · Dec 14, 2019

So, by a stroke of luck I happened to see a tank advertised for sale and when I turned up to view it just had to snap it up, an Aqua One, Aqua Reef, 400 litre complete with aluminium box frame stand and sump for just £20 !!
Having decided to keep it as an upgrade, I cleaned it up and made a custom rockscape in an attempt to try and produce something really neat like I’ve seen on here and YouTube.

Today was the day to move everything from the old tank to new so here is the before and after, the after is still a little cloudy so i will add another photo tomorrow when it’s cleared up.

Let me know what you all think?

OLD.

NEW.

Daddy-o · Dec 14, 2019

Old shows nothing and new is too blue/dark to see much.
Cheers! Mark

Andy Bliss · Dec 15, 2019

Ok, let’s try this again

Old.

New.

Hope that’s a little better, it was a lng day yesterday !

Katrina71 · Dec 15, 2019

Nice scape!!

Andy Bliss · Dec 15, 2019

Katrina71 said:
Nice scape!!

Thanks, took a couple of days and a couple of packs of glue sticks and then it was too hard to move so mounted it on a sheet of glass, think the live rock (dark) needs a little adjustment but all in all I’m pleased how it’s turned out!

Braves Fan · Dec 15, 2019

Braves Fan · Dec 15, 2019

Braves Fan · Dec 15, 2019

Vlad990 · Dec 15, 2019

I agree with braves about flow, before I had to completely restart my tank after a cyano bloom took out my 150 I had more of a pile style setup and I could NEVER get flow through the scape and it always looked awful with hair algae. Every weekend I was in there scraping it off. But it’s a good looking start!

here’s my new scape. I’ve got all my rock secured together but everywhere there’s joints are also gaps and swimthrus and the top is only half closed off. I’m still in the process of getting it back up and running and have to make a build thread

Andy Bliss · Dec 15, 2019

Braves Fan said:
Congrats on the tank upgrade

I know Katrina71 likes the scape ,,, me ,, not so much ,, I would work on it a bit more I am not good doing scapes ,, I am so bad at it I bought a already made ,, man made scape from Carib Sea ,, they did a awesome job with it lol ,, but I know what works good in a tank so I have a few suggestions for you ,,

What I like with your scape ,, the whole middle section ,, what I don't like ,, everything to the right and left of the middle section ,, what you don't want is all that rock piled up against the glass ,, you want to have a buffer zone between the side glass and the start of your scape ,, you don't really want to have your scape sitting up against your back glass either ,, am not saying yours is, I can't really tell in the picture ,,,

What you are trying to achieve is good flow around your scape and as much as you can ,, thru your scape ,, what you are going to get with what you have is ,, a bunch of gunk building up on the sides of your tank that you can't get out ,, your side glass is going to be hard to keep clean because you can only get so close to the rock to keep it clean ,,

How to fix it the middle section ,, the bottom layer of rock needs to be brought forward towards the front glass ,, try to keep the overall look of the middle section .. use some of the rock you have on the sides up against the glass to support the upper layers of rock in the middle section ,, try to get a layered look to the scape ,, you can kinda step the corals down your scape ,, the lower you go down your scape are the less light loving corals ,,

I used to think ,, more rock in the scape ment more places to mount corals ,, took me a long time to over come this way of thinking ,, I never did really ,,, thats why I bought a man made scape

Take another shot at it

Hey Braves &Vlad,

As per my previous reply to Katrina71, the center scape is fixed together and is the part I am really pleased with, the dark rock is the live rock from my old tank and is currently there for the maturity of the water (am hoping to get away with having to re-cycle it all over).
The fixed is more or less central both side to side and front to back and the live is piled up at the moment, as I said I intend to work on this over a period of time.

Thanks for your comments, there’s a couple of ideas in there that I may steal but this will be a changing picture over the next couple of months, unfortunately I don’t have the same length as your tank braves (60/72”?) as mine is 48x24x22 but ideally I’d like to get another cave style out of the live rock.

I’ll get some more pictures from some different angles so the positions can be seen with more perspective.

Andy.

Vlad990 · Dec 15, 2019

Understand the space woes Andy lol. My 150 is a tall I’m at 48x24x24

Andy Bliss · Jul 23, 2020

Hello everyone,
I’m sorry there has been no updates for an absolute age now but I had a breakdown at the end of last year (anxiety & depression) and I haven’t really wanted to communicate with anyone during the first dark months, thankfully I am on the mend and waiting to return to work soon.

This tank has been a real challenge and things have not gone to plan but through it all I don’t hesitate to say that it may well have saved my life !
To have something to occupy my time and attention without having to go out was hat times all that kept me sane so I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the system (even though it has fought me at every chance) for pulling me through.

I have included a summary of events (tank related) below to catch everyone up.

the live rock from my old tank did not immediately mature the system and I had a horrendous ammonia spike that wiped out any corals/shrimp I had.

The ammonia spike was predictably followed by a nitrate problem at which time a added a bio reactor to try and alleviate it as well as 25% water changes every 1-2 weeks.

having dealt with the nitrate issue i quickly had a Dino explosion, (low nitrates and no phosphates) I have been struggling with this for nearly 4 months now and finally seem to have broken its back about 4 weeks ago having tried nearly everything.

Everything is looking much healthier now but I now have high nitrates again and green hair algae starting to take hold so have started manual removal and purchased an algae blenny (salarias fasciatus) to help out and will restart water changes (suspended during Dino outbreak).

i will have a look through my iPad and see what pictures I have of any of these stages but will definately take some new pictures tomorrow and post them.

Maybe someone will still be following this thread ???

Andy.