My 72 Bowfront Build Revised Thread

jsker

Reefing is all about the adventure
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A little history: I have had a few fresh water tanks and have had 3 salt water setups to date. Is a move tank, considering a setup? The tanks were in different cities 35 gal and a 150 in St. Louis. I had my moving tank, a 75 oceanic. That tank was in Chicago, New York, Boston, Florida. I would get transferred and depending on the situation of finding housing and move time, (load and unload) I would pack my live rock and the hearty live stock(fish) in a cooler and move. It got to the point that I would have the rock and fish in a cooler for a month at a time in a hotel room with a power head and everything survived, even with my cat Samantha in the room

Well I sold the 75 mover about 13 years ago because I had a few things going on and lost interest. Last year in 2014 the bug bit again, but I was going to do this one right. With all the new technology and blogs, it is so much simpler then the stone age of running down to the LFS and asking or heading to library. Yes, this time around is still a discovery process with buying things on the cheap when I should have paid more and got what I wanted and not what I needed. Notice the want and need thing, I am trying to control the want issue.

I started to build my tank stand during Christmas and new years of 2014. The stand, drawers are out of solid Honduran mahogany, fiddle back maple as well as the sides and face work. The case work is Burch ply. I used 7 nails in the hole project very little glue and a lot of screws. The drawers are dovetailed and drawer fronts are mortice & tendon to match my desk in my home office (my me room) the finish is a FDA approved oil varnish. All door and drawers have Blum soft close. All the drawers are functioning file drawers and drawer. The center of the cabinet meant for storage and now electronics, I did not know I could get all of these neat new toys that I can pull up on my network when I built the cabinet. Here is the pictures of the build and design
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Charlie is checking out the cabinet

Called a guy I did a job for and asked if they could make an Absolute black (I wanted black galaxy but you take what you can get when a deal is involved) I catered his wedding and I will leave it at that.) granite top made to match the bowl front of the new 72 tank.
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Charlie really like the cabinet The Other Cat just likes to relax and watch

2/2/15 above the tank has water in it, and the next picture is 2/22/15 scaped also added Lucy and Ricky.
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March I added Yellow Polyps and the Shrooms

The Polyps did not last but thanks to the guys I bought the Polyps from I now have aiptasia

March 2015 added Tyrone (Kole tang and Ethel hippo tang) to the tank, I bought the fish from the same guy I bought the polyps and shrooms from and could not be happier with the quality of fish.
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Not much going on in April except for the really cool thig above the mushrooms (oh yeah that is the aiptasia) but is was cool when I did not know what it was.

April 2015
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Went to Reef a Plooza Orlando, had a great time. Met some really nice venders, it was like they want me to buy more stuff. I did buy a couple of corals and placed them in the tank. Then I discovered the online auction of corals (I am hooked)

May 2015
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June 2015 is a blank but this was a really good baked pasta we had for dinner. Italian sausage, Meatball, Ghoncci, and cavitalli with a red sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese. Added peppermint shrimp to try to kill the aiptasia, but that did not work. Used Aiptasia X and that only made grown more.
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July 2015 not much progress but things are growing. Brought in the enforcer to kill off the aiptasia. Matt (aka matted file fish aka aiptasia killer) Matt is a machine. Within three weeks no noticeable aiptasia and you almost hope they grown so that Matt has something to eat besides Mysis and the homemade food. Matt is a cool fish.
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August 2015

Did I say Coral Auction? It is a really sick thing that happens to a hobbyist, I think it is time to create Coral spending support group were we can get together (oh that is this blog)
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Photo shop of placement
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8/19/15 dropped 3.5 lbs of dry reef rock in upfront to keep things for shifting around with the new
Mp40.
Under the hood 8/21/15 notice the Reef 2 Reef towel.
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My setup

-72 bowl front marine land tank

-CPR Bio pak 2 (I like hang on the backs built my first one and had great success with it, and I have found after time all I need is a protein skimmer and water movement

-Current Orbit Marine LEDs very happy and no heat and no huge canopy with fans on all of the time, but I am think of upgrading to the Pro for the broader spectrum. I do not know yet for the reason I have not found any reviews on them yet.

2 Gyre 130’s. I really like these pumps aka power heads. Looking at getting the new ice cap controls

1 echo tech mp140 for movement in the center of the tank. I also really like this pump/power head

Reeflink control for the Echo Tech mp40 works well, read the reviews and most paned it but if you take your time and follow the instructions no issue.

90 lbs of live reef rock most real reef rock and some real stuff. Back in the day you could get some tanga rock and that would spark up you corline in a month but a group out there messed that up.

2 bags live Hawaiian sand

Make my own food and buy Mysis shrimp from the great white north for feeding

Future:

Apex system for monitoring my system from a far.

Red type corals (at another coral auction) maybe red fan coral.

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jsker

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I have been dealing with a real bad hair algae bloom for the past month and half. I think I have the bloom under control now. I am going to post Sunday an update views.

Corals a cat and food. This is a great thread. My cats love staring at my tank. Heck they even sleep by it. That food made me hungry, looks good.
we have two cats. Charlie is my helper when ever I do anything, and the other cat it just an observer. Thank you for the complement on the thread. After reading many tank build threads on R2R I decided to redo my build thread a month ago. I had the post ready but finally figured out how to post it after using word to edit and setup of the post.
 
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jsker

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Here are some Picture of my new under cabinet slide out drawer. Made from all scrap. Really needed a pull out drawer for all of the product that is starting to accumulate

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jsker

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Here are some pictures of the tank 9 months in. Some of the Corals are starting to grown and the color is starting to come back after fighting high Po4 levels since July with I added some dry rock.

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jsker

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Playing with Camera and photo shop to make the picture look better. I have been running @Aquaforest 1+2+3 for three weeks now and my over all reef look better than it did. Also install the Neptune Apex Gold earlier this week.
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jsker

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Finished my dosing and ATO closet, I am really thinking of building a sump and have a remote sump in the closet.
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jsker

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Switch out my lights from Orbit Marine LED to Hydra 26 HD. Wow what a difference in color, and control. I had decent growth with the Orbit Marine. Let see how the Hydra's do. I also used the kessil goose necks to mount my lights with out to many modifications. I wanted to use the kessil mount for a range of reasons, flexibility, cleaner look, and I can adjust were my light will shine. taking pictures with these light are so much easier. These pictures are without any filter, photo shop, and adjustments to the camera.

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john.m.cole3

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HUGE improvement in color/brightness with the Hydra's. Are those the ones you can program from your phone?
 
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jsker

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Nice Build. Really like the aquascaping!
Thank you. You are the second person today how likes my aquascape. I was down @WWC picking up my hull from the live sale and I was showing one how the lighting and color looks and they comment also on my scape.
 
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jsker

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is a PCshot better or worse than a phone?
There are some plus's and minuses of using the application on both devices. I would rather use my PC to do my adjustments since I have a I pad mini and sight is catching up with my age. It was a lot easier to do the initial setup on my pad then the PC.
 

john.m.cole3

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lol, I thought you were saying you used the camera on your PC to take your FTS. My vision is so bad I didn't even see your pic of your lighting cycle (the pic blended in w/ the white background, and I have low vision aka legally blind, and didn't see a pic there at all! too funny!)
 
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@john.m.cole.3 I used the snip tool in Windows to take a picture of the desk top. I am, let's say taking a two day break from reality and I will learn a better way to post a screen shot.
 

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i love breaks from reality... doesn't happen very often now days as I am a soon to be husband and a father of a 5 year old boy. But, life is grand! My technological skills are lacking at best and may need to bend your ear on these topics in the future. Great tank my friend! I hope I may humbly follow in your presidence in the near future. Keep it coming pal!
 
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@john.m.cole3 ask away, we all learn together. That is so cool to have a young one to mold into a reefer. Congratulations.
 

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It is very pleasing to hear him describe the fish, algae, the fact that corals are animals and not plants, how it's important to not overfeed... He wants to be a part of everything! Smart kid! And you know he is the boss of naming the fish!
 

Aquatic acrobat in your aquarium: Have you ever kept an eel?

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