No more lurking

[jdogclif]

I lured twin gorilla crabs out of the TBS rock this weekend. I had seen one of them, so I set up a glass with a bit of shrimp on the bottom (held down by some rubble) and tilted it at 45 degrees against the rock where I saw him. In the morning there were two crabs in the glass! Hopefully that is all of them.

 

[EriksOasis]

Welcome! Start a build thread! Tank looks like ya going to be awesome. Any plans on painting the back?

 

[jdogclif]

So I have two closed loops set up in the rock formations. I did it to hopefully reduce the detritus around the rock. I got the ideas from two different sources which I unfortunately can't find now :( One was a beautiful small reef tank I think from Brazil, where you couldn't see any plumbing at all, and the only circulation was a single closed loop outlet pointing straight up. So I decided to try that with two Vectra L1, one in each rock pile. The second idea I borrowed was from a tank that had the rock elevated and closed loop outlets flowing under the rock to keep out detritus. What I did instead is I put all the rock on 3/4" HDPE cutting boards that I got from an online restaurant company. Then I did a single outlet pointing straight down, so it constantly hoses off the cutting board surface. So each of the closed loops has two outlets: one pointing straight up and one pointing straight down.

 

[jdogclif]

Welcome! Start a build thread! Tank looks like ya going to be awesome. Any plans on painting the back?

Yes, I've been trying to decide what to do with it. I was considering doing a shadowbox back, but I have too many projects going on right now, so I am going to try window black out vinyl to see how that looks, so it'll be easy to remove if I decide to change it later. But if that doesn't look good I'll just paint it black :)

 

[nickman]

Off to a great start!

As an in-wall tank owner I would recommend against painting the back of the tank.
Since you dont appear to have access from the front you are going to rely on looking through the back glass on a regular basis to place frags, retrieve corals that fall off the rocks, catch fish, etc. I use a piece of black corrugated plastic from a sign shop held on with velcro and it looks pretty good. Not at pure black as paint would but at least it is removable.

A shadow box sounds like an awesome idea and would definitely be an upgrade to what I'm using while also allowing you to remove it should you need the view.

Excited to see how this turns out!

 

[jdogclif]

That's a good point, I do like looking through the back of the glass. Yes, something removable will be the goal I think.

 

[DSC reef]

Welcome to R2R. Off to a great start

 

[EriksOasis]

As you can tell I didn’t think of that. My picture of a in wall tank would have acces from the front. If I was to make cut outs for cupboard doors or hang a couple cool pictures. I just would want acces from the front as well personally. But my in wall build won’t be for years to come.

 

[jdogclif]

I actually originally planned to have access from the front. I did the math so many times when I was ordering the tank and when we were building the wall, but then I changed the stand design at the last minute and I ended up only having a couple of inches between the top of the tank and wall opening. So far it hasn't been too bad. So far...

 

[hockeyhead019]

Definitely open a build thread! This one looks like it's gonna be awesome :)

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[nickman]

I am still thinking of cutting a couple holes in my wall but the amount of work it will take to make it look nice is holding me back. Until then aquascaping and coral mounting are a pain in the butt.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Nice job!

 

[jdogclif]

Not much to report this week... I have a few more fish in QT, getting ready to add the the blue/green chromis that are already in the display. I'm trying to keep the fish smallish and easy to care for. I have the chromis in the tank already, these guys, then I'll probably do a yellow tang and maybe a blue tang. After things have been going good for about a year I would like to consider Lyretail or Bartlett Anthias and a mandarin. But these guys will do for now!

 

[jdogclif]

I also started dosing the Triton elements this weekend. My Alk is 8 with the Hanna checker. BRS is out of the Core7 so I have 4 tupperwares of the diluted base elements, and I am manually dosing with a measuring cup for now. Super high-tech! Actually I can't decide which dosing pump to go with. I am a low-tech guy by nature, so I don't need wi-fi or fancy features. I have a RKL which I am using just to control the heaters. I'm considering doing the BRS 1.1 ml/min dosers on the RKL. But I haven't decided yet. Any thoughts would be welcome. For now it will just be me and my measuring cup...

 

[jdogclif]

The tank is doing the hair algae thing now, it's been set up for about 2 months so I guess the timing is about right based on what I've read regarding other people's experiences with a new tank. It was all bright green and now it is turning brown so I'm hoping that is a good sign... The refugium is growing ulva super well but the chaeto is slow. I'm not sure if my $10 grow lights are going to cut it...

 

[jdogclif]

About a week ago I added 10 trochus snails. And a tuxedo urchin, which promptly disappeared... I would assume if it died I would see a shell?

 

[Fin]

Great tank for a lurker! :)

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[EriksOasis]

Looking good. Mexican turbo snails will clear that hair algae right up along with emerald crabs. Once the hair algae is gone the chaeto will take off they are competing for nutrients right now. By doing a large water change you could eliminate some of the excess nutrients available and help with eradicating the hair algae.

 

[jdogclif]

I made a black worm keeper. I'm lucky enough to have a LFS that carries them, but I wanted to keep them a little longer to reduce the number of trips to the store. I do a water change every couple of days with tap water and feed an algae tablet every few days. They are doing great, haven't had any die off and it's been running for about one month!