Waking up from the nightmare build: the reboot

[LBReefer]

Thanks. I’ve got a 570g (72”L x 36”W x 48” H ) going in around the holidays in a new home build. It will be a nice contrast to see how it looks when I get to control the tank and space design.

This one will look nice because there will be no front access. Just straight drywall, so a very clean look. Client has some sort of entertainment system going into the space to the left. Will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Life support system in basement.

Love it. Although a 48" tall tank seems very daunting to scape and light.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Love it. Although a 48" tall tank seems very daunting to scape and light.

The scape will be pretty sparse, with two vertical features. Lot of negative space (at least until the corals grow out).

I’m going to use AI 64s for the lighting. Plenty of juice to light it up, even down to 4’. I’ll just keep the higher light-demanding corals in the upper zone. Plenty of corals that will appreciate the lower light near the bottom.

The tank in this thread is 38”, and there are plenty of corals on the bottom that are doing great, even with the overall output of the lights on the lower side (I’ll pull up the settings next time I’m there). If you look under the small toadstools in the pic I just posted, you’ll see a jack-o-lantern leptoseris that is growing decently. It is almost completely shaded. It only grows when it’s mostly shaded. Before I put that toadstool there, that lepto never grew, and it had a bleached/burned look on a lot of it (despite being 30” down). Once I shaded it, it took off and the color is awesome.

There is also an elegance on the bottom that has at least doubled in size over the last year. Most people would argue that it needs more light, but if it did, it wouldn’t be growing so much. My strategy is to put corals where I think they’ll be happy and then don’t mess with them.