Black Mammoth

So far....2 buckets of ReefCrystals (160gal). But I haven't filled the sump up. I'll probably be around 2.5 buckets when done. Good thing I did a group buy of ReefCrystals and bought 10 buckets

SWEEEEET!!!! Who is the carrier? As long as it isn't Estes....I think you are OK :D

This is a very good point. I forgot to mention this. Some corals look better under MHs and some look better on T5s. I'm not sure if it is the colors being used or what. For example, I bought some corals (I think from Moga) and when I put them in my tank....the ones that looked awesome in his tank looked OK...a bit washed out and color was a bit different. However, I also got some corals from him that looked so so...but when I put them in my tank they popped out and were very cool looking! I was seeing colors that I wasn't seeing in his tank. Some of it might be husbandry as well, but I suspect a lot had to do with the lighting. Yeah, you won't have the shimmer with T5s, but it didn't bother me. I'm not really familiar with the fixtures since I have a retro kit. Make sure that the fixture you pick has individual reflectors.

Hey there! I haven't been on too much lately. I need to take some pics...the tank is filled with SW, LR and Tunzes. However, it doesn't reach the overflow yet because I'm still plumbing. I've been really really busy lately. The sump is in and 95% plumbed. It should be finished tonight and I can start skimming. I might snap a few pics before I go on vacation. My lights come in tomorrow. I still need to finish building the light rack. So many things to do and not enough time :(

I disagree with zygote on MHs being better, but everyone will have their opinion on this topic. I have T5s on my main tank an a MH on my frag tank. I'm only using MH on the frag tank because I got it for $25 Anyway, both have pros and cons. You can keep the same things with T5s as you can with MHs....at least for tanks under 30". I'm sure you could light your tank with T5s using less watts. On top of that you won't have the same heat issues as you do with the MHs. The short of it is that you can keep the same things under T5s that you can under MHs....not unless you got a really crappy setup. Even at that, you will probably just have to put your clams and SPS up higher. I've kept clams and SPS on the bottom without any problems.

I'm a big fan of ReefGeek as well. I have an order coming Wed for 24 bulbs, test kits, and some power cords. FYI if you order 12+ bulbs you get a 10% discount. For 24+ bulbs you get a 15% discount. And of course you get Free Shipping for spending over a certain dollar amount. I've been using them for awhile and I've always been happy with them. Greg is a good guy and always willing to help.

I had a Magnificent Foxface that would eat the stuff. Sean at F&F suggested some Blue Knuckled Hermit Crabs. I put 5 of those guys in and they destroyed that stuff almost over night. After a week it was completely gone and never came back.

My overall experience with Marine Scene has been pretty good as well. In general, the people that work there are pretty good. Remember, they used to employ people like Sean @ Aquaco and Phil @ eReefScape. I stopped going to them because I found other stores I liked and they are A LOT cheaper than Marine Scene.

I recommend talking to the people working there. I don't think that many of the local stores carry too much inventory. I think that part of the reason is that they probably don't want to have too much $$$ tied up in supplies that they don't sell too much of. Also, they probably can't sell enough to get a big price break like some of the online dealers. However, with that said, I found that some local stores will give you good deals if you ask about something, even if they don't carry it. For example, I got my 90g at Scales when they had a sale. Mr. Coral used to (might still do it) sell tanks at distributor pricing. BRK sells T5 bulbs, plumbing and food for the same price online. Fins & Feathers has a smaller store and doesn't carry too many dry goods, but if you talk to Sean, he can order you anything. I got an A.G.E. tank, IceCap supplies, sand, etc cheaper than anywhere else. I also got Live Rock there for about the same price as online. So there are 4 stores there that do have some good deals on dry goods. My suggestion is to talk to them. Some things they can help you out on and others not so much. Also, if you think about if a heater cost you $20 online and $40 in the store, it's probably close to a $10 difference after shipping. So then it comes down to how bad do you need it and how much is worth it to you in supporting a LFS. Then again there are non-WAMAS LFSs that will just charge a lot. Just find a store or two you like and try to deal with them. I know when I was at Aquaco, Sean told me he doesn't carry too many dry goods because people can get them cheaper online and it isn't worth his time and $$. So some of them know that they can't compete with online vendors and I'm sure that they don't mind you ordering stuff online. At the same time, I don't think they'll turn you away if you ask them to order it. Most of the LFSs that support WAMAS are VERY accommodating. You will see a lot of good reviews for Mr. Coral, Scales, Aquaco, BRK, and F&F. And personally, I don't mind paying a little extra locally if I'm treated well. These are also the same guys helping me to learn and grow. I look at it for paying for both goods and knowledge. Don't get me wrong, if I can get something $100 cheaper online, I'm going to do it. But the local guys know I'm coming back for fish & corals. I suspect that they make more money off of fish & corals anyway. It really depends on what you are getting. I ordered my first set of T5s from ReefGeek. But when I found out that F&F became an IceCap distributor, it was cheaper for me to get my new set of lights from F&F. I noticed that from time to time John has some killer deals on some skimmers. I've rambled enough....I hope that this helps and good luck! BTW, I don't think anyone will look down on you for ordering some dry goods over the internet

Wow Doug! I'm sorry to see that. I wish I could say I know what it feels like, but my tank crash and coral loss isn't nearly as bad as your loss. I remember you offering me some frags to get me back up on my feet. I would like to make the same offer to you. I don't have any right now as I'm virtually tankless for the next month or so. But when I get some corals, I'd be more than happy to help you out.

Yeah man. I knew Company 12 was great before this, but this is icing on the cake I have a funny story to share with you some time. Hopefully Mike passes it around to others. Again, if this didn't happen on Easter Sunday, I would have given you a call But then again, they may have put you to work

Sweet! I can help you get it moved in. I have a sled and ramp for any stairs that you may need to go over Anyway, I'm going to stop by tonight, not unless that doesn't work for you. I meant to stop in Saturday and I didn't realize it was already 6pm :(

I thought about giving people a call so they could watch, but I figured they had better things to do on Easter Sunday We were going to try for Saturday, but the weather didn't really cooperate. Now I need to finish off the room so I can start putting everything together. Obviously, I need to finish the outside portion of the room as well.

I'm pleased to tell everyone that the tank made it down the stairs and on to the stand. The fire department did an excellent job! I have a lot of pictures and I tried pairing them down for the post. I'm sorry for all the pics. If you are interested in more pictures, you can find them on my photo bucket account. The suction cups were awesome. I would also like to say that I would have helped, but they didn't want it because they work great as a unit. I'll try to give some info about each picture. And yes I built both the sled and ramp. It might not look pretty, but it did a great job. The funniest question I got today was from my mom. "Who told you how to make those? How did you know that you need to make them?" That was referring to the sled and the ramp. I laughed and tried explaining to her that I'm an engineer and that's what I do. I solve problems. It kind of cracked me up; especially since I think that non-engineers would have thought of the same thing. Anyway, I got a kick out of that. We thought of several different ways of lowering it down. We (the Fire Department) ended up using a belaying system. At first we thought we would use the winch on the Range Rover, but it ended up playing the role of the anchor. You'll see that in a picture below. Here's the FD showing up! Here's the ramp for the sled. It was 12' 6" long and stops at the threshold: Here's the sled to carry the tank. The face of the tank needed to face the sled to get it through the basement door. The sled had about 1/2" of clearance on each side. Obviously, the top was made to keep the tank in the sled. It isn't in this picture, but there is styrofoam on the sled and then I put a very very thick blanket down. It did a very good job. Here is the crew carrying it out of my garage with the suction cups: Now the tank is in the backyard. They placed the tank on blankets right before the sled. They are now moving the tank on to the face because that's how it needs to go on to the sled. Now they are placing it in to the sled. No snow, but the tank will still go I'll have quite a few pics of the tank going down the stairs per Sean's request Here is the man belaying the tank down the ramp. You can see his gear. For those that climb, yup, same concept. Here it is about to go down the ramp: Thar she goes! About half way there: Now it is at the bottom: I don't have very good pictures of the tank coming through the door, so I'm not going to put any up not unless someone screams for them Here is the FD preparing to get the tank up on to the stand. I'm in the room making sure it doesn't hit any of the walls or do anything weird. Here is the tank entering the hole: So you would expect a final shot, right? You expect the mermaid shot, right? I present you the mermDAD shot I was telling my parents how it is tradition to get a "mermaid" shot or put your kids in the tank. My wife wasn't too thrilled about it and my dad popped up right away and said that he would do it. A bit to eagerly if you ask me...hmmm.... So we all had a good laugh and my wife was like OK, I guess it is my turn. So here is her reluctant mermaid shot

I will definitely be taking pictures of this. My dad is over with his camera to document it. The ramp is made, the sled is made, and everything is ready to go. The fire department stopped by to check things out. They think going down the stairs will be easy. The two things they are concerned about is actually lifting it up on to the stand and flipping the tank to be on its face to go in to the sled and then flip it back out once it goes down the stairs. I suspect that the fire department will be showing up in about an hour or so. It should be interesting.

So I have some good news and bad news. Good news is that the Fire Department is showing up tomorrow after church to move the tank from the garage to the basement and up on to the stand. The other good news is that my friend and I put the stand in the final location and we were able to make it level. I'll recheck the level again after the tank is the stand. The bad news is that I realized that I made a mistake on my side viewing portal. I can't believe that I messed it up. Actually, it wasn't just the portal, but the front wall as well. I measured incorrectly. I forgot to take in account for the width of the bar and and decking on the stand. I'm really mad about it because I asked Sean to get me the exact dimensions so I know exactly how to make my cuts. I checked them several times, but apparently I fell asleep at the wheel so to speak. I made the appropriate adjustments, but now the side affect is going to be that the side viewing portal will only have 24" of vertical viewing instead of 25.5". So it could have been worse. I'm just so angry with myself. It would have been one thing to not think about it and have it happen. It just burns me up knowing that I was specifically watching for this and I still messed it up. Eh, I'm only missing 1.5" of vertical viewing on the side panel, not that big of a deal. You'll see the mistake in the second picture. I'll add additional oak on the bottom to fix it. I was already planning on using a wide trim piece to enclose the portal. It might look like the stand isn't level in the second picture, but it is. My portal isn't level; I checked it. Somehow it got messed up. I think I can trace back to the day I installed it. I had it level, but I had to do something and pull it out and reinstall it. I probably forgot to check it when I was reinstalling it. Again, not that big of a deal, but a bit annoying. I can hide it and no one will ever know Anyway, here are two pics with the stand in place and level. It's ready for the tank. This is my last update for now. I'll post some pictures of the tank being moved and installed after the guys show up tomorrow to do it

So yesterday, the tank was delivered after some grief. Anyway, A.G.E. did an AWESOME job crating the tank up. The crate was VERY well constructed and easy to take apart. My dad, friends, Sean and I were impressed by the crate. We knew that the tank was going to be awesome just because of the create Anyway, here are some pictures. I won't post them all, but there are still a lot of pictures. Here is the tank and stand on the lift gate. It took the guy about 5 minutes of maneuvering to get the stand on the lift gate: Here is a picture of the bad boy in my garage still in the crate: Now time for the tank pictures. This is the best looking tank I've ever seen. I even believe I heard Sean say this is the best built tank he has ever seen. It was definitely worth the wait! There was a brief moment that I thought Sean might try to sneak off with the tank LOL Here's a pic of the back side of the tank. Notice that there is a cover on top of the overflow box. I was very impressed. I didn't know/realize that Tom was going to put that in there. It's very cool. He also made the back side of the tank black which is awesome. He even provided an black insert for the overflow to hide the overflow. Now here is a pic of the overflow. The top of the overflow is off and resting on the top of the tank. It's a bit dusty, but that's the cover above it. Here is looking at the overflows through the front of the tank: Here is the right end: Here is the left end: Here are some pics of the stand because it is also very cool Another update is coming up shortly...

Well, well, well...where to begin? So much has happened since the last update. The last 3 days or so has been so hectic. I guess first I would like to start and thank Sean & Angelique at Fins & Feathers. Both have gone WAY ABOVE what anyone should have to do to make sure things happen and go right. Literally, I don't even have the words to describe how thankful and every thing that they did for me. I'm still amazed at what they did for me. You'll read it further down here and I plan on posting in the vendor experience forum. Apparently, Tom at A.G.E. has been experiencing some growing pains. Well those growing pains caused a lack of communication and a bit of frustration. Both Sean & Angelique were calling and emailing like 10 times a day without getting a response. The problem was the tank was done, but we were trying to get it delivered. I let Sean know the date I wanted it delivered about 2.5 weeks before delivery. I figured this would be more than enough time to get it up here. Well Angelique left a very convincing message to get in contact with us. I also called and left an email. After that, Tom was VERY responsive and did a great job to make things right. I truly believe that the lack of communication was due to growing pains. Tom and I had some email discussions and he explained some things and sent me of a picture of a new machine he got that caused him to shut down shop for a couple days. It's pretty impressive. Anyway, I would definitely order from A.G.E. again. I feel that his growing pains will subside, his professional and quick response, and the quality of the tank will make me a repeat customer. Anyway, it was very important that the tank came on time, Friday April 10th because my crew (Fire Department) was scheduled to show up Saturday or Sunday depending on the weather. I was also renting some suction cups for the tank. Well Tom got it shipped out so it would be here on Wednesday April 8th. So I left work early thinking it was coming. It didn't show, but I wasn't too disappointed and figured it would be here the next day on Thursday. So I took off from work and decided to work on applying FRP to the drywall. (Yes, the drywall is done, pics below, sorry I didn't post earlier). Anyway, it didn't show up. It looked like it was stuck in NC, but later on I saw it in transit. I later got a call from Estes Express, the shipping company, asking a time to setup for delivery for tomorrow. It was agreed that it would show up somewhere between 11 and 3. So that meant I had to also take Friday off because the tank would be here. I take Friday off and I get a phone call at 10:52 telling me that delivery would have to be rescheduled for Monday because the driver needed additional help. I told them it had to come today and it then became a big hassle. They tried telling me it wasn't marked as needed a lift gate and being residential. I knew that wasn't true as I had the receipt sitting in front of me. Then they said it was too late to get out to me because all of the drivers were out. They said if they could get it to me, I would need to hold like 4 to 5 feet of it because it would fit completely on the lift gate. I was frantically trying to call people to see if they could help. I called Sean and he took care of things. He called up Estes Express and got them to make a special delivery to me (even though it shouldn't have been), but we still needed people. Sean said he would come over and bring someone to help out with the people I had coming. I couldn't believe that he would do that. So another thank you goes out to Sean and his friend CJ. Anyway, the truck shows up a little early and the guy gets the ENTIRE tank on the lift gate and brings it down the driveway. He got it on the ground before my friends and Sean could show up. No one was needed which was great, but it was a bit annoying that it was stressful and through off my plans for the day because of the shipping company. We have some theories on why it happened this way, but it isn't important as I got the tank and they did all the work. The driver even moved the tank inside my garage with his pallet jack. Pretty sweet. So lets go back a few days. I got the "drywall" (HardiBacker) done. Here are a few pics: Left Side Wall Under The Stairs Right Side Wall So the next step is to get the FRP up. At a bare minimum, I need the walls and hole lined with FRP so we can get the tank in. We got all of the FRP up except for the left side wall and back wall, but neither are needed for the tank to come in. Here are some pics of the installed FRP. FRP On The Right Wall (and ceiling) With Dehumidistat FRP Under The Stairs FRP Around The Viewing Portal I'll be posting a follow up with the delivery and the stand here shortly...

LOL...not the tank...the treadmill was 300lbs. That's what I took down the stairs. A.G.E. is quoting ~600lbs for the tank. That probably makes sense since A.G.E. uses plastic for the bottom piece instead of glass.

Russ at Buckeye Field Supply was kind enough to answer a lot of questions I had about RO systems and water in general. Well today I received my goodies to beef up my system. Everything looks good. I ordered two additional canisters and those things are beefy! I got one to do an extra layer of sediment filtering and another one to replace my horizontal DI canisters. Hopefully the new filters and setup will work better. The old system did a great job, but I was going through filters faster at my new place. The tank should be here in 1 week (Friday). Tuesday I'm going to get confirmation on the day that works best for my movers (aka Fire Department). They'll stop by either Saturday or Sunday. I still need to finish drywall and FRP! This is going to be a race....hopefully I'll win Anyway, the pictures will start coming in soon.

Sweet! Thanks for the update. I can't wait for the corals and get some color in there! :D BTW, you wanna come over April 12th to help move my tank? hehehe

You might be able to keep SPS with 4 bulbs. I had 4 on my 75g and I kept SPS. When I went to a 90g, I added 2 more bulbs and kept SPS.

Of course, I'll make it work for them Both of them I see on a regular basis as well No kids yet, but a neighborhood kid almost burnt my house down when it was being built. One of these guys was on the scene to put it out. He claims it was dinky and didn't have much of a threat, but appreciated none the less.

Well I have some good news about the tank move. I decided to talk to someone from the Lovettsville Fire Department and someone from the Fairfax Fire Department. Both are very good things like this. I ran them my idea by them. They liked it, but found something annoying with it. Actually, I thought of the same thing, but I didn't know of a better way. They thought the come-along would be annoying because it is slow taking it down the ramp. They suggested a belaying system with some pulleys and a figure 8. I wish I would have thought of that. They have the equipment and are actually up for bringing some FD guys with them to help me move it down to the basement. It will give them good practice with ropes and some of these techniques. It would save me a lot of money in moving and I could give them a donation for them helping me. I just need to confirm with them that they can still do this. I just need to give them the move date.

Hehehe, I've been doing that one for years...I guess great minds think a like. I have a suggestions/modification for it. I use an O-Ring to hold it on. It seems to hold it better and it doesn't deteriorate like a rubberband