roni

Hung the ATI hybrid (love these lights), put in a dedicated 20A circuit and ran tubing from remote water supply Sump prior to water Tank in place. Ordered from NOVA tropicals, who did a fantastic job coordinating with FedEx (still terrible) and getting everything into place as well as with initial setup. Can't say enough good things about Dave and the team. Filling with water, took almost 3 days. New rock structures that I built using marco cement/epoxy and gluesavers thin glue. Water in, moved some stuff over. Sump plumbed, have since installed the apex, the sterilizer and plumbed the kalkreactor Prior to screen, most of the corals moved over. Fish mainly moved over. A purple tang is in my old system but waiting for a large order of fish to finish qt before they are all put in.

We'll see how diligent I am about updating this but here goes nothing. Tank: Waterbox 270 LX (72x30x24) with stock stand and sump Lights: 60" ATI LED/T5 hybrid fixture Water Motion: 1 MP 60, 3 MP40, Tunze wavebox, Vectra L2 return x 2 Skimmer: Bubbleking SuperMarin 250 Replenishment: Deltec Automatic Calcium Reactor, Litermeter Auto Water Change, Litermeter kalkwasser topoff fed into an Avast kalkstirrer Fuge with Chaeto, lit by tunze ecochic and a kessil 80. 57 W Aqua UV sterilizers fed off manifold Neptune controller

looking good, excited to see what you do with the larger system. I saw this thread about using IKEA for organization under the tank and thought of you. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/waterbox-50-aio-in-phx.856541/

Looking good buddy. That undata looks great. Almost a little like the leng sy cap

I'd stay away from hawkfish but the geometric (pygmy) hawkfish is a great little fish with a ton of personality. They are technically anthias but do well on their own and are shrimp safe (as safe as anything...sexy shrimp are small). A tailspot blenny is another great small safe fish. The possum wrasse is a great little addition. I'm a huge fan of the shrimp goby/shrimp relationship in a small tank as stated above. Might be worth looking at a biota/ora mandarin that is actually eating pellets. They come in tiny so would probably do best in this size tank, though if not eating pellet, will outgrow the system/outstrip the microfauna. I also like small pipefish but same issue with microfauna. tank looks great so far!

Tank is looking great! Very nicely grown in! Bummer about the vibrant and losing the elegance. I know some people have good success with it but I also had problems when I used it.

Pretty much. Tangy delicious chicken. Now I'm hungry, thanks a lot :). More on topic, my alk dropped from 7.5 to 3.8 over a week of vacation ( guessing my tank sitter forgot to dose the tropic Marin). My yellow porites is always my clue. When alk is low it does really poorly. When everything is right it's a really nice yellow

I'm willing to be a taste tester. Because I'm a good friend. Not because it's delicious.

Mainly lack of time/space to do something really custom. Waterbox, while pricey, had a reasonable turnkey solution with plumbing, sump, and nice aesthetically pleasing steel stand with electronic separate compartment in a complete package. I was able to get it ordered through a LFS (Nova tropicals) and they are helping with moving in and initial setup. I can give more direct feedback in a couple weeks but the tanks I've seen to date have pretty good build quality. If I had room for a fish room and more space to play with, I would have gotten cda or miracles. Good luck!

Miracles is fantastic. They do a lot of bigger custom tanks and the work is amazing. If you contact them, use email and not the web form as I don't think it's functional. I had a rimless 270 gallon Miracles tank that was a work of art. They also have a long track record so you know the tanks are built to last. They also will do full solution with stand (wooden or steel) and really nice cabinetry or panels. I looked at CDA as well and they were very responsive and a few people I know had a good experience. TSA in Florida built a tank for one of the club members, who said the workmanship was similar to waterbox. Waterbox tops out at under 270 (7 x 30" x 24") but as a turnkey solution, they are very nice tanks (I've got one coming right now). I've heard Glasscages has improved their build quality greatly but I am old enough to remember some bad experiences in the past. Planet Aquarium, Coast to Coast, AGE, and Reef Savvy are others to look at. I have a 100 gallon Reef Savvy and it's a really nice tank but I've heard they are having significant production issues with lead times exceeding 9 months. Hope that helps.

Thanks Jack! Much appreciated. Looking forward to seeing your new build!

that's fantastic! Love the detail and the final result. I'm working on a new build and trying to figure out a way to build a small 12" tall cabinet that would both double as an under the tank area to store things as well as a stand for small separate refugium. Any ikea products you think could be repurposed after reinforcing? This would be under a 72x30 waterbox tank and my hope was to drill the ATO that comes with the tank, elevate it slightly and have it gravity feed back into the main sump.

looking good! congrats on TOTM!

That sucks, sorry. I have frags of stuff I got from you ready whenever you get stabilized and ready again.

Wow, this is pretty amazing, following..

Trying out the orange polyp labs filter

Great start! Looking forward to seeing this progress. Those miracles tanks are beautiful!

Yeah, I totally get that. I miss my imperator and my moorish... They are the primary reasons that I consider getting a big tank from time to time. Get a filefish. Got a pair to wipe out an aiptasia infestation. When they finally finished the aiptasia they went to town on my zoas, and finished off a couple hundred dollars worth of corals pretty quickly. Fun stuff. I've had them in the past for aiptasia but was able to catch out before they went through too many zoas. Seem to be safe with everything else (lps).

That's rough. I'm not great about being consistent but I do think there's a lot of value in having a place to condition and fatten up new fish before going into the main display. When I had a larger system, I had a 4 foot tank tied into the main system where no additions would hang out a couple months to get them really aggressively chasing food before they went into the main system. These days I have no real space for that. Are you going to try to add some more?

Everything's looking great! Love the ventralis... Bummer that the rest didn't make it. Did you condition in separate tank or did they all go in at the same time into display?

tank of the month! glad you finally posted some pics

wow, very cool! put me in line if you get them to grow

Oh man, sorry to hear that Rik. When you get stabilized let me know. I'm still in the process of recovering but should have some frags for you.

Thanks Tom! Haha, I may have spent too much this past month.

Looking good, glad to see things recovering!