My Tank At 1 Year

[Rascal]

My tank turned 1 at the beginning of August. Here it is:

 

FTS:

 

Right side view:

 

Center of tank is high flow, high light, sps dominated area:

 

And, some fish shots:

 

 

 

 

My current avatar:

 

Probably the most rewarding thing for me has been how much I have learned from all of the mistakes I've made. Too much light, improper light acclimation, excess nutrients (mainly PO4), and Alk swings top the list, but by no means exhaust it.

 

Anyway, here's a few shots to show the progression of the tank over the year:

August '06, just after set up

 

October '06 - I call this shot "Algae Tank" -- check out all the hair

 

Feb '07, getting better

 

Aug '07

 

 

And finally, some growth shots of specific corals:

 

ORA Rose Mille

October '06

 

January '07

 

February '07

 

April '07

 

May '07

 

Aug '07

 

Chip's (not Flowerseller) acro:

 

October '06

 

February '07

 

March '07

 

Aug '07

 

Tri-color Valida:

 

October '06

 

1/24/07 - can you see the red bugs?

 

2/4/07 - can you see them now?

 

2/9/07 - after interceptor

 

April '07

 

August '07

 

Guess that's enough for now. Lights are out. Beer is done. Time to go to bed.

Edited August 24, 2007 by Rascal

[treesprite]

really beautiful tank

[Bendalat]

Wow! Lot of growth in one year.

The color is very nice too.

Beautiful tank.

Edited August 24, 2007 by Bendalat

[Antiguan]

Nice tank!

[Almon]

Good work in one year. It's very pretty and colorful.

[tygger]

Very nice!

 

What size tank is that and do you have any pics of the equipment, sump or fuge?

[Connor]

looks great, your tank has made a lot of progress over the year

[Charlie97L]

looks great, your tank has made a lot of progress over the year

 

wow, awesome!

 

did you change your lights during summer 07? what lights are you running right now?

 

i notice a drastic difference in coloration towards the end.

 

or was that just getting rid of the PO4?

 

awesome, just awesome!

[Rascal]

Thanks for the comments, everybody.

 

What size tank is that and do you have any pics of the equipment, sump or fuge?

 

Here's some more info on the set-up:

It is a 150G by glass cages. 5'x2'x2'. Just about everything else is DIY except the skimmer, UV, and 2 phospan reactors. Lighting is 3 250W DE metal halides, 7 1/2 inches off the surface. Outer 2 bulbs are 14K, middle 1 is 10K, all by Ushio. Supplemental actinic is 2 x 110 VHO and 2 x 54W T5. There is a horizontal overflow (which hopefully will someday be obscured by corals) which is emptied by 3 x 1" drains. Internal circulation is by Panworld 100px-x on closed loop (3 intakes drilled into back and left side of tank, return manifold w/ 4 opposing outlets over top of tank), 1 Koralia 4 and 2 mjmod 900s. I estimate about 800-1000 return from the sump, so total circulation is conservatively 5000 gph. There is a 4-6" DSB in the tank, the bottom 3" of which are obscured by a piece of molding which ties into the stand. Most of it is sugar-fine aragonite, but I put about 1 cm of A.R.M. media on top of it in the center to stop the sand from being pushed out of the way there.

 

Here's an old picture of the sump set-up:

A couple of changes since then include the addition of a 20G frag tank on a shelf to the right of all that, which then feeds into the refugium, and the DIY Ca reactor there has since been replaced with one based on this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...ium+AND+reactor

Filtration is by ASM G4+ with recirc&gatevalve mod fed by OR2700. I also run about 300 gm rowa and 500 gm carbon in 2 separate phosban reactors, and a 15 W UV which is gravity fed. Temp control is by 2 ranco controllers - 1 for the heater and 1 for 3 fans and a 1/10 HP artica chiller. I run my temp pretty high compared to most, 80-82 in the summer.

 

 

did you change your lights during summer 07? what lights are you running right now?

 

i notice a drastic difference in coloration towards the end.

 

 

I did just replace and change some of the bulbs (14K on the outside instead of 10K), but I don't think that accounts for the difference. Some of the color difference is just from corals coloring up as they settle in and get comfortable and start to grow, some of it probably from lower nutrients as my tank has matured and I have improved with water quality issues, but a lot of that difference is also because my photography skills have improved. They are still not great, but a better camera and the recent addition of a tripod has helped a lot.

Edited August 26, 2007 by Rascal

[dandy7200]

Very nice. I really like the aquascaping.

[HowardofNOVA]

Sir, what ever your doing, keep it going!

[Rascal]

Here's another growth sequence:

 

This one's a frag that I got from Leishman maybe around December.

Here it is in Feb:

 

Then in April, you can see one of the little "arms" has broken off - fragged by a fish and not recovered.

 

Next month the other one came off the same way, but this time I picked up and mounted it somewhere else:

 

Then in June/July, I broke the whole thing off while meddling in the tank again. So the original 4" is frag is now 4 separate frags, all of which you can see in this picture:

Edited August 24, 2007 by Rascal

[SteveM]

Looks great!

[EBR]

Very nice. I really like the aquascaping.

I agree. I've been debating how to 'scape my 125, and have been leaning toward two islands with beach front in the middle, but I like your take where one is larger than the other. Sort of a main island with a smaller barrier beach. I've never been diligent about taking FTSs on a regular interval -- need to work on that.

Very cool tank -- thanks for sharing.

Matt