Onyx Oceanic Tech 120 Bare Bottom

[onyx]

Well since I'm officially a WAMAS member now, I thought I would go ahead and start a thread about our tank. It's been up and running about eight months now, but I will do my best to detail the process to catch everyone up. I will copy/paste some of the info from my earlier post saying hi to the board.

 

Background Info

 

I've been keeping SW tanks for awhile now and just recently in the last few years have gotten my gf addicted to this hobby. That's been both a blessing and a curse - she seems to have the SW bug worse then I do lately.

 

I started keeping SW over a decade ago with a 40g breeder setup. Relying solely on LFS advice, needless to say it was a disaster. Since then I've had quite a few tanks.. including a 75g reef, 90g reef & 90g FOWLR.

 

Currently we have an Oceanic Tech Series 120g Reef and two Oceanic Biocube 8g systems. My gf got me into the nanos and I have to admit I love having one of my desk next to my computer.

 

Tech 120

 

This tank was a long time in the making. My gf and I had been wanting the 120 for a few years, but we new we would be moving into our current house and did not want to have to transfer such a large tank. Needing to have a tank of some sorts, we setup a 75g to hold us over. When we moved in March, we bought the Tech 120 and transfered over everything during the move. Luckily we did not lose anything during that process.

 

I really wanted to do something different with this tank. After having quite a few tanks over the years, I wanted something new to look at, something more then your standard rock wall and sandbed. Knowing that we would not have a ton of SPS colonies, I wanted an open look and feel to this setup. I wanted to maximze the amount of room for my gf's PBT and just try something new. I am happy to report that I am very happy with the end result.

 

Hardware

 

Oceanic Tech Series 120g Reef w/Starboard BB

2x 150w Phoenix 14k MH w/Reef Optix III with Ice Cap Electronic Ballasts

4 x NanoStream 6045s - 40x Turnover

29g Sump w/ASM G3 Skimmer

250w Jager Heater

Tunze Auto Topoff

 

Inhabitants:

 

Powder Blue Tang

Mated Pair of Black Percs

Lyretail Anthias

Yellow Coris Wrasse

Mandarin

Fire Shrimp

Misc Hermits & Snails

 

Corals:

 

RBTA

Pink Birdsnest

Teal Acro

3 x Orange Caps

Red & Teal Acan

Watermellon Zoas

Bam Bam Zoas

Fire & Ice Zoas

Cotton Candy Zoas

Pink Zoas

Kedredd Zoas

Caribbean Blue Zoas

Green Goblin Zoas

Eagle Eye Long Lash Zoas

Green Moon Palys

Green & Purple Open Brain

Pulsating Xenias

Orange, Blue & Purple Ricordeas

Blue Candy Cane

2 x Frogspawn x Hammer

3 x Hammers

 

FTS as of a few months ago. The starboard is now about 75% covered in coraline.

[onyx]

I had a hard time figuring out how to hang the lights for this tank. I wanted something suspended off of the tank, without attaching to the ceiling or wall - I am moving the tank to another location once I tile the rest of our floor. What I came up with is a PVC base system that extends out over the tank. After painting it a nice satin black, the end result was pretty nice.

 

 

 

 

[jamesbuf]

Very nice aquascaping. Definitely tagging along to see the process of this one..............

[onyx]

I new that I wanted columns for this tank.. to maximize the amount of swimming room for our tang, and to get away from the standard look. I was really excited to try this out and after researching the options a bit, I decided on using PVC pipe to hold the rock together.

 

Using a drill and masonary bit, I carefully drilled holes into the rockwork and stacked the pieces together. Using smaller rubble pieces around the base, I was able to make each column a lot more sturdy than I had thought possible. I filled in a few pieces with some epoxy to help snug things up a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onyx]

Here are some of the photos of how the rock turned out prior to adding water and corals. I kind of did things backward this time.. I made the columns then placed them into plastic totes to finish curing. Most of the LR came from Marine Scene and was already cured for the most part. A couple of pieces were dried base rock and that took a few weeks to finsih cycling. But I wanted to make sure I liked the look and feel before going through with the process, in case I needed to go buy more LR and scrap the colum idea. Luckily, it turned out well.

 

As you can tell in the last photo, this structure gave the tang the entire back wall as added swimming space. It's really quite fascinating to watch him swim through each column and back around the sides of the tank to the front.

 

 

 

[onyx]

Very nice aquascaping. Definitely tagging along to see the process of this one..............

 

Thanks a lot. It's been a fun tank to work on.

[gastone]

Onyx, glad to have you guys on. I followed your gf's thread on RC for a spell. It's good to have you guys as members of WAMAS.

 

Where are the other 2 nano-streams? I see one each on the left and right panels, but I don't see the other two.

 

Garrett.

[zoozilla]

Jumping on. Very nice setup

[capsfan]

1

[Larry Grenier]

Very nice. I did the same thing with the pvc years ago and my next setup will be done that way too.

[onyx]

Onyx, glad to have you guys on. I followed your gf's thread on RC for a spell. It's good to have you guys as members of WAMAS.

 

Where are the other 2 nano-streams? I see one each on the left and right panels, but I don't see the other two.

 

Garrett.

 

Thanks Garrett. I'm sure she'll chime in here and there, but after the RC thread she's been pretty Jaded about the whole thread thing. I guess that's my fault.

 

The other two are in the back corners directing flow against the starboard to keep the flow moving. I'll get some updated photos shortly to show more detail. Except for a few dead spots that I have to have in order to keep the LPS happy, it's worked pretty well for us.

[onyx]

Thanks guys for the comments. I'll update tonight with some more photos of the corals and a bit more detail.

[steveoutlaw]

Glad you guys made the jump over to WAMAS. I too was following your thread on RC.......make sure your GF knows that WAMAS is nothing like RC. There are a few people on here that have been screwed over by RC so you're not alone. The tank is looking awesome....keep up the pics.

[Gadgets]

Looking good! Think you should up the flow a bit though.

[GSM]

Hey Its clown and nanogurl welcome back to the intrawebzzz.

 

Any updated shots? those are the same ones from the old RC thread Right?

[onyx]

Glad you guys made the jump over to WAMAS. I too was following your thread on RC.......make sure your GF knows that WAMAS is nothing like RC. There are a few people on here that have been screwed over by RC so you're not alone. The tank is looking awesome....keep up the pics.

 

Thanks man. I'll tell her and show her the thread when she gets back in town.. been away for the holiday so she hasn't even seen this thread yet. She was really mad at me for about a week after losing her other thread lol.. RC is fine.. it is what it is, but I'll never go back.

[onyx]

Looking good! Think you should up the flow a bit though.

 

Thanks. I think I'm good with 40x turn over plus my return. It's basically a LPS/Zoa/Softie tank. Eventually we may add some extra SPS and see how that goes, at which point I would agree I need more.

[onyx]

Hey Its clown and nanogurl welcome back to the intrawebzzz.

 

Any updated shots? those are the same ones from the old RC thread Right?

 

Thanks bro. Yea, they were old shots from the last thread. I took some tonight actually and I will work on uploading them in a few.

[onyx]

Photos from tonight.

 

Bam Bam Zoas

 

 

Cotton Candy Zoas

 

 

Pink & Purple Zoas

 

 

Watermellon Zoas

 

 

Kedredd Zoas & Fire & Ice Zoas

 

 

Hammer

 

 

Frogspawn x Hammer

 

 

Orange Cap Frag

 

 

Orange Cap

 

 

Acan

 

 

Blue Candycane

 

 

Green & Purple Open Brain

 

 

Blue Acro

Edited November 29, 2008 by onyx

[onyx]

Couple of FTS from tonight.

 

 

 

[GSM]

Looking good! Think you should up the flow a bit though.

looks like they ran out and got 2 more pumps real fast...

 

:laugh:

 

 

so, nice, pictures looks real good, pillars are sweet.

 

I remember telling you to put a sandbox in for the wrasse like 6 months ago but the wrasse is fine, you never added sand? does it sleep in the same spot every night?

[onyx]

Sorry dude, I don't remember talking to you before, but thanks for the comments. My bad if we did. The wrasse sleeps up inside a rock, but I have seen him swimming around at night with the tang. There is no sand it's all BB.

 

The other two 6045s have been in the tank since a few weeks after the tank was setup. The original photo was like the day after we had the tank setup. Nice and new and clean. The flow was decent for our collection, but I added the extra 6045s to help move detris off the bottom of the tank to help with dead spots.

 

When we first setup the tank I was hoping we wouldn't need the extra flow to help keep the tank look clean, but there were way too many dead spots which was not acceptable. Even with all four running, there are three distinct dead spots in the tank near the front where detris settles, which I siphon up every week.

 

I had to do it this way in order to keep the LPS/zoas. To position the 6045s so there are no dead spots, it blows the LPS/zoas around way to much. In fact, I have to aim the return nozzles upwards towards the surface of the water. It kind of goes against the grain of having a BB/high flow tank, but it's worked out well enough. I have no doubt that a BB system would work better for an SPS dominated tank.

 

More flow would not be possible for the corals that we are keeping and plan to add.

[onyx]

Thought this was cool to post. My clowns have been laying eggs every few weeks for awhile now. Got to watch the entire process one night and snapped some photos. Female would lay some, then the male would go over and fertilize them, then they would repeat the process.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2008 by onyx

[Smoothtriqueter]

First time looking over this and it looks great. I am planning on doing towers myself on my next tank. I like the PB tang. Keep up the good work.

[onyx]

Thanks man, I appreciate it. The columns are great, I would do it again with another tank. The tang loves swimming throughout them. Very cool to watch.