MisterTang's IM 38 Nuvo Reboot

[MisterTang]

After all the overseas travel and uncertainty, I'm excited to get back into the hobby for the third time - and of course even more excited after attending all the cool corals being sold by copps and Pacific East Aquaculture at the meeting this weekend!

 

Skimming will be facilitated by a Tunze 9004 DC, which I will be designing a custom circuit for so it can be modulated by my Reef Angel based on water level and other variables. Lighting will be provided by an Ecotech Radion xr15w Pro G4. Main circulation pump is a Jebao DC3000 that is already modulated by my Reef Angel.

 

As discussed in another thread, I'm going bare-bottom with this tank, but the more I've poked around, the more I've seen this doesn't have to mean that the bottom of your tank has to be an ugly mirror. In fact, as I've found out with my own experiment this weekend, you can take it pretty far to looking realistic! 

 

I decided to give this stuff a try as the first coat:

 

 

It's coming along here. The stuff is really interesting... it's not "paint that looks like sand", it's actually very find sand in a spray paint container held with some kind of epoxy. Instead of traditional paint overspray, you have to clean up the excess sand. Definitely recommend a dropcloth and to tape off areas you don't have to get sand mixed with adhesive on. Anyway, I'm excited; this is precisely the kind of look I was going for, with the individual sand pieces reflecting at different angles/rates versus a flat "painted" look.

 

 

I used the entire can. This is definitely not an intended application for this stuff, and I found it was still a bit too see-through when I placed it back on the stand, so I currently have a white piece of thin poster board between the tank and stand, which makes it look great. I am debating right now whether I will stick with this or add a coat of white paint to the underside of the tank - it looks great, but I'm not sure what it will look like if the poster board ends up getting stained over time or something (due to a leak or something, heaven forbid.)

 

Here it is with the white poster board underneath:

[Fishie]

following, like the white poster...i should have done that .. but now I'm going to ride the sand wave

[DrReef]

Looking forward to seeing the progress! 

[MisterTang]

Progress made!

 

My rock has been sitting in a sealed mixture of water and bleach for the last two years while I've been overseas. In retrospect, this was a bit overkill. I've done a lot of rinsing of the rock and it's still clouded the water a bit. I picked up some algae from BRK a couple days ago and have started the cycle. 

 

 

I'm loving the Tunze 9004 DC skimmer. This thing is a workhorse. It's already way better than the IM skimmer that I had on this tank the last time around. I'm currently having to empty the cup three times a day. It has done pretty good at removing the cloudiness of the water.

 

[MisterTang]

Whew! What a month!

 

The tank has just exploded with awesome stuff. The caulerpa I got from BRK has just been going nuts in the tank. I have to take out a handful every two weeks or it starts to grow a large chunk at the top and shade everything.

 

I picked up a rock from a tank teardown of a friend of mine; my rockwork just seemed "bare" and like it was missing something. It's a pretty good-sized rock with a bunch of anthelia and yellow sponge in it, along with mini brittle stars which I had in my 72g bowfront but was missing from my last tank. I also have also seen a massive amount of copepod colony growth - it really is so much easier to "long cycle" a tank without fish and let critters like this get established before introducing predators. 

 

This is the first tank I've had with the harmless "wheel hydroids" (dots on the glass), which have been interesting. I've scraped a few out and have observed them under a microscope. They seem to resemble the infant jellyfish stage that Jon talked about at the last meeting. 

 

The tank has been cycling for six weeks now and things have definitely settled down, so I introduced my first livestock - a pair of aquacultured clowns that we picked up from BRK over the weekend. Johnny was patient and let my four-year-old pick exactly the pair she wanted. Next livestock acquisition will probably be an ORA yellow assessor - I'm hoping someone locally is an ORA retailer. I'd like to keep all-aquacultured fish in this setup if possible; not only do I think there's less chance for disease that way, but as a capitalist at heart, I want to send the message with my wallet that I value efforts to breed species for hobbyist use rather than catching them wild, even if it's more expensive; after all, in a hobby where you pay $10/lb for rock, why is there any hand-wringing at all over 10-15 additional dollars a fish to support sustainable aquaculture?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by MisterTang

[johnnybv]

Looking great!