Reef Creeper's "dirty thirty"

[Reef Creeper]

So after a year away from the hobby I decided it's time to get back in the game. I sold off all my previous equipment and livestock so I had to start over from scratch. I had been eyeballing the fusion aquariums from innovative marine and finally settled on the 30l. It's a bit different from the usual cube style tanks I kept previously and I really like the shallow display. So here is the equipment list.
Innovative Marine 30l
Custom stand
AI prime - 2
Tunze 3152 ato
Jebao rw-4
American DJ power-strip
20lbs of marco rocks
30lbs live sand
Spectra pure ro/di

When I first started ordering equipment my wife and I discussed how having a small aio tank would be best because of ease of maintenance and such. Then This showed up and she started packing her bags.

I assured her it was just a box in a box and she quickly calmed her stuff. Man was she ticked though. Haha.

So, next was the stand build. I spent about $100 on material and paint and it's built a heck of a lot stronger than the one IM sells for $300. It weighs a ton but I made sure to leave enough room for my 7 gallon ato container and plenty of other future equipment.

I ordered about 35lbs of rock from Marcos rocks but only needed about 20lbs of it or so.

After finishing the stand and getting the aquascape to my liking this was the end result.

Fast forward about 6 weeks and everything is cycled and I've added a few fish and scored some nice stuff from the Aqua SD live sale last week. This will be an Lps dominated tank so I'm going skimmer less for now. Hence the "dirty 30" label.

Let me know what you think. I'd like to add some other equipment like an apex and ditch the rw-4 and get a mp-10 qd but this is pretty much what I'm bringing to the dance. I'll update with more pics as things get acclimated. Thanks for checking out my build thread.

 

[pelphrey]

How is the rw4 working out in your tank? I like the clean look on the light installation and your stand looks great! I got my marco rocks in last week but haven't taken them out of the box yet. I went a bit overboard and ordered 50 lbs for my 27 gallon cube. I figure more selection since the price wasn't much different. Did you get your sand from marco also?

 

[Shep]

Looks very nice!

 

[Reef Creeper]

Thanks for the compliments. The sand is Bahamas oolite and I got it from a lfs. It's really fine and the rw-4 was making the water a bit cloudy but it has settled down some already. I ordered 35lbs of rock from Marcos rocks and I'm really happy with what I was sent. Lots of nice pieces and after a couple days of socking in ro/di with a powerhead all the dust and debris was gone and I barely went through a cycle. I did seed it with a couple pieces of live rock and used a bottle of bio-spira so that definitely helped. 50lbs is a lot but it's nice to have options. Good luck on your build Pelphrey.