twiggyb
Active Member
This is my Super Pretty Sticks tank, along with plating and encrusting montis. Keeping it mainly sps with the exception of a few lps like my sun corals, chalice, frogspawn and hammer and two brains. About 2010-2011 timeframe I purchased this tank and have slowly been building up all the components i would need to run it.
This is a 225g acrylic tank that measures 72"L x 30"W x 24"H. It was used and in a restaurant of sorts and was covered in scratches inside and out when I first set eyes on it. They took it out to get buffed and came back pretty good, minus a few spots, but overall way better than when it first arrived.
The sump is a 120g I got from a store that was sadly shutting its doors for good, so I decided to use it to my advantage and get this for a good price. It was a planted discus tank when it was at the store, I rinsed it out, bathed it in vinegar and eventually glued in some baffles
This beast of a stand was made by my pops out of metal and built to be able to take apart only because we couldn't fit it through the door in one piece. This thing isn't going anywhere
bucket size reference
I gained a nice skimmer and calcium reactor for a very fair price and they still sit to this day not hooked up, though I really need to start planning to hook it up with all the calcium that's getting used up.
The original plans were to have the skimmer, calcium reactor, and return pump in the other room, traveling through roughly 25' of plumbing before reaching the main display. The first pump I bought was a 1hp pump that I got from the lfs that was closing down, it ran their whole left wall. This thing was a beast and definitely moved some water, but was way too loud and was sucking up some juice so I eventually ended up getting a panworld.
Forgive the lack of details on models right now, as I'm not sure and have to look it up. If you have questions, ask away and I'll find it out
After all the plumbing then came waiting for the right opportunity of some lights. Well wouldn't you know it a semi local reefer in my club was getting rid of his setup en route for some LEDs.
What lights my reef are 4x 400w 20k Radium SE halides hovering about 15" over the tank. Boy do they light this tank up, as well as put out some heat. To control that I just run a house fan across the surface to keep the tank temp stable around 84 in the day and around 80 at night. No heaters of chillers are used on the tank, though I would like to plumb a chiller in eventually if I can find one big enough at a price I can afford.
About two years prior before getting the plumbing and parts needed to run it and building the stand etc. I purchased 225 lbs. of live rock from another semi local reefer that was getting out of the hobby. The rock sat in the dark with with powerheads and heaters in two brute trash cans in the other room until I finally got the tank wet and ready for some aquascaping. I never did a water change and only topped off the cans maybe three times in the two years they sat there. When they first went in, phosphates were climbing high at around 0.43, though these numbers may make some of you grit your teeth and make an ugly face, they were a relief to me as my 65 had hit a high of 2.23 at on point. I did some water changes and they steadily dropped to about 0.11 after a few weeks, there was a mini cycle due to the rocks just sitting there, but didn't last very long at all.
I went with minimal rock work up top to give the fish room to swim and give the corals more space to grow outwards. My main goal for this tank is to have dominating tabling acros and plating monitporas with some cool pieces in between. After the mini cycle, I decided to move everything over to the big tank, the phosphates, unfortunately, were way better in the big tank then the smaller one. All was well until I hit an ugly algae bloom, but it wasn't the normal hair algae, it was an algae I've never seen before. It looked like dying hair algae, a light yellow color, but was super slimy when you touched it, and was pretty tough to just rip off. It smelled horrible and wouldn't go away quick enough. So, for the next few weeks, I would have to manually pluck it out in order to keep it from suffocating the corals that were in there. I eventually moved over a yellow eye kole that I had in another tank and he eradicated the algae in no time, keeping it in control from growing over the corals, from that moment on, the corals have done nothing but color up and grow. My fish however suffered a major loss due to a couple of flasher wrasse that I got from a lfs that weren't there long enough and gave the fish something. Long story short, lost all my fish except a lubbocks wrasse. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, I had a poly filter get sucked into the return pipe and clog it all up, thus forcing me to cut all the pipes and put the main pump right on the side of the tank. Originally, and as of right now, you could walk around the tank, granted, theres not a huge amount of room in the back, but will now probably have to put the skimmer and reactor back behind it since the return is over here.
It's getting late, and I know I'm forgetting some things, but a lot's happened in the 6 months this tanks been running. So far so good, and hopefully more good in the future! I hope I didn't make anyone more sleepy reading this. Enjoy!
This is a 225g acrylic tank that measures 72"L x 30"W x 24"H. It was used and in a restaurant of sorts and was covered in scratches inside and out when I first set eyes on it. They took it out to get buffed and came back pretty good, minus a few spots, but overall way better than when it first arrived.
The sump is a 120g I got from a store that was sadly shutting its doors for good, so I decided to use it to my advantage and get this for a good price. It was a planted discus tank when it was at the store, I rinsed it out, bathed it in vinegar and eventually glued in some baffles
This beast of a stand was made by my pops out of metal and built to be able to take apart only because we couldn't fit it through the door in one piece. This thing isn't going anywhere
bucket size reference
I gained a nice skimmer and calcium reactor for a very fair price and they still sit to this day not hooked up, though I really need to start planning to hook it up with all the calcium that's getting used up.
The original plans were to have the skimmer, calcium reactor, and return pump in the other room, traveling through roughly 25' of plumbing before reaching the main display. The first pump I bought was a 1hp pump that I got from the lfs that was closing down, it ran their whole left wall. This thing was a beast and definitely moved some water, but was way too loud and was sucking up some juice so I eventually ended up getting a panworld.
Forgive the lack of details on models right now, as I'm not sure and have to look it up. If you have questions, ask away and I'll find it out
After all the plumbing then came waiting for the right opportunity of some lights. Well wouldn't you know it a semi local reefer in my club was getting rid of his setup en route for some LEDs.
What lights my reef are 4x 400w 20k Radium SE halides hovering about 15" over the tank. Boy do they light this tank up, as well as put out some heat. To control that I just run a house fan across the surface to keep the tank temp stable around 84 in the day and around 80 at night. No heaters of chillers are used on the tank, though I would like to plumb a chiller in eventually if I can find one big enough at a price I can afford.
About two years prior before getting the plumbing and parts needed to run it and building the stand etc. I purchased 225 lbs. of live rock from another semi local reefer that was getting out of the hobby. The rock sat in the dark with with powerheads and heaters in two brute trash cans in the other room until I finally got the tank wet and ready for some aquascaping. I never did a water change and only topped off the cans maybe three times in the two years they sat there. When they first went in, phosphates were climbing high at around 0.43, though these numbers may make some of you grit your teeth and make an ugly face, they were a relief to me as my 65 had hit a high of 2.23 at on point. I did some water changes and they steadily dropped to about 0.11 after a few weeks, there was a mini cycle due to the rocks just sitting there, but didn't last very long at all.
I went with minimal rock work up top to give the fish room to swim and give the corals more space to grow outwards. My main goal for this tank is to have dominating tabling acros and plating monitporas with some cool pieces in between. After the mini cycle, I decided to move everything over to the big tank, the phosphates, unfortunately, were way better in the big tank then the smaller one. All was well until I hit an ugly algae bloom, but it wasn't the normal hair algae, it was an algae I've never seen before. It looked like dying hair algae, a light yellow color, but was super slimy when you touched it, and was pretty tough to just rip off. It smelled horrible and wouldn't go away quick enough. So, for the next few weeks, I would have to manually pluck it out in order to keep it from suffocating the corals that were in there. I eventually moved over a yellow eye kole that I had in another tank and he eradicated the algae in no time, keeping it in control from growing over the corals, from that moment on, the corals have done nothing but color up and grow. My fish however suffered a major loss due to a couple of flasher wrasse that I got from a lfs that weren't there long enough and gave the fish something. Long story short, lost all my fish except a lubbocks wrasse. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, I had a poly filter get sucked into the return pipe and clog it all up, thus forcing me to cut all the pipes and put the main pump right on the side of the tank. Originally, and as of right now, you could walk around the tank, granted, theres not a huge amount of room in the back, but will now probably have to put the skimmer and reactor back behind it since the return is over here.
It's getting late, and I know I'm forgetting some things, but a lot's happened in the 6 months this tanks been running. So far so good, and hopefully more good in the future! I hope I didn't make anyone more sleepy reading this. Enjoy!
