28g JBJ HQI
 

I recently purchased the JBJ 28g HQI. It has a 150w MH light as well as 4 lunar LEDs. It has dual 266gph return pumps and a wavemaker. The setup also comes with a basic airstone skimmer. It seems to be a pretty solid setup. Within the next few weeks I will be transferring the contents of my 10g over to this new tank. I bought the stand and chiller as well. The stand is a cheap particleboard stand but was designed well to work with the chiller. Down the road I will rebuild the stand out of real wood. I was a little disappointed that the chiller is sold so incomplete. I had to buy an installation kit and still have to find a pump for it. Personally, I would rather they packaged a complete kit and raise the price. All in all it is a pretty sweet setup and I can’t wait to get it up and running.

The tank and stand
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...nkandstand.jpg

The lights and overflow
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v..._llane/lid.jpg

The sump
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...llane/sump.jpg

Inside the stand
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...nsidestand.jpg

In the last photo you can see the chiller, wave maker, ballast, and air pump. You can't really tell from the pictures but the stand is designed with ventilation for the chiller.

Here are some of the inhabitants of the 10g that will be moving over.

The sun coral and clown fish
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...alandclown.jpg

The bubble coral
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...ubblecoral.jpg

The cleaner shrimp
http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/v...anershrimp.jpg

I also have a chromis and assortmant of snails and hermitts that will be moved over. There is a mystery crab in there that I hope I can get rid of in the process.

At this point I plan to use a SSB and about 18lbs of hopefully cured live rock. Once the tank has cycled the 12 lbs of live rock will move over from the 10g. I will also move over the K1 because the stock water flow in the JBJ is only 266gph. That seems to be pretty bare minimum to me, correct me if I'm wrong.

Will I have any problems with the bubble coral going from 40w PC lighting at the top of a 10g to 150w MH lighting? Should I be doing something to help the coral adjust to the stronger light?

looks good so far. a nice little mod for extra flow is replace the stock pumps with something a little more powerfull like maxi jets or maybe a rio of some kind.
you should indeed acclimate the coral to the light. the best way i find is to find a shady spot on the sand bed, then every about 2nd day(may take longer for certain corals)move it up a little until it's where you want it to be

Wow, this is going to be one heck of a coral producing tank once you have it all set up, I really look forward to seeing the end!

Any new news on how this tank is doing?

Well so far everything is on track. I bought aprox. 18lbs of live rock and it is doing its thing. There has been no noticeable spike an anything yet so I am not sure if there will be an actual cycle. I have the lights on a timer at 4 hrs/day this week. I am following the advice I have received from bauder1986 and increasing the daylight by 2 hrs every week to avoid problem algae.

The live rock came with aptasia that I am trying to kill off. I have also spotted a crab in there that I have to figure out how to catch. Any suggestions?

There are a couple of threads on here about bottle trapping. I dont really know what that is about because I got lucky this far and havent had to go and catch any annoying hitchhickers (knock on wood). But yah, search bottle traps/trapping in the forums and read away.

Well things are going good so far. There was no cycle so the rock must have had very little die off. The hair algea is starting so I didn't increase the light cycle this week.

I was thinking of peging my rockwork. Any advice on the best way to do that? Any reason not to do it?

nothing new to report. I have some hair algea and the start of a diatoms bloom.

I was wondering if I should remove the ceramic rings and sponge from the filter chamber. Any thoughts?