Apologies for not keeping the thread up-to-date. I'm still in the process of shutting down my 150G and some issues on that side slowed me down.
First my Gyre 150 controller died out of the blue. Lucking the guys at Distribupet (Maxspects Canadian Warranty support), hooked me up and 2 days later its back up and running.
Of course for those two days I was running a mishmash of powerheads in there. One of my old Koralias was moved in from my salt mixing setup. Of course when I went to adjust the angel, the ball joint was jammed with calcium sediment and it broke of in my hand. Completely my fault, just a **** off to an already ****ty day. But it did make me think of a use for it, more on that in a later post.
And then to top it all of my driver went in one of my Chinese LEDs (full spectrum side). Another shoutout to Reefsupplies.ca, they've threw a new driver in my order that should arrive tomorrow. Thanks Ray!
Anyway... back on track...
I got the sand and water in 5 days ago. Decided to go with 15 lbs of CaribSea SeaFlor Special Grade, plus 1/4 cup of my old sand just to help seed it. I am a big fan of sand in a tank, looks more natural to me than bare bottom. I also can't stand that crushed coral look, too gravelly (Is that even a word?). In my last tank I went with Oolite, and although I loved the look, I could never run enough flow through it without creating sandstroms, and my Orange Spot Diamond Goby was always keeping just enough fine particles of it in the water column that the tank never looked completely clear. The SeaFlor Special Grade has a slightly larger grain size (1.0-2.0mm VS 0.1-1.0mm), and I can already tell it's going to work out much better.
The following day I moved over about 13 lbs of Pukani from my 150G. A quick hacksaw here and a little bone cutter there and I came up with this:
I didn't really get much further, I had been ordered to recycle the box the tank had come in (APPARENTLY it had been "laying" around too long). So of course I did as ordered:
