280g Inwall

[lastlight]

And holy hell you're trying to do this with the tank full I forgot. No way in hell I could have done that either man. I water tested with regular tap water. Drained. Scaped. Ro/di'd that beatch. May the rock gods have mercy on your soul =)

We should set aside a night this week and I'll swing by if you want?

[Rbacchiega]

Originally Posted by lastlight

And holy hell you're trying to do this with the tank full I forgot. No way in hell I could have done that either man. I water tested with regular tap water. Drained. Scaped. Ro/di'd that beatch. May the rock gods have mercy on your soul =)

We should set aside a night this week and I'll swing by if you want?

I'm home Wednesday night at midnight...and am without vehicle until I renew my license, but
I can hop a bus down your way later on in the week if you need a hand Tony

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Tony I recall not wanting to mess around with parting rock out during that time so you did in fact receive ALL the rock. I'm almost positive.

I thought there was someone else you gave a couple pieces to, I remember you sort of saying "hey is this cool?" and I'd have never said "NO IT'S NOT COOL, I AM DELPHINUS, ALL HAIL DELPHINUS!" or words to that effect (I might THINK it, but I'd never state it out loud). I could be wrong (even if it did happen it's OK, it's more for my own sanity that I can't find those pieces now so I'm grasping at a possible explanation). I'll look at the stuff more closely again but I could swear that some of those pieces I see in that smaller shelf are not there. It's no biggie either way.

Your description should help me look through it all though - thanks - and - you kinda scare me that you can remember details like that. On a good day I can't even remember what I had for breakfast the day before, and you're all "the triangular piece this with the crack that I fixed that" and so on. ALL HAIL LASTLIGHT MASTER OF THE GOODER REMEMBERORAY THAN DELPHINUS WITH THE BAD REMEMBERORAY!

I also got very frustrated with the shelf pieces. I mean they're sorta the creme de la creme but are so damn big and tough to position. I'm sorta a fan of piles now and letting the corals BE the shelves. You could certainly sell them =)

Who would have thought they're frustrating?! But yeah that they are.

[Delphinus]

And thanks for the offer Brett and Randi - unfortunately the only time I get to work on things like this is very late at night, which probably explains my propensity to get all depressed and frustrated at every little thing that doesn't go right on the first try (which is everything) .. if you're OK with coming over at 11pm, cool, but otherwise I wouldn't blame you for being more sane and saying "Uh, I might have to wash my hair or something that night".

And Dez, sorry man somehow I missed your post earlier, but hey I appreciate the comments (and everyone else too). It's been such a long road it would be soooo nice to be done with this chapter and move onto other things! Like .. um .. enjoying the tank.

[lastlight]

Well who's always around on msn far past 11 dude? Come up with a night and I'll still be there.

- the night owl

[Rbacchiega]

if I can find a way down there I'll be there...or I'll wait till I renew my liscense and meet ya down there one night....either way, I'm game

[Delphinus]

Time for some pictures!

Ok, so, it's been a few weeks of working on the rockwork now. I think it's finally at a point where I'll be leaving it (at least for now). Still some features to it that I'm not completely loving, but it's good enough. There are a few features that I really do like though. So time to toss up a few pictures since next I'll be dumping the sand in and who knows when you'll be able to see into the tank again after that, at least a few days I imagine or maybe longer.

FTS


The main design idea was to get a few shelves, some arms, some ravines, some caves, some bommies, and some open lagoon type spots; and then to try to not be too uniform about it. The shelf rock in particular has been a thorn to work with, it's been redone several times now, and in fact came close to just being nixed altogether. But I'm glad I kept it, it's no bonsai tree but nevertheless I'm liking the shelf now.

Right hand side bommie/caves:


Unfortunately it doesn't show up in the photo well but there is a 3" wide ravine here that opens up into the inside of the bommie which is essentially hollow.




Might be hard to pick out in the photo but there is a really neat overhang here. I took a page out of Kien's book to build that particular corner of the bommie, in order to stabilize it, it is permanently mounted to some scrap acrylic (the flange lid to one of my earlier DIY calcium reactor jobs).

End view looking to the left side of the tank:


The left side shelf/bommie/island:




I really wanted to get two levels of shelves going but it kept coming back to either looking contrived and fake, or a bit just "too much" for the tank. I came up with a few tries that would look great in a FOWLR tank and/or a tank larger than this one, but just didn't fit into this overall schema of THIS tank. So away with the second shelf and just went with a "cap". This sucker is a bear weight-wise and had to constructed outside the tank and lifted into the tank in two separate layers. The base rock is probably 60 lbs on its own.

The hole to the lower left is a rock I found in my holding tank that had the hole. I melded it to a curved rock and leaned it up against the base of the shelf rock on account the base rock really needed some more texture to it in order to fit in, plus I wanted a cave of this nature since my trigger currently sleeps in a very similar rock in the base of the bommie in my 115g cube right now. Hopefully she finds this spot, but if not, I'm sure someone will and hopefully likes it.

And then there's this nightmare of wiring:


This is actually the "clean" look. Man there are a lot of things to plug in. Some of the wires were too heavy for the cable holds so they are just dangling. I'll probably replace the cable mounts with some threaded S hooks in the ceiling.

The orange extension cords that run off the right there are for the two existing tanks in another part of the basement. I can't wait to shut them down and get the rest of the basement development work going.

You can also see a "hole" where there should be a second Tunze driver box (above the one by itself and below the two Wavysea controllers). I figured out what's wrong with it, and I should be able to fix it so long as I can actually find my stupid soldering iron. I haven't done any soldering on electronics in like 6 or 7 years so I can't find it at all. So I just went out and bought a new one. But stupid me, I bought a butane based soldering iron and no butane. DUH. So off to Home Depot to correct that little oversight and hopefully get my one not-running Tunze back into a running state again.

I did a quick calculation earlier tonight and with the Dart return, the two 6100's, and the two 6080's, I figure I'm right at about 40x turnover with the 6100's at peak. This is before the waveboxes fit in (not sure how they would factor into a volume turnover calculation). I am hoping this will be enough for SPS for starters but I guess I'll have to see, might have to toss a few more flow generation things in there I suppose..

Next up, the sand, and then starting the cycling in earnest. I liberally estimate maybe another month from this point before the tank is ready to start having fished moved over, but we'll see how things go.

For the most part the fish load is already complete since I'll be shutting down the other tanks. I have been dreaming up "what else's" and one option that keeps speaking to me is a small group of lyretail/squamipinnis anthias. I saw two such groupings today at Red Coral and it's really solidified in my mind that I would like to try, wow, they are really beautiful fish. I have some time to do some more research on them in the meantime.

[lobsterboy]

its really coming along Tony, and the scape looks great.

There are alot of places for fish in there, what kind of sand are you going to use, the fine grade or something abit more coarse ?

great work man

[Delphinus]

Thanks!! It's been fun, well, sort of .. a few swear words uttered here or there but overall I hope it's stable. Still some parts I'm not loving but I'm hoping that it will be better once there are some actual corals in there.

The sand is a mixture of Fiji Pink, Select, and then Seachem as well. Forget how much I picked up now. If I guess I'm sure to get it totally wrong but I'll guess anyhow and say maybe about 200lbs in total?? I'll have to count the bags tomorrow. I basically cleaned out Kevin right after Mitch had bought a whole bunch of sandbags for HIS tank (great timing on my part - as usual, a day late and a dollar short, but oh well, I do at least remember thinking that had secured enough to cover the bottom silicone basically). It was about a month ago so I'm sure by now there will be more in store should I need any more (hope not though).

I TOTALLY went overboard on stockpiling rock in preparation for this tank and in the end I've probably only used up about 30% of what I had on hand. I'm still trying to secure a 65g tank I can use for the butterflies and the eel on their own, so I'll keep some rock for that tank and then sell the rest. Long story short, the eel will be too difficult to feed in this tank, and the butterflies are just overall too destructive to a reef, so I'm thinking I will setup a FOWLR just for them.

[Skimmerking]

WO that is looking great Tony.
Start date 1-08-08
life date
11-29-10

man time flies when your building addy boy buddy