Bignose's 95G reef

[bignose]

Quite a bit actually. I'm going to drill the holes today.

[Tangman]

Then I would address the power bar issue as well

[bignose]

I got about 40pnds of LR for free from a local reefer which was frozen... Yes frozen. There's a first for everything. He left his tank to a friend to take care of it while he was out of town and he ended up crashing the tank. He put the rock outside because it stunk and I was the lucky one who got it for free.

Here is the rock when I was cleaning it and cooking it.

Talk about a stink! I had to do this in my apartment. My girlfriend was ****ed!

I also bought about 37pnds of rock from other local reefers in the city. I paid about $5/pnd which is alot better than store prices.

A couple of months later the rock was cleaned and ready to go into the tank.
I also added about 7pnds of rock from my established tank

Here is a pic of the rock in the tank


At this point I was starting to get excited. All the searching for equipment and rock was starting to pay off.

[michika]

Looks good so far!

I was going to suggest some foam under your tank, but seeing as it full, and with so much rock (free rock is extra awesome rock by the way), I'm hoping you'll be fine as you are.

So what is your plan for this tank? Fish only? Reef?

[Skimmerking]

Thats looks good man , love the tank. but the stand looks like its bowing in themiddle and there is no styro foam either.... just plywood

[bignose]

I thought about using foam under the tank but I never did. What is the advantages of foam? I'm planning a mixed reef. Most likely will be softies and lps but I hope I can have some sps near the top of the tank. I'm going to transfer my fish from my nano tank but I haven't done much research on fish yet. I want some tangs for sure.
The stand is ok if you look at the top of the pic it looks like the tank is bowing up. Maybe my camera?

[BlueAbyss]

The assumed 'bowing' in the picture is the fish-eye effect from your camera's lens. No biggie, but the lack of some sort of cushion under the tank is a little scary... foam is generally used to cushion the bottom of the tank against any sort of imperfections in the surface that the tank is sitting on, so that there is no localized stress on any one part of the bottom panel of the tank. This reduces the risk of cracking over the long term.

That said, you seem to be off to a good start!

[bignose]

I added 100 pnds of sand into the tank. I used 60pnds of sugar sand on top of 40pnds of crushed coral.

In goes the sand

Time to drink some beer and wait

The skimmer started doing its magic right away.

The cup filled about 3 times with cloudy water.

Hours later the tank started to clear up

I'm not sure if this is too much sand but I like the look of it

[bignose]

I added a couple more rocks to the tank to make a nice looking cave on the left side. I still have about 5-6pnds of rock left to transfer when I shut down my nano. I think it's enough rock but it could use some more to cover the overflow.

Here is the most recent picture I took of the tank.

The light is temporary for now. Looks dull with only the center lit up.

Here is the cave from the left side.

[Rbacchiega]

looking good!

Dig the over hang...that's a great ledge for an sps colony LOL