Rishu's Really Ridiculous Reef: a 96x20x20 penny tank build

[Sharkbait-huhaha]

+1

Love the plan!!

Following along for the ride !

[FishingGoalie]

Originally Posted by rishu_pepper

LOL thanks for the love



Thank you for the note on sun corals. If it's too hard to keep, we'll find some alternatives probably. The reasoning behind choosing sun corals was we wanted the bright attention grabbing colours at the entrance/tip of the penny so it makes a nice impression. What other red/yellow/orange corals are out there?

If your looking for something similar dendros look pretty much identical. The only real difference that i notice is the base where sun corals are more of a solid base with little arms that is all living and dendros being more like a torch or hammer coral.
I hope you understand what i mean.

[rishu_pepper]

Originally Posted by FishinGoalie

If your looking for something similar dendros look pretty much identical. The only real difference that i notice is the base where sun corals are more of a solid base with little arms that is all living and dendros being more like a torch or hammer coral.
I hope you understand what i mean.

Yup I do have dendros and understand what you mean, saw some sun corals at JL before.

Don't think I can afford a dozen heads of dendros easily though lol...

What's red/yellow and flow-y?

[lastlight]

lol great idea for the rough layout! i suspect someone's into crafting over there

it's now going to drive you partially nuts hunting for specific rocks to full-fill your paper dreams.

regarding the osmolator... i'd never hesitate to recommend one. i've owned 4 different units and three were bought used. they've never failed on me once and one i even dropped the controller unit into water and dried it out (was ro/di mind you). I try to topoff onto the sensor so it sorta keeps it clean(ish) automatically.

[.bubbles]

@Anthony: That's too bad about the sun corals....We love our dendros, they're so interesting to watch and ours have been having tremendous growth. But they're supposedly pricey hence why we were thinking of doing sun corals, especially since they come in some pretty bright colours.

I also just free styled the aquascaping..up until now. It'll likely end up looking different from the model, but I wanted to go in with more of a plan this time because of the size of the tank. In the past I've upset the corals (and thus Brian as well) by constantly moving stuff about. I'm hoping having a plan to go from will help me get it right the first time and refrain from fiddling too much with the aquascape after. Plus it is my little way of contributing to the build since I know nothing about the technical/chemical stuff.

Lol I'm totally fine with selling the car because I'll have a chauffeur instead Though I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good thing that we're both into the hobby. One of us ought to be sensible.


@Sharkbait-huhaha: +1 for your username!

@Lastlight: you suspect correctly, I'm a designer by day. Also, I am working towards acceptance of the fact that our tank will be unlikely to resemble the model. But one can dream :T

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by .bubbles

I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good thing that we're both into the hobby

i've often thought it'd be cool if my wife was into the hobby. reading your post about moving corals around has filled me with a calming sense of satisfaction regarding my current life situation! cool that you guys have found a way to enjoy it together though. My wife would have her own tank lol!

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

To be honest, my wife would have me fill the tank with a single type of coral and just have her porcupine puffer as the only fish. Either that or she would make me get rid of all the big fish and fill with only one species of small fish in a big school. Yes, its would look cool, but I would be so bored with a single species tank very quickly. Collecting is my favourite OCD activity

[Myka]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

You should rethink the "suncoral" and eventually get another dendro or maybe some photosynthetic gorgonians. Suncorals are notoriously hard to keep alive long term compared to Dendros because each head needs to be individually fed. Suncorals also tend to open up at night or when detecting food. My dendros are open 80+% of the time, in contrast.

Yeah yeah! Dendros are the bomb in comparison to Sun Corals.

[CM125]

IN FOR UPDATES!

[.bubbles]

Update:

On Tuesday we picked up a RSM 130 from a fellow reefer in Coquitlam. It didn't fit into our car (oops!) and he ended up delivering it over to us. (Yay for kind reefers!) We had originally planned to use it as a temporary home to our current livestock but after setting it up and seeing how nice it was, we've decided to keep it as a secondary tank to house 'aggro' fish that would not be safe to keep in the main tank. (Possible candidates atm: small eel, puffer, baby box fish, another mantis...any suggestions?)

On Wednesday we tore down our current tank and moved everyone over to the RSM. It went relatively smooth but still took the two of us about 5 hours to get it done. There were a few moments when I was accessing the state of our living room: endless buckets of water, equipment strewn all over the floor, a pungent smell of wetdog - I questioned whether it was really worth all this trouble. It is

Currently everyone seems to be adjusting to th RSM well...it is a little bit of a tight fit but only for a month, then they'll move into a much more spacious penny tank Curiously I've developed a rash on the back of my hands..I think it is from handling our 10" sebae anem...she was stinging me like mad when I was coaxing her out. Anyone experienced this before?