Public 120G Reef Startup!

[Miso]

Hi everyone,

I'm also quite new to the salt water / reef hobby. My first experience was only 2 years ago when I wanted to see if saltwater tanks were really that hard to maintain. I put together a 30g nanoreef to have some fun and "learn". The setup did not ultilize a sump, so I had 2 hangon filters with tons of live rock for filtration. That limited my setup a lot, as I cannot keep a lot of the fish and corals that I wanted. I won't go into details of my first tank, but I consider it a failure. I've only been able to keep easy fish (clowns, gobies), and easy corals only even with a 350W MH.

Anyways, my motivation to setup a beautiful reef tank came back when I got asked to change my work's FW to SW. I claim to have some experience so they let me take up the job. I wasn't given a budget, but my goal here is to make something long lasting with great value and beauty. This tank's going to be in a small restaurant, so anyone can come see and give me feedback / comments.

I have tons to learn, and I'm counting on those who are willing to lend a hand (head) on this project. I thank everyone in advance for reading this!

2/13/2010:
1) Live Rocks So first things first, I'm in the process of gathering up all the supplies I need. The first item that I got (came in yesterday!!) would be the Eco rocks from Bulk Reef Supply.
Total: 100 lbs (110 lbs received) Eco Saver rock (man made calcium carbonate) $495.46 CAD

I'm planning on using my existing 30 pounds of LR to seed these first while I get everything else and wait, hence I ordered them first



Rocks arrived in 2 boxes. I ordered 100 lbs due to the slight discount, I ended up getting 110 pounds. Sweet!




Tons of squishy beans which my dog thought was delicious. Rocks packed nicely in a plastic bag.



I really like the shapes of these rocks. They fit really well together and are extremely porous.



I got a good assortment of shapes and sizes from box 1. This was one of the bigger pieces.



So when I took out most of the rocks, I found tons of rubbles left over. Probably a good handful which I can probably put to use in my sump.



So I'm going to start seeding Box1 and see how that goes. I put about 75% of the rocks from Box1 into a 20 gallon tank here. There were 2 big pieces which I couldn't fit into the tank as I need to leave space for my LR to seed them.



Again, I left out 2 big pieces and 2 small pieces and the rest went into this 20 gallon. Just to give you an idea how much 60 pounds of Eco rock is.



Top view. Nothing interesting to see I have an actinic 65 watt running and a heater in there for now. I know I need to throw in a power head or aerator which I'll toss in later tonight. Anyone know what conditions are most effective in seeding base rocks? Should I give it more lighting to develope coralline and what temperature should I set the water to? Would I need to do water changes at all for the first couple weeks?

[Miso]

Reserved for updates!

[Miso]

Reserved for updates 2!