Daelie's 3 Feet of Reef Tank

[daelie]

Never really posted too much here, but have had tanks for a long time and having upgraded back in december, and things also going decently well and stable for me, I thought I would at least start my first build thread on the site and hope to keep it updated regularly from this point.

Equipment List

Tank Dims: 36" x 21" x 20"

Skimmer: Vertex Omega 130

Lighting: Giesemann 8 Bulb 36w T5 with Kessil A360WE supplementation

Heaters: Eheim Jager 100W x 2

Flow: Jebao DC6000 Return & 2 x Ecotech mp10wQD & 1 x Ecotech mp40wQD

ATO: Gravity Fed Reservoir combined with a Tunze Osmolator

The tank itself took a very long time to level on the carpet in the room where we wanted it. Several fills and refills later it finally stayed true.

The first piece to unbox was the lights, which I originally ordered a 6 bulb setup during a sale, but it was mislabeled, and turned out to be an 8 bulb setup, so the store honored the same price, so I didn't complain in the end. Here's a few shots of the lights.



After getting the tank partially wet, I had all my corals/rock/fish from the previous tank divided between two 20 gallon tanks, so I ended up transferring all water/rock/corals from each tank over the course of a couple days, making sure it was a decently slow transition to not really cause a new cycle. Then began the aquascaping.

I started with a small island on the left that's mostly stayed the same this entire time



And then I decided for some shelves on the right side that are mainly going to be the make-up of a large zoanthid garden when everything grows in (hopefully).



To this :



After getting everything up and running, I was skimmerless for the better part of a month because my old tunze didn't really fit anywhere very well and I was torn between what would actually work well in the sump. In the end, I went with a used vertex that was a pretty good price, and it ended up taking up most of my sump space, but it started pulling out some really dark, awful smelling junk. I also repurposed some kessils I had lying around to supplement the t5 lighting and I mostly use them for some shimmer, and the dawn dusk lights on the tank. This FTS and sump shots were taken just after I got the skimmer.





These pictures were all taken roughly around the same time: Thumbnails are clickable



I began dosing a few of the zeovit additives as well a couple times of week to help nutrient levels and see a little better growth than I had in my 30L in the year and a bit prior. My doses were based on someone else's tank build on the zeovit forums that had a very similarly sized tank. My nutrients dropped fast, slightly bleaching a couple of my favias, but everything else responded really well to it and the favias are recovering at a slow pace.

The latest full tank shot is this one taken about a week ago:

[Image: ETcBHFth.jpg]