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Anonymous
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What do I mean by "real" tank? Well I mean my tank isn't immaculately clean, I do have brown "gunk" growing on the acrylic and I don't spend day after day making sure the front & side panels are perfectly clean, I do clean it when company comes over or if it gets too hazy to look through (ie I have time). No disrespect towards those who have those immaculate tanks, but I'm not at that point in my reef keeping where that is a high priority, right now I'm about keeping corals alive and that comes more so with water parameters and flow way more than asthetics for those outside the tank. Anyways feel free to comment as you will on the tank, particular pieces, or whatever 
Oh yah and I just saw Len's tank, even though it was posted a few days ago, so I think this tank rambling is fitting
Btw, I like to tell stories, so there will be some rambling on about completely inane crap about particular pieces
This tank is my first major attempt at keeping stonies (mostly sps), I've tried with various frags way to early in my reef keeping days and have had near zero success (although I do have a particular piece that managed to survive everything!). As such I decided on a smaller fish load, no large fish (although I'm tempted at getting a tang of some sort to keep the rocks cleaner of algae but unsure which one would work best, unfortunately my Seios have killed my last two tangs! Stupid bastages). The tank is a 100g long tank (6 feet long!), I have a good amount of flow 4100gph from 2 seio pumps, and about 1000gph from my sump return that goes through an ocean motion squirt for the variable flow. My lighting consists of 2 250w 12000k reeflux bulbs (they're pretty badass!) they are both housed in Lumikearc reflectors (homemade DIY lumenarcs... please don't pm me for plans), and while this doesn't give uniform lighting over the tank (you can see from pics) I've decided to keep less light intensive corals in the center, LPS types, I would eventually like to throw another bulb over the center (maybe a 175w) but there's a center brace that would block most of the light so until I reenforce the bracing the center piece is staying put. There is a light sand bed in the tank, and it does occasionally get blown about but I like the sand look way more than a bare bottom, a sand sifting star & cucumber continuously chomps through it and keeps it clean and in a nice white(ish) condition.
Here's the left side of my tank, yeah there is 1 piece of white PVC left over in the tank, I just haven't gotten around to hooking up the black flex pipe, mostly because I don't know which way to point the outlet. The bottom of the tank is where there are more brown diatom like things on the glass, mostly because it's harder to reach down and scrape, and I'm guessing because they're closer to the sand they have more nutrients to grow.
Here's one part of the left side, this side is dedicated to branching types, most of these frags have grown out from fairly small nubs, and there's still a lot of growth left in them (I'm sure if I had a calcium reactor they'd grow crazy!), this is probably my favorite side of the tank, something about seeing all the colors that I like.
Here's the other side of the left rock work, infact you can see in the upper corner (next to the Percula) a piece that I glued straight to the back acrylic, why? Well it was part of an Acropora Microphthalma and those of you who have thse know they grow like crazy! Well I whacked it off the piece in front (middle bottom) and since I have a nice blue/green version of the species next to it, I decided I didn't need ANOTHER colony of this stuff growing on the rockwork but the acrylic is fair game! Also on this side I have a gorgonian as well that I finally got settled (I hope) as the bulldozers of the tank (turbo snails & tuxedo urchins) kept knocking it off the rockwork (and yes I glued it, just apparently not enough).
The final piece of the left end of the tank, this is the sand bed area where both my clams are located, a crocea (blue one) and a maxima (gold one) that I recently picked up. Also I have one of those affore mentioned corals that made it through hell a favite, actually I got this for free as it was on death's door about 75% of the skeleton was visible, well it came back with a vengance the only issue with it is that it's simply brown but it does have nice green eyes. And yeah there's a non-branching sps coral there on the bottom right but that's simply a grow out area until I figure out what type of montipora it is and what kind of growth pattern it has (plus it's not THAT flashy looking, but it was a freebe rescue coral).
The middle is probably one of the dirtiest parts of the from acrylic (except the sides) this is mostly due to that above mentioned center brace which is quite wide and makes it hard to get to. The middle is LPS dominated. Pictured here from left to right is an acan enchinada (mottled tricolor, rescue coral), a red blasto wellsi (which has really seen better days I actually wonder why pieces are receeding), and acan lords (which absolutely love the more shaded area).
The other middle side, also has an assortment of acans, blastos, and other rescue corals that have all done fairly well. Especially the blue with red center favite (??) once I glued that sombiznitch to the rockwork so it wouldn't get knocked over all the time it regularlly has feeding tenticles out and has grow and healed up nicely (it fell into the red brain in the lower right.. and yeah it lost). Here is my original acan lord colony that is absolutely huge (like few hundred dollars online type size), now they aren't super exotic colored or anything but they are still nice.
Here's the right side, which is more imposing as far as rock structure, I managed to put a flat piece along the top, I originally wanted that to be my "egg crate" for growing out, but I think its too high in the tank for many corals, either way it's mostly empty now with the exception of a few corals, I'd like a nice encrusting piece to just cover it but we'll see how it works, maybe some pieces that break the surface of the water might look cool too.
Here's a close up of the right, and contains some of my earlier SPS corals, the green with purple rim cap (which is over saturated here) was one of the first ones after moving this tank, it has grown from a small half dollar size to a dinner saucer... and like everyone with their early sps didn't exactly plan out the growth pattern... oh well I'll let nature take it's course, it recently began to curl up up the edges too giving that "bowl" look that i think is super cool. There's also the original bases of the microph. and the digitata that are on the left side here, they snapped off leaving nothing but the base, but now the bases are little colonies in the making, gotta love that aspect of corals! Sorry the image quality isn't the best, but if anyone wants to see close ups of any particular coral I can take pictures.
More right stuff, on this side is what I call my "Survivor coral" it went through hell and back, being covered completely in cyano to having horrid water qualities, it's the green & pink pocillipora that's shaded a bit (highest one), below that are a couple pocis that I got recently included Jim's (Bookfish) infamous tricolor one (left) and a really ultra bright green& yellow one I picked up at a frag swap (right). Amongst other things is my other "named" coral the "Phoenix Cap" because this thing came back from the dead it was a nice bright pink color, then I found out my IO salt mix had super crap alkanity! (I measured 4dkH before breaking down my "prop" tank *grumble*), it was now a brown cap that had lots of dead flesh on it that was covered in algae etc. I ended up fragging off all the healthy flesh giving away & selling some of the smaller frags that have colored up to a nice orange with pink polyps and kept the bigger piece which is a really bright orange with pink rim & polyps, gotta love the story of the Phoenix!
Here's the top of the right with that flat rock I was talking about. The weirdest thing happens around here, that brown flimant like algae (I'm guessing it's diatoms that are forming chains... opinions on this welcomed) forms where there is either a LOT of flow right were the output from the sump is blasting the rocks, and as a result around the output of the flex line's openings, then it seems to grow along the flex line as well where there is practically no flow. This has kept me from aiming this at any corals as it already has caused some of this brown gunk to form on them (as a result I scraped it bare). Either way it is a bit of a mystery to me. Oh yah and one of my infamous overflow slits is viewable here, no internal overflow on this badboy!
Well if you happened to make it through all this and didn't get completely bored, please don't nominate me for tank of the month or anything on any e-zine mags as this will require me to spend a lot of time cleaning it which I don't want to do
Oh yah and I just saw Len's tank, even though it was posted a few days ago, so I think this tank rambling is fitting Btw, I like to tell stories, so there will be some rambling on about completely inane crap about particular pieces
This tank is my first major attempt at keeping stonies (mostly sps), I've tried with various frags way to early in my reef keeping days and have had near zero success (although I do have a particular piece that managed to survive everything!). As such I decided on a smaller fish load, no large fish (although I'm tempted at getting a tang of some sort to keep the rocks cleaner of algae but unsure which one would work best, unfortunately my Seios have killed my last two tangs! Stupid bastages). The tank is a 100g long tank (6 feet long!), I have a good amount of flow 4100gph from 2 seio pumps, and about 1000gph from my sump return that goes through an ocean motion squirt for the variable flow. My lighting consists of 2 250w 12000k reeflux bulbs (they're pretty badass!) they are both housed in Lumikearc reflectors (homemade DIY lumenarcs... please don't pm me for plans), and while this doesn't give uniform lighting over the tank (you can see from pics) I've decided to keep less light intensive corals in the center, LPS types, I would eventually like to throw another bulb over the center (maybe a 175w) but there's a center brace that would block most of the light so until I reenforce the bracing the center piece is staying put. There is a light sand bed in the tank, and it does occasionally get blown about but I like the sand look way more than a bare bottom, a sand sifting star & cucumber continuously chomps through it and keeps it clean and in a nice white(ish) condition.
Here's the left side of my tank, yeah there is 1 piece of white PVC left over in the tank, I just haven't gotten around to hooking up the black flex pipe, mostly because I don't know which way to point the outlet. The bottom of the tank is where there are more brown diatom like things on the glass, mostly because it's harder to reach down and scrape, and I'm guessing because they're closer to the sand they have more nutrients to grow.
Here's one part of the left side, this side is dedicated to branching types, most of these frags have grown out from fairly small nubs, and there's still a lot of growth left in them (I'm sure if I had a calcium reactor they'd grow crazy!), this is probably my favorite side of the tank, something about seeing all the colors that I like.
Here's the other side of the left rock work, infact you can see in the upper corner (next to the Percula) a piece that I glued straight to the back acrylic, why? Well it was part of an Acropora Microphthalma and those of you who have thse know they grow like crazy! Well I whacked it off the piece in front (middle bottom) and since I have a nice blue/green version of the species next to it, I decided I didn't need ANOTHER colony of this stuff growing on the rockwork but the acrylic is fair game!
Also on this side I have a gorgonian as well that I finally got settled (I hope) as the bulldozers of the tank (turbo snails & tuxedo urchins) kept knocking it off the rockwork (and yes I glued it, just apparently not enough).
The final piece of the left end of the tank, this is the sand bed area where both my clams are located, a crocea (blue one) and a maxima (gold one) that I recently picked up. Also I have one of those affore mentioned corals that made it through hell a favite, actually I got this for free as it was on death's door about 75% of the skeleton was visible, well it came back with a vengance the only issue with it is that it's simply brown but it does have nice green eyes. And yeah there's a non-branching sps coral there on the bottom right but that's simply a grow out area until I figure out what type of montipora it is and what kind of growth pattern it has (plus it's not THAT flashy looking, but it was a freebe rescue coral).
The middle is probably one of the dirtiest parts of the from acrylic (except the sides) this is mostly due to that above mentioned center brace which is quite wide and makes it hard to get to. The middle is LPS dominated. Pictured here from left to right is an acan enchinada (mottled tricolor, rescue coral), a red blasto wellsi (which has really seen better days I actually wonder why pieces are receeding), and acan lords (which absolutely love the more shaded area).
The other middle side, also has an assortment of acans, blastos, and other rescue corals that have all done fairly well. Especially the blue with red center favite (??) once I glued that sombiznitch to the rockwork so it wouldn't get knocked over all the time it regularlly has feeding tenticles out and has grow and healed up nicely (it fell into the red brain in the lower right.. and yeah it lost). Here is my original acan lord colony that is absolutely huge (like few hundred dollars online type size), now they aren't super exotic colored or anything but they are still nice.
Here's the right side, which is more imposing as far as rock structure, I managed to put a flat piece along the top, I originally wanted that to be my "egg crate" for growing out, but I think its too high in the tank for many corals, either way it's mostly empty now with the exception of a few corals, I'd like a nice encrusting piece to just cover it but we'll see how it works, maybe some pieces that break the surface of the water might look cool too.
Here's a close up of the right, and contains some of my earlier SPS corals, the green with purple rim cap (which is over saturated here) was one of the first ones after moving this tank, it has grown from a small half dollar size to a dinner saucer... and like everyone with their early sps didn't exactly plan out the growth pattern... oh well I'll let nature take it's course, it recently began to curl up up the edges too giving that "bowl" look that i think is super cool. There's also the original bases of the microph. and the digitata that are on the left side here, they snapped off leaving nothing but the base, but now the bases are little colonies in the making, gotta love that aspect of corals! Sorry the image quality isn't the best, but if anyone wants to see close ups of any particular coral I can take pictures.
More right stuff, on this side is what I call my "Survivor coral" it went through hell and back, being covered completely in cyano to having horrid water qualities, it's the green & pink pocillipora that's shaded a bit (highest one), below that are a couple pocis that I got recently included Jim's (Bookfish) infamous tricolor one (left) and a really ultra bright green& yellow one I picked up at a frag swap (right). Amongst other things is my other "named" coral the "Phoenix Cap" because this thing came back from the dead it was a nice bright pink color, then I found out my IO salt mix had super crap alkanity! (I measured 4dkH before breaking down my "prop" tank *grumble*), it was now a brown cap that had lots of dead flesh on it that was covered in algae etc. I ended up fragging off all the healthy flesh giving away & selling some of the smaller frags that have colored up to a nice orange with pink polyps and kept the bigger piece which is a really bright orange with pink rim & polyps, gotta love the story of the Phoenix!
Here's the top of the right with that flat rock I was talking about. The weirdest thing happens around here, that brown flimant like algae (I'm guessing it's diatoms that are forming chains... opinions on this welcomed) forms where there is either a LOT of flow right were the output from the sump is blasting the rocks, and as a result around the output of the flex line's openings, then it seems to grow along the flex line as well where there is practically no flow. This has kept me from aiming this at any corals as it already has caused some of this brown gunk to form on them (as a result I scraped it bare). Either way it is a bit of a mystery to me. Oh yah and one of my infamous overflow slits is viewable here, no internal overflow on this badboy!
Well if you happened to make it through all this and didn't get completely bored, please don't nominate me for tank of the month or anything on any e-zine mags as this will require me to spend a lot of time cleaning it which I don't want to do
