40 Gallon Reef

Picked up about 20 crabs locally and ordered about 100 assorted snails from reefcleaners.org by his recommendations. Of course he sent me about 200 assorted snails lol. Water is starting to clear again so I should have pics soon.

 

Excellent Mike

sounds like you got a good deal there, well done

Steve

 

Been a couple of days since I said it was done. I lied. I decided to add a DYI sump today. Heres what I did. I drilled the return pump housing in the back of the tank almost at the top. Ran a peice of big tubing from there down to a tall trash can sitting in a low big tote. I put my return pump that used to be in the return section of the back of the tank and put in down in the sump. The tubing from that runs right up to the original return output that came in the tank. From the front it looks like nothing has changed. The sump holds 25 gallons of water and still will not overflow if I cut power. Im also planning on sumping the 20 gallon fish only tank sitting right next to it into the same sump. When I get that done my total system will be 75 gallons. Much more stable and then I will only have to test water on one system. total cost for an extra 25 gallons of system volume $50.

 

Couldnt just leave that alone. I had an old PC retro lying around so now my sump will double as a frag tank. Iv been getting killer deals on frags lately and Im planning on offering the left overs to everyone on here for a flat $5 per frag. Some really good stuff so stay tuned. I just need to get a frag rack built and Ill be fragging like crazy!

 

yeah RIGHT!!! trust me, there will always be something to get or do or something to invest in. Just give it some time. You'll come up with something ;D Congrats on the finished feeling though. Im sure the tank looks awsome.

edit: i cant wait till i have that feeling! some things i need is a skimmer, new light, A LOT OF CORAL, and 1 more fish not so bad right? well it is when your parents wont drive you to the LFS 45 minutes away and wont let you use the credit card for online purchases ;D well i managed to buy a $400 tank online but thats it. (i payed for all of it!)

im just calling it but as soon as you think your all done and you have all the right equiptment, bam! you want a new and bigger tank haha!

 

Of course Ill want a bigger tank. I want one now. That will be an entirely new project though not gonna break this one down to stock a new one. Im also planning on adding an auto top off but I consider it done for the most part.

 

Very nice start. How are you liking the fuge setup?

 

Love the fuge. Iv now added a light above the trash can part of my sump and made that a 24 hour lighting fuge too. It holds about 17 gallons so plenty of room for macro growth in there. I also built a frag rack in the lower portion of the sump and am beginning to build up some frags to sell.

I posted what I have so far here:

$5 DOLLAR FRAGS - 3reef Classifieds

I also plumbed the return line and pump for my 20g tall that sits right next to the reef. Its going to run off the same sump fuge so my total system volume will be around 80 gallons. Should be a lot more stable and the 20g tall has about 15 mangroves in it that suck up nitrates like crazy. This tank should also help a lot with cooling as it is a very low light tank. Just waiting on my overflow to arrive.

Almost had a huge disaster the other night. Lost power for 8 hours. My temp dropped 4 degrees. I was up all night floating water bottles full of hot water and stirring the water ocasionally. Didnt want to loose all the new coral. Everything survived but Im planning on adding the battery backup system to my MP10 as soon as possible. Now I see why the $160 is worth it for it.

Future plans:

In keeping with the natural ecosystem nature of my system Im finally planning on adding a skimmer. Not the ordinary skimmer of course. Im putting together plans to loop yet another tank into my sump to be a simulated beach. Ill be imploying another MP10 to make waves and a sloped sand bed for the waves and skim bubbles to splash up on. Ill have a full crew of tide pool creatures in there to keep the beach clean. Now if I can just figure a way to eliminate carbon but still keep the water crystal clear Ill be all natural.

 

A pic of the new frag rack.

 

See, there's something to that statement "I'm done"- you're never done!!!!
Looks great so far...