50Breeder ~ Lee Chin Eng / HANDY Style

After spending far, far too many hours researching how to make this tank work, I settled on the Eng/Handy style - natural, no plumbing! This is the basics:

The Eng method focus'es on having a plenum, a dead spot under a large amount of sand (at least four plus inches), so bacteria can absorb nitrate. They both follow a rough guide of 1 to 3 lbs of sand per square foot. The entire biological breakdown process is handled by live sand/rock. Eng started this in the 50's - and with new technology it makes it even easier. Note - some pure Eng style tanks have NO skimmer. The thinking that it takes away too much bio-matter that bacteria can breakdown. The Handy method suggestions once or twice a week (or more if algae starts showing up).

I'm going lighter on the sand, heavier on live rock.

So with this info in hand (well on the net...) we dive in.

The tank:

50 Gallon Breeder 36"x18"x18"
2 Hydor Koralia Series 2 Powerheads ~600 GPH
Aquaclear 110 Powerfilter - Mechanical/Chemical filtration
~40lbs live sand
~20lbs live aragonite sand
~90lbs live rock (Not yet added)
Coralife Aqualight Pro, 1x150W HQI MH + 2x65W PC + 2x1W Lunar LED
200 Watt Marineland Submersible heater

Thats it.

Started leak test tonight, placed egg crate under sand layer to place the 2-3 large live rock on (Waiting to be picked up in the morning), as well as keep dead spots to a minimum and keep rock stable.

I'll add a skimmer once the tank cycles (should be 2-3 weeks depending on die off from live rock). I'm going to cheat a bit and have some mangroves growing from the top (and probably get a decent light system for them as well).

Shooting for a nice, pretty, natural reef.

Pics tomorrow once I place live rock.
Cheers!

 

man i want pics now lol

 

Sorry, forgot about this thread

Pics of the tank and the black and white clowns its growing out.



A very blurry shot of the clowns (they just won't stand still...kids!)



They are getting adult colors, the nose is always the last to go. I was pretty happy when I walked into the LFS today. I managed to trade in a bunch of coral I picked up this past saturday, so the tank raised pair cost me about $15 after trading ins. I'm hoping in about two to three months they should be all grown up (well, at least ready to start spawning - I hope

And an edit from the first post - I've got an additional 20lbs of live rock I didn't use - (Check my blog for where it went), as well as about ~15lbs or so curing. I also added some coral and macro algae in there. I did cheat a bit - all the live rock and sand came from the same 800 Gallon tank that I stocked my 28 Nano from, so my cycle was about four days (Took everything - water/rock/sand from the 800).