bje's 75gal reef (finally)

on the left of the reef tank is the 30gal DIY 'bearded dragon' lizard terrarium. on the right is a 55gal setup peninsula style and full of lake malawi cichlids. in the back room on the left of the sump is the fluval 305 for the chiclid tank.

the lizards getting a new cage above my tv and im going to put the 10gal there for display. still not sure what ill do with the 10g in the end after the 75's up, but the 10g for now will continue to house the scooter blenny and condy nem

 

DT 1/2 full of RO/DI water! .... ~8 hours to go lol

 

been at work all day, just found a 24 hour place that sells some fish stuff and oddly they had hydor's. so i got a hydor 300w its in the sump now.

got the skimmer working a lil better, pics to come. salt is still not fully disolved. its kinda pissing me off. im guessing the heat will help

 

1.018 SG and rising.... temps rising too (67degrees at the moment)

nitrate 0/ppm
nitrite 0/ppm
ph 7.9 (was 7.6 an hour ago...)

didnt bother with any other tests at this time...

 

eeeeeeeehhhhhhhh gasp!! you let a women in the man cave!!! oh well. like the tank. what do you plan on stocking fish, invert and coral wise?

 

yeah, the heat will help with the salt dissolving. Throw another photo later on today.

 

SG 1.020 - 10% cloud left

Method I used for salt mixing -

-started with an empty display tank
-added in 1 50gal bag of coralife salt
-added in 60gal of RO/DI water
-Ran Pumps for 24 hours
RESULT: Cloudy and milky couldnt see the BLACK overflow box through the front of the DT with all four T5-HO's on it was that cloudy. (probably from adding water to the salt and not the other way around)
-added in a 300W heater set to 80 degrees
-Ran Pumps for 8 hours
-added in 25gal worth of salt
-Ran pumps for 8 hours
Result: 10% milky, most dissolved now, and im at 1.021.

waiting an additional 24 hours to see where im at. trying to take it slow..... though with the excitement of this tank finally having the proper sand, salt, and such available im freaking out

 

setup the T5 HO fixture.... used to be on my cichlid 55gal tank. had 1 bulb, but a ballast capable of two. i added another ballast and two more bulbs. total of three 54w t5... odyssea bulbs 2 actnic and 2 12000k

heres a pic of them mounted above the tank. need to clean the plexi i put beneath them.

FTS shot with all four bulbs on and a shot with just the night LED's on.

 

refer here for any more detail on my salt catastrophe : http://www.3reef.com/forums/salt/coralife-salt-78378.html

 

that piece of live rock was given to me courtesy of a LFS after purchasing 4 bags of sand. i requested some Coraline algae for my 10g, told him i was setting up my 75g with the new sand and he walked over, grabbed up some rock out of their live rock bed which has two types on it, and bagged it up. AWESOMENESS!

WTH as im writing this a cichlid just jumped out of my 55gal... my computer desk is right near it lol scared the hell out of me.

i took the top off to get my ballast and havent put it back on yet