Bloke's 90g Consolation Prize

k+ man. Hope you get the tank. Maybe you will come out with a 90 and a 180 The 90 is looking great!

This is one of the examples of why I will never marry. I've seen some of my buddies get screwed over, some of their friends get screwed over, etc.

 

Thanks all!

As far as lighting, I decided to go with a 6x54w TEK fixture that I hung over the tank. As far as bulbs I went in this order (1-6):

1 UVL Super Actinic (454nm Blue)
2 ATI Aquablue Special (12k)
3 UVL Pro Color (650-720nm Red)
4 UVL Actinic White (11k)
5 ATI Aquablue Special (12k)
6 ATI Blue Plus (420nm)

 

Day 5


Tank has finally cleared. Surprisingly, the rock I picked up in Olathe has lots of color and life. There are several pieces with cup coral (tubastraea) still alive along with assorted shells, etc. On a side note, I HATE the stacked apples look, but there is alittle to do with 125 lbs of round rock. Drilling it wouldn't be a viable option. Purchasing additional flatter pieces might be, but a 90g tank just does not have the same real estate to work with so, this looks good for now and hopefully I can get some coral to grow and that can be where eyes are drawn versus the apple basket we have today.

 

Here is a short video of some of the live bivalved shellfish on my rock. I don;t think I;ve ever seen live rock locally with this sort of life on it:

YouTube - Live Rock

 

I was never happy with the aquascaping, but after getting all the rock in Olathe, I needed to get it in the tank as soon as possible. So an apple-stack rock wall was the easiest and fastest way to get everything into the tank for cycling, etc. For reference, this was the original aquascaping during Spring Break:
Day 5


This tank is still less than 60 days old, but everything is growing well. As you can see in the center of the above picture, there is an "Incredible Hulk" montipora up against the overflow box, which has since grown onto the box. When I re-scaped the piece was moved and as a result, it should be pretty nice to see the coral grow out from the wall there.
In a 90g there isn't a lot of real estate, but I wanted to redo the aquascaping so that I could enjoy the fish swimming whereas in the "rock wall" scape they were often behind the rocks even with the lights on.

Additionally, now that the carpet has regained it's color (the pic does NOT do justice, but when do they ever?) I wanted it up front. I can already see the fish like this version more because they are out MUCH more.
At first I thought it looked like I removed a ton of rock out of the tank, but I actually only removed one rock. It was about 11lbs and about 8" wide X 18" long. Huge rock (now at Sea Dreams), but I like this a lot better and as the caps grow they should fill the valley between the pillars very well. This look reminds me more of the space between the pillars in my 180g.

Sorry for the cloudy pic - things are still a little cloudy from moving the rock around.
Day 44

 

Very nice and timely post. I have 150 lbs in my 90g and it is just too full. I'm going to redo the work tomorrow. I actually didn't plan it tomorrow, but what the heck. I'm taking a fair amount out to open things up more. Got some really nice pieces of tonga branch to do a thing I want.

Your tank looks great.

 

Nice setup! I love the lighting.
The new aquascaping is nice too.. plenty of swim room.

 

I changed my bulb lineup just a little. I wanted the tank to have a slightly bluer look somewhere in the range of 12-14k. The logical choice would be to remove the ATI Pro Color bulb since it peaks in the 650-720nm range (Red) but it helps with growth tremendously, so I decided to change out the UVL Actinic White (11k) bulb and replaced it with an AquaScience Blue (22k) bulb - one bulb change.

I think I like the end result! This is one of the great things about T5's - you can try out various bulbs fairly cheaply in order to obtain the configuration which yields the right growth & right color. Here is my current lineup:

Back
1 ATI Blue Plus (420nm)
2 ATI Aquablue Special (12k)
3 AquaScience Blue (22k)
4 ATI Pro Color (650-720nm Red)
5 ATI Aquablue Special (12k)
6 UVL Super Actinic (454nm Blue)
Front

Before


After

 

Had to get away from BB - Just didn't look good

Before


After


I couldn't resist... but I do think it helped with the lighting. I had enough light for the tank prior, but after adding the sand I think the colors look way better. Of course, it always help when seeing it in person, but look at the colors of the fish. Their colors seem more brilliant and even the anemone's color seems richer.

These pictures were taken with the same camera about 24 hours apart.

 

Finally got my picture issue fixed - now you should be able to see what I was trying to show earlier.