Chris' Reef

Very nice looking tank!

 

Thanks!

 

Lol, yes. I have plenty pictures of my little on helping me out. Or should I say getting into everything. Switches are so fun at that age. Mine will be 2 next month and I got the call at work that she got in the cabinet and was turning off switches. Awesome!

Here is one of for you


BTW, tank looks great! Love all the fish. Good choices

 

Great scape, pro fish selection, only question is what kind of gorg is that.... I want one. Looks photosynthetic

 

Luckily I haven't had to worry about him playing with tank switches... yet. Before this system I had a 180 inwall with a full fish room. Then last September I had a skimmer pump melt down in the sump which wiped out all of my sps and half my fish. I contemplated getting out for several months and finally decided to just set this tank up and sell off the old system, had my leopards not made it I would have definitely just packed it in and called it a day tho. But yeah so anyways, after having the security of the full fish room I knew going to the stand I would have to put all the plugs and switches on the back wall and high behind locked (or as close as possible) doors. In all reality tho, I am more concerned with my son opening the doors and the dog getting into the sump then him messing with it. I have told him no enough times I am pretty sure he gets it, but his knucklehead sidekick is another story LOL

 

Thank you! I really can't take all the credit on the fish, my LFS is great and does an excellent job on his orders.

The gorg is a local piece that I think everyone has had and thrown out atleast once over the years around here.... Its one of my 1st corals ever so I've kept it (and really pretty much only reason I have kept it as my tank is 99.5% SPS it almost looks out of place), but I got it as just a purple gorg, or maybe purple whip gorg.... It is photosynthetic and has been under EVERY light type commonly used, and thats just in my care lol

 

Lol, your dog in your sump. That would be something to see. Yea, this is just recent though. As of the last 2 weeks she's gotten into everything and those baby safety latches, they don't work. She knows how to open them. I have 2 on each door now. Guess who's smarter than a 2 year old,,,, this guy(pointing at myself).

Yea a couple weeks ago I thought I was going to kill everything in my tank by screwing up a wc by completely botching a sg check, really scared myself. Everything turned out ok but I had to do a real gut check and I wouldn't know what I'd do if I lost everything. Besides cry, I wouldn't know where to start.

I just love that we can share this hobby with our family. My family loves it and I'm sure yours does too. Again, your tank looks great.

 

I ran it through a calculator and it said your tank was 67 US gallons, you sure it was 56 before rock and sand?

That's a nice tank! And pics of the former 180?

 

Yeah I am finding around this age they are definitely little explorers. I let him get into and try most things (as long as it wont kill him lol) that he wants to, so I think somehow he respects it a little more when I tell him no about the tank stuff. He hasn't messed with the latch since the 1st couple days, and when I am doing stuff in the sump he will walk up and open the door so he can see but stay out of my way....... So far we have been really lucky that he listens fairly well still.

Yeah it is definitely gut wrenching when you watch colonies basically melt away. The hardest coral to take losing was a large ~8x7x5 multi-color granulosa colony. I got it as a wild piece and was really taking off. I lost my supermale yellow coris wrasse, and an australian copperbanded butterfly that ate everything including flake.... and left coral alone.

The dog in the sump is no joke, while she can't fit in the current one I left the door open while the kid was asleep and I was working in the fish room and walked back in with her getting into jump mode infront of my 100g rubbermaid sump on the old set-up. Thankfully an 85lb cane corso mastiff/pit mix doesn't fit well into a 20g long, but I wouldn't doubt that she would try to make it her new water bowl.

Yeah definitely sharing it with the family and seeing the kids enjoy it and smile as they watch the fish help make it even more enjoyable.

 

I can assure you that the calculator is wrong, I kept track of every gallon that went into the tank and it rolled over the overflow at 52g.... before rock, sand, salt, and fish. The entire system after everything was added totals just over 62g.


Here is my 14g before I went through and raided it for frags of frags for the current tank, looks about the same but alot smaller frags now lol:



There are about 25 different acros in there ^

Couple random shots from the old 180:








This was the most recent FTS I can find before the crash:



And then after:



Its hard to tell from the pics but after it went through a horrible algae phase, the back and side glass were covered in 3" long waving nasty GHA (and it wasn't your normal GHA either), only corals that made it where some red shrooms, the gorg, and 3 ricordia. I tossed about 80 different frags- minicolonies, and 7 medium-large colonies. Even the rescape wasn't enough to decide to keep it after all that ugliness.