COnverted 75g to reef

Evening everyone. Hope each of you are doing fine as well as your tanks.

I just converted my 75G FOWLR to a reef this evening. I used the water, sand and live rock from my 46g. The 46 was just too small to do what I want to do eventually. The 75g is also, but it's a start. 46g bow front is going bye bye. If anyone wants it let me know. I have the tank, stand, a coralife 192w light for it, 2 wet dry's (1 drilled) and a heater of course.

Anyway, the 75g has a new 30g diy fuge. That was a chore to get it in the stand. Had to go from the top and remove the cross support braces. The EV-180 is in the sump...hope it never fails because it won't come out now. Too tight...LOL Figures...130+ lbs live rock, 100lbs live sand. The fuge is housing a sump that is 10"w by 12" deep 16"H, fuge is 16"w, then the return area. I have 40lbs live sand in the fuge and macro. Chaetomorpha, red gracilaria, and caulerpa. I also have added a Mangrove in the fuge. See how that goes. 10-12lbs live rock in the fuge also. I am in the process of building a canopy for this and that will house for now, 6x96w PC's and will incorporate 2 fans. 1 to come on when the lights come on, the other to run 24/7 for evap. Future plans will be to add 2 250w metal halide and then run 4x96w pc's. With the 6x96 I will have 7.6w a gallon. I think that is sufficient for now.

I will post some pictures in the coming days. Want everything to settle down. The water is a bit cloudy still anyway.

Thanks for reading,

T

 

Sounds fantastic and good luck! Can't wait to see the pics!

 

Is there any reason to do more than 7.6 w/gal? Even that seems a bit of overkill, with all the opportunity to do just that.

Not being critical, just asking the question, at what point is it too much?

Cheers,
Ray

 

Thanks Craig. Looks like everything made it through the night also. Nothing dead that I can see. I was worried about that since it took about 12 hours to get this done. I cleaned off all the rocks while I had them out. that took forever. Tank still has some cloudiness to it. Not much but a tad. SO pics will have to wait another day or so.

Ray.....I do not know at what point you have too much light. I have seen several local tanks that have 12w per gallon and everything is beautiful in it. I figured by doing this, I would have plenty of light to grow anything I choose. SPS, LPS, clams...etc. And the nice thing is if it becomes too much light, I can turn off one or two bulbs. I am going to wire the lights so I have that flexibility. See how it turns out. They should be here around x-mas I hope.

T

 

Personally, I think the rating of watts/gal is pretty useless anymore.  For instance, I have a 180 with 3-250W DE bulbs and 4-39w T5's giving me a total of 906 watts, divide that by 180 and you get 5.03 but I have more light than a lot of people.  Also, 250W DE's are similar to a 400W SE.  I would say that the amount of watts over a tank truely depends on what will be in the tank.  But 6 - 96W pcs over a 75 and you can grow all softies and LPS and maybe some montipora but that is about it.  For clams, acros and montis to be truly happy and color up you will need halides.

Mike