Long Time Lurker - First Time Poster

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome

the current stock list is:

• Cleaner Common Wrasse
• Four Blue/Green Reef Chromis (they are pretty young, but the group is holding steady)
• Harlequin Shrimp (getting pretty big)
• Masked Goby
• Copperband B/F
• Two Scooter Blennies (one female which we've had for almost 2 years, and a male that just got added)
• Tail Spot Blenny
• Royal Gramma
• Yellow Coris Wrasse
• Yellow Watchman
• Large Tiger Pistol Shrimp (nearly 4 inches long)
• ORA Purple Dottyback
• An Emerald Crab
• Black Rock crab (not positive on this ID)
  He's large. His cap is about 1.5" across and he's been with us (this tank and the old tank) for a little over a year.
• Two Sand Conchs along with the usual hermits and assortment of snails.

You can see most of my stock list along with actual photos of these little guys on my AquaticLog.com profile. Some of them aren't there since I don't have photo yet.

 

What do I think?

Awesome looking tank! And that's coming from someone with delusions of granduer and thinks he has his own decent 125Reef.

Can I borrow your wife to set up the scape on my soon to be running 180?

Are those rocks glued, fastened, or just placed that way?
Either which way, looks awesome!

Welcome to 3Reef

 

looks awesome. Glad you shared

 

LOL - I'll ask her if what her hourly rate is

The rocks are set in a combination of ways. The large structure on the right side is made up of lots of smaller chucks of BRS dry rock cemented tighter, along with a few large pieces stacked/leaning on it and then epoxied in place.

the structured starting from the left of the tank (rock 1, 2 and the center tower as we like to call them) are both stacked and then epoxied in place using a combination of larger pieces and smaller pieces.


to give you an idea what was new rock and what was old rock, and how it all fit together, here's a pic the day before we did the move. the old 50gall with all it's rock is sitting next to the new 125 with the new rock




The structure is strong enough to stand up to turbo snails, but might tumble if the pistol shrimp ever ventures to that side of the tank and digs out the bottom.

We have attempted to keep him segregated to the right side of the tank under the big structure. It's hard to tell, but there is about 8-9 inches of space from the large rock on the right to the next rock over. so far (going on two months) he's abided by the rules

 

Thanks,

Nic pics

You did set the rocks on the bottom first, then added the substrate, or made sure the larger pieces were touching the bottom?

 

ya - most of them are. At least as far down as I get push them. The ones at the far left may not be all the way to the bottom, simply because the tank was setup for about a week before I started moving all the rock and livestock from the old tank.

It's pretty stable though, it's just that the bigger pistol shrimp can move a lot of stuff around. On the right side of the tank, where the pistol lives, the rock was placed first, before the substrate.