Reefnjunkies-addiction-I mean 75 gallon tank

Well I need to dig up some photos from the archive but if I am going to start my thread and using the word "addiction" than a little history is in order. Also did you notice the name of my ID??

Go ahead and take as seat because I am long winded-but I will try to summerize since it is "history"

Thanksgiving time frame of last year a client of mine is moving and has a 24 gallon nano he wants to sell-I used to do reefing back 1990 and got out of it. The nano looked cool, I had never heard of such a thing, you see kids when I was a kid....opps sorry, they did not have the reefing things then as they do now.

After nearly 20 years of forgetting "all the joy I had" I bought it(soon to be for sale).

I remeber one comment he made that went something like this-

"these are great they run themselves practiclly. That bulbs been burned out for about a 7-8 months and see how great things look? I haven't changed the water in about 5 months"

It has dual PC bulbs one half of one of the bulbs had burned out

WOW-no more water changes? :clapping:

Here is a shot after I changed a few things;




OMG this is so funny-NOW

I say changed a few things since I knew I wanted/needed a skimmer, so I bought an AquaC Remora HOB (soon to be for sale), I beefed up the return pump. I figured I would upgrade the lights to so I got a 24" fixture that housed 6-24 watt T-5's(soon to be for sale).

Well all that really drove up the heat so now I needed a chiller, and I may as well by 1/10 hp since 1/15 would not work if I every wanted to upgrade


"IF I EVER WANTED TO UPGRADE" :LolLolLol:LolLolLol:LolLolLol


I am ofcourse skipping the story of the algae blooms, the cyno outbeaks nthe , the , the learning curve if you may.

Here is a shot of the Nano, you cant see the light assembly, as it would blind you-


Well now Christmas is getting close, I wonder if I can find a larger tank on Craigslist?????

To be continued...............

Thats all I have time for now-got to get some house things done.

Please follow along as I am sure I am not the only one who has gone down this road, OMG!!! There has to be MANY out there that would say-to themselves of course, never out loud!!, "Dude, that sounds just like the stuff I went through" or "did"

The first step is acknowledging you have a problem-I think I will be starting a 12 step program in the future

 

reefnjunkie

for all the ups and downs, you have something there to be very pleased with IMO
I can see from the photo just how bright that tank is
and those corals and nems do look like they are really "glowing"

Steve

 

Thanks Steve, its not all as bad as it sounded, if it was not for some of the things that happened I would not have thought about getting a larger tank-How twisted is that?
This is the only hobby I know that if you are having a problem with something like a 24 gallon tank as an example (in my case) going larger like to an 80 gallon is a good thing-very twisted thinking. Except we all know the smaller the water volume the bigger swings you see.

Anyway I'll fast forward as quick as possible-I mainly show the Nano tank so you can see how certain livestock did over time.

Short story-I bought an 80 gallon of craigslist. It was the stand, tank, sump, the light had 2-150watt DE 20K MH and 2-54 watt actinic, he had 2 seperate wave timers, Koralias, skimmer, dosing pump-complete set up. This was just before Xmas- I sold the wife onthe idea its my Xmas present plus I can sell all the old stuff, help pay for new........Blah Blah Blah

The stand was ugly so I built a new one and canopy and redid all the plumbing-
That thing had a 3" downspout-LOFL -DO you hear Niagra falls? No its the downspout.

Heres were I ended up;

Left side of cabinet-initially was going to do a fuge/sump but change my mind on the fuge;

Right side;


Yep I use Unleaded Premium to top off my tank-Do you like my Top off container-:-[ I needed something narrow

A few shots from the front;
Left half

right half


This tank still needed to cycle so my Nano acted as the holding area- really wish I would have got a few shots of that.

Do you see any green showing????

Do you think this tank is due for sometype of bloom perhaps?
Lesson learned here-you dont need to run your lights 12 hours a day while it cycles

I can share that with anyone that asks-

A few more shots of individuals on the nano;

My Horn Coral-Whose name I learned here;

my Duncan;

my Rose bulb-with strange white lines-I never got an answer to that Q but that was a different forum I used to visit-also the Zenia;

Well dont want to make this too long.
I'll be back to the present in no time. Pretty odd thread
reliving the past 10 months going to the present.

 

excellent lookin tank

 

kewl goods there junkie. the progression is great. keep it up.

 

After the cycle I moved everything in.

Hindsight originally was really kicking me hard since I had planned on buffing out all the scratches but figured it would not be that bad from what I recalled once the water was in it.
That was partly true but as you can see from the photos you can still see scratches-man I was P.O.'d Kept telling myself 'its not that bad, you really cant see the scratches, THAT MUCH!"

Here is a shot from the right;

From the center;

and the left;


You can see the Zenia has quadrupled in size. Its funny since I got the Nano and actually got the water to the parameters of a REAL Reef tank, the Zenia melted away to almost nothing. I thought it was gone just a patch on the rock was all that was left-I guess it got used to living in the sewer-Nitrates were probablly off the chart.
Anyway it grew back and with a vegance
Here is a shot of a devils finger I got before the jump to the 80;

A tyree toadstool;

lastly some kind of zoos;

Well as you can see the scratches are clearly visible (except the last 2 were while in the Nano) and I was kicking myself hard. I decided that before I dump more money (than I ever had any wild idea of-to me at least) into something-I better dang well be happy with it, and I knew I would not be happy with a scratched up tank.


SOOOOOOOO, I decided to go glass.

It was an easier pill to swallow (this is called justification) because as I explained to my wife, I can sell all this stuff to help pay for the new equipment. Plus the tank was 5 feet long and it really was to large for the room I needed to put it. At lease she let me think that anyway

She said she had heard that selling the old equipment would help pay for the new equipment somewhere before but just would not say where-HMM
Deja Vue.

So back to the drawing board to build a new stand and canopy and start from scratch, with all new plumbing sump footprint etc.

At some point maybe this will develop into something

for now, I think the jury is still deliberating

 

very nice tank! what is the orange coral to the right of the clam??

 

Thanks Tiger, it was terrible looking at the scratches, I'm getting ready to load the photos that are current.
The orange coral is a tree coral, they come in different colors, orang, purple... The dont like the light much and lack zooan thinghy so the need to be spot fed. Can be difficult to keep-Short story-I traded it in-and got a Dendro

 

So the scratched up tank had to go plus it was to long. I got a 75 gallon All Glass tank-HINDSIGHT AGAIN, now I wish I would have gone 90 gallons-but at that time I had 2-150 watt MH with 2-54 watt actincs, now I have 2-250 MH with - 65 PC actinics-wish I would have had my crystal ball around.

I only had a single design change and that was the canopy, I wanted a hinged lid/door so I could access the tank without removing the canopy.

So I built the new stand and canopy and this all happen 1 week after the acrylic tank had finished cycling and now I am tearing that one down and going glass

I'm an idiot.

Shot of the left side of the stand before plumbing it;

Right side;


You notice, I got rid of the gas can

The top before cutting in the door;


and after;


Man that rock sure has an ugly green going on-

I needed to wait and see if I get a mini-cycle I was extremely careful moving out the old sand into the new tank.

After 4 days and no spikes I moved everone over again Hopefully this time it the last-Honestly it is the last, unless I blow out the F/R wall and add on using the garage.I build alot of stuff but not that job.

FTS;



Looking through the side of the tank;



I'll dig up some photos that have closer shots of the neighborhood.

 

wow the tank looks soo good