RM's Coral Farm (update 1/11..changin' gears)

Yes another build thread by Reefmonkey. ;D This one is a small coral farm I am setting up in unused space at my retail store downtown where I live. It will be a slow build but in the end it will consist of a softie tank, an lps tank, a sps tank and a frag tank. All will be drilled 40g breeders. There will also be a frag 24.5" X 23.5" X 8" coral tank that will be for top down shots and taking to swap meets.

All of the 40's will be tied together and use the same sump, fuge, and ATS. In the future I plan on adding a breeding system for some type of clowns so I'll begin the phyto and roitifer cultures the same time I begin cycling this system.

So far the plans to light it up are 8 bulb T5VHO with IceCap 660 ballasts, IceCap SLR's and most likely ATI, UVL, and GE bulbs on the soft and lps tanks. The SPS and frag tanks will be MH. I have no experience with the halides so I'll have a bunch of questions on them when the time comes.

So that is the plan. For those of you that like DIY be sure to be here when I build the 500 gallon skimmer. It's trippy.

Here's what I have so far.
the lumber for the tank stand. It'll be 4X4 and 2X4 construction

the first of the four 40 breeders. I would have two but the help at the LFS dropped the second one while carrying it out to my car.

 

nice. cant wait to see it

 

sweeeet. get to working haha

 

Sweet. I'll definitely be following.

I think your skimmer might be too small. Only 4 x the water volume.

 

Petco just had all those on sale for $1/gal.

 

Very nice!! This is going to be a fun build thread to follow. Get to work!

 

Yeah and they were sold out with no rain checks! I paid $109 each for the two. And one got dropped. Glad it wasn't the one I had my hands on!

 

Yeah no kidding. When I went they didn't have any 40s or 55s left but I got 2 29s for sumps. Should be a cool build.

 

There will be a ton of macros and mangroves and the ATS. There won't be enough to pull out of the water for a huge skimmer anyhow.
It'll be like my build at home. The skimmer barely pulls any gunk at all.

 

Nice im gona keep an eye on this one.