Sharoleb's 75 Gallon

Last week was fun and we made a lot of progress. We bought a used 48" 6 bulb T5 fixture. We currently have 4 Actinic Plus and 2 6K daylight bulbs. The fixture came w/ 12 bulbs so we were able to play w/ the options a bit.
We also ended up making a great trade to Jody (Totally Exotic Corals of Oregon) and got 60 pounds of rock, all dead. Nice huge pieces though. We added 40 more pounds of sand and re-did all of the rock. So basically I will be starting the cycle pretty much over but I love the way this looks now. Also we got the black backing put up.
First we laid out the rock on the floor to try to get an idea of what we wanted.

This is what it looked like when we were putting the rock in, so it was a fun to wake up in the moring to see how it looked.

It's now officially a reef tank!


I think the aquascaping looks a lot like what we had on the floor. I like it.

 

Looks good. I like that it has the "holes" in the rock for the fish to swim through. I also like the way the ends curl around to the front of the tank. Gives it some character. Nice job so far.

 

Nice scape.

 

BUMP for a cycle question: we went through the diatom brown stage. Came home yesterday and instead of the brown "dusting" everywhere, it's now green. Is this normal? Could this be from running the lights too long, or just part of the cycle process? Thanks.

 

your scqpe job is simple mahvelous. you did an excellent job. with the lights running, you will start to get green ahir algae. its all pqrt of the process. keep it up.

guy

 

looks great! i really like it. good job!

 

Scape looks great. My only concern is that it looks like the rocks are just sitting on the[VMEO][/VMEO] sandbed. This could lead to problems down the road. I have always put the rock down then the poured the sand around them. A large rock falling over could be a disaster. Unless that is the way you did it and I'm looking at it wrong.

 

Scape looks awesome! makes me want to redo mine.

 

Thanks everyone!!! It's been so much fun! Our other tank is a 36bf so it feels like we're in the big time now! ;D I really wanted to get creative w/ the rock, didn't want it to look like everyone else's. It's been a couple weeks, and I keep looking at one rock or another and say "maybe that one should be turned..." Yesterday my husband cut me off, it is what it is that is how it will be. But it looks great. I'll take another pic of the final product soon, but it's really not much different than what we started with.

The rocks are on top of the sand bed, but wedged in. There are actually some points that are touching the back of the tank (it's ok, we wanted it that way.) The rocks are all very very stable and "locked" into one another. I actually only just read a couple days ago that people put it directly on the tank bottom. Oh well - maybe in another year or two I can upgrade again...
Ha ha - I told my husband this was an upgrade too, except I wanted to keep the 36bf running. So more of an addition really, but who's counting?

 

Thats pretty good aquascaping considering you where working in semi darkness due to tank clarity

Steve