TWOLITREmedia's 75g BowFront Reef!

Ok so a lot of this post will be taken from my intro post as it was quite thorough and I figured I would begin my official build thread!

I come from an automotive background and am a proffesional photographer and graphic designer for a living. I live in Ontario Canada (It's getting cold here!) and I am very new to the hobby. So new that two weeks ago I knew pretty much NOTHING about salt water. I have an addictive personality (Yes I know I stepped into the wrong hobby ;D) and I quickly found myself spending every night up until 5am researching everything I could get my eyes on. After feeling as though I had enough knowledge i started scouring Kijiji for some deals..... here is what happened

So I found an awesome deal right off the bat from a guy who was going to start a 55 gallon salt water tank but failed to collect all the necessary parts before his budget ran out which always blows my mind when people tell me that. I realize not everyone has the money for it, but when dreams go further than wallet it baffles me.

Anyways here is a photo of the tank I originally bought.






Thought I had really grabbed a steal, he threw in about 20 lbs of fiji rock, a ballast, and some bulbs......I didn't know what a good deal was until I jumped back on Kijiji the next night.

I stumbled upon this deal that had been posted that very same night I was browsing. It looked to good to be true, so I started asking questions about why he was getting rid of it.....

Essentially the guy flooded his basement pretty bad with his RO/DI unit so his wife demanded he get rid of the tank. After begging and pleading he promised for it to never happen again....what do ya know, it happened again, even worst. So he posted the tank right away with great hesitation.


Here is what is coming with the set up.....here's the kicker, everything for $700 dollars! The light alone is almost 4 or 5 after tax, skimmer is a good 200+, ehiem heater, etc etc. Here is a list of what I got with the tank...



Here's the package:

72G BowFront with stand

Vertex Illumilux 48" LED

Vertex Refractometer

Vertex Puratek 100 GPD RO SYSTEM

Reef Octopus BH-2000

2 x Hydor Koralia Evolution Powerhead (750 GPH)

Jager 300 Watt Aquarium Heater (Eheim)


Live stock:

~100lb premium fiji rock + 40lb SeaFloor Reef Sand

1 x Blue Tuxedo Urchin

1 x pisttol shrimp

1 x percula clown

1 x six line wrasse

1 x Flame Angelfish

1 x Yellowtail Dascyllus

2 x cleaner shrimps

1 x Feather Duster

1 x Dwarf Colored Feather Duster

1 x peppermint shrimp

1 x sand dollar

2 x Pom Pom Crab

~3 x Nassarius Snail

1 x Sand Sifting Sea Star

lots of assorted snails and crabs

few purple mushrooms
1 x Green Polyp Leather
1 x button polyps
1 x frog spawn.
1 x Green Polyp Leather


food, every needed test kits, 10g tank, 3g water pale, 2 x hydrometers, magnet cleaner, 2 x powerheads and everything else he has kicking around.


After speaking with a few different people who I respect their opinion I decided to take the plunge and tell him I would take it all. There was certainly concern on how I was going to disassemble the tank, keep his water to make sure the live stock would survive the move. A risky maneuver for a rookie to the hobby, but like I said I researched for about two weeks for hours and hours a day and felt confident. I had 5 guys with me including the owner, a giant cube van, and a lot of hope.

The fateful day came, and I made sure to prepare myself as much as possible throughout the day.

I did not lose a single piece of live stock and everything is sitting pretty and getting adjusted to the tank! I managed to actually keep 90% of the 72g of water and transport it all to my house in about 200$ in buckets. 100lbs of rock, and the listed livestock from earlier in the thread are all safe and sound. Should I mention it snowed a bit while we did it?It was about one degree Celsius, scary thought.

Aquascaping this rock was incredibly easy and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Below is a photo progression somewhat of the setup process in my house. I wish I had time to take more photos, and just better ones in general but it was all quite hectic. From this post on only A++ photos from here

Here we are pulling out the rock at the owners house....



Everything started to panic in the tank a bit at this point, the shrimp started swimming all over the place. You can see the Vortec Iluminex on in that photo.

So about two hours later all the buckets were at my house and I needed to start to get to work, even though I had a heater in the bucket with the live and with the coral.

I used a small pond pump to ever so gently begin piping the water into the tank and onto a plate for the first five inches. Below is a depiction of SOME of the buckets this required. You can also see my custom built water dragon tank to the right ;D More on that later...if anyone is interested.



All the fishies were in here with one piece of live rock.



Starting to slowly pump the water. I couldn't believe how clear the water was right away. Slow and steady was the way to go here....You can see the aquascape here as well. Managed to do this all with no putty or glue, not bad for a first timer Tonsss of tunnels and caves everywhere, love how it turned out. Made sure to have visible perches for coral addition.



Basically I pumped out all of the cleanest buckets into the tank first trying to leave as much sediment and whatever else at the bottom of the bucket. Really the only dirty bucket was the one with about 75 lbs of live and i made sure to rinse it all before placing it in the tank with some RO water. (I was told to do this to reduce sediment when putting in the water.)

Began to acclimate everything from the coral to the clowfish as the tank was filling. The anxious wait to get the level to the pump to begin filtration :-(



I think everything was floated at this point



Here's my yet named little clown Excited to get out and re explore the new reef!



Here is the beast of a protein skimmer (Reef Octpus BH2000 I believe) still turned off at the moment, and probably will remain that way till possibly tomorrow night.


So after many hours and my back killing me from improperly lifting large buckets with hundreds of pounds in them I decided to turn the light on quickly for a few photos. I was told to keep it off for the first night and turn it on in the morning. Had it on for all of five minutes and felt bad as the frog spawn began immediately reaching out towards the light. Regardless it's night time and it was time for bed anyway.




So all in all a giantly successful day in my opinion. Like I said before I don't think I could be happier with my $700 spent on this set up. Not pictured here is all the testing kits, refractometer, supplements, food (frozen and dry), salt, the RO/DI unit, and just INSANE amounts of other stuff the guy threw in. I felt incredibly bad at times when he helped me do this entire thing along with my three friends because I could tell it was killing him to get rid of it as he had thousands tied up in the hobby he loved. I'm not even sure how he could have left his RO/DI unit twice and flooded his basement to the point his wife demanded the removal of the tank, but I guess as the saying goes his loss....you know the rest.

So I'm sure I did some things wrong here and there today but like I mentioned at the beginning of this thread as of a couple weeks ago I knew absolutely NOTHING about salt water tanks at all. I mean I didn't know the difference between RO/DI or what it ment and LPS coral or what they were. I am going to continue researching and gaining as much knowledge as possible to further pursue this hobby I have become instantly addicted with.

Thanks to the people who have already helped thus far, and those who have not yet but will in the future.

Let me know what you think about all this from my purchase, to the way I moved it, suggestions of corals, changes to the tank, etc etc. I will start building my 20 gallon sump w/ refuge on Saturday and hopefully will be flowing water through it by Monday.

Sorry for the essay/short story/novel.

 

Here's day 2 of the tank just before I topped off the water level with some salted RO/DI water that's been mixing since the day before.. After this I also got the protien skimmer running, as well as bought and installed a small internal filter to take care of some of the kick up created by the fish flying around. Eventually this will be pulled once my sump system is in place and I change out my power heads for a pair of MP10es.

 

Great deal and great looking rock!

 

Wow, looks great! Nice aquascaping as well.

 

Thanks! One of the greatest advantages of buying my stuff this way was all 100lbs of Live has gorgeous coraline all over it.

Thank you! I am changing things here and there as I go but I was very happy with how it came out. Next time I may putty everything together just for security but for now I'm super happy with it and all the livestock seem to feel the same way!

 

I am impressed! Beautiful tank and quite a score! Welcome to the hobby and thanks for sharing your labors in getting your tank set up! I do feel sorry for the man that had to give it up. I'm sure it was really difficult. The coralline on the rock is awesome!

 

Thanks for the warm welcome, and I am super excited to be doing this, I can't even walk by my tank without going and staring at it for 10 minutes but I guess everyone on here knows that feeling all to well.

The labor to get the tank here was well worth it, and proves that with a little planning, some help, and a whole lot of research you can basically get it done if you want it bad enough.

I felt horrible for the guy as we were packing up all the stuff and draining the tank you could tell it was a depressing experience. I called him up today and asked if he was willing to come by and fully explain the testing process, his feeding routing (targeting corals and for fish) as well as how to set up the RO/DI unit I got with it and he was extatic to come by. I think at this point any time he can still see his tank he is happy. When he got here he looked wildly impressed that I didn't kill anything and that the new setup of the tank looked great! He ran a full test on the tank from salinity to ammonia and everything was perfect. I told him that for the price I got this all for him he can call it "our" tank if he wants and is more than welcome to come by anytime he pleases to check out the progress.

As for the coraline, I'm super happy I didn't have to wait the year or so that it took to grow it to this point.

I will make sure to keep this thread updated with plenty of nice photos cause that's really why we're all here isn't it!

 

Good on ya (K+). I bet he was super depressed to have to tear such a nice system. You should e-mail him the link to this thread so he can keep up that way too. Congrats on the successful transition.

 

Yeh he was pretty devastated but I think he accepted the fact that it was his own fault for being lazy and not just installing an auto shut-off float valve in his RO/DI bucket.....twice. Regardless he's happy to see it went to the right hands.

Alright so more photos from today! Still getting adjusted to shooting through the bow front glass as it certainly distorts the image from certain angles. Anyways I got a couple decent ones below, enjoy!

The set-up from afar....

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr


My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr


My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr


My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

These are awesome, can someone tell me the name of this coral again? It wasn't mentioned in his stock list...Green Polyp Leather?

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Button polyps spreading around looking great....I have a question about another colony later on.

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

My little nemo hanging out around the AWESOME frogspawn!

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Ok so I could NOT get a perfectly focused shot of this but I would LOVE to know what these little green clear bubbly egg looking thing is hnaging out on the top rock. The owner said they were in his tank as well and he left them alone and was curious as to an ID on them as well. Any help would be great, should I pull them out? Will they grow into something?

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Some purple mushrooms with neon green spots on them

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Can't get enough of my feather duster, there are also two heads of dwarf colored feather dusters as well in a darker spot in the tank that I couldn't get a shot of.

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Busy shrimp is busy...

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Tuxedo Urchin looking fancy

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr



Alrighttttt, so everything is looking great and the fish are all active and happily feeding moderate feedings twice a day of dry. This is the only thing I have some concern about and unfortunately it's on one of my favorite peices of coral. This colony of button polyps has 10 of 25 little heads looking like they're dying. The owner said to leave them and just see how they do. The strange thing is that the heads that look like they're dying are still reactive to feeding, light, water flow, etc etc. What exactly is going on here? If they are dying should I remove the entire colony from the tank? Is there a way I should remove the "dead" looking heads?

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

As a general question about corals and this one as well..this may be very noobish but it's important I ask, when corals "die" can they toxify the tank like when a fish dies and you don't take it out quick enough or does dead coral just turn to it's hard rock form?

Thanks in advance, hope you like the photos and they'll only improve from here!

 

It all depends on the coral. Usually, when softies die, they just kinda melt away. LPS corals will generally lose all their flesh, SPS does the same thing but they turn solid white.