blindside

Wassup ARC! long time no see!

soooo... long story short as many of you know, ive been thru SEVERAL tanks... I took a very long break from "reefing" tho, ive had this sitting in my closet for over a year now, and decided why not give it a go! lifes been a bit complicated, but I feel like im now more stable then ever, as a professional tattoo artist I have become very busy, working over 12 hours a day, and all the traveling involved in my career... from west coast all the way to the east coast, and everywhere in between.. soon to be over seas im sure.. BUT I have a little more time on my hands now that I have worked my a** off for everything to be more stable. Also raising my 3 year old son has not been an easy task... ha! (that guys nuts!)

Anyways, on to the tank build! I have decided to stay in the nano realm, and start off with something simple and not as time demanding.

My plans for the tank, keep it simple, so far it is housing a pair of extreme misbar clowns, and a fire shrimp. I would like to add a few smaller fish, maybe some tiny gobies, a strawberry pseudo for color, and some cool inverts. As far as coral goes, I will eventually venture back into housing SPS, but for now I will take it easy, maybe some nice ricordeas.

Here is the tank sitting in its permanent location.

I had put 5lbs of live sand and filled it up with saltwater, no liverock. I noticed the top shelf bowing just a bit, so i cut some pieces of MDF i had lying around and drilled them to the next shelf under sitting directly under the tank to help support the weight of the tank when its fully stocked, it no longer bows.

Here it is after i had the supporting MDF painted and installed, also added some shelves up top, the main reason for the shelves hovering up over my tank is to mount my lighting, it turned out to look really good i thought.

I added a few pounds of liverock that I aquired from a good friend of mine, and his tank has been running for almost a year now. I have always been a fan of using a minimal amount of rock, I enjoy beeing able to see areas of wide open sandbed, and want to give my inhabitants as much swimming room as possible in such a small tank. I also cant stand when liverock touches any sides of my glass, so I went with some isolated islands. Theres not alot of room on my rocks for much coral, but eventually when i get back into growing SPS, the pieces I do decide to add will have enough room to branch out nicely.

so far so good! Anyways, let me know what you guys think! Thanks for checking out my build!