Parasuta's 100G

[parasuta]

Hi All,

I joined this forum a little bit back now, but never got round to really introducing myself or my tank or doing my tank build. Well as it turns out I'm 1 month off submitting my Master's thesis and finally writing up a tank build will be an excellent form of procrastination.

So I bought this tank, and most of it's components in one go back in March 2015 after tossing about the idea for several months. I had done freshwater before in Australia, then I moved to Austin after the significant other got a job offer at UT. After settling in from the move, we both started thinking about our respective tank builds (He is attempting a self composting enclosed frog terrarium that takes up the entire kitchen at the moment and makes progress only on certain weekends when the moon is full or blue or whatever magic inspires him to actually work on it) and I started thinking about saltwater. I wanted to go big-ish, and a second hand tank seemed more within my budget so this is what I ended up with.

There was a lot of salt creep on the stand and canopy so I figured while I was ordering bits and parts I was missing I would work on it first. The hinges were welded on with rust so I destroyed a couple of screw bits removing them and set about cleaning, sanding and re-colourising the stand. This is a pic of the difference in colour before and after. I used minwax polyshades bombay mahogany over the old poly coating rather than stripping and starting new because a) I only have a tiny little outdoor working area and b) I'm lazy.

Some new hardware and it all looked good as new!

You will notice areas of slightly darker colour. Basically, if you do any reading on the minwax polyshades it's a tinted poly urethane, so when you do touch ups, or where your brush crosses a part you have already painted, you lay down slightly more of it and the colour ends up slightly darker - basically it's the reason everyone hates this stuff and no one recommends using it and I knew all this but I figure I'm better than everyone and learnt my lesson. At the end of the day it's really only super noticeable if you pay attention and hopefully people will be looking at the tank not the stand. I also painted the back of the glass black here.

Fill up day came shortly after. I had a bunch of previously live rock, now dead from the same person I got the tank that I scrubbed and cleaned up, ordered 3 20lb bags of Arag Alive Special Grade, got the sand and thought it didn't look like enough so stupidly ordered two more bags rather than one. I think it could have used a bit less sand. Everything is blindingly white. The sump is a 40G that I also got second hand, I installed a baffle as previous owner was using a bucket inside the sump for the protein skimmer section, chucked some dead rock in the middle section and called it a day. Fill up happened in June, The tank cycled in a little over 3 weeks and I didn't add anything, I think old organic material on the rock just started rotting which is not great but... oh well!

During cycling I set up my QT tank and bought two Ocellaris clowns. I have a rule that everything in my tanks has a name, so they are Peppy and Fancy Pants who is apparently a black ice? He gets darker every day so honestly I reckon he will end up looking like a black snowflake of sorts, you will see another picture later on. His nipped fins healed up very quick as he was kept with two Percs who were much bigger than him. Peppy is quite obviously going to be the girl, she/he has put on much more size than fancypants.

Anyway, life went on in the tank and I added a Randall's Goby (Goby-kins) and Pistol Shrimp Pair. I'm pretty strict about quarantining things so the clowns had the tank to themselves for a while. Then found a suitable light upgrade in the classifieds section here so I would be coral ready.

When the tank was about 3 months old, I decided to try getting a bubble tip. I know forums recommend waiting 6 months but my nitrates had been a stable 2.5, and I came across a particularly healthy specimen. He settled in lovely, picked a spot in the first 2 days and hasn't moved since, here is a pic of him today.

I also added some of my first corals in the last month or so, a Chalice and bubble tip I bought in the classifieds here, some GSP and a torch coral, all are doing great. I want to slowly add some more Euphyliia as I like the movement they create, some more chalices and I'd like to try some monti's up the top. I'm not big on having one of everything, I'd rather keep my selections to a few genera and a couple of different colours, it means I'm also spending money on buying one larger frag than several smaller ones so stocking will take some time. My significant other attended the frag swap in my place as I work weekends, but we didn't purchase anything, sorry folks.

Full tank shot:

More recent shot of the clowns showing Fancy Pants' colour change, horrible photo but that is him on the right:

Fish plans are also kinda limited at the moment. I'd like to go for reef safe wrasses rather than tangs, maybe add a blenny, and the end goal is a green mandarin. To facilitate that goal I purchased a 29G tank during the latest dollar per gallon sale and will be building a dedicated refugium out of that which will be plumbed in and elevated behind the tank under the stairs. The pump from the sump will feed the fuge which will overflow to the DT, so that will be an update coming soon. I'd also like to automate dosing 2 part, as currently I am doing that manually. Currently I have the clowns, the goby and pistol shrimp, two cleaner shrimp (who are both called Nugget), some green mithrax crabs and assorted snails.

Maintenance at the moment is a 30G water change every 2 weeks, I do manual top off (waiting for a second hand automated one to turn up at a price range I like). I do things cheap for the most part, well as cheap as you can get in this hobby.

Looking forward to interacting with everyone on here more frequently.

[+KimP]

Great job on the stand and aquascaping! I admire your patience and qt process.

[parasuta]

Thanks heaps for reading. My background is biology and I've spent a fair amount of time working in zoos as well, I like to do right by my animals and although I know some people argue that QT can stress animals out and do more bad than good, I like to be able to spend some one on one time with the animal at the very least to make sure they are eating and doing okay.

[FarmerTy]

Great looking work in staining the stand. I like the non-uniformity of it better actually.

Have you gotten the anemone to host the clowns yet?

[parasuta]

Lol, no. The clowns haven't shown the slightest interest in the anemone. They are very active clowns, buzzing up and down the tank all day. I figure they are just teenagers who want to travel and eventually they will settle down and think about being hosted.

I also have to get around to reading your mega thread. I've been slowly working my way through some of the threads here, but yours is very hard to make the commitment to start!

[FarmerTy]

I've heard taping up a picture of clowns hosting on your tank glass for them to see it helps... however anecdotal that really is... it's worth a shot.

I'd hold off on the mega-thread until you finish your masters. My wife found every excuse in the book to not do her master's thesis until it was really crunch time.

[LarryD]

Lol, no. The clowns haven't shown the slightest interest in the anemone. They are very active clowns, buzzing up and down the tank all day. I figure they are just teenagers who want to travel and eventually they will settle down and think about being hosted.

I also have to get around to reading your mega thread. I've been slowly working my way through some of the threads here, but yours is very hard to make the commitment to start!

As someone who has read the entire Ty thread I suggest just finding the synopsis that was posted a few pages back.