Grog Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Plans and Goals This tank is being set up to be FOWLR'ish. There may be a few corals. The plan is mainly fish and macros. Being reef safe is an afterthought. The intent is a lot of live rock and sand for filtration. Macros to suck up fish poop and look cool. Fish that may not behave well around corals. Save some money on lighting with this build. Design / Theory No skimmer. HOB filer and power heads. Deep sand bed of live sand. I intend to do 10-20% water changes every week. Went with hygger full specturm cheap lights as minimal corals. Tampa Bay Saltwater Rock. Going with 60 gallons worth of TBS "the package" for this with an additional 60# of sand. (120# of rock and 120# of sand total.) That will give me great live rock and a very nice sand bed. IMO they provide a little too much rock for a tank, so I'm ordering a 60g kit for the 75 g tank. I want less rock and more sand, more open space for fish and macros. I've ordered from them several times and the rock is great, but I always ended up with extras left over. This is going to be my delay in setting up this tank. They are back ordered so it will likely be next month before I get rock and sand. Gear List Seachem / Sicce Tidal 110 HOB Power Filter X2 Hydor Koralia P29501 (1400-1500 GPH) X2 Hydor Koralia Wavemaker Basic Controller, Dual Pump, 12V, DC The Sicce HOB filters are pretty huge. Should be great flow. Eheim Jager 3616 150W Heater GLDF 55-75 Gallon Fish Tank Stand Heavy Duty Metal Aquarium Stand - Got this stand off of Amazon. This was a super nice product IMO. Metal and good finished wood, nice curves, good hardware and instructions. Made in China but had IKEA quality. Way better than expected. Aqueon 75 Gallon hygger 978 48" Full Spectrum X2 - The lights are 'full spectrum' Not a reef light but very thin and the price is right. Color and output reminds me of some of the T5 tubes I used to have. I'll very likely add some actinic blue strips to this to get a more 'normal' reef tank coloration. Stocking Plans Galaxea 1 <-- Maybe, maybe the only coral Foxface 1 Coral Beauty Angel (maybe flame angel) 1 Chromis 6 Fairy Wrasse 1 Heavy quantity and variety of macros I'm open to other stocking ideas if anyone has some. The plan is to get the 'package' in and quick cycle the tank with that rock and sand. Then add critters slowly. In my experience, using their rock and sand you have a very slight ammonia spike from die off on the first few days, but all the numbers drop really quickly after that. Here is a pic of the WIP build. Seemed appropriate to put the tank under my shark mount. Still don't have enough water. I have a 13g trash can I'm mixing in, so it is batch after batch to get this filled up. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Timfish Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 If you exchange the tang, foxface and angel for a Pyramid butterfly and copperband you could grow some of the red macros like dragon's tongue and red grape. Purple stylo is probably robust enough to deal with the excess DOC from a lot of macros. I would think hardy zoas and actinodiscus mushrooms would too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grog Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 Updated the stocking list. Tang is out. I had a second guess, "Do I want this eating my macros?" no..... Is this tank big enough for it? Maybe.. So, its out. Now I need something to fill that slot. Not sure about either butterfly or copperbands though.... Still thinking. I'll stock slowly so not a big deal. The decision can wait. Filled the tank with the last bit of water yesterday and got both HOB filters running. Tank is nice and clear but has no sand or rock. Took forever as I only have a 13g mixing can. One batch a day... sigh..... Now I'm waiting for TBS to give me a ship date....... Played with the lights. They will grow macro, they are bright, but the color is not the visual I want. It is very white. I'd call it a clean 6500k mix. Just one of these Hygger lights would be perfect in a tank with Oscars or a Red Devil. I want more of a traditional blueish reef color for viewing so, I ordered one SB Lights Actinic 48" bar to supplement these. Hoping this will make it look better and allow me to have macro and coral in this tank. The galaxea going into 40B will be moved into this tank, once this tank is stabilized. It can live in front of a return and sting away at non-existent enemies, to its hearts content. Personally, I think sweeper tentacles are cool. I don't think the macros or fish will care. Maybe it will become a galaxea dominant tank? Like I said before FOWLR'ish.... zoas/paly may work too. (I do have a liking for the large green tinted paly grandis.) I'm not too worried about coral beauty or the foxface munching them from past experiences. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Timfish Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 I've gopt green proto' grandis when you're ready. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grog Posted 10 hours ago Author Share Posted 10 hours ago Thanks for the palys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grog Posted 10 hours ago Author Share Posted 10 hours ago No real progress on this build but...... I ordered live rock and sand from TBS today! Woot! I went with a 60G package, an additional 60# of sand, and 60# of additional premium rock. I want to be able cull through to find the perfect pieces so the extra will help. I can put the extra in another tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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