Huge shot out to you for the structures by the way. Here are a few pictures with measurements of the rocks.
Right
Center
Left
210 gallon Dream tank
- Thread starter MichaelB
- Start date
Right
Center
Left
So here is day 2 of adjusting the rocks shifted stuff around some and added a few select peices of branch rocks. The larger structure on the right is the orginal big peice and a few smaller peices kinda in a stack.
They should easily be removable if ever needed while the 3 main structures are semi heavy 30lbs or so each. If I hold my mouth in a proper frown and man up I should be able to remove them as well.
There are a couple of caves and a few holes scattered for fish to swim through. Maybe not enough only time would tell.
I also added 90% of the crushed coral I have left. The other 10% will be a crazy proccess to scoop out of the bottom of the stock tank. I'm planning to have multiple wrasses in this tank so there is a solid possibility of me filling in the back of tank with a crushed aragonite sand, hopefully small enough for wrasse to burrow into, won't get blown around and hopefully won't mix to badly with the crushed coral.
Otherwise I may consider putting some type of diy acrylic divider (or a solid line of smaller rocks serving same purpose) 2-3 inches high running front to back in the tank. To one side of the tank at maybe 1/3- 1/4th of the tank. With the smaller side being the special grade type aragonite.
Open to thoughts on this subject of substrate in a portion of the tank that's wrasse suitable.
Failing that, I'm a little over a 5gallon bucket short of crushed coral. Neptunes sales it but it's $6.99 last I saw. So would be insanely expensive when all added up.
Lastly I added a ton of live rock to the sump. One smaller peice of branch rock was the only thing dry added to this tank.
They should easily be removable if ever needed while the 3 main structures are semi heavy 30lbs or so each. If I hold my mouth in a proper frown and man up I should be able to remove them as well.
There are a couple of caves and a few holes scattered for fish to swim through. Maybe not enough only time would tell.
I also added 90% of the crushed coral I have left. The other 10% will be a crazy proccess to scoop out of the bottom of the stock tank. I'm planning to have multiple wrasses in this tank so there is a solid possibility of me filling in the back of tank with a crushed aragonite sand, hopefully small enough for wrasse to burrow into, won't get blown around and hopefully won't mix to badly with the crushed coral.
Otherwise I may consider putting some type of diy acrylic divider (or a solid line of smaller rocks serving same purpose) 2-3 inches high running front to back in the tank. To one side of the tank at maybe 1/3- 1/4th of the tank. With the smaller side being the special grade type aragonite.
Open to thoughts on this subject of substrate in a portion of the tank that's wrasse suitable.
Failing that, I'm a little over a 5gallon bucket short of crushed coral. Neptunes sales it but it's $6.99 last I saw. So would be insanely expensive when all added up.
Lastly I added a ton of live rock to the sump. One smaller peice of branch rock was the only thing dry added to this tank.
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I'm not fully following you on the soccer ball illustration. Yet I'm listening
PizzaOven
Supporting Member
It's wet and full of rock!! Congratulations!
From personal experience, I would not try to partition sand and crushed coral, it will eventually all mix together. It looks kinda natural when it mixes, but I feel you get the worst of both worlds: sand still blows everywhere with too much flow and it's difficult to keep clean. Just my 2 cents.
From personal experience, I would not try to partition sand and crushed coral, it will eventually all mix together. It looks kinda natural when it mixes, but I feel you get the worst of both worlds: sand still blows everywhere with too much flow and it's difficult to keep clean. Just my 2 cents.
PjFish
Supporting Member
Can always tilt/angle lights a bit to eliminate shading @Turkeysammich perfected this with a diy gizmo swivel flex head mount thing
That’s interesting in my tank it is the opposite - sand and crushed coral absolutely separates over time into very distinct sand zones and coral zones. So I guess maybe it depends on flow.
PizzaOven
Supporting Member
I'm envious. I tried to replace a small section of sand with crushed coral to propagate zoas and mushrooms. It eventually all mixed in with the sandbed, and now it's a pita to gravel vacuum.
Only a few very minor updates to report.
I got around to putting together a magnetic diy screen lid for one of the 3 sections of the tank. I originally ordered 2 but used one on another tank. I think it looks pretty good it's the same screen kit that I installed on my sps tank.
I still need to order 2 more kits one day this week.
1.) I added a bout 3/4 a bottle each of 2 different pods given to me by Chad with reef nutrition at Cfm. The remainder I added to the sps tank.
2.) I finally added 1 of the 2 500 watt finnex heaters purchased for this tank. The other is still being used in the stock tank. 1 heater is sufficient for this tank but plan is to run two 2 for redundancy.
3.) I have a to for this tank and the ato resivor is filled with rodi already though, I've been to lazy to dig it out and install it maybe I will spend 10 minutes to do it one day this week.
4.) I spent a hour or so rising out and straining the crap out of some fine crushed coral from @Turkeysammich. I'm still thinking of try to use this in a section of the tank. For wrasses. It's nowhere as fine as sand more it's not as corse as my crushed coral. So I think it shouldn't mix up as bad as if I used sand for that purpose.
It's throughly rinsed debating on bleach/ rodi soaking it for a day or two. Or just drying it out and using it as is.
I got around to putting together a magnetic diy screen lid for one of the 3 sections of the tank. I originally ordered 2 but used one on another tank. I think it looks pretty good it's the same screen kit that I installed on my sps tank.
I still need to order 2 more kits one day this week.
1.) I added a bout 3/4 a bottle each of 2 different pods given to me by Chad with reef nutrition at Cfm. The remainder I added to the sps tank.
2.) I finally added 1 of the 2 500 watt finnex heaters purchased for this tank. The other is still being used in the stock tank. 1 heater is sufficient for this tank but plan is to run two 2 for redundancy.
3.) I have a to for this tank and the ato resivor is filled with rodi already though, I've been to lazy to dig it out and install it maybe I will spend 10 minutes to do it one day this week.
4.) I spent a hour or so rising out and straining the crap out of some fine crushed coral from @Turkeysammich. I'm still thinking of try to use this in a section of the tank. For wrasses. It's nowhere as fine as sand more it's not as corse as my crushed coral. So I think it shouldn't mix up as bad as if I used sand for that purpose.
It's throughly rinsed debating on bleach/ rodi soaking it for a day or two. Or just drying it out and using it as is.
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I used to hand dose for 3 years, and for about 2 weeks I topped off by hand. Lol to much work these days. Yet that's a awesome looking tank.
The only thing I hand dose is adding 5 drops a day of traces (If I could use a doser for it I would. But so little not sure I would trust one to measure 5 literal drops accurately)
New updates:
1.) I completed the other two screens. So now the tank is fish jump proof.
2.) I installed the ato finally.
3.) I ordered royal Microbes from Coral hub.
I dosed most of this in to 210 and a little in all my other tanks. Last week I dose 2 types of pods addtion to pods and live phyto split between all tanks. I have about 1/4 of 32 Oz bottle left adding little by little to this tank.
4.) Fish
I was at petco (blossom hill rd in san jose) the only one I've found that takes proper care of their fish and has a guy over the department that at least knows the basics. I occasionally go in there to look around. I spotted two extremely small less than a half inch maroon clownfish. One of them had a chunk missing from its tail, I felt very bad for the little guy or call it my obsession with these mean fish lol.
I decided to try make it my mission to try to save the one missing part of his tail. So I took them both for half off of each after telling the fish guy it's a risk if the little guy will make it or not.
While there I also picked up 6 banghi cardinal fish babies. They look like they were born a few weeks ago. The clowns meh so tiny I was worried these baby cardinal fish might try to eat them.
* these Cardinals were always on my wish list for the schooling fish of the 210.
As were maroon clownfish.
The plans for these maroon clown fish are to put them into my frag system with the wrasses.
I'm supposed to get a pair if lighting maroons from @Woeday that will be large enough to handle themselves. So I will either add the lighting maroons to the 210, or swap the lighting maroons with my golden nugget maroons in my sps tank.
My largest pair of maroon clowns are in my nem tank. I would love to put them in the larger tank. But they are insanely evil and crazy about their nems. I fear They would take over the entire 210 tank and prevent me from adding more fish. They have always hosted nems since I got them a few years ago so they would go really crazy taking them away from their nems.
I will likely hold here for a few weeks with fish. Though I have a few wrasses intended for this tank and a yellow tang. In my other tank. I need to allow the other wrasses to grow some more and the yellow tang as well.
The XXL paddle fin wrasse Is by far to big to add to the 210 until other fish at least grow another 1inch or so. He would likely currently eat them. So he's in with my largest maroons.
5.) Next project. Just started today.
I plan to diy a floating canopy to hang the lights from the ceiling.
Ceiling is 30 inches from the top of the tank. So I'm thinking hanging the canopy 15-18 inches from the ceiling. If I need to have the lights lower I will make that happen for each specific light suspended in the canopy.
With the canopy I hope to have all the power bricks hidden within it and a power strip. so that I will only have one cord coming down the wall from it. I plan to hide that cord neatly with a wire cover.
This is a big project and I'm kinds figuring it out as I go. I have ceiling anchors and lockable pulleys so I can adjust the canopy height should I ever desire to.
I've added one coat of paint to the boards so far. I may add one more or Just assemble the base frame and paint the entire thing once assembled.
** Initially I will have a few different types of lights on this tank. Long term I will go with kessils. I had enough for it to start with. Lol, but I've used 3 of them on other tanks already. So I have 1 kessils 360x kessil 360xe, 2 black box xr30 knock offs, and 2 very old soup can style kessil 360wes. I likely won't be using the older wes.
*** I still need to do something to the leaking gate valve on the main drain. I will likely order a new one from brs this week along with another peice of red pvc to replace the part I will have to cut off to remove the gate valve.
Overall things are looking good and taking shape.
1.) I completed the other two screens. So now the tank is fish jump proof.
2.) I installed the ato finally.
3.) I ordered royal Microbes from Coral hub.
I dosed most of this in to 210 and a little in all my other tanks. Last week I dose 2 types of pods addtion to pods and live phyto split between all tanks. I have about 1/4 of 32 Oz bottle left adding little by little to this tank.
4.) Fish
I was at petco (blossom hill rd in san jose) the only one I've found that takes proper care of their fish and has a guy over the department that at least knows the basics. I occasionally go in there to look around. I spotted two extremely small less than a half inch maroon clownfish. One of them had a chunk missing from its tail, I felt very bad for the little guy or call it my obsession with these mean fish lol.
I decided to try make it my mission to try to save the one missing part of his tail. So I took them both for half off of each after telling the fish guy it's a risk if the little guy will make it or not.
While there I also picked up 6 banghi cardinal fish babies. They look like they were born a few weeks ago. The clowns meh so tiny I was worried these baby cardinal fish might try to eat them.
* these Cardinals were always on my wish list for the schooling fish of the 210.
As were maroon clownfish.
The plans for these maroon clown fish are to put them into my frag system with the wrasses.
I'm supposed to get a pair if lighting maroons from @Woeday that will be large enough to handle themselves. So I will either add the lighting maroons to the 210, or swap the lighting maroons with my golden nugget maroons in my sps tank.
My largest pair of maroon clowns are in my nem tank. I would love to put them in the larger tank. But they are insanely evil and crazy about their nems. I fear They would take over the entire 210 tank and prevent me from adding more fish. They have always hosted nems since I got them a few years ago so they would go really crazy taking them away from their nems.
I will likely hold here for a few weeks with fish. Though I have a few wrasses intended for this tank and a yellow tang. In my other tank. I need to allow the other wrasses to grow some more and the yellow tang as well.
The XXL paddle fin wrasse Is by far to big to add to the 210 until other fish at least grow another 1inch or so. He would likely currently eat them. So he's in with my largest maroons.
5.) Next project. Just started today.
I plan to diy a floating canopy to hang the lights from the ceiling.
Ceiling is 30 inches from the top of the tank. So I'm thinking hanging the canopy 15-18 inches from the ceiling. If I need to have the lights lower I will make that happen for each specific light suspended in the canopy.
With the canopy I hope to have all the power bricks hidden within it and a power strip. so that I will only have one cord coming down the wall from it. I plan to hide that cord neatly with a wire cover.
This is a big project and I'm kinds figuring it out as I go. I have ceiling anchors and lockable pulleys so I can adjust the canopy height should I ever desire to.
I've added one coat of paint to the boards so far. I may add one more or Just assemble the base frame and paint the entire thing once assembled.
** Initially I will have a few different types of lights on this tank. Long term I will go with kessils. I had enough for it to start with. Lol, but I've used 3 of them on other tanks already. So I have 1 kessils 360x kessil 360xe, 2 black box xr30 knock offs, and 2 very old soup can style kessil 360wes. I likely won't be using the older wes.
*** I still need to do something to the leaking gate valve on the main drain. I will likely order a new one from brs this week along with another peice of red pvc to replace the part I will have to cut off to remove the gate valve.
Overall things are looking good and taking shape.
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Update #2 of diy floating canopy project.
Continuing from the previous this project started from plain wood yesterday that I painted white.
Today I actually had some helpers at a few key points in the project.
Locking pulleys for the ability to raise or lower the entire canopy should the need arise. Most of the adjustments I would likely prefer to adjust the individual lights instead.
If I feel up to it maybe I will cover the screw holes and paint over it all again.
I have no idea how I will actually mount the different lights something I will figure out during tomorrow's project.
Than hopefully I can work on getting it mounted on tbe ceiling. I have a stud finder so hopefully I can hit the second floor joist on both sides if I'm lucky so I won't have to make as many adjustments trying to secure it properly while having the ceiling anchors hanging straight down.
.....
Fine crush coral on 1/3rd of the tank for wrasses next to the larger crushed coral.
A picture of a few of the tiny banggai Cardinals. They are very hard to find in this large tank.
Continuing from the previous this project started from plain wood yesterday that I painted white.
Today I actually had some helpers at a few key points in the project.
Locking pulleys for the ability to raise or lower the entire canopy should the need arise. Most of the adjustments I would likely prefer to adjust the individual lights instead.
If I feel up to it maybe I will cover the screw holes and paint over it all again.
I have no idea how I will actually mount the different lights something I will figure out during tomorrow's project.
Than hopefully I can work on getting it mounted on tbe ceiling. I have a stud finder so hopefully I can hit the second floor joist on both sides if I'm lucky so I won't have to make as many adjustments trying to secure it properly while having the ceiling anchors hanging straight down.
.....
Fine crush coral on 1/3rd of the tank for wrasses next to the larger crushed coral.
A picture of a few of the tiny banggai Cardinals. They are very hard to find in this large tank.
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
Looks great. I might hire you to install a floating light mount over my tank haha.
I started adding up cost of kessil a mounting arms lol so made me think of other options.
This was 100% diy. Luckily I'm better with wood than plumbing. I wouldn't mind helping you make something but not charging as I'm no professional.
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This update is more general in nature.
I added two kessils 360x
I've decided being all the the other tanks have these lights I might as well stick with them. I plan to grab 2 more next week sometime.
If I ever decide to go sps in the future this floating canopy makes it easily possible. If I ever do that I would run 6-8 360x lights making 2 rows. 4 of these lights should I definitely be sufficient for a while.
In the center I zipped tied my old budget build nicrewn light until I aquire more 360s.
I needed the center light to shine down upon my larger leathers. I held back all my more fancy leathers minus two I added to see how they do in the new tank.
On the last update I mentioned getting 2 crazy small maroons. One with a missing portion of tail. I wanted to try to save it. Unfortunately the little guy didn't make it. He was struggling to swim before I bought him. He had been beaten up by larger fish that were kept with him. The female was placed in the frag tank and healthy and thriving with the 3 smaller wrasses.
I also was able to finally catch up with @Woeday and was able to get a bonded pair of lighting maroons from him.
That makes 3 pairs of maroons and one solo baby maroon I will eventually play match maker with.
I was also able to replace the leaking gate valve with a brand new one from.brs.
Only thing left to add to the tank is my nicer leathers, hammers, torches, and other lps.
I'm not currently confident enough to risk adding them.
I added two kessils 360x
I've decided being all the the other tanks have these lights I might as well stick with them. I plan to grab 2 more next week sometime.
If I ever decide to go sps in the future this floating canopy makes it easily possible. If I ever do that I would run 6-8 360x lights making 2 rows. 4 of these lights should I definitely be sufficient for a while.
In the center I zipped tied my old budget build nicrewn light until I aquire more 360s.
I needed the center light to shine down upon my larger leathers. I held back all my more fancy leathers minus two I added to see how they do in the new tank.
On the last update I mentioned getting 2 crazy small maroons. One with a missing portion of tail. I wanted to try to save it. Unfortunately the little guy didn't make it. He was struggling to swim before I bought him. He had been beaten up by larger fish that were kept with him. The female was placed in the frag tank and healthy and thriving with the 3 smaller wrasses.
I also was able to finally catch up with @Woeday and was able to get a bonded pair of lighting maroons from him.
That makes 3 pairs of maroons and one solo baby maroon I will eventually play match maker with.
I was also able to replace the leaking gate valve with a brand new one from.brs.
Only thing left to add to the tank is my nicer leathers, hammers, torches, and other lps.
I'm not currently confident enough to risk adding them.
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Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
Moving in the right direction
Nothing good happens fast in this hobby
I recommend always having at least enough water for 50% water change (at all times)
Nothing good happens fast in this hobby
I recommend always having at least enough water for 50% water change (at all times)