High Tide Aquatics

Barney's new 300 gal reef tank :)

B

barnfrog

Guest
Hi All,

New to the forum but not to the hobby. Some of you might remember me from a few years back when I was in the Sunset in San Francisco.

Here are some pix of my old tank:

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Anyhoooo, I moved down to Santa Clara now and am in the midst of setting up my new 300 gallon reef.

I snapped a few pix as I went. Here's a few:

I made this kalk reactor:
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The basic plumbing:
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I drilled my Reef Dynamics skimmer and added a separate Sedra pump for re-circulation:
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I have about 350 pounds of live rock in there now with a few fish. I'm importing A LOT of corals directly from Indonesia in 3 weeks. Some will be available at Ultimate Aquarium in San Mateo.

I'll do separate video showing a walk through of my lighting setup and new live stock.

Thanks for taking a look :)
 
Hi! yup is a scwd plumb from my close loop pump. my main pump is a large hammer head located in the garage. You can see it's plumbed in my youtube video.
 
Haha, Jim calling somebody else's tank big. That's like Godzilla complimenting the size of a normal lizard. Seriously though, nice tank! If you're a lizard then my tank is a flea.
 
thanks for the comments guys :). I'm a big DIY guy. I've made all kinds of stuff in the past. Most notable are large 2 chamber calcium reactors seen here:

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I recently made 5 of them for a coral farm in Indonesia. If you remember a lighting store called Innovative lights in Menlo Park, they were using one of these reactors there. The calcium reactor at Ultimate Aquarium in San Mateo is one of my early designs. I gave it to them years ago and they still use it to this day.

I'm currently making my version of this nitrate filter. It should be done in a few days. I'll post some pix up as soon as it's ready.

If you viewed my vid, you'll see some of the DIY customization I did to the plumbing and sump.

As for the size of my tank, I wish I could have gone bigger but my wife wouldn't allow it :). I have set up some pretty big tanks in the past. I set up a 2000 gallon shark tank in a sushi restaurant in San Francisco a few years back and a few tanks for hotels in LA. This is the first time I got to build something "bigish" for myself and I'm loving it :).

I'll be posting more pix and vids shortly. If anyone has any questions on the DIY stuff just shoot me a PM. I don't have any written plans but I can pretty much walk you through the build outs and I can tell you were to purchase all the parts.
 
barnfrog said:
Hi Jar,

I'm not sure what you mean by "QT". :)
Click to expand...

I would have guessed that. To avoid an outbreak of pathogens a lot of responsible reef keepers will QT the fish before adding them to the main display.
 
Hi,

Yes, I have a 2 large rubbermaid tubes (used for ponds) in my garage set up as a hospital and acclimation tanks. A valve from my main pump can be opened to do a fast drip of water from my main tank into the two tubes. All the fish were set up in their own baffles in the separate tubs (depending on the source of the fish) for a week before they were put in my main tank. I did lose one bar gobby to an unknown reason but other than that, everything looked good. BTW, I've been in the hobby for over 15 years. I just didn't didn't know what your acronym meant. I stopped for a few years because I was moving around too much. I'm all settled now so it's time to get back into it. :)

Also, I took a trip to Indonesia to set up sourcing for coral import. Our second shipment is coming in 3 weeks. My tank will be the main show tank for our sales operation. Very exciting stuff :)
 
Very nice start!

I am envious of your being able to pop over to Indonesia to check out corals.
Pics on your other blog look good.

I have a group of Chromis now, and have been really thinking of a group Lyrtails as well.
Very handy to see the combination in action.
 
The Chromis and Lyrtails get along great. I did lose the male Lyrtail because he wasn't eating. One of the females has already started to morph into a male. It's a pretty interesting process. I see the spike growing on the dorsal fin and the coloration is turning more red every day.

My business partner's is related to the Secretory of Agriculture in Indonesia so we got "royal treatment" the whole time we were there. It was extremely enlightening. We toured the biggest and best coral and fish facilities out there. They even took us to Bali to dive at their mari-culture farms. I have a video of my wife diving next to a blue gigas clam that was over 5 feet long - very humbling experience.
 
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