Ok so I got tired of waiting for a tank that was empty all the while holding my breath around it to make sure I don't rescratch any of the inside panes (still have to tackle the outside ones). I had rock "cooking" in the refugium area, however I wanted to get started on aquascaping which meant taking some rocks from my holding tanks as well (which pissed off a couple of my inhabitants big time, now they have a mostly empty tank to swim in). Mind set is get the aquascaping while it's dry and then add water from the sump area, which won't be enough but enough to keep the whole cycling process going.
And done! It looks so natural doesn't it??
But in all seriousness, looking down at this I feel like I don't have enough rock for what I want to do. And afterward, I felt like I was right, however I did not want to just pack every inch of the tank with rock, I wanted various zones and areas separate from one another and always have to remember if it doesn't feel right, don't do it just because you can.
So I went to work. Started at the back of the tank and moved forward, I do have to say standing inside the tank and looking down is a whole different ballgame when aquascaping, I didn't want to keep climbing in and out of the tank so I just went with my gut what it would look like... and a few times my gut was wrong.
So here's version 1.0. Now one of the "rules" I had was that flow had to be "unobstructed" at least 2/3rds of the tank distance. So that meant a low area from the back to the front. Now an issue that I've always had my mind on is that pumps are only going along the back wall between the overflow boxes, the tank is viewable from 3 sides, and I didn't want "ugly pumps" viewable in the tank, so check this out, black background, black pumps.. except for the impellers they do a pretty damn good job of blending in.
Here's a closeup of the back corner as I'm filling it with water. First thing that pops out is I need to get me a bristletoothed tang, they're made for scraping that type of algae of rocks. Second is that very white flat rock in the lower left quadrant.. I really like the idea of "flat rock" so that I can just cover it with frags, but something just looks unnatural about it, I think I'll live with it for a while, and regardless of the way it looks now have to remember corals will be growing vertically so don't worry about low areas or areas that are "too flat"... at least not now.
Here's the other corner, a bit more water. Another thing I'm not quite sold on is the branched "rock" I have in there. The one of the back corner I'm not too worried about, it's isolated, I'll toss on some zoas or palys on it, and I'm sure they'll cover it in no time. However in the foreground I'm not yet sold
Here's the front part of the tank, ignore the bottom corners, the left corner is the rocks I wasn't sure where to fit so rather than just go "ooh lets stack rocks" I left them here in case I needed them later, the green rock is one of those "lets see if there's any more aiptasia on it" rock. I purposeful left the front corners devoid of stuff because I still have some rocks with corals/clams in the other tank that I'm not ready to move yet. However this picture helps illustrate something I was planning out when I was in the tank with the "lagoon view" and that's that I wanted different areas that were isolated from one another, there's that big one at the top (and in picture above) there's a smaller one in the bottom corner, another one in the upper left corner, there's one behind the rocks in the first picture with the pumps, and lastly one in the front right corner (can't see too much here). My plan is to have very few big fish, I already have a yellow and purple tang, and a foxface.. . I will get a bristle tooth tang too but that's a smaller fish, and I'm really thinking of a copperband or long nose butterfly to deal with those pesky hydroids that I know will make their. Mostly though I want smaller fish, not nano-mini fish but anthais/clownfish sized, and I figure different areas will give different fish various territories. Although I think I may have over done it with the number of "caves" I have (hard to tell with this view).
Here's a long shot towards the back, again those branches I'm sold on, keep telling myself, corals will grow on them, branches will disappear.
Here's a side shot, I didn't want to take any more of these because I still need to clean up the outside acrylic, and with a flash off it just looks bleh. However another thing I wanted from this tank is that each side would be a unique view. If you have a longer skinny tank as a pennisula, you basically see the same thing from both sides, you're looking at the backside of the rocks you see from the other side. Now while I couldn't completely remove the otherside, I'm hoping that when some corals grow in they'll really change the landscape considerably.
Also did a leak test on my 100g storage container, and the container it self and bulkhead is fine, unfortunately my gate valve leaks a bit from around the knob, I'm sure it could be fixed with a new washer or something... however I'm not sure I can actually get in there and service that. So I'll probably buy a new valve, go with a cheaper ball valve.
Either way, back to making water in the brutes. Bonus I found out while filling water, and using the waste water to leak test the storage container, is that my RO/DI system only wastes 1.4 gallons of water for every 1 gallon it makes.