motoxc
Supporting Member
I have only been a member for a short time, but I thought I should at least show my tank.
A little history, I have been in the saltwater hobby for well over 30 years. My first tank was a 150g which I purchased from a LFS in mountain View / Sunnyvale area off of Central expressway if anybody remembers that one. This tank only lasted a few years and the 1989 Loma prieta quake took her down. She had some great fish and anemones which were all dead on the hardwood floor when I arrived home. I took a short break from the hobby and then moved to another house which is when I decided the next tank would be built-in to the house and secured for any future quakes. I have moved a couple of times since then and each time getting a new tank to be built into the new home. At my current home here in San Jose I again had a custom acrylic 100ish gallon tank fabricated to fit into a niche I had in my Entryway, and this backed up to a spare Bedroom closet which became the fish closet or at least half of it did. I will add pictures of this tank later as it is up for sale for the bargain price of probably free. This is a custom corner tank which was a whooping 40 inches tall, yes that is not a typo. I was very difficult to reach the bottom, but I did it. I think I planned this height to align with the adjacent door frames so for aesthetics rather than function. When it was in its prime it was an amazing reef setup with LPS, shrooms, zoas and fish. This tank has been up for almost 16 years and has seen a few changes from reef to a FOWLR then recently back to a mixed reef. My yearly maintenance was to pull out the aquascape to clean detritus from the rocks and sand but in recent years this process has been neglected and "old tank syndrome" has set in. In a recent attempt to revive the reefer inside of me I tore a little more than half of the aquascape down and cleaned but what it really needed was a complete tear down to get the years of neglect off of the bottom layer. So the buildup started by added more light, two Kessil 360x with 55 degree reflectors which worked great for the SPS but also created an algae factory towards the bottom of the tank. My nutrient levels were low thanks to the macro in the fuge but also masked by the uptake of the newly acquired algae growth. I wish I had a tang or two but the tank was not wide enough to successfully keep one alive although I have tried in the past. I will try to find pictures for a later post.
Okay, now fast forward to today. I am moving again and needed to remove the built in tank to fix the dilapidated drywall and repair the hardwood flooring that has seen a few sump overfills from human error. BTW, I did fix that issue with a few fail safes. So I now have acquired a Aqueon 90 gallon with an internal overflow from FB marketplace as a temporary holding spot for the current livestock I have, this tank needed a bit of elbow grease to get her looking acceptable, but I got it for a fair price. The idea of tearing down and setting up a new tank was not my idea of fun and added a lot of stress to my life as I had to run a business while doing this in a timely manner so to not stress out the livestock. So, three days later the tank is fully up and running basically as the old one had been. I have hydrogen peroxided all of my algae and am waiting on a shipment of Copepods to hopefully keep the tank looking clean from a diatom break out which I am anticipating. I will be looking for a new tang as I feel there is room for them to move around and also considering a foxface.
Coming up in a future post will be my new built in glass corner tank for the new house we are moving to.
Here is the temporary tank setup:
Aqueon 90 gallon
(2) Kessil 360x (no narrow reflector on this setup)
30gallon (actual filled volume) sump / refugium
Neptune Apex pro system
COR return
Reef octopus HOB classic 90 (temporary as my external does not fit in the cabinet and was the easiest solution at the time)
Pentair 25watt UV (from display tank and return back to DT)
Dosing 2-part ESV CA and Red Sea alk (RS alk has a great ph boosting affect) and then Magnesium.
upcoming projects for this tank:
add a DC pump (currently AC and gives off some heat) for the UV - need a 400-600gph if anyone might have one.
add utilitarian fish
add a tuxedo urchin and maybe a sand sifting star and a cleaner shrimp
add auto water change setup - Thanks Eric!
add a T5 atinic to the light setup
maybe paint the exterior of the bottom cabinet with low/no VOC paint. I know it is temporary, but I can't help myself, Infact after seeing this setup I may keep it setup in another area of the house.
That's it for now.
Looking forward to the frag swap. See you there.
A little history, I have been in the saltwater hobby for well over 30 years. My first tank was a 150g which I purchased from a LFS in mountain View / Sunnyvale area off of Central expressway if anybody remembers that one. This tank only lasted a few years and the 1989 Loma prieta quake took her down. She had some great fish and anemones which were all dead on the hardwood floor when I arrived home. I took a short break from the hobby and then moved to another house which is when I decided the next tank would be built-in to the house and secured for any future quakes. I have moved a couple of times since then and each time getting a new tank to be built into the new home. At my current home here in San Jose I again had a custom acrylic 100ish gallon tank fabricated to fit into a niche I had in my Entryway, and this backed up to a spare Bedroom closet which became the fish closet or at least half of it did. I will add pictures of this tank later as it is up for sale for the bargain price of probably free. This is a custom corner tank which was a whooping 40 inches tall, yes that is not a typo. I was very difficult to reach the bottom, but I did it. I think I planned this height to align with the adjacent door frames so for aesthetics rather than function. When it was in its prime it was an amazing reef setup with LPS, shrooms, zoas and fish. This tank has been up for almost 16 years and has seen a few changes from reef to a FOWLR then recently back to a mixed reef. My yearly maintenance was to pull out the aquascape to clean detritus from the rocks and sand but in recent years this process has been neglected and "old tank syndrome" has set in. In a recent attempt to revive the reefer inside of me I tore a little more than half of the aquascape down and cleaned but what it really needed was a complete tear down to get the years of neglect off of the bottom layer. So the buildup started by added more light, two Kessil 360x with 55 degree reflectors which worked great for the SPS but also created an algae factory towards the bottom of the tank. My nutrient levels were low thanks to the macro in the fuge but also masked by the uptake of the newly acquired algae growth. I wish I had a tang or two but the tank was not wide enough to successfully keep one alive although I have tried in the past. I will try to find pictures for a later post.
Okay, now fast forward to today. I am moving again and needed to remove the built in tank to fix the dilapidated drywall and repair the hardwood flooring that has seen a few sump overfills from human error. BTW, I did fix that issue with a few fail safes. So I now have acquired a Aqueon 90 gallon with an internal overflow from FB marketplace as a temporary holding spot for the current livestock I have, this tank needed a bit of elbow grease to get her looking acceptable, but I got it for a fair price. The idea of tearing down and setting up a new tank was not my idea of fun and added a lot of stress to my life as I had to run a business while doing this in a timely manner so to not stress out the livestock. So, three days later the tank is fully up and running basically as the old one had been. I have hydrogen peroxided all of my algae and am waiting on a shipment of Copepods to hopefully keep the tank looking clean from a diatom break out which I am anticipating. I will be looking for a new tang as I feel there is room for them to move around and also considering a foxface.
Coming up in a future post will be my new built in glass corner tank for the new house we are moving to.
Here is the temporary tank setup:
Aqueon 90 gallon
(2) Kessil 360x (no narrow reflector on this setup)
30gallon (actual filled volume) sump / refugium
Neptune Apex pro system
COR return
Reef octopus HOB classic 90 (temporary as my external does not fit in the cabinet and was the easiest solution at the time)
Pentair 25watt UV (from display tank and return back to DT)
Dosing 2-part ESV CA and Red Sea alk (RS alk has a great ph boosting affect) and then Magnesium.
upcoming projects for this tank:
add a DC pump (currently AC and gives off some heat) for the UV - need a 400-600gph if anyone might have one.
add utilitarian fish
add a tuxedo urchin and maybe a sand sifting star and a cleaner shrimp
add auto water change setup - Thanks Eric!
add a T5 atinic to the light setup
maybe paint the exterior of the bottom cabinet with low/no VOC paint. I know it is temporary, but I can't help myself, Infact after seeing this setup I may keep it setup in another area of the house.
That's it for now.
Looking forward to the frag swap. See you there.
