Cali Kid Corals

SFSU's (Fishnfst's) 180g temporary tank.

Yeah, if I wanted to snaz it up I could put black acrylic sheets on it, or fancy plywood.. however this is a temp tank.. it's function that wins over form, although I really do like the form .. just wish aluminum wasn't so damn expensive, I seriously want to bring the scraps to a recycling plant as they're probably a couple hundred cans worth :D

I still am on track for a weekend fill up too, think tomorrow I'll move stuff over, unfortunately I'll be missing the meeting, hope I didn't promise to bring anyone anything.
 
Design it out of 8020 and it could be functional and have form :p...industrial form :-D
Of course, that is even more expensive.
 
Yeah unfortunately I think the wiring for each of the sockets negates the clean factor of open aluminum frame :D

I didn't want to put the electronics/power under the tank, so I went up along the ceiling and side wall, so I got this multibundle of wires. Going to ziptie them together, then maybe cover them with something so it doesn't look so ghetto fabulous
 
That depends. You can have exposed wiring look good if it is done really cleanly. parallel wires really help as opposed to bundles.
 
Meh, as long as wires aren't hanging down to hit me in the head I don't mind.

Got the tank moved over today though! Did a bit of re-aquascaping as obviously I couldn't move the structures as a whole, I really have out done myself, unfortunately I ran into a couple problems...

1) I didn't have enough water, I'm about an inch short of the overflow, and a whole sump that needs to be filled I'm guessing 30 gallons or so... luckily I'm making water and should have a can filled by tonight (I hope) and perhaps start mixing salt tonight as well. My tank, my sump plus a garbage can full of water was almost enough to get to the top.

2) I forgot that it is kind of cold, granted me working and all wet with 80 degree water didn't make me feel terribly cold but I tossed a few heaters in the tank, apparently the temp dropped to 74, not a big deal... but there a lot more gallons of water so the heaters are slowly cranking up... things slimed up a a bit and the waters a bit cloudy... but all is good i think, tomorrow fresh water will be made up and my skimmer can get online. Although I think I need another heater, might swing by OTA tonight and get a 300watter sucker.

So my lights I'm quite pleased with the colors, considering my lack of openings to fire down MH bulbs, a couple Phoenix look fairly good with the ATI Blue Plus, and for the morning evening the UVL Super Actinics makes things look saaaaawheeet.

Well I"m tired today, I got some steaks I'm going to be grilling up (Lucky has a special on NY Strip steaks. $2.99/lbs!) and just going to relax.
 
Yup I bought 10 packs of those steaks for my wednesday night dinner.. THey were excellent.. Glad everything went well.. Post a couple pics when you get a chance Mike :)
 
10 packs for your Weds dinner? wow how many did you feed :D

Didn't want to take pictures yet, want to run the skimmer for a while, but that requires water in the sump :D Plus there's a few heaters just hanging in the tank so my fish don't get chilly tonight.

I took a couple teaser pictures though, problems though

1) it's been a while since I've taken shots through glass/acrylic... I'm used to top down pictures.
2) It's been a while that I've had any sort of fluorescent tubes over my stoney tank that I forgot how absolutely bad ass it looks, but taking pictures to reflect it is next to impossible. White balancing with the camera removes the blue, but also the blues of the corals, and unfortunately it does look blue, just not overly saturated.

So here's a couple pictures, one a picture of my sunset monti, which is electrific under the blue plus and actinic bulbs, with some other stuff in the background ;) And the other are my acan ech/subech, where the orange one doesn't look orange, it's almost a bright red! Unfortunately the picture doesn't reflect that.
 
35 people :) Supplementational t5's always are amazing in terms of coral colour.. Good to see everything made the move safely.. I was going to ask how the overflow was working but I guess there isn't enough water yet :)
 
Alright, everything is working and running smoothly! I still need to move the plugs and wires around to make them less of a "hey look at this firehazard of a surge strip next to all this saltwater" into a more organized mess (hey maybe that DJ powerstrip will be useful! Although in my defense there are no plugs that are below the sump level, everything is at tank level or so, so no dripping into plugs.

Took a few (twenty or so) full tank shots not too long ago when all the lights were on, unfortunately with the T5s I could not capture the look of the tank accurately, it's either too blue or not blue enough (camera's white balancing feature), so here's a shot of both... note that big honking scratch was there before I started messing with the tank Doug! :D I might try to buff it out, but I don't know if even the super strength Novus will work (Novus 3? or 1?).

Also got the plumbing glued in last night, but didn't have enough water until this morning, the unfortunately side effect is that all the calcified crud that was on the pipes got loosened up somehow (being dry?) and shot in the tank so it has a partial snow storm look to it. You can't see it in this shot, but there is ONE single cord in the tank, which bugs the hell out of me, however I don't know if I want to pony up another $420 for a Vortech!

Camera White Balanced
wtswbmt5.jpg


Photoshop Auto-Levels to try and white balance (typically doesn't work that well with overly saturated blue photos), the true color is about halfway between these two, I prefer a more white crisp look like the top photo, but the T5s cancel that out on me, the Phoenix bulbs actually look mostly white by themselves.
wtspsbm8.jpg



Here's the overslots on the inside of the tank, there's that wire I was talking about!, there was a bit of an issue with the overflow, first the dimensions of the tank got me a bit perplexed about how the water flow along the surface would work. Most tanks are long and skinny, as a result overflows work nice since there's not much place for the surface water to go, however with this more cubical look, I'm not quite sure the water current along the surface is going where i want. However moving pumps probably could help this, having a closed loop from the bottom would definitely help but no way in hell I'm emptying this tank and drilling it! :D Time will tell if I see any particular surface slick forming
pb090130vv8.jpg


The other issue, is my Quiet One 4000 return pump which worked perfectly when it pumped against a head of a couple feet, isn't doing so well now that the head is closer to 5 feet, as a result not as much water as I'd like is being pulled over the top, which could also fix that whole surface scum thing if it becomes an issue.
pb090134ci9.jpg


Ok that's enough for now, enjoy :D
 
Lookin good Mike.. I know that big scratch was there.. If I remember correctly its on teh outside of the tnak right? 30 seconds with the novus and my buffer and it'll be clear again.. Don't worry about messing with it with the tank full.. It's a quick and easy fix for me.. I don't take the gouge all the way out. Just break the edge and then buff the entire gouge :) The external overflow is looking good..
 
Yeah that scratch is on the outside of the tank.. I should say the scratches, as there's another on another side. Also the back has some weird bulge in it, I saw weird because its bulge you can feel if you run your fingers over, however it doesn't carry through inside the tank, almost as if that was a discount piece of acrylic that didn't have 2 flat sides :D
 
that bulge you feel is a huge scratch that I polished out if its the one I'm thinking of. It should be more like an indentation not a bulge though..
 
well it's not a bulge in the sense there's a single bump, but I do definitely feel the topography of the acrylic .. in fact I tried to mount a vortech there unfortunately it wouldn't hold due to it being uneven. It could very well be a valley and I just feel the peaks on both sides
 
I'm glad its working out for you Mike.. It's nice to see the tank getting some use.. Not good enough for a display but plenty good for a working/holding tank.. Doesn't look like that much stuff in there :)
 
Well it's a bit of an illusion in the pic, because the stuff in the front is piled higher than the stuff in the back, so you don't really see it. Now that usually goes against what people do but because you can see it on three sides (2 sides are only really viewable, the third is an access side that yeah you can see, but you can't really sit and enjoy), it's not a big deal, I'm tempted to pull more rocks out of storage (I got rocks like you got tanks! :D) but because there's no access in the back really I don't really want to try my luck at stacking rocks while I'm outstretched over the tank, plus you can see the stuff fine from the side, and most of those corals (LPS) were in the middle on my 6 foot tank where they only got a little bit of light from each halide, so it's all good.

Definitely is giving me ideas though for my next tank, this size is very enjoyable. I think with a more open top (eurobraced) I really could dig this size tank, although I'll have to see.
 
I've seen quite a few glass setups in this size when I was down in LA.. It's a pretty versatile size.. You can keep big fish in it and it has plenty of room for creative aquascaping.. Ian's 30" front to back is another viable option.. Not too wide and easier to work on.... Or you could make it 4x3x20" tall. Will make it alot easier to reach the back. But will limit your aquascaping and how high you can go with the rock....
 
well I'm not terribly worried about tall as far as aquascaping, it's the corals job to get tall not my engineering skills :D

Although the rock structure on the left I'm quite proud of, got a neat little arch thing going on, the fish seem to approve as they swim through it quite a bit.
 
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