• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Finally - My 120

S

Singlemalt

Sooooooooo......After nearly a year of thinking, planning, learning and building I actually have my 120 up and running.  This idea actually started about 5 years ago when I had a 55g FOWLER.  A friend at work began to build a reef tank and showed me some pics.  It became immediately clear that "I had to have one of those".  Anyway as we all know stuff happens.  Started to work about a million hours a week and my 55 went to hell so I sold the fish and broke it down.

Last year I finally convinced my lovely wife to let me take a shot at a Reef.  Bought the tank in April of 2007 and just as I was about to start setting it up...BOOM... I tore my Achilles tendon (softball can be a dangerous game!!).  After a 3 month recuperation and some more delays, not the least of which was my fear of cutting holes in my house to plumb the sump and fuge into the basement, I actually got started.

I finished the plumbing in December and filled the system with water on Xmas eve. At that point I figured I was close but then had to deal with some small leaks and some back ordered rock.  Last week the tank finally cycled and my 13 yr old son Nick (definitely a future reefer) and I did the final (for now at least) Aquascaping.  Most exciting of all is that yesterday we bought 4 tiny Green Chromis who seem to be happy exploring their new world.

Thanks to everyone at NJRC for the help, advice and in some cases free stuff!!!!  Here's a link to my tank. This really is a great club!!!!.

of=50,590,441




(embedded picture - RichT)
 
JohnS_323

JohnS_323

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
That looks GREAT, Lou! Nice aquascaping. Keep the updates coming. I'm looking forward to following along with this one.

Hope to see you and your son at a meeting soon. I'm sure he'll have fun with the rest of the future reefers (as I'm sure you will with the current reefers)!
 
S

Singlemalt

Thanks to all. The goal was to get some depth to the aquascape. Can't see it very well in the pic but I think we did ok. The problem is that the more I look at at the more I want to tweak it!!!!
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

That looks great! Lots of spots for corals and plenty of swim throughs for fish, not just a rock wall, very nice!
 
M

momof6kids

NJRC Member
It looks really good. I agree with Phyl and your son. Don't touch it. There have been times I have tried to tweak just a little and ended up redoing the whole side. ::)
 
S

Singlemalt

So I got home last night to find a bunch of brown stuff on the top of my rocks. Only the rocks on top of the aquascape that are close to the lights are affected so far. Since I only have 4 chromis in the tank at this point I'm only running the actinic lights to save a couple of bucks on the old electric bill.

Water parameters are ok - a touch of nitrates (.5ppm) are the only concern so far. I'm thinking its a typical new tank thing like diatoms maybe. I'll do a water change tonight but is there anything I should do?

Thanks
Lou
 
S

sinkingbeach

Brown stuff is diatoms, it'll get worst before better, if you got in on the reeftopia group buy you'll be fine if not add a cleanup crew.

Singlemalt said:
So I got home last night to find a bunch of brown stuff on the top of my rocks. Only the rocks on top of the aquascape that are close to the lights are affected so far. Since I only have 4 chromis in the tank at this point I'm only running the actinic lights to save a couple of bucks on the old electric bill.

Water parameters are ok - a touch of nitrates (.5ppm) are the only concern so far. I'm thinking its a typical new tank thing like diatoms maybe. I'll do a water change tonight but is there anything I should do?

Thanks
Lou
Click to expand...
 
S

Singlemalt

Starting to get some actual fish in the new 120. In addition to the 4 Chromis I've added an Orange Spot Rabbit fish and a Yellow Coris Wrase. The Rabbit fish was shy at first but is all over the tank now. He is cool!! Also gonna get my first corals - Gonna pick up some Zoa's this weekend!! This is getting exciting!!

Oh and I didn't take the pic - found it on the web.

rabbitfish1.jpg
 
S

Singlemalt

Venomous they are - guy at the LFS said to be careful. He told me that he has a friend who got pricked by one of the spines and that it can be very painful.
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

The orange spot rabbits are very cool!

I have a blue stripe and it eats zoos & shrooms, so keep your eye on new additions. From what I've read they, rabbits in general, can be hit or miss with tastier softies.

As far as venomous I blame an incidental collision between my Midas blenny and the rabbit on the blenny's death. A slow death at that. After the feeding time collision, the blenny disappeared for nearly six weeks then reapeared in bad shape just the other day only to die overnight. I am sure it was not intentional on the rabbit's part but do keep you distance.
 
JohnS_323

JohnS_323

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Glad to see you on your way, Lou. You've done a great job at being patient through this process (well better than I ever was!). Good luck with rabbit fish. They really are beautiful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top