The Plans!
Being so sick/in hospital on and off for the first 3.5 months of pregnancy, my two nano setups have turned to algae overrun, disgusting boxes of yuck. Other half tried to help but used horrid Ballarat tap water to top up and to be honest, I'm surprised anything is left.
Since we are staying here for quite a while (in October I bought/opened my own tattoo shop) We will eventually be setting up the 6 foot but for now I want something I can setup/salvage from the 2 nano tanks and start preparing for the 6 foot. I already had pretty much everything lying around for this set up, save for a light unit and some more rock.
Australia has some LPS that back home I wouldn't be able to find for less than the price of my first born....so I would like to have a tank with a focus on them. That and the fact that, for now anyways, I don't want to run a skimmer. I'm sure as time goes on this will change, hell...by the time it's wet it'll probably change...but for now, no skimmer is planned.
I know I want to run 2, 3 foot lights over the 6 foot tank. And have been sold on the Razor units. I was going to save up and buy one but I was offered a UK Marine 3 foot unit for almost half of what I can purchase a Razor for new. It runs the same LEDs as a razor and 4 clusters instead of 3. I've done some research on them and from what I can tell, they are a decent unit and will do well for what I'm looking for. The light will be suspended above the tank to cover the remaining 6 inches either side. And will run on a basic sunrise, increase, sunset program.
Live rock. Ugh. The current tanks are over run with apistia and algae of various grossness. But I love some of the shapes I've got. So the remaining coral will be stored in a bin with powerheads and lights etc, after I pick it clean and assassinate any pests I can find. The rocks are going for a bath. In bleach/.water and then soaked for at least a week and cooked. This will essentially turn it into dry, dead rock. Which is fine by me. I've picked up some Marco rock and between that and the newly dead stuff, should have a decent amount to work with. I have no problem with waiting a good month to seed/cycle the new tank properly...one of the nano setups took 6 weeks before levels read where they should.
I'm hoping to keep a relatively simple rock layout, so plans are to have a single mp40 on the back centered in the tank and then have a Tunze on one of the side walls to create a decent random flow pattern. Research says the MP40 on reef crest and maxing out around 70% should be a strong enough but still random flow pattern.
I will have a modded Aqua Clear fuge off the back running some sort of marcro algae and possibly another modded HOB filter running Chemi-Pure and Purigen.
As for livestock, I want it very...very minimal. It will have a simple, basic clean up crew of snails and then I would like this to be a single species setup. Mainly because I have every intention of this being a stepping stone tank. Who am I kidding. I know full well that I'll have this one set up and then end up just setting up the 6 foot as well...just don't tell that to my husband yet. So I would like a small group of the Vanderbilt Chromis. I just need to see if any of the shops here can get them in. From what I've seen of them they are quite active little fellas and I think with a species only tank I'll be able to get the colours I'm looking for out of them better than I could if there were in a tank with competition/other fish.
Those are the plans....for now anyways.
Since we are staying here for quite a while (in October I bought/opened my own tattoo shop) We will eventually be setting up the 6 foot but for now I want something I can setup/salvage from the 2 nano tanks and start preparing for the 6 foot. I already had pretty much everything lying around for this set up, save for a light unit and some more rock.
Australia has some LPS that back home I wouldn't be able to find for less than the price of my first born....so I would like to have a tank with a focus on them. That and the fact that, for now anyways, I don't want to run a skimmer. I'm sure as time goes on this will change, hell...by the time it's wet it'll probably change...but for now, no skimmer is planned.
I know I want to run 2, 3 foot lights over the 6 foot tank. And have been sold on the Razor units. I was going to save up and buy one but I was offered a UK Marine 3 foot unit for almost half of what I can purchase a Razor for new. It runs the same LEDs as a razor and 4 clusters instead of 3. I've done some research on them and from what I can tell, they are a decent unit and will do well for what I'm looking for. The light will be suspended above the tank to cover the remaining 6 inches either side. And will run on a basic sunrise, increase, sunset program.
Live rock. Ugh. The current tanks are over run with apistia and algae of various grossness. But I love some of the shapes I've got. So the remaining coral will be stored in a bin with powerheads and lights etc, after I pick it clean and assassinate any pests I can find. The rocks are going for a bath. In bleach/.water and then soaked for at least a week and cooked. This will essentially turn it into dry, dead rock. Which is fine by me. I've picked up some Marco rock and between that and the newly dead stuff, should have a decent amount to work with. I have no problem with waiting a good month to seed/cycle the new tank properly...one of the nano setups took 6 weeks before levels read where they should.
I'm hoping to keep a relatively simple rock layout, so plans are to have a single mp40 on the back centered in the tank and then have a Tunze on one of the side walls to create a decent random flow pattern. Research says the MP40 on reef crest and maxing out around 70% should be a strong enough but still random flow pattern.
I will have a modded Aqua Clear fuge off the back running some sort of marcro algae and possibly another modded HOB filter running Chemi-Pure and Purigen.
As for livestock, I want it very...very minimal. It will have a simple, basic clean up crew of snails and then I would like this to be a single species setup. Mainly because I have every intention of this being a stepping stone tank. Who am I kidding. I know full well that I'll have this one set up and then end up just setting up the 6 foot as well...just don't tell that to my husband yet. So I would like a small group of the Vanderbilt Chromis. I just need to see if any of the shops here can get them in. From what I've seen of them they are quite active little fellas and I think with a species only tank I'll be able to get the colours I'm looking for out of them better than I could if there were in a tank with competition/other fish.
Those are the plans....for now anyways.
