Quarta's 120g Reef Tank

[Quartapound]

Picked up a gorgeous Powder Brown Tang over the weekend!

He's in quarantine for now, getting ready for the display.

He's on cupramine at the moment, eventually I'll switch to prazipro, then if all's well he'll get to join his buddies.

 

[Quartapound]

Looking good so far, powder Brown is just making an absolute mess of the QT at the moment, picking at the Nori clip like nobody's business... I've never seen such a messy eater. At this point I'm not sure if he's even eating it or just playing with his food.

...I think the powder brown and yellow tang can see each other through the glass, the tanks are very close to eachother, it's interesting to see them interact...

I'll plan on adding the powder brown at the same time as one of my new rock structures, the tank will be rearranged at that point, which I hope will help to keep the yellow tang from being too aggressive... but the yellow is also much smaller than the powder brown.

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[Quartapound]

Finished the scape!

This is probably about 70lbs of Caribsea Life Rock and Shapes, bonded with reef safe cement. (Emaco GP and Acryl60)

There are a few main structures bonded together, while other rocks are still 'loose' to let me move/remove corals if necessary.

Although I need to wait and see what it looks like in the tank, I think I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Hopefully everything stays solid while being moved *fingers crossed*

 

[Quartapound]

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle adding the rock to the tank yet.

Caribsea claims that no curing is needed, and that the rock is infused with a dormant bacteria that will become active once wet.

I'm debating just adding one 'structure' directly to the DT every few weeks, instead of putting them in a separate tank for awhile.

hmmm

 

[Fredk]

Any rock that was once live will be infused with dormant bacteria. It will probably still take a while to get micro-fauna communities established on the rock. One structure every few weeks sounds like a good plan.

 

[Nonuser]

The nicest tank I’ve seen the owner had all his major corals on small fist size rocks that were on acrylic rods drilled into the scape,you couldn’t tell. He did this so when he wanted or needed to frag a colony he could just pull it out of the display. frag what he wanted and then just put the colony back. He also had a frag tank in his oak stand behind a door on the right. The frag tank I think was on a slidinge shelf so he could pull it out like a drawer, he was lighting the frag tank with a radion xr15

 

[Quartapound]

Sea of Duncan

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[Quartapound]

Skimmer Upgrade!
The curve 5 from the old 45g was making a valiant effort, but my stocking plans for the 120g necessitated more power!

I ended up going with a slightly less well known skimmer, the IceCap K2-200.

This beast packs a lot of power into a very small footprint. It's powered by an Italian Sicce PSK1000, so it should be quite reliable *knock on wood*.

So far it seems very solid and robust, thick acrylic, including titanium hardware, and gate valve for control.

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[Quartapound]

Break in period? ..... what break in period?
...New skimmer is absolutely destroying DOC's only 24hrs after installation.

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[Quartapound]

Update time! Good news, bad news....

Good news: 2 new Vortech MP40QD's have been added to the DT for flow! this is in addition to the Gyre xf130.... This freed up the MP10, which has now been moved to the frag tank.

Bad news: my Jebao DCP 8000 was starting to fail

Good news: It's been replaced with a Vectra M1!

Bad news: the tank has Ich. several fish were showing it.

Good news: I was able to catch ALL the fish without tearing my tank completely apart... They're all now in the hospital tank with cupramine.

Bad news: Need to wait out the fallow period

Good news: I'll be able to focus on finishing the rock-scape and placing the corals I already have (just sitting on the bottom of the tank) into the scape.

 

[Kyle1970]

Glass half full guy I see.

Tough catching the fish??

 

[Quartapound]

Glass half full guy I see.

Tough catching the fish??

It wasn't easy. Each fish was a slightly different challenge. I had to get pretty smart when it came to the six line wrasse. Egg crate blocking half the tank helped disorient him a bit. After chasing him awhile he established a route across the back of the tank through the egg crate, so I setup a net in that area and scared him right into it.

Never Chase with the net... Chase into the net

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[2CCs]

Following along - nice work - good luck

 

[Quartapound]

been MIA for awhile! quarantine is OVER! EVERYBODY MADE IT! They've been back in the DT for awhile... good thing too. rocks were starting to look a little hairy. tangs made quick work of that.

Here's an updated FTS. Pardon the oversaturation, quick cellphone pic.

...and this is what I've been doing that's kept me so busy I haven't taken the time to glue any corals down to the rocks yet!

 

[Jewel]

Looks good