the 600 c.a.g. is up and running - finally !

[gwaco]

yep i know it seems i have been gone forever , but after three months of being invisible things are getting back to normal , well sort of ....
the new tank is up and running but with lots of little things to do yet .
so i should be back around alittle more and will continue to add to this thread as time permits , and i must say i have alot of things to talk about ! at times things didn't go to smoothly but i managed to keep my sanity thru all of this .
for tonight i'll post some pics i took as of an hour ago , as i said still much to do so i'm sure these new photos will become old quite quickly !
i will go into greater depth with the build soon , so for now i hope you all enjoy these .

[gwaco]

it also looks like i have some relearning to do on the site

this should give an idea of the size of this tank which measures out at 8' x 4' x30" high .


and the last one for the night showing the garage half of the tank .

[motorslave]

Im liking it! Nice to see you back. That thing is a monster, Im jealous. Cant wait or the details on the build.

[VWD]

Glad your back, looks great!


Many changes lately

[aquawolf]

Man that is really cool and HUGE! What are those really smooth, almost white or gray looking rocks? Are they hiding powerheads? The whole thing has a really nice structure to it. Congrats on getting it up and running.

[Hop]

Looks very good. Rather than asking a ton of questions, I'll just wait patiently for the little posts

[dobejazz]

Looks Great Gary! Welcome back we've missed ya

[OneDummHikk]

Tagging along to see this monster being built Awesome looking tank.

[tims]

very nice gary!

[Leonardo's Reef]

Looks good Gary!

[crvz]

What a tank!

[gwaco]

thanks everyone ! its nice to have alittle time away from working on something !
i'll go ahead and give the equipment rundown and try and answer some of the ?'s.
tank- custom built acrylic tank with the dimesions of 8' long by 4' deep and 30" high .
all sides and bottom are 1" acrylic with the one piece top being 3/4" . the back also has a 1/4" black background laminated to it .
it has an intergrated coast to coast overflow which spans approximently 7' of the tank . the overflow box is also constructed from 1" acrylic .
flow- main return pump flow is provided by a sequence barracuda pump , supplimental in tank flow provided by a tunze 6055 , 2- tunze 6060's , a couple of eco modded maxijet 1200 's , a freak 6000 tunze i modded ( more on this later ) and duel wavebox i built using the internals from my orignal tunze wavebox ( more on this later also ) .
filtration - simple ! using the big mouth beckett skimmer i built when i had the 180 still being fed by a little giant 5.5. pump. twin filter socks in a filter sock box i built , which sit in a 110 gallon oceanic tank for the sump .
lighting - same set-up as i had on the 180 with the exception of additional t-5 lighting . so thats 3- 250 watt 10k xms , and six 4' t-5 rated at 54 watts each .
misc- 1/2 jbj chiller and a 20gallon ato .
so thats the rundown on the equipment .

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by aquawolf

Man that is really cool and HUGE! What are those really smooth, almost white or gray looking rocks? Are they hiding powerheads? The whole thing has a really nice structure to it. Congrats on getting it up and running.

ah ! i new this would be the first thing someone would ask about ! well long story - i ended pitching the haitian rock from the 180 as it was giving me problems for months , it turned out to be just bad rock . but since the previous owner of the tank was going smaller he had quite abit of indo rock left which i quickly took ownership of ! but it wasn't quite enough to do what i wanted to do for aqua scaping so i came up with this brilliant idea , before i filled the tank i added some brackets to the sides and brackets for the wavebox .
those gray rocks you see are plastic rocks used for covering sprinkler pumps and control valves . they actually worked out perfect for what i wanted to do and since i cut holes in each of the rocks the fish absolutly love swimming in and out of them . the largest of the plocks is large enough for even the vlamingii when full grown.
the only bad thing i have found is that their very bouyant , but even a small piece of live rock holds them down .
the two rocks on the tank floor are joined with two pieces of 1/2 pvc which gave me the strengh to support the largest of the live rock pieces to ceate the bridge .
the other thing that was a pleasant surprise is that epoxy sticks great to the surfaces , so it allows me great versatility for mounting things to it .
the one on the left wall will be left just for zoos to encrust with the right one being undecided at the moment .
it will be real interesting to see what they look like in 6 months !

[aquawolf]

Thanks for the information on those Gary. It actually sounds like a pretty ingenious desigh concept, and once covered with coralline they won't even be noticeable. The part about epoxy sticking well to them is a definite bonus in my book. Great job!

[gwaco]

i'll leave you tonight with a few pics .
this one is how the fish spent their spring break ! i moved the 180 to the garage .