SWE Display 300Gal

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300g Fish Only Display
October 30, 2008.
Boom!!! It's time to play. When Jeff Jacobson heard we were going to do a "Fish Only" Display, he let us know he wanted in. Underwater Creations (www.UWCMN.com) is overseeing the creation of our latest greatest display at SWE.
Fritz picked out all the equipment and Li pulled together all the plumbing a few weeks ago.

The Monster:
Say “Hello” to the largest production line reef-aquarium in the area: Perfecto’s Deep Dimension 300 Gallon 72”LX36”WX27”T. Starphire front, duo “Corner-Flos”. You have to love it! These are the tanks reefers have always dreamed about. My favorite sizes for home reefs are the 3’X3’ and the 5’X3’. The first would look great with one 400W Metal Halide light with a single 2’ diameter island. The 5’ would look great with a 4’ 8 bulb Tek light! Of course, a fish only warrants the biggest aquarium your space can afford, so go with the 6’X3’ if you can!
Our aquarium sits in the center of the dry-goods section of the store. We left enough room on the “back side” to put an empty aquarium for sale, but will be aqua-scaped with two sides viewable in mind. We did this not only to make it accessible to more customers at once, but also to be able to show off the plumbing for educational purposes.

Filtration:
Xtreeme MSX 250 Protein Skimmer: Two pump version of the best bang for buck skimmers out there.


Octopus Reef-sump 300: The reef sump makes a great holder for the skimmer. Also the reef sump comes with the PH probe holder and two 4" filter-sock holders. We will not be using the socks regularly in this configuration, but they will be used for siphoning during maintenance.

Octopus Bio-Ball Sump 300: For a tank this big, it was either custom or two Large, regular sumps. We connected the two sumps with 1 1/2" bulkheads, union, and PVC. The bio-ball tray receives the water first. The top of the tray has a sponge to collect any large particles. Because this is a "Fish-Only" Display we chose to use bio-balls. This type of aerobic filtration is very effective at removing ammonia, which is the biggest concern for fish husbandry.

Total Control:
Neptune AC jr. Once you go controlled, you never go back.

Top Off: 20GalHigh aquarium, connected to the AC jr. and an SP3000 Niveaumat dosing pump with top-off switch.

Flow: Two Tunze 6101 streams on a Stream controller 7095

Heating/Cooling: We would control the heating with the Neptune controller, but the whole store is controlled by air heating. Cooling will be provided by a $10 plastic clip-on fan from one of the super stores. This will be plugged into the Aqua-controller.

Parameter maintenance: Reefstock Kalk-reactor Why Kalk on a Fish Only? As we understand it, kalk helps participate phosphates. Any aid in keeping the algae off seems good to us Obviously it helps keep PH up as well.

Lighting: Three 175SE, SLS Blue Wave Ballasts. Love that shimmer! Two of the reflector mogul sets we had laying around. The third we put a reef optics reflector in there. Wow, what a difference a few extra bends makes


Stock List:
Jeff has put together a sweet stock list and some goals too. The first goal is to get all the fish in the aquarium before any other inverts, plants or scuba divers. This way, if there are any diseases that come with the fish we can deal with them however necessary without having to remove the décor or animals. Eventually, we will likely put in pretty, inexpensive, low light corals. “Fish only system” is a style that is fish centric, not invert exclusive.
Underwater creations has a long-term outlook on aquariums, much like our “five year aquarium, life-time customer” motto. While we were consulting with Jeff he explained, “You want your fish to grow with the aquarium over the years. So, no sales out of the display! Your customers are going to be just as excited as you are to come back and see the little changes as the fish age. We will make a stock list and stick to it.” Here is the list on its final draft:

Nov 3, 2008:
Jeff re-ordered the stock list in the order we plan to add them and expanded the target size we will be scouring the wholesalers for.


1st - Flame Angel 2.5" - Passed 02 / 2009
- Juv Emperor 2.5" - Stocked!
2nd - Raccon Butterfly 3-4" - Passed after 1 month.
3rd - six Heniochis 3" - On hold, we haven't been happy with what we have seen this winter.
4th - four Squirrelfish 3-4"
- Foresters hawkfish 4" Stocked at about 2.5" 1/6/09
5th - Bluethroat or Crosshatch pair 4-5" Crosshatch pair Stocked 02 / 09
6th - Ausi Harlequin Tusk 6" Stocked 1/12/09 (You may call him Fritz Jr.)
7th - Vlamingi 4-5" Stocked 1/30/09 Thanks Li!
8th - Brevosteris Tang Pair 4-5" We got a 16"er in so skip the pair, we will keep the one.
9th - Grouper - Miniatus or Polleni 4" Miniatus Stocked 2 / 2009

10th - Powder Blue 5-6"
11th - Australian Lunarre Wrasse 6"
12th - Clown Trigger 4-5"
13th - Adult Queen Angel 6-8"

Today we added the rockwork and sand. We used the drill, activator,two huge tubes of superglue and clothes hangers. The process took about three hours. There are essentially three main islands. Jeff refused my pleas for a pirate ship!
On our reef tanks we always use Fiji pink, but for this tank a heaver weight is in order. This tank will need to be siphoned like a typical "fish-only" (fish dominate more like it as a starfish already has snuck over!). Jeff's favorite sand for this style of tank is Carib Sea's Seafloor Special Grade Reef Sand. Sea floor grains range from 1.0 - 2.0 mm (vs. Fiji pink from .5-1.5).

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Plumbing- This side will be viewable, though we intend to make some trim to block the light, add some signage, and keep the kids out of the sumps. You can see we just used the standard Perfecto Plumbing. It works great.

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Filling her up!

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Never forget the clip! I like these ratcheting clips better than spring loaded ones.

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XMS 250 and Octopus Reef Sump 300.

You can make out the bulkheads we added to share the water between two sumps. Unfortunately, the Bio-Ball sump can not handle this large of a skimmer. Fortunately there is plenty of room for two sumps side by side. We have since added a 20H for top off and two MH ballasts for lights. You can see we removed the filter socks, but they will be used for siphoning. You can see the Ocean Runner 3500 in this picture as well.

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The water hits the filter tray first, then the bio-balls. For now, we are not utilizing the rest of this sump.

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"I WANNA ROCK!"

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The first two pieces came out pretty fast (good thing a starfish came for a ride)... But that last one took some serious time.

Note: All this rock is from our existing systems... So we expect the cycle to be fast and minimal (mostly from all the new dry sand).

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The mistro, Jeff.

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Here is a good shot of Scott gluing it up.

Drill hole
Spray with activator
Gob up a whole bunch of Super glue
do the same to the other rock
Insert rod
attach other rock
spray more activator


add more glue anywhere you think you can make contact with both rocks
spray with more activator

wait 10 minutes
DONE

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This piece is so big, I think it needs a name...
"Flying Dragon Island"

Like that?

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We left plenty of room in the front for the large fish to cruise around. Its amazing what you can do with a tank this deep. These will be the customer's first view of the tank when they come toward it.

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OK time to open the store for the day. I leave you with.... Sand.

More to come

[Loverotties]

Great pics and rock work too!Keep them comming.