Hey folks, I was thinking of posting a few questions/experiences and saw this forum. First off, I moved to Alaska in 1995 and gave away all my setups to friends in back in Virginia. I haven't had a tank in 11 years!
I bought a poorly neglected 180 gal reef setup this past fall (oct. 2006). The lady had it setup as a "berlin" style; ie. she only had power heads circulating water in the tank. The tank came with about 200lbs live rock, a yellow tang, a
blue devil, various
mushroom corals and a leather. Apparently, the lights on the tank had not been used for a while so the corals looked pretty bad and there was no algae in the tank! Unfortunately, the leather didn't make it.
I had been saving up and researching for quite a while when i saw her add in the paper. When i went to see it, I knew that I was going to buy it (fortunately i was the first and only person that saw the tank).
The tank I had designed for the house was to be viewed on three sides and even though this wasn't my "dream" tank I thought it might be it for a while! So I decided to drill!
I drilled 3 holes in one end of the tank for 3 two inch bulk heads and then built an internal overflow. I had found a few tanks at the dump to practice on so all went well. One of the tanks was a 29 gallon and ended up being my refuge.
As I said, the tank sticks out of the wall so that it is viewable from three sides. The refugium is located in the wall next to it, only above it so that gravity would bring the water back to the main display. The water flows out the back of the display into a 40 gal sump where water gets diverted to the refugium, the skimmer and the surge buckets.
Several of the pumps went bad on me right away, so i was left with less that adequate water flow (at least what my end goal was). So, at this point the tank is up and running with three power heads (one with a diy eductor), plus the water stream coming from the refugium. I purchased an Ocean Runner 2700 for a diy skimmer that I was going to make, but decided to use it for the surge devices instead! Works great.
Oh yeah, the lights. the tank came with a 1000w, 400w, and two 250w metal halides plus a dual 4' flo. fixture. For now, I have 4 T5 lights on the refuge and only the 400w mh and about 400w of flo. on the display.
As of Feb 2007, the mushrooms look great and are finally started growing (they are located under the flourescent part of the tank). The blue devil went to the local fish store, as he was just hogging all the food so that the tang wasn't getting any. When I got the tang, she was so skinny; I don't think I have ever seen such a skinny fish. She is nice and fat now! I've been feeding her seaweed that I get from the sushi section at the grocery store (make sure it is 100% seaweed).
Here is the real kicker! The amphipod/copepod/shrimp population is out of control. I hesitate to get something like a mandarin, as i love seeing the rocks literaly crawling with tiny and sometimes big "bugs". At night it kind of scares me there are so many!
Sorry I can't be too specific with the pump names and skimmer name, but i don't know as they have no identifying marks (except a few of the power heads). Eventually, I would like a Sequence pump that would do 5-6000 gph. Probably will have to wait until summer.
Feel free to make comments and thanks for listening!
peace.......jason s/ tundra reef
