Nate213

My wife would beat me. Im already at my tank limit. I need to stay on her good side, since I still have approval for an in wall build.

The 75 is gone and a computer desk has replaced it. Sad, but necessary.

FTS. The 75 is officially broken down. I lost some corals during the change over due to neglect. A few more browned out but they are starting to color back up.

I think the pearly jawfish are under rated. It is hard to capture how good they look in photos. Most of the time they are pale and stressed at the LFS, but they are quite pretty once healthy and established. Granted they are no blue-dot, but quite an attractive fish.

1963 International Harvester 1-ton.

Welcome to Cowlitz County! It's great to have more reefers in the area. Let me know if you need anything, I live just 15-20 minutes away and work in Kelso. The new tank looks fantastic. Nice, clean & well thought out.

Soak it in 90-100% Isopropyl alcohol for a few minutes, then use the bowl of rice. This is the same method for recovering water damaged cell phones. I have used it successfully with a couple of co-workers phones. There are a bunch of articles and you tube vids if you want to research more.

Not much progress. I added a MP40 and put some corals in the tank. A few SPS frags weren't doing so well in my 75 due to overcrowding so i moved them over. I also added my colony of Duncans and a few ricordia. Here is a short video of the MP40 on the nutrient transport mode creating a small wave. I need to get another one later but one works a lot better than I anticipated. http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/vv264/ntschneibel/150%20gallon/4270569a.mp4

Mike, I will be getting rid of it once the in-wall tank is complete, but that is gonna be a while. Probably a year or more. It will be part of a minor basement remodel and my wife and I haven't figured out exactly what we want. I will post it up in the classifieds when it is ready to go. It is a beast though, so if you live above the ground floor it would be extremely difficult to move. It has 3/4" glass on all sides and the bottom is two layers of 3/4". So it weighs just under 500#s empty.

Thanks Derbird. I'm hoping it looks better when everything grows in and I add the live rock. I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but I set my standards pretty high after browsing some aquascaping threads on RC.

Yep 40B sump. I got the baffles from a local glass shop. They cut the glass and nipped the corners. The only problem is they cost more than the sump. Last time I bought glass from Lowes and cut it myself. It was much cheaper that way.

Looking good. The wait for the RO/DI to fill up is a killer. It's worse than waiting for the cycle.

Thanks reefnjunkie and Mike. I'm due for an update pretty soon.

Your aquascape is amazing. One of the best I have seen. The barnacles are a nice touch. Now I'm wanting a coldwater setup.

Retrofitted my Smart Light with 2 x 250 MH moguls using Radium bulbs. Now I have temp lights so I can start transferring over everything slowly from the 75 gallon. I want to make sure everything is pest free, so I'm allowing myself ample time to dip and closely inspect before the transfer.

Aquascaping is getting there. Also added some sand over the weekend and it cleared up quickly. I need to add some more sand and transfer over some live rock from my other tank. The flow through the sump was ridiculous. I had to throttle it back almost 50%. The stockman standpipe I built works great though. Still some more tweaking required but I'm pleased with my first attempt.

Oh I forgot my shameless sponsor plug. This project is brought to you by: Homebrew. Without it plumbing would be impossible.

Plumbing is complete. Aquascaping in progress:

The piping inspector was back today and she was happier: Here are a couple of photos of the drain lines & return. Its getting there, but not quite complete. I made a real simple three chamber sump out of a 40B. Far left will be fuge, center will be return and right side skimmer chamber. And some more obligatory rock photos:

We had a special visit today during the project. She turned out to be the civil engineer: She was also the plumbing inspector: And the environmental engineer:

Put 200#s of rock in the tank last night. It's not aquascaped yet, I just sorted and piled them up by size. Im going to epoxy them together with acrylic rods to create some tower like structures. I just wanted to get the cycle started. It is nice to finally see something in the tank. I haven't gotten as far as I'd hoped with the sump. I only have one of the four baffles done. Hopefully by next weekend I can finish it and the return plumbing. Here are the rock pics:

Filled & mixing salt. I have 200 lbs of live rock in 35 gallon cans ready to go. I think this weekend I will finish the sump and started placing rockwork.