Manny Tavan

Plenty of room there for the 650...

Would a shame if one of those package thief came by the house at 1030am lol

It’s pretty light. It’s just the base right now. Will be placing all the branches once i get my 1/2” ceramic rods and new cement. It will be just one piece that weighs about 50-60 lbs. that’s why i wanted the feet to have a wider contact patch

Marco cement hasn’t arrived so I continued with quickrete cement to finish the base. I epoxied frag disks to the bottom edges that will make contact with the glass. Will apply cement around the disk to hide them since i will have a bare bottom system

ouch...

9 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

thats Jeff.


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Jeff is a cuddlefish???

What’s a cuddlefish...

Make garage sales great again!

You’re gonna need more superlative to get me interested...

Reefers: wow that rock is awesome!

normal people: it’s a rock....

Did more research. Some people are reporting crumbling of the hydraulic cement after a year or so. Seems like emarco 400 is just hydraulic cement MasterEmaco N 427 but it comes with an acrylic fortifier acryl 60. Some people report using the quickrete acrylic fortifier with the quickrete hydraulic cement. Not sure i want to experiment further because the branches I am using are HEAVY so I ordered emarco 400 cement. Doubt I can find it locally under it’s generic name

which epoxy brand would you recommend? 

6 minutes ago, CrabbyCrabs said:

Epoxy can make that happen. Just have to research the epoxy.  I've glued cars together as an auto body tech, correctly, I've done structural steel repairs with epoxy. Epoxy is bad as*. You just have to research and find the right epoxy, there are thousands to pick from.

oh I know epoxy is solid. I use it all the time. But can you get a 10lb bucket of epoxy for $7?

I bought epoxy initially but figure i wouldn’t have enough to make this design. This is the vision and I’m going to need at least several pounds of cement to make it hold safely 

I’ll let you know if i need more but so far so good. This cement sets REALLY quickly. Got too hard before I could use the first batch

Yeah caribsea shapes are just pieces epoxied together to create a shape. The epoxy held pretty well the rocks broke in between the pieces of epoxy because the rocks is made of aragonite and is much weaker. I know cb’s does sell arches individually 

Decided to use this quick onset cement 

Decided to start my new build by getting the rocks first. This will force me to take my time since I don’t have anything else. Not even the tank. This is by far my least favorite part of the build and decided to make a branch style aquascape for a 5ft tank. Sadly my caribsea liferock shapes rock were damaged during shipping. I got 13 pieces instead of 4 large structures. The branches on the other hand were intact 

2 hours ago, SuncrestReef said:

The diffusers really help with smoothing out the color pattern and reducing the disco effect.  They also reduce the glare when looking at the tank from across the room.

 I’m not exactly sure what shading you mean, but hopefully this helps.

By shading, i mean dark spots on the sides of corals especially acros

39 minutes ago, River City Corals said:

I have 3 gen4 xr30 with the aquatic life t5 fixture and it awesome   They are definitely Par monsters depending on height of fixture and intensity of Radions 

Hows the cord management with that set up. That means you have 5 different cords to route back to the power outlet right?

did the diffuser help with reducing shading?

With black friday coming up. I'd like to finalize my build as soon as possible. 

This will be a red sea reefer 525xl (5'x2'x2') SPS dominated tank.

I really can't figure out what lighting to go with because there are s many options out there: 

x1 Giesemann 60" aurora t5/led hybrid

x3 radion xr30 gen4 pros

x3 Hydra HD 52

x2 Kessil A700

x1 aquatic life T5 fixture with x3 LED (hydra, kessil, or radion)

If you guys were building a 5ft SPS tank, with aesthetic and coral color/growth as your priority, which one would you guys pick. 

(ps would be nice not to have to hang a fixture from the ceiling)

everytime my Nitrates and Phos go to 0 I get cyano. Now when I see cyano, I just feed more and it goes away

+ 1 on taco food truck