I guess you all know me Adam (Myteemouse) already. We got started with this hobby by winning a SW tank setup at Wild Side (a LFS) in a raffle . The 29 gallon was a basic setup with FW light, canister filter, crushed coral, and no liverock. We had always wanted a tank but had never gotten around to it.
After months and month of reading, asking questions, hundreds of drawings and remeasuring the dinning room and tanks about ten thousand times, we came up with this. System is now 18 months old (set up march 2009) and we couldn't be happier. If anyone would like to come over and give the bar a try, give us a shout. Don't forget the beer!
The peninsula style is definitely the way to go for viewing your corals and live stock. It's a bugger to clean all that acrylic. The bar is very functional. We eat all our meals there. We also hang out around the tank, drinking beer or wine with guests. Everyone that comes over says it is a "One of a kind" setup. That is exactly what we were aiming for.
Our set up is a 125g peninsula tank made by Jason @ CFI, a 24x24x12-inch (30 gallon) frag tank and a standard 29 gallon (softy) tank (on separate system with sumps and all we are running a total water volume of around 220 gallons.
Everything on the 125 is custom made to our specs. (Stand/bar by me, hood by Mike Bell, tank and sump by Jason @ CFI). The stand was built in pieces out side and assembled in the house. (Too big to get in the door.) The overall footprint of the stand/bar is 8'6" x 6'3" x 42". I put doors all the way around the stand so we can get to all sides of the sump. The bar is strong enough to stand on to work on the tank.The hood is three pieces, one over each tank. Mike did an outstanding job making them seamless. At a distance they look as if they are all one hood. They all three have huge doors to get into the tanks. We painted the stand and hood gloss black to highlight the tanks themselves.
Maintenance and Equipment
System Parameters: pH 8.1-8.3, Temp 78-81, Cal 420, Mag 1250, Alk 9, Sal 35
Additives: kalkwasser with topoff water and magnesium once a month
Maintenance: 20% water changes twice a month
Livestock
29 Gallon
a two dragon face pipe fish
Chalk Bass
Harlequinshrimp, Snails and corals
125 Gallon
yellow tang
Naso tang
Fairy Wrasse
leopard wrasse
blue jaw trigger
yellow coris wrasse
green coris wrasse
red scooter blenny
a mating pair of yellow
watchman gobies and a pistol shrimp.
one peppermint shrimp and a few emerald crabs, & snails. No hermit crabs ..
lots of corals.
Eye Candy
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