Shovelhead's 250 Gallon Deep
All right folks, Yes I have a woodworking shop here at home, and no I haven't finished my cabinetry....lol I'm working on it!!!!!!!!
This tank has been in the works for over 4 years. I started gathering up all of the things I would need and ordered the tank back then cause we knew we wanted to go bigger when we built our new house. The tank sat dry in my woodworking shop for 2 years until I got finished with the house. Let me tell you one thing..... when a piece of wood goes flying out of your wood shaper toward an expensive piece of glass like that tank you will have an accident all over yourself..... I had that happen twice! Luckily the tank survived my clumsiness and after getting the frame up to support it I called 6 of my biggest friends and we moved it into the new house. Several hernias later we had it set and I began to build the sump. I built the sump to fit under the stairwell behind the tank and during construction ran 4 dedicated circuits into the area behind the stairs to have plenty of power for all of the equipment.
After getting that far life got in the way as it usually does and I didn't do any more work on the tank until about a year ago when my wife and kids hounded me to get the tank going. I started up the RO/DI unit and began to fill her up while I plumbed up all of the overflows, returns, etc. When I got it full I put in about 300 lbs. of old sand from our old tank that had been dry for all those years. I also put in about 100 lbs of new bagged live sand in at that point.
I built a PVC rack and covered it with black pond foam that we use on water features to allow for a huge cave under my live rock. After letting this cure I put all of our dry old rock into the display and started the tank up. I actually never really had much time after that until about a month ago when I got motivated to test the water and everything tested out right on the money!
The good water test got me excited so I went to my LFS and picked up my last piece of rock from my old tank(Thanks John, He kept that rock in one of his display tanks for me all those years and didn't charge me a dime even though it had mushrooms etc. on it) That rock in the tank plus about 100 each snails and crabs got me started again. I added a 16 oz. bottle of purple up over the last month and the coraline is coming on well on the rest of the dead rock and PVC rack.
The first batch of livestock made me nervous cause of the quantity of animals.... We added 2 yellow tangs, a green goby, a mated pair of clownfish, a horned blennie, a regal tank, a green bubble tip anemone, 2 cleaner shrimp, 4 peppermint shrimp, 6 emerald crabs, 2 lettuce nudibranch, and 6 fighting conchs but everything made it through except for the regal tang and the horned blennie(both of which were lethargic when we got them).
Reply With Quote
