So, I've made some good progress on the tank in the last couple weeks and need to update here.
I decided what type rocks I would add, arranged them and epoxied some of the more unsteady pieces. The rock was from a tank I bought a couple years ago, just been sitting in a bucket in the garage since then, so happy I can finally put it to use. I decided to not add a ton of rock, as I wanted plenty of swimming room for fish and plenty of room for coral to grow out. I didn't have a beer bottle for scale so I used a ketchup bottle, hope that's ok :tongue_out:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30-12001.jpg
I liked this rock, has a cool little cave inside :thumbsup:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30-12002.jpg
Here's the rock in the tank the way I like it. A few pieces have epoxy helping to hold them in their spot. Wow, epoxy is sooo much easier to use on DRY rock! :doh: I'll be adding a few more small pieces of live rock and a little sand from 75g tank to help the tank cycle/seed the dead rock.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30-12003.jpg
Happy day, filled the tank with saltwater :big_grin: Also rigged up the Marineland LED strip light I got at the MACNA dinner this past fall (was "free"). They're not currently available for sale, I guess these were prototype lights that they gave away. Had to drill into the plastic and also drill into the clips that came with it in order to mount it in the tank. I'll use these as actinics-daybreak-sunset type lights. They're submersible and I do have them under water, was a little scared at first, but they seem fine so far :snorkel:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30-12009.jpg
The powerhead in there is a Tunze Nanostream Turbelle 6055. Not sure I like the placement, as the front curved glass seems to magnify it, but this spot does seem to provide the best water circulation vs. a side-mounted spot. I'm going to try it on the left-hand side and see how it does there. Its ramped down to 12v right now, although 15v was fine too. Any higher than that and sand started to kick up.