MotoFish
MotoFish's First Salt Water Tank
by
, 03-17-2010 at 03:26 PM (2265 Views)
Well, first let me start off with a big thank you to a few people who have helped me get the grasp and understanding of what I am diving into.. Those few people that I'd really like to mention are Jessy, SDguy (Peter), Nick_Kun, SDFishman (Justin), Rudy, and nahtanoj (Jonathan) all of whom (whether they knew it or not) have helped me out tremendously in my quest to start up this endeavor. All of whom I met thru SDReefs.
I also want to say thank you to my fiancée who has been very supportive of my desire to build this tank. Thanks love! I love you!
A little about me.. I've been a certified diver for many years. Have many dives under my belt from tropical waters mostly in the Caribbean and mostly off the shores of Cozumel, Mexico.. I have had a few freshwater tanks in the past, thanks to my Uncle whom spent most of his adult life living in the Virgin Islands and Trinidad and Tobago.. RIP Uncle Joe, I love you. Also the same man that tought me to ride motorcycles.. Hence the name. Anyways, back to me.. I've always had an appreciation for the underwater world, and finally, I am building my own little piece of it. I started out about a year ago by signing on to SDReefs.. I would read thread after thread. Ask question after question. I started attending the monthly meetings.. all the while learning as much as I could to know that I would not just have another salt water tank, but to have something that is much more than just a salt water tank.. I want my slice of the ocean, my slice of the reefs and fish I love to dive to see.
Here is the start of the scenes that have been ingrained into my memory. Scenes from my own experiences. The visions of those scenes, replicated to reproduce what I found extremely fascinating.
So without further ado, here is my first reef tank..
MotoFish's Reef
A front view
and a back view..
The stock plumbing as it came with the tank..
The redesigned plumbing, hoping to utilize some of that knowledge I have picked up in the past year.
A new skimmer!
and some new rock...!
I opted to build this tank from scratch, using all new stuff (for the most part) some stuff is used, but as far as the tank goes, I am trying to set it up and know exactly what is in there.. No unwanted pests to destroy my hard work! I'm new to all of this and am trying to go slow and learn and know exactly what I am doing through every step of the way..
So here goes.. My first time ever aquascaping.. It took days. It went thru a couple iterations, it got my fiancée, and my own votes of approval. Together we found what we think is going to look magnificent in our home when it truely comes to life!
A first go at the final layout.. It got changed.
Here was the second and the final layout we opted to go with. Here's some close ups of this layout..
The back left..
The back right..
The front left..
and the front right..
Some top down pics.. left side.
and right side.
Most of this layout came from visions in my head of one of my favorite dives.. The Palancar Wall.. If you have ever dove the site.. You can relate. I remembered working my way down thru the reef, getting deeper and deeper as I went. There were many cracks and crevices to swim thru and around. Ultimately coming out of the reef and near the 120 foot mark, led me to be suspended over a 3000 foot underwater cliff that seemed to just go straight down into the darkness of the ocean. It was truely an amazing feeling to feel so small in such a vastness of water. I of course hurriedly swam back into the safety of the reef, but it was that dive that inspired this rock formation. Minus the 3000 foot cliff of course. My tank is only 18" deep..<-- The hissyfit icon seemed very fitting here!
So the RO/DI unit showed up on Monday and I immeadiately had to get it going.. I filled the tank with pure RO/DI water and added salt afterwards, slowly to the overflow, bringing salinity up to par.
A view from the back.. ultimately this will get a piece of black vinyl applied to the outside of the tank, just where the overflow section is, to hide the plumbing.. But for now, you can see the water level in the tank sitting about an inch higher than the water level in the overflow. There is no pipe for the return water, it flows directly down thru the bulkhead fitting and around the 3/4" pvc sticking up thru the middle (my backup drain).. Before I built this new drain system, during initial water tests, my fiancée asked "Is it always going to be this loud?" as of this morning, (finished filling the tank about 1:30 am last night) with new drain operative, she says "Is it even running?" to which I answered "Yes!"
A picture of it near full.. It is completely full now and up and cycling..
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