Here you go... now start plumbing

Going from FW to SW. It is funny to me what SW keepers consider aggressive. Hear it time and time again, one tang per tank. Yeah maybe if you have a small tank, but even then Tangs probably aren't a great option as the majority get fairly 'large' and they really like a lot of space to graze. I have 5 now, and when i add a new one, the Powder Blue goes after it for 3-4 hours. Then the next day its like the new fish has been there since the start with 0 aggression. They actually even seem to 'enjoy' each others company. Look at the pics the 5 tangs are all within a foot of each other in both pics. This wasn't a coincidence either. They seem to actively graze as a group moving about the tank - even though they are all separate species. With two in the genus Acanthurus and two Zebrasoma and a lonely Naso for now. 

Patience is for suckers, get that sucker full of water. If there's beer involved and maybe a frag or two I may even be willing to help you move it  

Awesome work mate! To set up or not.... 

Delapool - thanks mate. When looking at the pics as a whole they kind of have a grayed out look to my eyes. Will definitely need some tinkering with the settings on the camera or some editing to get them to be a true reflection.

Jules - Thanks. Yeah the desjardini are stunning tangs. Really gives a nice contrast compared to the rest of the fish, especially the tangs. I do need more corals, but in reality i just need the ones I have to grow out! My tank is only 2 and a half months old, so think she's going alright. 

I actually lost my Favia 'brain coral' - first coral I have lost! Lost it when I had that mini outbreak of Dino's (only thing that was affected). Dino's came and went in 4 days - which I am very grateful for and fingers crossed the nasty bastards don't return. Another learning process for me. When I bought the Favia it had a black spot/hole in the top of the coral. One evening I noticed what I thought was a tiny shrimp darting in and out of the coral (trying to collect food particles?). There was also a secondary hole close by but nothing major and I couldn't see anything living in it. Just figured the holes would close as the coral grew. A few more holes developed, and I believe this weakened the coral and overnight the dino's took over one side of the coral (where the holes were) and then 24hrs later the entire coral was covered in dino's. I took the coral out and dried it in the sun. All of the holes were created by what I now know to be 'Gall Crabs'. I counted 7 of these crabs in total that the drying process brought out of the coral. Some people believe that these crabs are not harmful and some people remove them at all costs, I will now fall into the second category. 

These crabs make their home, normally in LPS (predominantly Favia and Elegenace from what I understand) and kind of burrow into the flesh and the coral grows around them. The female is the crab that lives in the hole and they use their back to block the hole up. The male is free to roam around. Ugly looking buggers - look like a tick. I dip all of my corals before placing them in the tank, it is possible that these crabs are unaffected by the dip, my dipping procedure is insufficient or and probably the most plausible answer is that the dip is effective (most dips 'stun' and not kill parasites so they fall off the coral) but they are within the hole so they don't actually fall out of the hole as they are wedged in then when placed inside the tank they then recover and carry on with life.

I was saying to Jules that Reef Keeping has been a pretty steep learning curve (not that anything has gone wrong) and I feel their is a nasty algae,parasite or disease lurking around every corner. Compared to freshwater is is crazy. I think in the previous 25 years of FW keeping I dealt with whitespot maybe once? and Hole in the Head once and that was about it. 

Busted out the SLR today - been a long time since I used it, and in fairness I was never that good to begin with. Still need some tinkering as some of the colours are not quite accurate.

Bengaii Cardinal

Orange Shoulder Tang and Powder Blue enjoying some Nori. 

Group shot

Blonde Naso

Blue Chromis hiding out in one of my Staghorn's, Cool pic but not really accurate colour wise. Staghorn growth tips are a blue colour, rather than all white.

Zebrasoma crew - Desjardini Sailfin and Yellow Tang

SPS - Acropora tenuis 'Blue Batavia Coral Farm'. This is one of my favourite corals, and of course I do it no justice. Is a nice violet blue colour with fluorescent axial polyps.. This thing has grown heaps since I've had it and is going from strength to strength. 

Thanks mate. 

Have a couple more sps and a handful of zoas going in today. 

Starting to see the first signs of new growth out of my sps, which is a great sign. 

Calc reactor seems to being doing a good job at keeping my water param's super stable. Alk 8.4, Calc 450 and Magnesium around the 1600 mark. The algae reactor is growing chaeto like mad, and my nitrate levels are low because of it <5. 

Need to get a phosphate test kit - been lazy. 

Battling a bit of hair algae. Rocks are now clean of it, the tangs and army of snails has nailed it all. Still quite a bit in the sand bed, but that is slowly being taken care of by the crew and siphoned out. All in all things are well. If a bit of hair algae is the worst of it.

What lights did you end up going with?

The tank is starting to come to life with some colour - still a long way to go.

Moving house is a pain without moving a marine tank too. Be worth waiting for sure, when's the house due for completion?

Jules - may not be a bad idea.

It's all systems go, Calcium reactor is now online and my levels are looking right where they need to be. 

Ordered some corals this morning from Oceanarium - that will be delivered tuesday afternoon, next week. 4x different Acropora sp and a plating green challice coral. Probably not the most forgiving corals to start with, but we will see how I go. 

Thanks. 

Nobody wants to see any coral go in anymore than me. Got my Calcium reactor media yesterday, and get the co2 today. So the calcium reactor can go online this weekend - then it's time to sell a kidney and start buying coral. 

Baby on the way! congrats mate, absolutely awesome news.

Setting up a reef tank and a baby on the way. Sounds like your 2019 will be similar to my 2018. It's all good fun though, beats sitting in front of the television. I seriously underestimated the time I needed to put into setting everything up, was a huge undertaking. 

Our baby loves the fish tank - calms her down 9/10 when she is having a sook, I think it's a combination of the lights, the movement of the fish and the shapes/patterns of the rock. 

Few things have been done.

Drilled another hole in the wall and now all the cords from the lights feed through the wall into the garage. Much easier and neater. 

Sand is in - used Carib Sea - 'Special Grade' mixture of live sand and dry. 

First fish are out of quarantine and into the display - 2x Oscellaris Clowns, 1x Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse (male), 1x Bengaii Cardinal (other one got beat to death in QT - both males once fattened up), 1x Powder Blue Tang and 1x Orange Shoulder Tang. 

Everything is going really well, fish are happy and healthy. First corals should go in, in the next week or so and need to fill the Qt with the next round of fish. 

Looks like your full steam ahead getting things done! You are in the fully motivated stage. 

Will be awesome once all done. Keep up the good work.

Thanks mate. 

Added a couple pieces of rock and moved the entire structure in on the left to create some more separation between the two structures: lowered my lights which was a mission!

Sand goes in at some stage next week, so realistically ready for fish and the first coral in the next 1-2 weeks!

Good man. You'll never look back or ever have any spare cash again.

Haha!

I started this process back in February this year, and still don't have a single piece of coral or fish in the tank. Patience grasshopper. 

It was collected by Batavia Coral farms from the Abrolhos Islands. Actually got the speak to the collector and he explained what he does in terms of eliminating pests best he can, and i must say that so far he seems to have done a pretty good job, not to say something wont pop up. 

Starting to see a few small corals pop up on it now. Including something fluro green with tentacles, possibly a torch or even a very small bubble tip anemone. Hard to tell at this size. Heaps of snails etc crawling around now too. 

Yeah, there are a lot of companies doing the fake rock now. I have some of the Carib Sea Life Rock in my quarantine, it does look pretty good. My gripe with it is the cost for a dead rock and most of the brands only come in fairly small pieces. The rock on the far left of my tank is one piece!

I have a sump, and connected to the sump is a large algae reactor with chaeto.

Sand will go in shortly once i'm completely happy with the scape. So far looks like no crabs are mantis have come in on the rock.

See how the tank settles first. Probably 2-3 weeks.

Quick update, was just going to drill another hole in the wall to run the cables through, but didn't realize the ceiling in the garage behind is much lower than the living room, so had to rule that out. 

Ended up running the cabling down the wall hidden in some television conduit. Looks pretty good for the most part, and hid the rest of the cabling behind the tank itself. Still a couple minor touch ups to be done. 

But the tank is back on the wall and the plumbing is now drying. 

Filled the tank up to see how 'unlevel the floor is'. Approximately 1/2" over and 8' length. Shimming the stand also isn't really an option with a 10 legged metal stand. Still unsure what I'm going to do about this if anything - the base of the tank is sitting on is a flat surface and the stand is bullet proof.

The other thing is there is a lot of light spill from the lights being the recommended 60cm/2' from the water surface, and it really illuminates my house and can even see it from the street (which i don't like) - am considering having a 'collar' fabricate and drilled into the wall around the lights to stop a bit of this light spill. 

Hopefully have saltwater in it this weekend!

No issue having more power points installed. The problem is that cables have metal 'ballasts' 2 for each unit, so these would also need to be hidden somewhere if i was to just shorten the cable, I'd have 8 of these ballasts that would also need to be hidden somewhere. 

I'm thinking another hole in the wall just below where the two middle brackets are for all the cables to pass through (and install a collar on the hole to make it neater) into my garage where all my equipment is. So I could just have all the cabling and ballasts sit on a shelf in the garage. Just a pain to have to drill another hole in the wall.