levels...good...chromis in!

All levels check out at zero.....here goes our test fish...a chromis but we acclimated him properly and we'll see what happens.....

10 hours of rock

Not Rock and Roll....live rock! Off to Tofino to get some rock from Patrick at $2.75 a pound who can resist the nice (was it nice "green" girls!?) trip to Tofino to pick it up and buy....oh boy here we go...his blue carpet anemone and pair of brown saddleback clowns...to be placed in this tank when it's ready but NOT until then. Then to Rylands house to pick up his rock (4$ a pound) and a bunch of stuff....does the 50g "need" a halide or will it just look better and be more useful???! and here we go....there is a fair bit of rock in the sump but we didn't want to overload the tank. There is still tons of room for some choice pieces and we have a ton of room in the sump to help cope with the microbubbles cuz they are BAD. Oh well....here's a tank pic with our rock

Equipment

We thought long and hard over what we wanted this tank for...to start it was going to be cheap and a FOWLR with no future of anything else...MY HOW THINGS CHANGE! We thought we could use our sump, skimmer etc from the 50g FOWLR but NOPE, it won't cut it for a FOWLR...so upgrade we did...first the skimmer, then the pump, sump and lighting. We went with an IWAKI pump 40RXT, a #3 Oceanic Sump and lighting...well we kindof went over what we needed as we want to be able to leave our options open....and went with 2 VHO, 2 moonlights and a 250W metal halide with ice cap ends. It looks amazing lit!

Fish list...

Some fish ideas we have......

Keep it tidy!

Ken did a beauty job of labeling, and organizing everything so that it is all tidy...(has he looked at my mess of wires downstairs or something???!) so now I have to keep it like that...and is it ever tough. I am trying with all the timers and such. Still looks half decent!

Add a little water...

Tank and stand brought home last night and here we go....lots of salt, no REALLY LOTS of salt added to 80% RO/DI water and then some sand...what a mess but just wait...it will be pretty. The tank has come so far since we started...doesn't really look like the same tank anymore....

Blue paint? Oil based? ugh

Instead of getting the blue background and taping it to the back of the tank where the water will get behind it and look awful we decided to make it permanent! A bit of Tremclad in a medium blue should do! Stinky! 4 coats later we think it looks good! And I think it will really show off the fish...speaking of fish...a list of hopefuls soon to come....

It's in...no broken backs?

Whew, Larry and Ken brought this up the back stairs...none too light...think it will look ok right here? I hope so (I think if I told them to move it they would throw me down the stairs!)

Light, we need WHAT kind of light?

Oh no, we figured we could go fairly cheaply on lighting as we will have this set up as a FOWLR tank with an anemone..oops key words there eh Ken....WITH an anemone...the lighting just changed. We were going to get your average VHO lights plug them in, no heat no worries...yah so anyways that above WITH means metal halides all the way. There goes that budget! Thank goodness we sold the 180g, we could never have done it properly on a budget! Ken recommended the best idea for lighting so we can have whatever we want and not have to re-purchase later. Saved us a lot down the road, as we aren't sure that we will stick it out as a FOWLR and at least this means the lighting is ready for ANYTHING! What did we get? Actually Ken built it all, and did a great job! We have 2 VHO actinics, 1 250 watt metal halide with 2 moonlights. It looks great! You wouldn't believe how much it makes the 50g seem "dim". Wow. And the price is handlable. How much credit do we have with Aquareef???

Now we can't decide on FOWLR or REEF??? More discussion obviously in order!