125 Gallon Just Filled! Questions

Keep the chromis in there. They will add movement to your tank. You've gotten great advice so far. Maybe move the pair of clowns down the list order. I know mine were aggressive towards any new fish. Patience is key! I tell myself this all the time.. Good luck with the tank!

 

We are also keeping the yellowtails. We have 3 Green Chromis and 3 Yellowtails. I love the characters the yellow tails have become as far as interacting with us Can't get rid of them quite yet. And the blue devils we gave to the LFS are quite happy.

We are redoing our hood, retrofitting it for the LEDs. Removed the old braces for the VHOs, and got 4 stainless steel brackets, which hold the bulbs quite well. Also got plastic bulb protectors so we can just wipe the salt off the plastic vs. the bulbs. Going to be ordering the new bulbs this weekend. Between the VHOs and the LEDs we should be able to get quite a bit of light. Maybe even enough to try an SPS in the future. Our powerhead count is up to 4 now LOL. Two Koralia 1400s and two Koralia 600s. Three of the pumps are on the left of the tank away from the overflow. One 1400 points slightly down towards the glass, another flows over the live rock, and the 600 is just pointed towards the surface to avoid dead spots on the surface. The other pump is near the bottom on the right side below the overflow. Although they haven't had light in two days, when there is light, our softies flow back and forth quite happily, and almost seem bigger then when we first got them. We've been spot feeding them Phyto Feast with a large feeding baster. Our macro algae is growing quite well. We do have an extra T5HO grow light, but the simple clip on grow light is working quite well, so I might just add it into my FW hood, which could use another one. A peppermint shrimp managed to get back into the wet-dry, and is happily crawling through the algaes. Lots of copepods! Our brine shrimp eggs have arrived, and we are going to be working on a hatching system soon! We also have a shelf piece we didn't use, so that is in the sump chamber near the pump, along with seamud in the chamber before the trickle filter area. Having quite a lot of fun setting up a copepod factory lol. Really want to set us up for success for a dragonet in the future!

Going to be mounting two pulleys to the ceiling, so we can simply lift the tank hood out of the way. Its an acrylic hood, so its quite light, but its large and annoying to take off to feed and work on the tank.

Here's our lighting progress so far:


And our chosen VHO bulbs (haven't ordered yet, current bulbs are just 6500K)
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=3813
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=21435

Very excited to see the lighting in its full glory on the tank

We are actually using our tap water (gasp). It has a measured TDS of 105-110 when I test with meter (I breed FW shrimp), and it has quite a bit of calcium in it for tap water with no flouride, chloramines, etc. I use R.O for top offs however.