Puffer Chick's 46 Gallon Bowfront Reef

yup

 

i'm not actually sure where i bought it, my dad did the searching part, i think all he did was google it. For the application process we had to first clean the back of the tank with windex, then buy some special dish soap *forget the brand, but it's in the instructions*, get diluted water mix the water and soap inside a squirt bottle. Spray the back before we put the window tint on, once that was all sprayed we then put the window tint on the tank, sprayed, squegied *sp* so all of the bubbles were out. Then we had to cut the piece to the size of my tank. It took us two tries as the first one was cut wrong. The second one worked out great. When you look at the back of the tank you can see through the tank, but if you look inside the tank, you cant really see anything. They sell them in removable and permament. We ordered the removable but they shipped us the permament, but we used it anyways.

 

Our special circumstances were, we bought pre cured, precycled LR. Because that's how our favorite LFS does it. Back then, they had a 180 gallon tank in the back dedicated to cycling new rock. The rock that gets cycled goes into their display tanks in the store, meaning it's already filtering and all that good stuff when you buy it. So, rather than cycling, we pretty much "moved" LR to another location. Also, we bought 50 gallons of LFS water, which was also a very wise move to start off with. The only thing "dead" in our tank was the live sand, and we noticed the ammonia from that die off. After 1 week, the ammonia was gone, so we added our 2 clowns along with a big bottle of nitrifying bacteria (just in case, according to the manager), and then we declared our tank cycled after two weeks. But we weren't fully comfortable until 3 weeks later, because our API test was bogus. We bought a new test kit, and even had the LFS test the water, so 2 out of the 3 kits read zero on everything.

So that's our cycle in a nutshell. Now our tank is about 8 months 1 week and 1 day old.

 

My lfs sells a box of 40lbs of lr for 175 and I think I will go that way and buy 2 boxes instead of paying 4.99 a pound but I don't think it will be cured but it's cheaper for me to buy the box esoecially with 50% off on the order

 

Yeah you'll just have to wait a bit for it to cycle. No cycle is the same anyways, you just gotta check the parameters until it's done.

 

gah i can't wait, i saw your DIY video, and gave me ideas how to place my powerheads, i had no idea where to place them, i guess if the position works for yours i might as well try. How much lr and sand do you guys have in there? I was thinking a 3 inch sand bed since i plan to get a melanurus *sp* wrasse, but don't know how to calculate how many actual pounds i would need

 

We have about 40 lbs of sand, which gave us a two inch sand bed. So you'll be looking at around 60 pounds for 3 inches I'm guessing. Right now we have about 70+ lbs of live rock. However, we started off with only 20 lbs of base and 25 lbs of live rock, meaning 45 lbs total. You can see what that looked like in our thread. And then we've just slowly added more over time to what it is now.

And powerhead placement is all dependant on what you need. All of our powerheads are facing towards the top off the rockwork because that's where we have several SPS corals. The one on the right is actually pointing at a birdsnest and acro, and our star polyps on the "tank" are happy to get what's left of that flow. The back wall PH is pointed at another birds nest and 2 more acros. Then the left side one is pointed just at the top rockwork. So you just need to aim them where you need them.

 

iohhhh ok, 60lbs of sand doesn't seem too bad. And thanks for the tips about the powerheads, now i have a better understanding of where they need to be placed

 

Have you gone through our tank thread (started by Jwin)? It pretty much has everything from our start last November to now. I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures!

 

Yup I think I'll put mine up very similar my only worry about not getting all the rock at once is that it might start a mini cycle so that may be the only thing that I'll really do different. And trust me, there will be a lot of pics