Snake's Progress Shots of 110g Show tank

Hey all! I introduced myself here several months ago. I just wanted to come back and get a feel for the forums. I hope to get to know everyone soon enough. I generally hang out in the saltwaterfish.com's forums mainly, but I kinda wanted to branch out and share with all some pics of my tank, and a few others and share some experience here and there when I can. I also came here to learn and expand my knowledge of the hobby as well.

This is not my tank. I maintain this tank for a client that runs a department store. Their budget is very limited, so it currently doesn't have much in the way of fish and coral. Hopefully all of that will change in the next few months as the Christmas season passes. This tank was set up August 1st, 2011. Liverock didn't arrive until the end of August. These pictures are progress shots of the tank, week by week (every Saterday, save a few) since the tank was started.

The tank specs:
110g show tank 48x18x32"
External overflow
Mag 9.5 return pump
30g custom sump
Maxijet 1200 powerhead
Koralia 5 powerhead
60 pounds base rock
35 pounds live rock
100 pounds dry aragonite sand
12x13" algae scrubber
up to 150g heater, Fluval I think

Livestock:
2 clownfish
5 chromis
2 firefish
10 astrina snails
10 nassarius vibex snails
10 blue leg hermits
2 green emerald crabs
2 brittle stars
1 lettuce nudibranch

Livestock to add:
1 Kole tang
1 bi-color blenny
1 neon goby
2 cleaner shrimp
1 coral beauty angel

What the tank doesn't have:
No protein skimmer
No filters
No pre-filters or sponge filters
no denitrators
no vodka dosing
no dosing Kent tech-M
no refugium (besides a verticle scrubber)
no chemical filtration medias like GFO or carbon.

And so begin the pictoral progress:

 

Basically, these three pictures are just getting the tank ready... setting it up, etc. Nothing really spectacular. lol But, I wanted ya'll to get a feel for how big the tank is, and what the stand and all looks like. The owner painted the stand white to match the rest of the stores furniture.

 

This was about three (maybe four) weeks after the tank was started. The light timer malfunctioned and the lights were left on for 16 hours a day for a week. YIKES! Especially for a tank that was started with tap water. I expected algae in the tank, and it wasn't going to be a problem taking care of it.



This was the next Saturday. Not much change at all. This is the day I installed the algae scrubber on the system and turned the lights down to 5 hours a day.



You can start to see some of the hair algae on the left side of the tank start to disappear this Saturday, especially with the Koralia 5 pointed in that direction.

 

Some Mermaids Umbrella macroalgae appeared on some of the rocks. It was pretty for awhile, but eventually has started to die away.



This is a shot of a piece of live rock in the tank with a bunch of hair algae on it. It was here one day...



And gone the next.

 

Yes, I know I have a long thumbnail that I needed to cut. But, it makes it easier to play the guitar.

 

And the algae scrubber that makes it all happen:

 

Halimeda algae popping out of the middle of nowhere and thriving!


Coralline algae starting to seed some of the base rock. This is just one piece of rock, I figured ya'll didn't want to see a bunch of pics of rocks. lol. Coralline algae just started to take off in the last two weeks. I dosed Kent's essential elements and topped off with lime water once a week for the last two weeks, and the coralline just started taking off. I want the tank to be purple in the next six months. So far I'm on track.

 

Well, I guess that's all for now. Oh, and I've only done one 20g water change in the last three months. So - yeah.

I'll continue to update this thread every Saturday/Sunday after I take pics of the tank. I'm really wanting to do some weekly progress shots thread, and let everyone see just how different things can get so quickly. It's going to be interesting to say the least!

 

The tank looks good. Nice job you did with the algae.