labnjab's 75 Gallon Reef Build

**labnjab** · 12-09-2009, 04:04 PM

I can't wait till it clears up. Its a lot better then it was last night. I can almost see the back glass. I'm heading out now to home depot to brave the blizzard and get the remaining plumbing pieces I need for the sump.

The only fish I haven't seen yet is the firefish. I hope he's just hiding like he usually does
Here's some pics. I have to move the halide to the right tonight

**Rue** · 12-09-2009, 09:24 PM

That's a lot more room!

Do you have a hood and full lights?

I'm assuming you're mixing up more water as well?

**labnjab** · 12-09-2009, 09:48 PM

Originally Posted by Rue

That's a lot more room!

Do you have a hood and full lights?

I'm assuming you're mixing up more water as well?

We have another 10 gallons mixed and another 10 gallons of ro made plus the other tank has 40-45 gallons between the tank and sump. I installed the new bulkhead, added some water and so far its not leaking. If its still dry in an hour then I think were good to go

No hood yet. The other half of the tank is going to have our 4x39 watt t-5 fixture (it will stick out a few inches). Sometime soon we'd like to add a 150 watt HQI in place of the t-5 fixture and then we'll have someone build a hood. We love the extra room

. Most of the rock that's in there now will be put in the sump because I want as much empty sand as possible for lps and a clam

**labnjab** · 12-10-2009, 05:24 AM

Tanks full and sump has been running for an hour running. We had one bulkhead start to drip but once I snugged it up it stopped. Our coralife 125 skimmers impeller broke so we stuck the coralife 65 back in until we could find a new impellar for the 125. The skimmer is pulling some nasty looking skimmate already. I didn't realize how much live rock we had. Were not gonna be able to do exactly what we wanted to the tank with the reef transition zone but I'll wait till the dust settles to aquascape, place coral and adjust powerheads. Were pushing almost 3000gph between the return and 4 powerheads. I love flow

Look for pics tomorrow and hopefully I can sleep tonight

I did a power kill test and the sumps level hardly rose

Clowns are sleeping in the nem which will hopefully not move much

Were going to be looking for a 150 hqi soon. Were not liking the 2 different colors between the halide and t-5's. On side is blueish and the other is pink. We are definitely going to change it

**labnjab** · 12-10-2009, 04:37 PM

Heres the pictures. The water is a little cloudy but much better. Now we need to fill it with coral
FTS

Left Half

Middle

Right

**Rue** · 12-10-2009, 05:06 PM

Looks WAY better today! Yay!

And yeah, you need the same colour lights...it looks odd when they don't match...

**labnjab** · 12-10-2009, 06:22 PM

Thank u im saving up for another hqi. I wat another luminex reflector with galaxy ballast and a phonix 14000k bulb

**Miltonic** · 12-11-2009, 03:12 AM

Im glad that you solved your bulkhead issues without many problems, I bet your loving the extra space a bigger tank gives. looking forward to see it once you get everything how you want it.

**labnjab** · 12-11-2009, 04:54 AM

Originally Posted by Miltonic

Im glad that you solved your bulkhead issues without many problems, I bet your loving the extra space a bigger tank gives. looking forward to see it once you get everything how you want it.

Thank you milt. The extra space is awesome. We picked up 2 frags tonight. A metor shower frag (very fast grower and very in demand locally) and a Red Zombie eye chalice. We traded a tunze nano skimmer for them. We also have a friend breaking down a frag tank soon and he's going to be selling his frags cheaper then he already sells them for so that will help us stock up.

I'm still getting a slight drip from one of the bulkheads. I have a small container under it and it gets maybe an once of water every 12 hours. I think I just need to snug it up but I can't find my pliers

I'll have to remember to bring some home from work. If that doesn't work I'll have to take it apart and seal it

We have 2 fish unaccounted for and I'm starting to worry. Our firefish and YWG are still missing. Hopefully I'll see them in the next few days. They are very skittish so they could be hiding when we come in the room. They were great at hiding with ony 30 lbs of LR in the tank and now theres over 80

Another thing is our calcium is very high at 550. I bet its due to the new aragonite. Alk is at 11 and ph is 8.2. Hopefully calcium will come down as we have quite a few sps. For now I'm gonna enjoy not having to dose anything for calcium

Look for some more pics tomorrow focusing on all the coral. Late spring we had a purple cap die and broke off and ended up in the back of the tank. While cleaning out one of the tanks we found it, and it had a small section of purple and polyps. I put it under the halide and several more polyps came out. Its 90% bleached but it looks like it may eventually recover