55 Gal. Input Please

[Hanali]

I would like some input on my tank. It is semi-new and just got leveled.

So give me your honest opinions and help me inprove it. I need more current in the tank so input would help there too.

[Ping]

Aquascaping looks nice. Make sure your rock is secure, not going to be easily knoked over by the animals. From the view in the picture, it looks like cleaning out ths skimmer collection cup will be difficult. Skimmer appears to be dialed in well. I rinse my skimmer cups once a week in warm faucet water, your looks tall for the stand. Can the skimmer be placed outside the sump? Is that cheato in the lower left corner? You may want to set that in a refugeum or do someting to make sure it stays put. If not it will get caught up in your corals if you decide to make this a reef.

As far as current you have many choices, but depending on what type of lights you have heat may be a problem. what kind of lights do you have?

[Hanali]

I have 1x 96W PC Atinic and 1x 96W 10K.

I am going to go buy a light to go under the tank today to move the Cheato under the tank it is there for now.

The rocks are not secure... I am wanted to pick up that green putty also today but wanted to get some input before I did that.

[GaryP]

The "green putty" would probably be a good idea. Just make sure to clean the areas you are attaching with a tooth brush first to make sure it makes a good bond.

What I see looks very good. I guess the question is what is your goal for the tank? What sort of critters do you want to keep? FO, soft corals, LPS, SPS? Where you go from here is going to depend largely on where you want to end up.

[gjuarez]

Thats very nice rock. As you mentioned, you could use a little more flow. You dont want to have dead spots in your tank. Other than that, its looking really good.

[mathias]

rockwork looks great but you have rocks against the side glass after time algea is going to grow between the two and very hard to keep clean....

[Hanali]

I want to keep some coral but no SPS. So mushrooms, minor fish, clownfish in some coral.

What would you guys suggest to create some current. I am looking for a cheap method because right now I do have many dead spots.

[GaryP]

The cheapest way to go would be multiple small powerheads such as maxijets. They can be aimed towards each other to create turbulent flow which is better then a solid stream of water from one powerhead.

[blueboy]

as others have said the rockwork looks great! and nice looking rock too. you might consider using fiberglass or plexi rods to stabilize rockwork, you just drill holes a couple inches deep in the rocks, then cut pieces of rod to appropriate lengths and stick them together. it's a little easier to hide than the putty. as far as increasing flow, powerheads are going to be your cheapest route. just be carefull to screen them so nothing gets sucked into them. the tank looks really promising, and 55s are hard to aquascape. i bet you'll have a great looking tank a few months from now.

[Andrew]

I'd probably go with 4 Maxijet 900's if you want to do soft corals. If you can afford it, also look into red sea wavemaster pro to vary the current.

Looks like you have really nice rock. The only other thing you might consider doing is varying the height of the rock across the back, maybe several higher points with valleys in between, or a valley sloping down to the middle of the tank. This would allow corals to have more room for upward growth.

Looks like you're off to a great start.

Andrew