100 Gallon Setup

[allan]

Hello folks,

My name is allan and I just moved here from Ft Campbell TN. I don't plan on moving again so I decided to build a saltwater tank. Here are some of the pics my daughter and I took while building our tank.

We recognized our lack of knowledge early on and as such decided to go with a FOWLR and feel out the hobby before committing to any coral or difficult animals. In fact to this date we still don't buy anything that isn't hardy or easy to keep.

We started in the first few days of the new year (02JAN09).

Fuge.jpg
We were given a 55 gallon tank, but then someone gave us a 100 gallon, so we turned the 55 into a fuge... the 100 gallon was given as I was carrying one of those huge wet/dry filtration systems over at AA.

Dry Setup.jpg
Once we got everything together we put it together to ensure that the fuge would fit under the display tank. I built a 6" pedestal to give me extra head room under the display tank. Still don't have enough room

First rock.jpg
We had purchased a piece of texas holey rock that we put in right away until we discovered a possible heavy metal leak from the rock into the tank. I lost three green chromis within two weeks of introducing them into the tank.

Few more rocks.jpg
Those live rocks are expensive!!! We purchased about ten pounds a week sometimes picking up 17 to 20.

0ne Month.jpg
This is probably a flashback to the tank at one month.

More photos of the current rig coming up...

[allan]

Left white.jpg
The problem that I've found with these long tanks is that I can't photo them in one frame without standing in the kitchen.

Middle.jpg
Took me a few tries before I realized taking the photo with the white lights on only cause the picture to show up a bit better.

Right.jpg
Not sure which of these pictures show SpongeBob, but I couldn't get the little guy to cooperate.

Current.jpg
This is the back up shot at the whole rig.

current fuge.jpg
And this is the Fuge. I have grape and razer colupera and a developing mass of cheato.

1.100 gallon top, 55 gallon fuge
2. Small power head and a corelia max for current
3. 350 emperor biowheel filter (use this for macro filtration and additional bacterial growth. I've been toying around with the idea of using LR rubble instead of the filters in the back tank of the emperor filter)
4. I have a 2700 rio (I think) return pump
5. Large skimmer, don't know what kind
6. Two 36" HO blues and two 36" HO whites on the hood

Mushrooms
Hairy frog
Palys
Another coral (big greenish thing on the right photo above)

The purple coraline is starting to spread and take to the glass of the tank. We painted the back of the tank black and white crusty things started growing on the inside of the tank. Kind of looks like the night's sky, however those little crusty things are starting to grow more numerous.

I had hoped to do this under a few hundred dollars.... I know, I know I laugh now when I say that too.

Anyway, there it is and for those of you who labored reading through my ramblings, thank you.

Allan

[jlh81]

Looks cool, that fuge is huge

[ErikH]

WOOT for large fuges. My 29g fuge is all I use. Au Natural... no skimmer just algae!

[edshas2]

Looks good. How are the hairy mushrooms doing?

[allan]

Hey Edsel,

They are doing fantastic! The two that were scraped off the glass took a couple of weeks to adhere to a small rock, but now that they have they are blossoming. When these photos w!ere taken they weren't extended out, but when they do they are huge!

You can barely make them out on the photo that mentions the cowfish.

A lesson learned, I've pulled a clown out of my fuge a few weeks ago. I've pulled my snowflake eel out of it twice. He's there again but I think I'm going to leave him there for awhile until I can figure out how to prevent him from entering the overflow.