The tank isn't done yet, but it's up!


Pics will follow shortly.



We supported the floor by wedging 4x4s under every joist below the tank in advance (with concrete feet under each 4x4)



Last week, on Monday we went ahead and painted the entire room (pale matt blue walls and glossy white trim)... we also got the 75 gallon drilled so we could use a reeflo dart for the return.



On Tuesday, I cut the carpet and padding up where the stand would reside and we bleached the floor (due to a former cat "marking" it's territory) and finished cleaning up the tank. I then started building stand out of 6x4 and 6x6



On Wednesday, I realized that 1- the wood I bought was warped and twisted strangely in spots, and 2-building the stand with wood this thickwould make housing a sump under the tank impossible, and would also make it impossible to use the overflow drain holes. I also realized that 6x6 is nearly impossible to cut level (way too thick for mitre saw to eat) I went out and picked up 2x6s to assemble "new" stand with.



On Thursday, I finished assembling the stand, got help moving tank on stand, starting filling with RO/DI and moved the sump into the stand.



On Friday, I took care of the plumbing and we added a very thin layer of crushed coral for substrate (20lbs)



On Saturday, I hung the lights through the ceiling and tested out all the plumbing for leaks (mainly just bulkheads that I hadn't tightened enough) and started mixing salt.



On Sunday, I finished adding salt in the morning and left the lights running to heat the tank, along with the pumps steadily mixing everything, and in the evening moved the atlantic pygmy, 6 line wrasse, maxima, and the live rock we still had into the tank.



On Monday, we added one new piece of live rock to help seed things further... which had a totally awesome hitchhiker - a green bubble tip anemone with a foot over 2" in diameter! How sweet is that?! We also finally picked up the multicolor angel that a LFS has been holding for a week for us.



Tonight I'm going to try to actually clean the room up so it looks halfway decent (it's a construction disaster area at the moment!)

(two pictures removed because they are displaying very strange)

Awesome pictures lostanime! I think I am almost as excited as you must be about getting this tank set up again!

We've got plenty more critters (and lost some fish), built a new return manifold that's 1.5" across the back of tank with four 1" valved returns going to locline, redid the four durso drain pipes so they are the height of the tank (to minimize waterfall effect in overflow chambers), replaced skimmer pump and venturi, and added wood airstone and pump to put it on steroids, and finally replaced it entirely with one of the new model octopus skimmers (NWB-200, not sure why it's still called "NW" because they now have a pinwheel impeller, along with bubble plate diffuser etc) and redid the flow through the sump. We even threw together some stained, trimmed wood panels that are velcroed to the stand (for easy access/maintenance but enough resistance and lack of grip to prevent toddlers from getting in)

As a teaser, here's one of the early pictures of the queen angel we tossed in

Nice teaser! Now for the rest of em!

ARrhrhghghh...

My tank started "crashing" a week or so ago... lost a couple fish. Started up with water changes, added a bunch of carbon, added another skimmer, tossed in cleaner shrimp, replaced UV bulb etc etc. Figured it was a fluke, but over half the fish just died.

The clam, corals, anemone and the shrimp all seem very happy. Temperature is ranging 78.6 to 80.1, PH is 8.2, specific gravity is 1.024, no nitrates, and with my tests I was unable to see any ammonia or nitrite... one of the local fish stores found trace of nitrite (0.002, not sure if kit defective, or possibly because of so many dead fish)... since corals are all happy including ora blue tort, ora pearlberry, etc etc I cant imagine there's something particularly funky with the water but other then parasites I dont know what else it could be. There's ich in the tank...but I've never run setups without and thought of it as a common cold that's more of a symptom that the fish is otherwise stressed and more susceptible then a problem in and of itself. The fish all aggressively eat (multiple feedings daily, thawed spiru enriched brine soaked in garlic and vitamin C) up until they die.

I'm at a loss, and outside of continuing water changes I don't know what else to do. If most everything dies I'm probably going to leave the tank fallow for at least a few months with nothing but corals and other inverts and just move any small straggler fish into the nano after copper dips and maintain that as a sterile hospital tank.

Any thoughts/ideas?