"Jag's 2nd" the 2ft All-In-One

[Jaguar]

LIGHTS R COMING! Lights are coming! They will be mailed out tomorrow (Friday in the US) so should be here early next week. I dun think Fed-X does Sunday delivery.

Damm, now I can't sleep.

[Jaguar]

It's like a blog, about your fish tank, that. . . . .no one's reading! HAHAHA

Today I worked on the light hanger in anticipation of the new fixture arriving sometime REAL SOON! It's a bit tall, but I can 'technically' modify it to shorter, but it would be a massive pain in the ass to drain and move and take apart, and anyhow. Today I built it!. I got tools and stuff. . .



(new hacksaw) When you buy a hacksaw, get extra blades. I broke this one, not once, but twice, cause it came with a tiny tool that I figured out I could use the broken blades in, and yeah I broke the blade twice, anyhow it did what it was supposed to and I finished my fixture.

somewhere in the middle, yeah there's a mirror on the left side of the tank which is the closet.


I made 4 of these, but turns out I was only able to attach 2 of them, so I hope it's enough support, I wedged the bottom of the legs up against the baseboard on the wall though.


Yeah it's probably 1ft too tall, but at least I know it's out of the way!


Just gotta put the water, clowns and. . .well, well, well. . . .

IT'S MAGIC THE MIDAS!


I have. .no idea! Don't wanna know, don't care, just happy I found him! I carefully bagged the clowns, pulled all the sugar white sand out, moved the rocks around, put new sand back in, took it all outta the old QT tank, put all the water back in the tank, then realized I hadn't put the light hanger on the back, and drained the whole thing empty again, moved all the rock around some more, water went down, and down, and finally I filled up the drum and left a few inches of water in the tank and I heard flap, flap, splish, splash. .and looked in the tank, and that little guy was cowering in the very back making himself look as tiny as he could. I was in shock, he moved! He wasn't even dead! He's . . traumatized, but he's alive! I left him alone, in all the photos he's still in that spot in the back of the tank cowering. I moved the tank back, put the water back in it, he moved to the corner in the back. He doesn't want to get ANYWHERE near that live rock. I let the tank run for a while to clear up the water some. I fixed the skimmer pump, it's quieter now, thanks Chris! Put that back online and put the clowns back into the tank. The water's still a bit cloudy, and it'll get a nice big WC tomorrow, but he's happy! now to go play with the QT tank. The new sand, which is also in my main 2ft is awesome, doesn't move anywhere due to the flow.

I didn't lose my fish, I'm so happy. He won't always look like that, he's just really freaked out. He's probably only now lost enough weight to fall out of the hole he got into. He'll be really pretty yellow/orange/purply when he's settled in after the shock wears off.



Yeah that skimmer has to go, the new Tunze will look much nicer in that back chamber making a nice clean look for the tank. Anyhow not immediately, this one is working fine for the moment.

[cody.sheridan-2008]

people are reading, trust me, it has been said time and time again, it feels like your alone in a TJ but your not!

[Lore]

Woo hoo! You found the blenny you'll have to go apologise to the cat now

[priscacara]

Lol yep definately reading but when you put your screws in with a hammer like me any diy starts to make the eyes water after a bit :-). I like your build, looks great and a nice size too!

[Jaguar]

Yeah Magic, the Midas jumped. . I went to sleep at about 4am that night, per normal after DIY work, I gotta clean the living room. Noon the next day woke up and went to looking for him. In the cats defense he didn't touch the body!

I had a feeling he was going to be really stressed, so I covered the tank with some styrofoam lids before I slept, except they overlapped at one tiny spot which is where he squeezed out. I knew it. That was a really pretty blenny, I feel lame. I cried. I immediately got online and found some acrylic clips for the lip of the tank to add a glass cover. My LFS cuts glass in any size I want, and it will still be rimless. Better safe then sorry. <BIG SIGH> I'll get another midas one day, but for now I need to make sure I do the best I can to prevent jumpers. The anthias I want to add are jumpers too, can't have that!

Poor McCullochs, they're swimming around looking lonely. I'll probably add some clean up crew to that tank this weekend. Might add a pair of blood shrimp to that tank, it needs color.

[Jaguar]

So no one has the blood shrimp pair I want in stock right now so I put some on order. The new LED fixtures arrived Friday. They * are * FABULOUS! As they have a billion settings and I have no idea which color combo is best I just turned it on 50% manually for my 'sunrise' time and left it at 100% for the rest of the time. Now normally starts the 'sunset' phase of my light cycle, so I just turned off all the color except blue.

100% all channels


Only Blue


The color it brings out in my corals on my main tank is awesome, but I notice alot of shadows compared to the previous BSLED so I'm not completely sold on it yet. Honestly I think the optics need to be changed out for that tank. Seems to be perfect for this tank though. Maybe ideally 12" from the water surface would allow less of the light to spill and more in the tank, so that's an option for later on down the trek. It is currently 14" above the water surface.

Little bit about this unit, it's remote controlled (naturally) has 4 channels, and each channel can be dimmed and adjusted down to the 1%. 4 different timers can be set on each channel, allowing for perfect sunset, and sunrise lighting, and moonlighting if desired. It even tells you what temp the unit is running at. The optics on both these units are 120. I have a Halloween party tomorrow I'm hosting so I spent most of today trying to do cleaning and decorating, rather then play with the lights.

I managed to change the filters on my RO/DI unit today The tanks are due for a nice big WC, and they will adore the ASW. Keeping the phosphates down! My old filters were DIIIIRTY! I don't dose potassium, and I think it's in higher quantities in my Red Sea Coral Pro because the past 3, or 4 weeks of NSW hasn't brought back the floresent pink in my birdsnest and milli. (In case you didn't know I moved that tank at the start of Aug and quite a few of my colonies totally browned out.) I've also had fun dosing twice the amount to keep my alk up and it's still not where it normally sits with my ASW So water is mixing for tomorrow's WC.

I also ordered two nano reactors from CPR and expect those will be arriving next week. One will go on the return chamber in this tank, and one goes in my main 2ft cube. I also added a ATO unit from Guppy's, THANKS ANDRIES! I am SO TIRED of the manual water topping off. I'm so happy I only have to fill up the RO container once a week now. The only thing I'm nervous about is when I add the biopellet reactor it will take up that entire chamber, so I might have to figure out how I'm going to fit the auto float switches in there with it. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Maybe it won't be an issue, we'll see.

I'm waiting on the little acrylic clips for the lip so I can add a glass cover as well. Tomorrow I'll do a little aquascaping, testing, and start moving over some corals! I've got some zoas, there's already a tiny little GSP patch in the tank. I haven't sorted flow with the spare parts I have around, and I haven't gotten a Tunze with a controller like I want yet. I was honestly hoping something would turn up 2nd hand, but nothing yet. So no corals that need the flow will come in yet. I also haven't put another doser on the shopping list yet so I'll have to manually dose if I want to start stocking the SPS, so I'll be patient and wait. This is my favorite tank ATM it requires nothing special. The clowns get fed twice a day, and the sun coral gets hand fed a cube of mysis a day. SOOOOOO EASY! I don't even check nitrates in it. HAHAHA I change the water when I can, (every other week normally) and it's secondary to my main. I know what kind of attention my main SPS tank gets and I'm okay not having two of those headaches. This one will get there, not fussed. Next on my to do list is making a frag rack. I'm making a different type then the standard, so another DIY project! The electric bill came in I'm not excited. . .Now I have two tanks. . . . I love my fish tanks though. I wouldn't trade them, and I'm happy with them all!

I picked up a great little pico tank for the office, and I'm gonna move that in on Sunday when no one's around. I'm stoked! I've already got plans for a retrofit LED build in it, and I'm making a gravity ATO for it as well. Wonder if I should do another TJ for it in the pico/nano section. That's all for now! I'll add in photos tomorrow with a few more of the settings maybe corals and the LEDs toned down so you can see the colors properly.

[priscacara]

You have done a great job, looks awesome!
Hmm wonder what my bill would be like without tanks, oh well I had 6 running almost all the time last year and down to 3 so the bills probably the same now.

[Jaguar]

Whoa priscacara, I'd hope the bill went down when you got half as many tanks? If they're big though maybe not. I just needed two tanks because of the two pairs of clowns.

On someday in the past few days the acrylic clips for the glass cover I want to put over the tank's display arrived. I ordered the glass cut for the top. I only hope with the back area uncovered that there won't be precipitation over the water surface. There's enough space, and I'm making sure there is about 5mm on all sides for airflow. I also found a great deal on just the right amount of LR, and added that on Sunday. I aquascaped on Monday. My reactors arrived yesterday, and I couldn't be happier with them in size, and how professionally they were made, packed and shipped. All was very well done, and I'm more then happy I invested in these. I included some photos of this one next to a normal toothbrush for size comparison.



It comes with 3 sizes of media screens for the top part, one for even really fine carbon, or rowphos, etc and suction cups which go on the back with there own specialized holders for added security in installing.



Now here are the exciting photos before aquascaping you'll notice there is a rock covered in macro, there's actually another one that has some bits on it as well. You'll also notice there's a pile of rubble and coral randomly put around, I fixed that:



As I picked up that pico tank last week, it got aquascaped as well, and I switched out the large pieces of rock in it, to this tank, and took small pieces from this tank replace them in the pico. One of the macro rocks came from there.

After aquascaping FRONT:



RIGHT SIDE:



LEFT SIDE:



After I'd finished plucking the macro with tweezers all out (I should hire my services for macro removal ) {My husband came in to visit and tell me how proud he was of his DIY Queen. <purr> had to mention!} , and arranging things as I liked and fixed the corals, etc. I found this little guy wandering around cranky.



Tiny little pistol shrimp. I caught him, thought about putting him in the pico tank, or finding a new home for him, and in the end I let him go, welcoming him to find a new home. Then I fished out the tiny shroud of macro in the photo that got caught in the sandbed.

I aquascaped with a large center diagonal canyon, and with the back rockwork having lots of holes for water flow also allowing the fish to swim through. None of the rock is supported by the back wall (in case something falls back there I can reach it and for water flow), and there is clearance on all sides for the magnet cleaner. There are two separate structures and the front tall island is not supported by the rear structure. The McCullochs have never been happier. They go in and out, and through the canyon. I've got alot of room for alot of random coral placement, and since this tank will one day have anthias I think the aquascape is fun for them to play in.

Turned down the blue (so much blue!) and placed corals about. So far I only have 8 zoas frags, 1 fancy mushroom (green and red Christmas colors!) 2 rics, a small plate coral or two, a yellow sun coral and a Xenia frag that'll go in the pico as soon as I make sure the mushrooms in there are okay under the PC light it has atm. (Already purchased the DIY LED upgrade for that tank.)



Here's me trying to properly photograph the large canyon between the two rock structures without success.



Only thing I need to upgrade now to this tank is the skimmer to fit in one of the back chambers. I'm looking at a Tunze 9006 rated at 500L since I'll have a heavy bioload with a group of anthias.. This tank is only about 250L or less. At some point I'll add on a doser, but I'm enjoying the ease this tank provides since I'm not constantly fussing with SPS in it yet.

[Lore]

The new scape looks a lot better!