34 Gallon Reef (Solana AIO)

[Revaltion131]

I thought I'd add my tank to the several ones posted here, though it's still new and not as beautiful yet.  My tank is a 34 gallon cube (20x20x20), the Current-USA Solana system.  Right now, everything is still stock.  For those that might not be familiar with the system, that includes a decent skimmer, 400 gph return pump, and 150w MH pendant.  I do plan on making some technical upgrades in the next couple of months, and they are as follows:

-24" Outer-Orbit HQI/T5HO, the 250w MH version
-2 Tunze Nanostream 6025 powerheads
-Tunze Nano 9002 skimmer

Depending on how the light acts, I may need to invest in a chiller and ATO system. Currently I'm just using the cheap bottles and go through about one a day.  The tank does run a little warm during the day (81 F), but that doesn't seem to be bothering anything.

The middle chamber in the filtration area has been converted into a mini-fuge.  I have about 5 lbs of LRR in there along with a big wad of chaeto.  The light is a simple "under-shelf" flourescent strip from WalMart that's doing a fine job growing the algae.  There is some sargassum in there as well.  It showed up on the original LR for the tank and I was able to successfully transplant it into the little fuge.  I replaced the cheap blue filter pad that came with the tank with a wad of filter floss that I change out once a week.  I don't currently run any carbon on the tank, but as I get into heavier/more delicate coral stock, I may start to run it or Chemi-Pure.

Right now, my coral stock is pretty light, and I intend to keep it low until I finish with the powerhead and lighting changes, which will end up taking a bit, but it does give the tank more time to mature, so I can't complain much.  I am doing upgrades with the intention of being able to keep a couple of different varieties of harder SPS, things more than just bird's nest and monti caps.

The current livestock:

Fish:
2 TR Neon Gobies
1 Occelaris Clown
1 Cherub Pygmy Angel
1 Pylei Fairy Wrasse

Corals:
Couple rics, shrooms, and zoa
Branching GSP
Long-polyped Toadstool
Frogspawn
Red and Green Favia
Green and Purple Indo Acan. Lord
Bird's Nest

All of my corals I've bought just as frags, so the tank's coral life does look pretty small. In addition to that livestock, I of course have the CUC of mixed inverts and I also have a male harlequin shrimp.  Here's some pictures, starting with my most recent FTS and side shots.





The funny blue stuff under the frogspawn's frag plug is a poor job at hiding the putty I used to cement the plug.  The frogspawn is a single head that I got for free because it had some pretty excessive damage.  It has been slowly coming back.  Here's after the first week.



Some of the other coral frags:






Here's a nifty, tiny zoa polyp that hitch-hiked on a ric's rock.



The harlequin and his first star:



He demolished that star in less than a week and promptly molted.  He's on his second now, moving much slower.  I originally wanted a mated pair, but the oppurtunity to get this little guy for free from someone tearing down their tank popped up, so I jumped.  He's still less than full size, and I may try to get a female to see if I can get them to pair off.  I have heard mixed information on whether or not they will pair happily or if they'll try to kill each other.

Lastly, the fishies.  I'm not exactly good with macro shots of them, so please bear with some of the blurryness.







And displaying, sadly with flash so the colors aren't as great as they are sans flouresence.

[Riderc82]

I like the look of your system, Nice pictures.  Looks like it will be a beauty

[MechanicalEngineer]

Very cool setup!  I LOOOOOOVE the wrasse (I'm a big fan of them...very interesting)!!  Where did you purchase the wrasse?  Are you growing a fuge for starfish?  Those shrimp are amazing, but I dread the thought of trying to feed them.  I'm surprised that starfish was gone in a week...I would've figured a day or two. 

[Revaltion131]

Thanks for the nice comments. 

I got the wrasse from LiveAquaria's Diver's Den.  I was browsing, having been looking for a lineatus for a bit, and saw this guy.  Significantly cheaper and just as beautiful in my eyes.  I'm not doing a 'fuge for the stars because, unfortunately, he won't eat CC stars.  From what I've read, sand-sifters don't live too terribly long in captivity, so it might be useless trying to do a fuge to just cycle through their arms.  A week or less is pretty fast for them to get through a full star, 2-3 weeks is more the norm, depending on size.  I was a little stressed by the idea of feeding it as well, but since stars don't have nervous systems, that pretty much did away with the issues I had. 

[aquavista99]

Very nice pictures! I have an argi pygmy angelfish as well.....very active little fish.

[ohioreef]

Beautiful pics!!

[JoeAyers]

Looks great. I've always like the looks of those Solana tanks.

[MechanicalEngineer]

Hm, interesting on the starfish.  I didn't know they didn't have nervous systems.  Go figure.  The one on my avatar was dying, so I froze him to give him a "humane death".  Oh well, guess that was for nothing.  If you think your shrimp will eat a frozen starfish, he's still in there until Friday, when the trash comes.  I've got a ton of those asterina starfish if you'd like some too...if your shrimpy will eat them. 

Anyway, very cool tank. 

[Revaltion131]

Here's some updates.  Finally got around to getting my powerheads, so I'm working on phasing them in.  I have a couple items of new live stock: green-tipped branching hammer, small unknown acro frag, and an RBTA that has decided it likes it best on the sand in the back corner of the tank.  I might scoop him out of the sand and try to get him in front of the rock work again.  Low light and flow in that corner, but it looks healthy and happy, so I'm a bit torn.

Here's some pics.

Tiny acro frag:


The hammer (which is no longer in the sand, just had it there for light acclimation):



Some other corals:





And fish:






Shrimpy:


He loooves to start showing off if you shine a flashlight on him at night.  I need to try to get a picture of it.  He's really funny about the fish in the tank.  If they even just swim buy, like the angel will scoot through his 'lair' in her daily rounds, completely ignoring him, and he'll still start showing off and I've seen him take a swipe at one of the gobies before.  I think he's pretty harmless, but it's still great to watch.

A nifty sponge I found growing on the back of one of the rocks.  I assume it likes low light because it's back in the rocks, behind the harley's 'lair'.


And I just really like this pic:


Thanks for looking!

[larrynews]

looks great

[Baggerhog]

I love that tank, where did you buy it?

[Revaltion131]

Thanks!  I got the stock edition from Joel at Aquariums Etc.  I saw one at Petland also, but their price is considerably jacked up from what Joel is selling it for.  The rest of the equipment is primarily from online sources.

[verper]

Very nice.

[Revaltion131]

I got some good pics of my shrimp carrying off his most recent star, so I thought I'd share.  There's no gore, but if you love your sand sifting starfish, don't look!








I'm also starting a DIY split tank that's going to be about 30 gallons, ~15 gallon main tank and 15 gallon 'show' sump area.  The footprint is 48"L x 12"D, and it is 12"H.  I was originally thinking of a much smaller design for a unique little 12.5 gallon set-up, but scrapped it because the dimensions were just wrong.  I wanted to keep with an idea for something long, narrow, and shallow.  The tank will be glass, trying for rimless.  The interior walls and baffles will all be acrylic, black or clear depending on the wall in question.  So far, only one set of actual baffles will be in the tank, while the rest are vented overflow walls.  Here's the cheapo paint sketch I did, any dashed lines are overflow walls.  The actual design sketches I have are actually proportionally correct and much cleaner.  A couple of design changes already are true baffles in the overflow channel, as well as a planned media rack in what will be the 'first' chamber in the overflow that will have filter floss on the top shelf, an area for carbon or chemi-pure on a lower shelf.  From there, it feeds through a set of baffles, then into the open channel.  This is a top-down view.



Right now, the plans are for a purple-themed reef with a planted fuge, if I can pull it off.  The part that would not be planted would be the chaeto.  I probably will not do a MH light for the main tank, and go with T5HO instead, but we will see when we get there.  I need to get the tank and the stand built first.  My father is excited to help me put it together, so it will be fun.  I am still amazed that nobody sells furniture at 48" or a touch longer, it's all 47.5" or 43".  T.T

[Hunter21]

that harlequin is so neat looking....how big do they get and do they only eat starfish??

[Revaltion131]

Their main food is starfish.  They can be trained onto other foods, like pencil urchins, but it requires something akin to starving them to get them to try it.  They can get to about 2-2.5 inches in length.  Mine's still growing.

[Revaltion131]

I lost my great fairy to jumping about a month ago, so the first thing I did after that was improve the lid.  We're using a metal screen that's 22"x22".  It's larger than the tank, but what we did was cut holes in the screening for the 'fuge light and for the legs on my lighting fixture.  The fixture exerts a ton of weight on the screen and holds it down so hopefully no jumping will happen again.  I also lost my little pygmy during the power outage, but thankfully the clown and two gobies made it. 

I went back over my "wanted" list and did some extra reading, and I decided to go with a Tailspot Blenny and a Potter's Angel.  The angel will be going in my new 65g when it's matured enough for my liking.  Any fish I'll be adding after it should be able to take anything it might dish out if it gets overly aggressive.  I've had both fish for getting on two weeks now and they're both happy and eating well.  The blenny came in a little thin for my liking, but he is eating very well and I can see a bit of improvement already.  The angel came in looking great and I think he looks a little thicker now.  He's showing all of the signs that he's a healthy little fish, so I am very excited and trying not to jinx things before we hit the 3 month mark on him.  I also did a happy dance when the angel ate pellets for the first time.  He was ignoring the nori (though the blenny annihilated that) and the mysis/cyclopeeze mix I feed also, so I was really surprised to see that he loves pellets.  Here are a couple of pics.

[apelaston]

very nice setup. i love these systems...so mod and clean looking. great selections as well...

target feed that acan so she grows fast and i can get a frag from you!! that is too cool!

[Revaltion131]

Thanks!  I do target feed the acan once a week and it's usually able to snatch a whole mysid or two out of the water column when I feed the fish.  It's just a slow grower, but having a 20K light instead of a 10K probably doesn't help it any.  Here's a more recent pic of it:

[MechanicalEngineer]

Sorry to hear you lost that wrasse.  I lost all of mine as well to jumping. 

[Revaltion131]

Thanks.  It stinks because he had such great color, but I have seen a couple with his same morph and color come across LA since I got him.  I am going to try to wait and snag one once my 65g is ready.  We've already made modifications so that it would need to be a show-sized angel or bigger that would need to hit it to dislodge the lid.

[Revaltion131]

I haven't updated anything in a little over a month, so here's a ton of new pictures.  I have a bunch of new corals, all SPS with the exception of a ric.  Everything is going excellently and I couldn't be happier right now.  Here's a bunch of pictures and some comments as we go.  My camera doesn't seem to want to focus anymore, both in manual and automatic modes.  Hopefully I'll find a good new one for Christmas or something.

My rics, the little powder blue one is the new one.  They're on pieces of LRR on the sand bed.


My pink zoas are growing well.  I need to add some more soon.


Rainbow monti in kind of a cross-shot of the tank.


I'm not sure if this is an M. digitata or a Stylophora of some sort, so please chime in if you have opinions.  I made a trip to Marine Solutions this past weekend and they had some excellent stuff.  This and the next one are two of the ten frags I could have walked out of there with.


Again, this is from Marine Solutions.  Obviously the back side is damaged, but the color and price was irresistable and I'm certain that I can get it to heal up and grow back.


Two pictures of fish and corals in the background.



My Bird's Nest had my bonsai frag get knocked onto it so it's still bleached on the stalk and very slowly is healing up.

[Revaltion131]

Everything's going well, and like a couple others on here, Christmas came one day early in the form of NDR's ORA order.  My Pearlberry, Hawkins, and Red Planet:





For more ORA stuff, my Plum Crazy has encrusted fully onto the rock, now.  I couldn't budge the coral's base if I tried. 



I'm looking into a new skimmer, finally, and narrowed it to a couple of different options.  I'm looking at a couple of the Octopus and Warner Marine models.  If anyone has any comments, feel free to chime in. 

[lazylivin]

Great Pics! Love all your new SPS. Merry Christmas to you.

[apelaston]

looks great will be amazing when it all grows out!

[Revaltion131]

Merry Christmas to you as well and thank you for the compliments.   

[Revaltion131]

Not a whole lot that's new.  I did finally change my bulb and got a Phoenix 14K and I just love it.  The color from this thing is beautiful, even though it's probably not totally burned in yet, lol.  I'm looking at how to improve flow across the middle levels of the tank (vertical levels) so if anyone has any ideas, let me hear them.  Here's an FTS and a couple of random pictures.



This green acro of some sort is almost a neon color with this new bulb and is really to be an eye-catcher with all of the purple and blues I want to keep up at the top once it's all grown out.



I moved my Pearlberry up and even though the picture is blurry, it's clear, at least to me, that's coloring back up and losing the brown.



Under the old bulb, this is my Plum Crazy and an acro I got from Quicksilver.  It started off as having blue tips, but it's gotten this brownish body and bright green polyps under high light.  I'm not sure if I'd like to move it and see if its color changes or not.



And just 'cause...it's supposed to be a purple cap, but it's more brown...lol.