200 Deep Dimension

Well, I figured I'd fill y'all in on one of our tanks. The idea of this tank actually started in May of 2009. However, the tank didn't start to take shape, for a couple of months. In July of 09, I started building the stand. You'll see later that the stand still isn't completed...lol.

For those of you who aren't aware of these tanks, they're made by Marineland and the 200 dimensions are 48'X36"X27X tall. They are plumbed with 2 corner overflows, which I modified, slightly. The front glass is Sarphire. In the future, I doubt I'd ever spend the extra money for Starphire glass. To make it more clear, it has a lower lead content. This results in a softer glass, which scratches much easier. Grrr

So, since we all love pictures, here we go.....

The stand is assembled, and in the living room. Well, partially assembled. The framework is complete and ready to hold up the tank. I had to build the stand in stages, that I could then bring into the house and assemble. Otherwise, it wouldn't fit through any doors.





Here's the tank, still crated up.

Here's the stand, not finished. Still need to decide what style of trim I'm going to use and still need to build the doors. Screws will all be hidden by trim.





Tank, placed on stand.



To give an idea of how large this thing actually is:

WooHoo!!! We got a tank full of water!!! It's only freshwater, to test plumbing, flow and such. No leaks, stand is level, we're making progress!!





Yes, there's a mesh wheel in the skimmer collection cup...lol. Just put it there so I wouldn't lose it in all the clutter.



The Sea Swirl on the left hand side will have the locline added to it tomorrow. I wanted to see the flow with and without the locline Y.

Looking good - excited to see the rest.

that tank looks HUGE!!!

What kind of lighting are you going with?

very nice looking! I would love a tank like this. I love the deep tanks like that.

Originally Posted by cdangel0

Looking good - excited to see the rest.

that tank looks HUGE!!!

What kind of lighting are you going with?

Originally Posted by rgrking

very nice looking! I would love a tank like this. I love the deep tanks like that.

Thank you both.

A quick note...

Please keep in mind, this tank was set up, over a year ago.

My lighting consists of 10X54 watt T5HO, via 2 Sunlight Supply Tek5 fixtures.


More to come.

Here's a few boring pics to look at....lol.

I ended up using a 150 gallon stock tank, to make enough RO/DI water, to start filling the tank. Still took a couple days to get it completely filled, with salt water.



Here's about 1/3 of the rock, added. That's a lid from the largest Rubbermaid tote I have. To give you an idea of size, the lid is about 3' long.


LOL Ceiling fan right above the camera, you can see the pull chain. Okay, this is all the rock I added the first day. There's still LOTS of room. I ended up re-aquascaping several times, before I got it all in.




Ran out of water, so I put a pump in to circulate water, and called it a night.

lalalala you're not posting your story fast enough hehehe

Then came the process of breaking down the 75 and moving all of the rock, fish, corals, clams, etc. into the 200. This all took place in a matter of hours....lol. Well, not actually. I worked on it a lot the first day, ended exhausted, and tackled the rest the next day.

At the end of that day, the tank was cloudy, with sand storms, and dirty from dripping water all over the glass. I didn't care...lol.





This is Actinics only.



This is all lights on, well, for now. At this point, the tank was lit with a 6 bulb Tek5 fixture, only.



From the end



Left side



Center



Right of center



Far right



Still not enough room!!!

Originally Posted by estanoche

lalalala you're not posting your story fast enough hehehe

Oh hush, you read all of this over a year ago.....lol.

Here's a few pics, along the front sand bed, from left to right.
There was still some sand floating around, so please ignore the sand that's settled on a few of the corals.

Also, some of the Zoanthids were still closed up, because they were just moved. Still had plenty more to move, before I could call it a day...lol.

Uggghhh, sand's still blowing around and it's driving me NUTS!!!

It was an exciting day, when I received these 2, and got to show off pictures of them.







Unfortunately, they later perished, in a disaster that wiped out much of my tank inhabitants. I'll get to all of that later......

These were a couple more of the newer tank inhabitants.

A couple new arrivals that came direct from Hawaii, via Les at WPH.

Finally, it was time to tear down the 75. All livestock had been moved to the 200.

Bye Bye Sweet 75. You've served your purpose well and will be greatly missed!!





Ewwww.

The first FTS I was able to take, after all the sand finally settled down.
This would have been August 30th, 2009.



About this time, I added a Koralin C1502 Calcium Reactor. Unfortunately, a malfunction of the regulator resulted in the above mentioned disaster. I promise, I'll get to that eventually. For now, suffice it to say that it almost drove me out of the hobby.

This one was taken, 9/10/09



On 9/12/09, we hosted our club meeting. The topic of discussion was photography. Estanoche was kind enough to bring over her underwater video camera and took these.



Hmmm, that failed......

6 of the 10 fish in our tank LOVE algae. I thought I'd take some pics of a feeding, thought it's much better to see in person. I kept the focus on the algae, so in some of the pictures, some fish may be out of focus. This was easier than attempting to focus on individual fish as they dash in and out...lol.

When the algae first goes in the tank, the first few bites release tons of air bubbles, so sorry for the bubbles. Then there's lots of specks of algae floating around, distracting the rest of the pictures too...lol.

Here, you can see all 6.






Most fish in this picture are out of focus...but for some reason, I really like it.




Check out those chompers.

Let's try the videos this way....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlhamilton/3916551570/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlhamilton/3916538460/

soooooooooo cool to see this in steps mike - - thank you for taking the time to do this! ...what a gorgeous tank too! it's huge ....I LOVE all the tangs and the triggers you have - did you get the triggers from Les also? your daughter seems to like hamming it up for the camera too - is she into the fish tanks? ...looks as though your frag racks keep getting larger ...do you sell any or keep them mostly for your tank and swaps?

.....so it seems as though we're getting closer to a great big "but...." in this fab story eh?!