Hello, my name is Dave, and this is my post-build thread for my 400g display tank. The good news is that this tank went up in 2006. So you won't be waiting months or years to see
how this project turns out. In fact you can jump to the finish right now and go to my live webcam and see the tank at 74.62.193.110. Lights turn on at 5pm Pacific time and shut down at
1:30am.
For those interested in the longer story, here it goes. I was born with a fish tank in my bedroom. My dad had a tank with Oscars in my bedroom as an infant. When I was 5-6 years old
my family had a couple of fresh water tanks, and my dad bought a 40g saltwater system. Undergravel filter, Silent Giant air pump pumping bubbles into the corner of the tank. Foil on the back
of the tank. Dead coral skeletons in the tank. A single 40w flourescent tube. The tank stayed tropical for about 4 years. At which point
my parents moved the family to a house on the water in Southern California. We had a dock in the back yard, and all kinds of life swimming 50' behind the house.
My father had watched an Achilles tang at a LFS for over a month. He stopped by the LFS every evening on the way home and fed the fish. After a month he brought the Achilles home.
It didn't last a week. Several days after the Achilles died, we caught a small 12" leopard shark off the dock. So that went into the tank. The leopard shark did okay for
about six months and then tore up its nose in the tank. We caught the shark and applied Methylene blue to stave off infection but after a few weeks of a torn nose the shark passed.
So my dad fed up, drained the tank, moved it outside on the patio, and we got to fill it with anything we caught off the dock. Now this goes back over 30 years ago. So salt water
was a specialty hobby, with not a lot of information, and the consensus was a 40g tank could sustain anything. We kept a smooth hound shark we caught off the dock alive for several years
in that 40g tank. In addition we had smelt, damsels, pipefish, crabs and octopus from off the dock.
When I was 10-11 I inherited my grandparents 20g show tank and started with my own tank of Livebearers. For my 13th Birthday (31 years ago) my parents gave me a 60g tall tank. The first
powerheads were just appearing in the states and the green Sicce pump was perfect for that tank.That 60g tank is in my dads office now with aquatic turtles. 30 year old tank and it's in
great shape only needing us to silicone the plastic trim back on after it was moved.
In high school I worked at the local fish store and collected freshwater angels and fancy discus.
I moved to Santa Barbara for college and immediately set up a 40g salt tank. My second year in college I started working at the local fish store and upgraded the 40g to a 100g tank.
Reef keeping was just becoming a part of the marine hobby. So I setup an aspiring reef tank of 2 tanks that were 48x12x12 that gravity fed from one to another to a 10g sump underneath.
Live rock from Florida was popular at the time. Colored mushrooms were special. Anemones and clowns and featherdusters filled the tanks.
By my 4th year of college I had upgraded the reef to a 75g show tank, with a wet dry with bio-balls, and a state of the art 5000k Halide bulb with standard flourescent and actinic bulbs.
This tank was at the foot of my bed and was one of my favorite tanks. Watching the tank while falling asleep and seeing it every morning gave me tons of enjoyment.
When I moved from college I swapped that 75g for a 125high. That was in 1992.
So now I can finally get to some photos. Here is a photo of my 125 high back in 1996.
Here was the filtration in the stand.
This tank had bio-balls, an Oceanic Skimmer, a closed loop and a motorized ball valve that switched the flow from the left to right side of the tank every hour. The screen in the
back of a stand was a sprinkler timer that I wired to turn the lights on/off in sequence.
In 2002 I had a 300g FO in my living room, and the 125 reef in what I call the fish room. The tank had been successful for many years and I reached the point where I was bored with the tank.
I went searching on the internet and came across Reef Central. I saw some crazy Japanese tanks, and started looking into keeping Acros. I started by finding frags from local reefers.
Fortunately in Southern California there are lots of great hobbyists that are willing to share their knowledge and success. I zealously had a local reefer
build me a Calcium reactor (Larry HawK)
Here was the Hawk Calcium Reactor.
Here was the tank in 2003
So I setup my calcium reactor next to my fish tank, and was discouraged by how noisy it was. I spent a portion of my college years selling audiophile equipment, and am
very sensitive to noises. My 125 ran silently. So sitting a room away watching my surround system, everytime the co2 bubble went into the reactor and hit the pump I heard the
noise and it drove me crazy. At this point I was realizing that if I was successful with SPS I wanted to put in a large reef tank.
So I figured I would start the upgrade with the equipment. And since I was so upset with the Calcium reactor I decided to put everything outside on my patio. Being a bachelor and
owning my home, if I get a bug to bust a hole in a wall, nobody questions me.
So off to find a new sump.
So I started with a used 100g acrylic tank. I have been a DIY guy with all my hobbies. My back yard is my work shop. So with some acrylic and acrylic weld I was off.
In the last photo you can see on the right side coming out of the top of the sump was a fluidized sand filter. I had been running a sand filter on my reef tank since 1994. I also had
one for my fish only tank since it's inception. I like to have lots of fish and with a sand filter the biological filtration capactity is great increased and allows for 'overcrowding' without
any filtration issues.