120 gallon reef build

R

Redrooster

New member
I was doing freshwater game fish for a little over a year, and when I broke the tank down to clean it I decided I was going to do a reef tank again.

120 gal 4x2x2 glass tank

30 gallon or so gallon acrylic sump w/ Danner magdrive 12 return pump.
1000 gph Seio powerhead in tank
Lighting is currently going to be a Nove extreme 4x54W T5 system and ATI bulbs as well as a Razor 420R 160W LED system. I definitely prefer the T5 after having tried them and the LED Hoping a mix will be the best of both worlds? Might buy a second T5 and just run 8 of those instead?

100 lbs Caribsea special grade argonite

70 lbs of Walt Smith fiji 2.0 dry rock I really like this stuff. Hopefully it doesn't leech anything out.
 
Looks Great! I really like that Walt Smith Rock.......Looks like you have it setup for some nice hiding spots for fish. I have always noticed that if you give fish plenty of hiding spots you end up seeing them out in the open more. My guess is that they must feel safe being out in the open as long as they know that they have good hiding spots to get to if something spooks them. Looking forward to seeing the progress.
 
Looks great. What type of reef are you doig, mixed, lps, sps? If you're going easier coral 4 bulbs could get you by, if you need more light it's a toss up but more people are getting better results with all T5.
 
jrpark22000 said:
Looks great. What type of reef are you doig, mixed, lps, sps? If you're going easier coral 4 bulbs could get you by, if you need more light it's a toss up but more people are getting better results with all T5.
Click to expand...

It's gonna be T5 and those Razor LED's for now. That being said I don't really plan to do any SPS. Will be a softie and LPS tank.

Tank temp is at 76 now, water is looking very clear. Planning on putting in the cycling chromis on Friday
 
yeah I'll try to get a close up picture tonight. IMO it looks really realistic. In fact when I first walked into the shop I saw a tank and was like WOW that live rock looks awesome, but super seasoned live rock like that would cost a ton, and then when I started asking about prices on dry rock and they showed it to me, they then said he check it out we have it in this tank and low and behold that was the rock. They told me the original version was too red and too consistent in color. This is mostly purple but with a little pink/red and nice variations of purple like how it really encrusts, not a solid uniform color.

The online stores say to cure it outside the display. I bought mine at Rob's aquatics and they said they've done several new tank builds with it and have put it right in the display after a quick was off, and have had no leeching probelms on those tanks.

I'm not sure how they do it. I do know that the actual rock is supposed to made form a mix of crushed rock that is volcanic rock and washed up reef rocks. The volcanic rock is a little lighter so this rock isn't that dense and you get a lot of volume for the lbs. it's also very full of holes and nooks and crannies and is very porous. Should be great for filtration purposes. I have a total of 70 lbs in the 120 gallon in the pics. The tank is decently full of rock IMO for only being 70 lbs.
 
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