My budget mixed reef.

[kingrb]

270 gallon acrylic show tank 72”L x 24”W x 36”H.
Been up and running for over three years.
Upper foam wall with live rock rubble set in.
About a three inch sand bed.
Made two medium size shelves with egg crate and pvc pipe to stack
live rock on and in front of, so the fish have two large caves to swim in and out of on both sides of the tank.
Circulation in the main tank is provided by two dual twin wave makers (3200gph each) and two 1300gph wave maker.
Lighting is with two 400 watt MH, 15k bulbs with Lumenarc III reflectors, and one all blue LED panel in the center just to entertain myself.


Fish:
Purple Tang
Scopas Tang
Yellow Tang
Foxface
Maroon clown x 2
Clarkii x 2
Coral beauty Angel
Green Chromis x 7 + 3 (12Feb2011 AIM) -1 dead.
Lawnmower blenny
Black spotted cardinalfish x 3
SailFin Tang (12Feb2011 AIM)

1-22-11 (from 50g)
Yellow Tang
Blue Tang

Added three Monster Tangs today (20Feb2011)
Show size Desjardini Tang,
7 inch Blue Tang
6 inch Powder Blue Tang.

28 Total


The sump is a 55 gallon tank with one chamber to hold the skimmer and filter sock.
I have some sand and rubble with 5 mangroves and some cheato in the sump. I have one small maxi jet 600 for water circulation in the sump, and a RIO 2500 for the return.
I have a flood light 5100k bulb feeding light to the Mangroves and just installed a Blue/White LED panel today to see if it’s enough light for the cheato.
I have a canister filter that slowly pulls water from the main tank into the sock filter.
The closed loop has been down for many months due to a leak in the plumbing and maybe one day I’ll rework the plumbing and get it back up and running.
1 and a half inch bulkhead in the upper right hand corner of the main tank feeds water to the filter sock.
One 300 watt heater in the sump.

 

[kingrb]

Two SPS Large Colonies i picked up the other day from Dave (evad1).
Cool dude with some amazing coral in his tank. I'm glad he shared some of his amazing coral with me. Not the best of pictures, my camera skills suck.
I did cut a small frag off each of the colonies to place in my vodka tank, and they are doing great, drinking up the vodka.

 

[evad1]

aqua skape looks great-i love the foam walls
i couldnt imagine cleaning a 3ft tall tank......
glad your happy with the pieces...

 

[kingrb]

place my Yellow and Blue Tang into the tank today from my 50 gallon.

 

[kingrb]

installed my Naturalwave Pump Timer the other week. my no name wave makers don't much care for the timer, sometimes they pump backwards. So i only had one 1300 gph wave maker on the timer. added a second 1300 gph wave maker today.

Purchased some small Marina algae magnets thinking they would be strong and built a new frag rack. the Marina algae magnets are weaker then the MagClip's.

 

[EyeReef]

whoa thats a huge tank!!! Look your aquascape as well..its gonna be one good looking tank once all your frags grow out...keep us updated

 

[JOSE CASAS]

Wow sweet......how do you clean that tank so tall? love the aquascape!!!!!

 

[IEreefmaster]

Nice setup. Make sure to take more pictures. I love tall tanks as they give you a huge viewing window! Nicely done.

 

[kingrb]

yeah i can't wait for the SPS to grow into colonies.

whoa thats a huge tank!!! Look your aquascape as well..its gonna be one good looking tank once all your frags grow out...keep us updated

Astrea Snails are what save me hours of cleaning almost gave up and was going to sale the tank but i picked up 40 Astrea Snails and they kicked a$$ cleaning the walls. the dang over priced large acrylic magnet doesn't help much and it's so deep making it very hard to clean at the bottom.

Wow sweet......how do you clean that tank so tall? love the aquascape!!!!!

So i picked up a nice large Colony of ORA Staghorn - Scripps Green Tip, unfortunately it had MANY anemone pests attached so i had to cut away the old dead base and scrub with a tooth brush so not as large as when i purchased it. The bottom has some bleaching so hopefully my tank will help it recover.
Mother Colony broke in two different pieces. see the nasty scratch in my acrylic

Some pieces that I had to cut away mounted on rock.

New frag rack. MagClips are strong even with thick acrylic, the other rectangle magnets are crap.

 

[kingrb]

Picked up 3 more chromis to make a even 10 in my tank, a Sailfin Tang and a nice multi branch frag of ORA Ponape Birdnest today from Aquarium in Motion.
Thanks Jason, it was nice meeting you.

I'll post pics later when the light comes on. i did break on of the branches on the frag

 

[kingrb]

Light just came on. Much nicer color then what i can capture with my camera.

finally mounted a few Frags.

Upper right corner SS (SCR G.O.)

 

[kingrb]

one of my new chromis already disappeared

 

[reefsUP]

Sweet rock work

 

[kingrb]

Three new Monster Tangs added to the tank today (Blue, Desjardini, and Powder Blue). best part about it. wife got mad like always when i asked if i could get them. BUT she was very interested this time when i got them into the tank and even named Desjardini Tang (Sam) WOW right. might have actually made some progress with my better half today.:beer:

 

[kingrb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEzXwTejuXM

 

[halvc909]

Very cool tank Rich....did u make good use of those rubble yet?

 

[evad1]

very nice richard

 

[furfeet26]

Very nice tank!

 

[shizam]

Nice setup. Make sure to take more pictures. I love tall tanks as they give you a huge viewing window! Nicely done.

:dito: