I saw this tank on craigslist and even though I was not ready for it, the deal was so good I jumped on it. A few months later I started setting it up. The tank was rather large sitting in my dorm room. (5ft x 28in x 32in)Thankfully a month later I found a place to set it up and work began. To save money the I built the stand using 2x4 lumber. I knew from early on that this tank was not going to be pretty, only functional. The tank was in a back room so aesthetics did not matter to me anyway. The sump is a 75 gallon tank that I got for very cheap. It was not ideal but it gave me a lot of room to work with and added water volume. I contemplated adding baffles to it but I didn't. (Bad decision) I added 80 pounds of sand along with about 100 pounds of live rock packed into the sump. The reason for so much rock in the sump is that I have decided to get a shark, and he needs lots of swimming room in the display tank. Equipment in the sump included two Quiet One 4000 pumps (960 GPH Each) and a SCA-302 cone skimmer. I like a high flow rate through the sump. I also have an old canister filter that I use as a carbon reactor. The 4 bulb T5 lighting looks really good. Here is Mark the Shark in his 4 gallon holding tank. He should hatch in about three weeks. He is going to love his new home. I added eggcrate shelves to hold my equipment off of my second sand bed. Plumbing was sloppy but functional. My American-DJ 8 plug individually switched power strip. There is never enough outlets for a good aquarium. I knocked a drain line out of the tank while wet fitting the PVC and got some very nasty shocks from this guy. Water and electricity never mix. I added eggcrate retaining walls so that I can keep small fish and crabs in the sump without them getting sucked up into any equipment. These worked very well. Baffles would have been better though. Mark wants to come out so badly! But it is not time yet... Filling the tank and aquascaping a big cave. The tank in the tank is so that I do not stir up the sand bed too much with the water being poured in. Tank filled and cave pretty much completed. I will finish aquascaping once the sand settles. Here is the tank under the moonlights, finished aquascaping. Lots of room for Mark the Shark to swim and play in the sand. Here is the finished tank with a blue-green chromis in it. The tank did not go through a cycle as all the live rock I had was already cultured. Mark finally hatched! He appears to be healthy and I will move him to his new home shortly. The water parameters are already matched so no acclimation is needed. Mark doesn't want to eat, he just wants to explore! He is very active. He started eating a few weeks later. After a month he is about 7 inches long. Mark is a very active shark, always interested in his surroundings. When the lights go out completely he can be seen swimming around the top of the tank. Mark and his new friend Big-Bird, the 8 inch bird wrasse. This is Layla, Big-Birds mate. She is about 5 inches. The algae on the back of the tank is getting a little bad, its nearly impossible to reach because of the depth of the tank. My next tank will not be nearly as deep and it will be much longer. It will also have a less powerful light, as I am not growing coral.
Well about 6 months later Mark jumped to his death. I decided to move forward with a new tank. But first this one had to be taken down. I siphoned the water out the window into the street. Moving this tank out by myself was very tricky. But it is done, and now I am on to bigger and better things. 55 gallon holding tank with some of the rock.
| 
