Dave’s Ramblings

Tonight we confirmed shipping arrangements and such for the Tank Raffle, a 4′ WallTank, thanks to our first official site sponsor Bizarre Aquariums. Thanks again Blaine! Raffle details can be found here.

You’ve probably seen this tank I’ve posted pics of it here and here on my blog here, as well as other places. Take a look at this thread on this thread for some of the detailed instructions of how I mounted it in the wall, our product review and example of an actual wall mounted installation, though not required to be mounted “in-wall” to enjoy by any means.

Come on and join in on the fun!

Couldn’t resist the urge to get the new in wall tank filled up with saltwater and get her ready to start the nitrogen cycle. The trim on the back will get finished shortly.

The sand should settle out in a couple of days and then we can start adding live rock to kick off the nitrogen cycle, 3-4 weeks and she’ll be ready for some really cool plants and shortly after that we should be ready to add our first pair of seahorses! Don’t let the picture fool you the tank is 4 feet long and almost 2 feet high, but only 6 inches deep. It’s just plain cool, it’s living in the wall between a long hallway and Angel’s office.

This is one of the tanks donated to Captive Reefing by Bizarre Aquariums. We’ll be kicking off a raffle starting this weekend for another tank just like this. Thanks Blaine!!!

The complete write up on the install and stuff can be found here

Finally was able to get some more work done on what will be our new seahorse and pipe fish display tank. This guy lives almost entirely in the wall (only 6″ wide but 4 feet long and 21″ high). Got all of the trim work done on the hallway side, today I’ll try to get all of the work done on the backside (in Angel’s office).

Thought I’d share some pictures.

For more info and details on this project take a look at the Wall Tank thread on Captive Reefing.

Again our thanks for the kindness of the folks at Bizarre Aquariums for donating this tank to us so that we could give it a great going over and write about it, additionally they donated a second one that will be raffled off on our site for members in the very near future. Want in on it? Come on in and visit with us on Captive Reefing.

My new pretty. A quick shot of the Green Slimer, a small polyp stoney (SPS) coral that I picked up last night in Madison.

Last night stopped by a local fish store to pick up some DT’s phytoplankton to feed our new clams, ended up picking up some new critters as well…. a couple more sea cucumbers, they are so industrious and productive in cleaning the sandbed that it’s hard not to overlook they are at quite ugly to look at. Also picked up either a huge frag or small colony of a Green Slimer (SPS), this one is mine! A green pagoda cup 4-5″ round, we’ve been looking at these for months and this is the first that we actually liked, bright green ’saucer’ with pink polyps. A large colonly of some really cool blue zoanthids. Another color varation that somehow we didn’t yet have, but there are at least 50 polyps spread over the rock each opens up to well over 1/2″, and just too pretty to leave be, so they came home.

Everything appeared to acclimate very rapidly, and we cheated a little turning on the actinic lighting so we could see where they were to live in our tank, surprisingly everything just popped open and starting showing off!

The photo period is now running from 11am - 7pm now, so Angel’s going to try and get some new pictures for us this afternoon, otherwise I have a good idea of what I’ll be doing after work tonight