Sunday, June 26, 2016

20 Gallon Long Stand Build

Now here was a fun project. I built this up a few months ago because I was running out of room in the 10 gallon frag tank I had and wanted to upgrade to a 20 long. The thing I like about this stand is because I custom made it to my needs, I got to built it out of whatever I wanted. So I decided to go with pallet wood except for the 4 4x4's for the corners.

Dimensions were a little hard to decide on. I wanted something that was going to be sturdy enough to handle the amount of weight I was going to put on it, yet look nice and even possibly be used for an upgraded tank later on in the future. I decided that I would make it big enough that, if I wanted to later on, I could put up to a 40 gallon breeder on it. 

It sits at just about 72" in height and about 37" wide and 18" deep. 

The inside can hold two 5 gallon jugs and the shelf on the inside is holding fragging supplies and chemical tests.
Total Price on this stand was around $25- $30.


$4 Anemone frag/ Mushroom Frag Basket

So at the last frag swap I went to I found a RBTA that I just couldn't pass up buying. The seller had accidentally fragged one of them and was selling both frags for the price of 1 haha.  In the past I've kinda stayed away from buying anemones because I had a mixed reef tank and didn't want to add them to it just to have them move around and kill a few corals before they found their spot. Rock Flower anemones are a different story though since they usually don't move around a lot. Well since I couldn't resist buying the RBTA I had to come up with a spot to store them in the frag tank without them roaming around. This is what I came up with: a $4 basket that hangs on the side of the tank.



Long Overdue Update

So it's been a long time since I've done anything with this blog. In my defense things got a little busy... I got a job offer from a company in Chicago, had to find a place and move within a month, go to some training within that month, take down all the tanks and get everything ready for the move. All while still working and going to school haha. It's been about a year since I've actually posted anything. There have been some losses and some gains during the whole process. I lost the vast majority of frags I had in the frag tank from the move. My fish died from being kept from new water for to long. My banded brittle starfish almost kicked the bucket, but I got to him just in time. Here's the newish setups.

40 Gallon Breeder
This tank has mostly remained the same. Same corals, same livestock, everything. The few changes that were made include moving the hang on breeder box that was on the 20 gallon over to here as a refugium, building a small frag rack for the side of the tank and keeping all the surviving frags over here. The fish have been replaced and are all doing amazing. Yes, I know... People will say that a blue tang belongs in a bigger tank. Well there is plenty of room for him to swim around, plenty of places for him to hide and we've become very good buddies haha.