75 Gallon Tank Build!!!

So for the past few months (actually since about July of last year) I've been working on a 75 gallon tank to replace the 40 gallon breeder that I had set up. A little over a month ago I finished it, set it up and now it is fully running with a few more additions then the 40 gallon had. Mostly some corals, but a few new fish as well. Links are at the bottom of the post.

The stand is the same one that the 40 was set up on that I refurbished awhile ago, adding more support and a top for the stand. I also added a nice dark mahogany stain and new hinges on the doors.

This setup started with a 75 gallon tank that I got from a garage sale for $15. Damn good price for a tank that needed a little work and I was going to do a few other things to it as well. I got it all cleaned up and the first step was to get all the silicone out and put a new seal on the tank since I didn't trust it and had no idea how old it was.

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.

Just some details...

Alright... so everything seems to be on track as of right now. The thing I love about this tank is that it is running and has been running without any expensive equipment.

My maintenance routine includes:

• Weekly 5- 10 gallon water changes, 
• Replace the filter floss twice weekly, 
• Feed the tank a little every other day and once a week heavy feeding for the fish and feed the LPS the day before the water change,
• Blow the rocks off every other day
• One drop of iodine mid-week
• Check the chemicals once a week and add magnesium if needed

This has kept the tank going well without much issue, including nuisance algae, for a little over two years now.

Livestock includes:

• Two clownfish
• A yellow watchman goby
• A banded brittle star
• A decent sized pom-pom crab

As far as corals go:

• orange montipora cap
• green and blue polyp montipora cap
• purple with green polyp montipora cap
• orange montipora dig
• green and kryptonite candy cane colonies
• baseball sized colony of galaxiea 
• two small frags of purple and blue stylophora
• small frag of green porcillipora
• three different brain colonies
• two common paly colonies
• a frag of pavona
• a colony of branching duncan
• misc mushrooms including a purple and green yuma and a green and orange ric florida
• a nice frag of blue stag that is starting to get its blue color back
• a few pieces of green slimmer that are slowly recovering
• a baby piece of green loripes that i cut off of a dying colony

Everything has growth on it from within the last few weeks since it crashed due to a heater malfunction.

Starting a Blog

So I decided that I would start a blog to help me keep track of my 26 Gallon display as well as the frag tank I have running. Not just for my own personal reasons but to show it off as well. Unfortunately my display crashed about a month ago and I lost a couple nice sized pieces but everything is good now and I'm starting to repopulate it slowly. The frag tank has been going nicely since started about a year ago and I was able to throw a couple pieces crime there into the display. The rockwork was redone after the crash but there is only so much I can do with it due to it being such a tall tank with the lights I have.