I guess I'll start the Chronicles of Akwar'eum This is the land where Pistol Pete the Defender battles Evil Seahares and such. If you read the story Of Petey and Goliath you'll know that Petey lives on the right side of Akwar'eum near the Hall of The Golden Polyps. Any way...
The aquarium is a 75 gallon 48x18x21 built into our living room wall. I have a 10'x6' maintenance room behind the tank. I recently, last month, replaced the floor underneath the aquarium after 20+ years of floods and spill. This time I put down tile that was given to me by a friend. They are brown, green and yellow. It looks like a harlequin exploded in there but my wife loves it. Leaving the tank in place was an engineering nightmare but everybody made it through the process. At the time of the repairs I had a 55g FW set up to the left of the SW, also built into the wall. It was dismantled and is now the refugium which replaced the previous 30g fuge. The water enters the overflow which is behind the rock wall center left. I have plastic mesh over the top to prevent any more critters from hiding in there. There are two outlets at the bottom. The 1" drains to the 20g sump directly below the tank, and the 3/4" line drains into the refugium. Durso stand pipes route the water to both. The sump contains a turboflotor skimmer which I like but am not sure it's working as well as it should. I cleaned it before reinstalling it after the rebuild, but....I don't know. The water from the fuge also drains into the sump. For a return I have a mag9.5 which feeds a seaswirl wavemaker. I've been pretty happy with the flow they give but am thinking of adding a SCWD to the mix, I have a small eheim 158gph pump I'm not using since I dismantled my calc reactor, and this will feed the SCWD. Coming off of the return line I have a slow flow chemical reactor which houses my purigen, carbon, and phosgard. This water is returned to the sump.
For lighting I'm using cannibalized parts from an old light system. I have two 150w MH HQI, four 65w PC's powered by an Icecap 660 ballast, and four blue moonlights. The PC's come on at 8:00am and go off at 11:00pm. The MH's come on at 10:00am and go off at 9:00 pm. For lighting in the fuge I have two clamp on work lights with flourescent curly Q bulbs that stay on 24/7.
Filtration is accomplished with 75+# LR in the MT, 20+#LR in the fuge, a sock in the sump, and sponge in the baffles, not to mention the skimmer.
I change two gallons of water/day which works out to a little over 10%/wk. To this water I add 1/2tsp Seachem Iodi
de, which is safer than Iodine for those concerned. I also add about 2tsp strontium, -1/8c magnesium, and 10ml calcium. My params hover around 410c, 1325m, 8sr, .06io.
For livestock I currently have
Fish:4 pajama cardinals (one is missing his tail completely, it was eaten by a serpent star), 1 Tomini tang (Tommy), one occelatis clown (Bobo), 1 pink spot goby (Shreck), 1 skooter blennie (Trixie, her namesake was a dog I had for 19yrs.), 1 mandarin
Inverts:2 serpent stars I wish I could catch to banish to the refugium, 1 skumk cleaner shrimp, 1 fireshrimp, 6 peppermints, 1 camelback, 6 scarlet legs, 6 bluelegs, numerous cirith and 50 nassirius', 2 seahares (both named goliath, I cant tell them apart), 1 tridacna, 1 pencil urchin.
Corals: 1 colt, numerous pumping xenia, 1 pompom xenia(also pumping but different), 1 elegance, 1 porites, 1 large plate, 1 small plate, 1 tracyphyllia, 2 goniopora, 1 daisy polyp cluster, 1 golden polyp cluster, 1 green eagle eye, 1 unknown brownish red polyp cluster, 1 turibina, 1 frogspawn, 1 torch, 2 tubastrea, 1 carnation, 1 fuzzy green acro, 1 yellow fiji, 1 devils hand, 1 cluster Green star polyps, 1 three headed trumpet.
Volunteers: cluster of red kelp, various other macro algae (the desirable kind)
I may be forgetting somebody, but that doesn't mean I love them any less! In my photo gallery are some other pics of the tank. I will try to post some here when I can. Thanks for reading