melev

Love the long shot Marc. Tank is beautiful.

Now you have a lot of room on top for more SPS. I love that FTS too, looking awesome!

I look at it as space for fish...a more "natural" or realistic looking reef. I subscribe to the tenent that "white space" is an important element in captive reef keeping. So many of us pack our tanks to the brim, because it's fun to collect, but the reality is, the more bio-mass you have, the more risky the system is, and the less realistic it appears.

One of the things I kept getting asked by others that were following my updates was "When are you going to add the rest of your liverock" or "you need to buy more liverock, right?" My answer continued to be No, I have all I want in there, and if anything there's a little too much (because of the LR that had BTAs attached) that were added after the aquascaping was done.

I love the open feel of my reef. I didn't want to look at a mountain of rock, while I wait for the corals to grow in. Instead, the fish have room to swim, I can focus on my frags and enjoy it as it grows in. I'm looking forward to stags growing upward ever so slowly.

Two questions! In the picture of your 280 gallon, is that a fiji leather coral on the far right? That this is enormous and awesome! and in your new 400 gallon tank, I love your idea of open water space. How many pounds of live rock do you have?

It is a Toadstool Leather, but I don't know more than that. Here's the write up on it, which I brought home as a tiny frag back in 2003.
http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...dstool-Leather

I probably have 200lbs of LR in the tank. I didn't weigh it at all, I just went with what I felt looked good aesthetically.

They always say a pound of rock per gallon. So in your opinion that's a myth? It seems as if you have a good clean up crew, a 4 in dsb, and a pound of rock per 2 gallons of water you'd be fine.

I'm trying something new. It isn't a myth. I also don't have my tank overloaded with fish and livestock. I still have 200lbs of LR in a barrel, which I may a some point tie in as a cryptic zone for additional beneficial filtration. For now, I don't see a need, but I'm keeping my options open.

Keep in mind that the total water volume of my system is 300g, not 400g. When using inner measurements, and taking into account displacement of sand and rock, there's really only 300g of water. My last system had 225g of actual water.

Those biopellets should also more than make up for the 100 pounds that he's short of the typical "pound per gallon."

So i need to know. Once your tank was leaking what did you do with your toadstool leather? It's hard to imagine you turned it in and didn't keep it somehow!

The Toadstool was in a separate container with liverock and flow, and I did a 50% water change twice a week. It was a beast, and I didn't trust it with the rest of my livestock. I was out of town when it suddenly took a nosedive, and ammonia shot way up. I believe it may have tried spawning in the limited water volume, smothering the oxygen level. I wasn't able to save it.

Looking back, I wish I'd contacted the Dallas World Aquarium the very next day and donated it to one of their tanks. Had I kept it and had it survived until the new tank, it would have taken up so much room in the new system that I probably wouldn't have been happy with it by comparison to everything else. Also, it definitely exuded chemicals in the water which I'm sure slowed the growth of SPS corals.

Too bad such beautiful pieces bring so much trouble with them! Always something to cherish through your pictures though =)

Hey melev, Ive been a fan of you and your tank for a few years now. Just wanted to say hey and Im diggin the new tank and aquascape. Im hoping to do something similar in my 125g.

Marc, looking awesome! I personally prefer the more open look you have now. One of my dream tanks is a large cube style, maybe 4' to a side?, with an SPS dominated island in the center and lots of sand and open water all around.

Thanks guys.

Yes a more open look gives the fish more room, has long has they feel they can hide if needed they will have less stress so less disease.Every one wins,I do feel live rock is a huge plus. The best of both worlds would be a open aqua-scape in the DT and lots of live rock in a remote tank tied into the DT system. IMHO

So I have done that, and ultimately pulled the rock out of the remote tank. The issue was that the RT was a huge detritus trap. I suppose that suspending the live rock above the tank bottom and improviing circulation would have worked too, but I didn't think of that at the time.