[JasonM]

As if by fate one Friday evening, after a bit too much wine, I found an advert for a Betta Lifespace 1000 that was only 15 miles from home and I thought it would be great to upgrade to from my Tropiquarium 88. The nano size Tropiquarium was a hand-me-down to get me into marines and over the last two years has taught me loads, but the misses and I always wanted something big enough to keep a yellow tang, so a bigger tank was always on the cards. Being able to keep a yellow tang may seem like a silly reason to upgrade but I guess it's a case of whatever rings your bell.

The Lifespace came with livestock, loads of extras like a selection of lighting to try, a flash vortech powerhead and a Deltec skimmer, so for the money I could say no and emailed the seller. Thankfully it still looked like a good deal when I woke up with a hangover the next morning.

After a couple of trips to the seller everything was stripped and relocated to my home where the acquired livestock had to make do with the cramped conditions in my nano whist I made RO and the Lifespace was cleaned and filled.


Thanks to Pete for the cabinet modification advice, making the cabinet centre panel removable makes life much easier when doing anything in the sump.





The tank has been running for three weeks and everything seems fine. I’m just using live rock rubble and chaetomorpha in the sump and water tests so far have shown nothing unusual, although I have got a slight brown algae formation on the sand, which hopefully is a new tank thing that will sort itself out in a couple of weeks.


I know that many people would recommend that I light the tank with a 250w halide, which the tank actually came with, but I’m not a fan of the suspended reflector look and I want to minimise water loss through evaporation by closing the top. To do this I’ve just finished making a 4 tube T5 lighting rig using Helvar electronic ballasts and Ultraseal leads with an additional single Aquaray blue. I’ll probably fit the new lighting rig tomorrow and see how the 4 tube set-up goes with my current stock of softies and LPS. If I need to increase light levels then I’ll probably add another Aquaray or two. The T5’s I’ve chosen to use are 3 14000k tubes and a single actinic from a non-sponsor and initial testing shows they’re much brighter than the single clip on 150w halide I’ve been using whilst I’ve been sorting out the T5 lighting. I’m still really a newbie when it comes to marines and have been basing my set-up on lots of research and other people’s set-ups so I'm open to suggestions but I’ll see how the tank settles in before making any major changes to the lighting. I’ll post some comparison photos when I change the lighting over.

[gray]

Looking Nice

keep the updates coming , good luck with it

[JasonM]

I've fitted the T5 tubes and single Aquaray and so far everything is looking good, just need to finish sorting out a the top cover to reduce the evaporation loss. Ideally I want to try and make the hood act as a condensation trap rather than a seal, I should be able to experiment with it over the next couple of days. Colour wise the T5 aren't looking too bad and I've not tweaked any of the photos, which seem to be fairly accurate.

3x 14000k Reef White 39w + 1x Blue Marine Actinic 39w + 1x Aquaray Blue





My collection of frags that hopefully will growing out to give the tank a bit more colour. The hammer started as two heads 20 months ago and is now up to 9'ish

The next 3 frags were from the November frag night and they seem to be doing well





The torch orgasmatron for my clowns



My duncans came from a three head frag and have grown well over the last couple of years but don't seen to have much colour either in the polyps or in their skeleton

[dave14]

Looking nice and healthy, the brown stuff on the sand is probably diatoms and is fairly normal with new tanks, it will prob get worse before it gets better

[JasonM]

Well, whatever the brown algae is it's pretty much gone but I think my sea hare must be desperate because it's munched its way through all of it and is starting to look under fed. If anyone within driving distance would like to swap a LPS frag for a sea hare let me know, if not then I'll return him to the shop I got him from.

[lindsay]

Looks good,the corals are doing well,also looks like you may have the room in the lid to add another t5 if needed.