Ace's tank progression over the years

[Ace25]

Long story short, been into fish tanks for 11 years now, started fresh, then brackish, then salt FOWLR, and now finally Reef. Here are some picures from the journey. First picture is fresh water, then FOWLR, then I moved and got out of the hobby for about a year. The final 2 pictures are when I first got into reef tanks and didn't know a whole lot, just had the tank with hang on canister filter and protien skimmer.. learned a tremendous amount from forums like this one, and the final pic is how it looks today with the correct lighting, sump, etc. Current 29g reef tank has been setup for exactly 3 years now with many changes/upgrades in that time.

[Ace25]

Couple more "random" pics I like.

[tottenchris]

Very nice tanks!

[paytonclimer]

Quite a journey, you had/have very nice tanks.

I really like your salt tanks.

[Coler]

great post ! lovely tanks

[Ace25]

Thanks all! Really appreciate the support! Couple more pics to share. First one is my sump after setting it up. I was sent the wrong one from what I ordered (it was 2" to big to fit in my stand) so I had to put it to the side. What a mess that made. Since then I had a custom stand made for me and it all fits nicely underneath now.

[jm1212]

nice angel and tang!

[Reefscape]

great looking tanks there...love the puffers...

Niko

[Malbri]

Thats really amazing

[Rbishop]

Awesome!

[electromen]

Looks really good.

[stephalpha]

You have really beautiful tanks. I love the puffers

[rockethippo]

beautiful!! How big is it?

[dbcb314]

what did u do to make the puffers puff lol


nice tanks

[rockethippo]

To make them puff get a really long stick and try to slowly poke them. But really... don't....

[LondonDragon]

Nice tank, one day I will have to try marines also, for now I started the planted ;)

[Mgamer20o0]

wonderful pics.

[H3D]

Cool pics!

[mostlycichlids]

Amazing! Beautiful Fish and Corals!

[Ace25]

Quick update, couple new corals and a new fish added. Just put in a Yellow wrasse today.

Full tank and a hydnophora.

[dieselman]

Excellent! :)

[Ace25]

Couple more pics.

[Ace25]

2 more pics to get an idea of the entire setup. One of the entire stand and one of the sump.

[mudskippers]

WOOOO HOOOO!!! GREAT JOB!!!!! :) :)

[jpappy789]

Wow, ace your sw setups are amazing!

[Ace25]

Thanks all. Here are a few more closeups of corals.

[marine_geek]

stunning tank! thanks for sharing :)

[mozart]

Great shots--a pleasure to look at!

[bzz]

OHHHH!!!!! AHHHHH!!!! Excellent !!!!!!!

[Ace25]

Few more closes ups. I picked up another rock with green and red zoos today. Last picture is a scorpion fish that I have never been able to identify. He hides a lot and lives with my japanese pistol shrimp.

[mudskippers]

BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!

[Ace25]

Thanks, just a few more pics and I am done for tonight. Spent a couple hours taking thousands of pictures trying to get a good one of my Pygmy angel and one of the 12" engineer goby (first picture below) out of the rocks to see how big it is.. but it wasn't to be tonight. Enjoy the pics everyone.

[mudskippers]

Love your yellow watchmen! Man, you really know how to take a picture ;)

[Ace25]

Well, it's easy when the target doesn't move much, like with corals and gobies. LOL. The yellow wrasse picture I am not quite happy with, little blury, and I can't get a clear picture of my pygmy angel for anything. Just won't stop moving and hiding in the rocks. :silly:

Plus a good camera helps. I have a Nikon D80 camera which does all the work for me. I am pretty much point and shoot using macro mode on a tri-pod. The key is take lots and lots of pictures. I usually get 1 really good one out of 100.

[Sploke]

Man awesome pics. EVerything's lookin good, keep it up whaever you're doing. Makes me want a watchman even more.

[Ace25]

Thanks. :) I am really not doing a whole lot anymore to keep the tank going. It is pretty self sustaining after 3 years of running.

I do a 5 gallon a week salt walter change, clean the protein skimmer, and replace the filter pad media (10 mins of work), top off with fresh RO water every few days, and once a month change out the bag of chemi-pure elite and phosban media (another 10 mins of work). When I do my daily feeding I put in 2 part B-Ionic to maintain the ph and calcium. Pretty quick and simple for me, which was exactly what I was going for. :grinyes:

[mudskippers]

Hard work is always rewarding in the end ;)

Also.. I cant belive I didn't mention this before.. Is your name really Ace? My sons middle name is Ace! What a qawincadince... lol ;)

[Ace25]

No, just a nickname since I started walking. I guess I used to fall a lot when I was little and my mom would always say to me "smooth move ace" and it just kind of stuck from there on.

Oh ya, back on page 2 someone asked what I did to make the puffer puff up. The answer is nothing. Puffers naturally puff up every once and a while just to stretch. Mine did it usually about once every month or so. As soon as I would catch him puffed up he would see me and deflate right away and start wagging his tail wanting to play. Best fish I ever owned but looking back I was not the best host as my knowledge at the time was limited and I did a lot of things I now know was wrong. I did bring him back to the fish store and he was bought by someone else. I know he lived at least 5 years before I lost updates about him.

[marcello]

wow very cool tank :D

[Ace25]

Still trying to get a good pic of the Pygmy.. the best one I got is still blury.

[Ace25]

First pic is of my bigger blue spot goby. He is about 2x the size of my yellow watchman in the second pic. Then a couple cool pics of some orange leg hermit crabs.

[Ace25]

I finally found out what my mysterious Scorpion Fish actually is. Kind of a cool name.

Gumdrop Coral Croucher:
The Gumdrop Coral Croucher resembles a goby and is actually a member of the scorpionfish family. These fish are native to the reefs in the Coral Sea. They are often found in and about both hard and soft corals. This fish is gray/white in color with many red dots covering the body. The entire body is covered with small hair-like appendages which gives this fish a fuzzy appearance. The spines on the dorsal fins of this fish are venomous. If you are stung, the reaction may be similar to a bee sting only a little stronger.

[the Amazonian]

Great Collection!!!

[tfarrar1]

I LOVE YOUR SW TANKS! THE PICTURE WITH THREE TANKS ON ONE WALL LOOKS MY LIVINGROOM! TANKS ARE LIKE CHIPS, YOU JUST CAN'T HAVE ONE. GOOD LUCK!

[Rbishop]

Very nice, Ace! Thanks for the update.

[kay-bee]

Great pix!

[rich311k]

Super pictures!

[Ace25]

Updated full tank and sump pics.

[Rbishop]

Great looking tank!

[Ace25]

Here is a pic with the sump labeled and showing water flow directions.

[da jig iz up]

Great great tanks and it really makes me want to get those kind of tanks in the future but that whole sump thing just looks too complicated.

hats off to ya

[Ace25]

LOL, ya, I thought the same thing at first about the sump. Even after taking the plunge and setting it up, it took a few months to get it dialed in and all the correct media in the right place. Unfortunately I did not have a lot of information to go on when I bought it. Online help was scarce at best, and finding the best answer really did come down to me watching the tank and trying out different things within the sump to figure out what was best. No one is going to be able to really tell you what is going to work best in a sump as every tank is different. Different sizes, water flow, inhabitants, lighting, substrate (sand), etc. Lot's of people can give suggestions and tell you what they did, but the reality is only you can watch your tank daily and see how it is doing.

From doing this so long I can now just look at my tank/corals and tell you what needs replacing, media wise, and what parameter is out of wack. Most of the time it is the phosphates rising a little high and many corals react and simply looking at them can let you know it is time to change out the Phosban. Smell is another sense to use, for the chemi-pure, when the tank starts to get the "fishy" smell, albiet ever so mild, I know the chemi-pure is used up and needs replacing.

It has literally taken me 2-1/2 years just to get a 29G Reef tank "dialed in", but it is finally there. Had I listened to my LFS's advice in the beginning I probably would have cut a year off of that time, but $ isn't always the most abundant resource for me, and I have many other hobbies that take my time and money, so I didn't buy the correct lighting, sump, etc in the beginning so when I setup the tank I paid for it at least 2 fold by buying corals only to have them die because my water/lighting/water flow wasn't good enough, even doing 20G a week water changes in the beginning.

I calculated recently how much $ I have put into this tank, and it is around $9700. Out of that, there really is only $2100 worth of stuff in it now, the rest was either bad decisions (crap Jebo lighting, bad protien skimmer, etc) and fish/coral loss.

[Ace25]

Couple more pics..
1. bristle worm going after an empty shell than an emerald crab just molted minutes earlier. This worm is huge, like 6". Usually I would trap em but this is the only one I have seen in my tank and it is a good cleaner so far.
2. Nassarius Snail
3. Pink Zoanthids
4 & 5. Sally Lightfoot crab - Always liked this crab. Very active and spider like.
6. Yellow Leather - my fav coral because it has done so well in my tank :)
7. Yellow Watchman Goby - I know, posted him a few times already, but he is one of my fav fish in my tank

[pinkertd]

Absolutely awesome!!!!

[flapper12]

All I can say is..wow

[chunkylover817]

very well done! Ace, nice pics,tank, fish, everything!