Day 15, The tank that took 7 years to aquascape..

So I finally got a good weekend, with all the ducks in the proper order, and was able to rescape (or finish scaping) the tank.  Now many many moons ago, when I first started all this, I was purchasing monster boulders one at a time direct from Fiji.  The idea at the time was, put one in, let it cycle up, then do another, and keep this up until a mains breaks and floods the house..  err..  I mean it's finished?

So some detours happened along the way, and I wasn't keeping up with the purchases fast enough, and I ended up with half a tank full of rock.  Which you have seen in all the "lovely" full tank shots, where you can see about 5 feet of bare sandbed.  Exiting stuff that.

Of course, because I'm super creative when it comes to fancy rockwork, my plan was "a big wall of rocks".  So to assist with this wall, I built a PVC frame that goes all the way to the bottom of the tank, so the rocks could sit up on it off the bottom a bit.  This gives the fish a permanent cave to hide in, and keeps the deep recesses from turning anoxic.  One of the main returns curves down there a bit, just to give some flow in there (very gentle), just to keep the water moving about.  I figure the sponges will love it too.

So along my new plan of "just get it done, don't spend 6 more years buying 1 rock every 3 months", I went online and got 240lbs of dry rock.

Now the old me would freak out right now and say dry rock is worthless, only Fiji or Pukani for me.  But that stuff is hard to get now.  And I refuse to use Atlantic rock, because I don't want to deal with the hitchikers.  So dead it is.

I got three boxes from Amazon prime, as I mentioned in a previous post.  Then I decided to get 3 more boxes from ArcReef.  I'm super happy with the Amazon Prime stuff.  Cheap, good rock, nice sizes, good stuff that.  The ArcReef stuff..  eeeehh..

So here is my thoughts on the ArcReef rock, and it's mildly whiny.

• It is 100% the same rock as the stuff that cost 1/3rd as much off Prime.  After I rinsed all the different rock off, I had a really hard time telling it apart.
• They shipped 51 lbs instead of 45 per box.  So that was nice.
• I picked ArcReef because they say on the Amazon page that you can request specific sizes.  So of course I say I want 20-45lb boulders.  (Which the page specifically says they will do.
• I ordered 3 boxes.  The first one arrived, and they required signature for delivery.  They needed an actual signature for a 45lb box of dead rock.  Completely absurd.  So of course I had to sign the little paper and wait for re-delivery.
• I get the delivery, and it's only 1 box.  There is a note saying the other two were shipped 1 day later.
• The rocks were kinda small.  Just a bunch of 8" rocks.  The Prime stuff was all 12" or better.  They obviously ignored my note.
• 1 week later, no rocks.  Fedex says they don't even have the boxes yet.
• So I send them a note on Amazon.  "Hey, my rocks didn't actually ship.  Also, I wanted boulders, which you said you would provide, please be sure the next 2 boxes are boulders"
• Next two boxes show up, signature required of course...
• Just a bunch of 8" rocks again, with a "we're sorry we forgot to ship them, oops"

 Now don't get me wrong.  They are good rocks.  But for the price, I wanted the specific size.  I didn't get that. I have no issues with the rock itself, just that I overpaid for it, because I wanted big rocks.  And the shipping issues were super annoying.

Either way.. Here is 260ish lbs of rock.  Can you tell them apart?  Hint, the big ones were from Prime.

So because as previously stated, my aquascaping theory is "chuck them in", I asked my wife to design an aquascape.  We watched a bunch of videos together, threw some ideas around, and then watched a particularly good set of videos with various shapes of tanks, and ideas.  One of them was a corner tank, and the concept he called "Sleeping dragon".

So we took this idea, because in essence what I really have is two corner tanks connected together (because there is no side-view), and made a huge dragon.  On the left side of the tank, we have the head, and on the right side, a small tail.

Now..  this was no easy project.  It took a day and a half.  Some of those boulders I originally purchased were in the range of 90-100 lbs each.  There were at least 6 that were 80+, and about 10 more that were in the 40 range.  Moving them around was a nightmare.  And oh the sandstorms we caused.  It would get so bad that we couldn't see what we were doing.

In the end, the smaller rocks weren't all that bad, as the big monsters filled in the majority of the space, and then the smaller ones just fit in perfectly to make various shapes, and fill in gaps all over the place.  We also made a small island on one side, just because there is so much space in the tank.  I feel like this structure uses alot more of the available footprint of the sand, and it's now far more stunning to look at.  Overall, I'm super happy with this.

And to put a kick on the end, I have turned on the main lights finally.  I have them set at 15% of full power, and will run like that for probably a week.

In other news, the GFO completely destroyed the phosphate in the tank.  So much so that I'm now shutting it off, because it's caused the chaeto to die back.  I still have a little bit of Nitrate, but that's all easy to deal with.  Hopefully things will balance out once the ugly phase begins....

Turning the lights on has also shown up some dark spots in the tank.  So I need to figure out a few spots or similar to fill those in.  I might just go with some cheap black boxes around the corners to fill in the dead spots, as I don't think I need a ton of light.  I'm also slightly concerned about the amount of white light..  I might swap the COB's for blues.. not sure..  we will see.

Oh, and since you made it to the end.  Here is the timelapse of us doing the aquascape!

Dreaming of a future shipment of peppermint shrimp.. I crawl into bed, exhausted...