d2mini's Epic Fantabulous New Reef Build

Part III


Here we are back at Richard's holding facility.
As soon as we returned with our loot, it was all pulled out of the barrels of saltwater on the boat and put directly into this system of big tubs.

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Giving the inverts a little lunch
Those upper tanks are filled with all kinds of snails, hermit, stars, urchins, small fish, shrimp, etc.

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One of Richard's pets.

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A couple more.
This big guy in front has been a member of the TBS team for 15 years!

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Here's another type of lobster, i believe it's a Spanish Lobster?

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Speaking of TBS rock and lobsters...
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UqKRGW6_rw]B52s Rock lobster - YouTube[/ame]


Here's a rock with some nice color on it.

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Packing it up and adding some water for the trip home.

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A little air for good measure...
And FWIW, Richards is using several of those thick plastic bags and they are not cheap!!!
No cutting corners with TBS. Richard does whatever it takes to make sure that every customer is a happy customer. This has always been my experience, but getting to experience what all goes into the process behind the scenes confirms it.

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All packed up so time to load the truck and head to the airport.

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Ready to unload at the freight office.

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Forklift makes it easy.

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And that's it! In a few minutes it will get taken to gates and loaded into the cargo hold of the same plane we took back to Houston. Every one but two of those boxes was ours. That big one had just one rock and weighed in at around 90lbs.

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Next up... pics of the rock back home in my tank! Stay tuned...
 
ok, i guess this is what everyone has been waiting for... pics of rock! :D

Full tank shot.
I just layed all the pieces out so I could get a good look at them and figure out how I want to aquascape.

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Here's the big rock.
The 90lb shipping weight was with water in the box.
I'd guess this single rock is around 50-60 lbs.

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Close-ups...
And FWIW, all shots are color corrected. All those colors are really there!

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Amazing is right!

I don't know what any of those hitchikers are but they are beautiful. This is going to be a fantastic tank!
 
Dennis,

Two things.

1 - thankfully I can just drive 25 minutes to his house and you are right, he is really meticulous and a great guy to deal with. Man I would hate to have to pay shipping o a plane ticket haha.

2 - all my rock if you recall had all that great stuff all over it but after time it just vanished. Why do you think that is? Snails, hermits, or it just can't stay in our tanks? I lost all the crazy little things I see in you pix. My guess is that in a small tank compared to the ocean things munch on all that cool stuff and destroy it.

Oh and yeah they look really nice by the way. Make some islands you know you want to haha. How much weight you have in there. I found you truly don't need 1 pound per gallon. I have 25 fish granted most are smallish or won't get that big and about 180-200 in a 220gal that has about 240-250 gal total in the system if that.

P.S. Any clicking yet? I found after getting rid of the Mantis it was those little dudes that live under the sand because there was clicking with no rock in the tank and I dug them up one day.
 
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