well it's been awhile. The 55 has turned into a oceanic 75 with a 30 sump. I wasn't crazy about the big glass cross brace but I got the tank for a pretty good price. I didn't have money to buy a new in-sump skimmer and still wanted to use my octo 800s HOB. I took it to my LFS who is FAOIS (John makes the i-tech) and we put our heads together. John is very smart and creative when it comes to this stuff and when he says something you should follow it.
So we took of the intake tube and surface skimmer box and placed the skimmer into the 30. We took a marineland 5500 and placed that in the left side of the sump. I t'd off of the outlet of the pump and have one line for the return and one line feeds the skimmer. I have a 3/4" hose that goes right into the skimmer inlet hole. I have ball valve here and it maybe open 20% to feed the skimmer what it needs. Under the return elbow of the skimmer I took two little carbon baskets and placed them on top of each other to make a hour glass figure and zip tied them. In there is a bag of carbon. On top of that I have some blue foam and then on top of that I have a chunk of the black mesh filter stuff. This got rid of the splashing sound.
The return line to the tank also has a valve and I keep that pretty much wide open. The overflow from the tank enters my home made durso and runs through a filter bag in the sump. So all of the water is "shared" in the sump since there are no baffels. The only microbubbles I get are when the water level gets too low or when I'm changing out the bag real quick. I have maybe .5" of clearance to remove the skimmer cup. It just worked out. The only way the sump will come out will be to smash it or take it out through the top when breaking down.
The switch wasn't that hard. I did it all in one night over a few hours. The most frustrating part was making sure I had the plumbing parts. I was working at a site north of Orlando all week and every night I would come home and stay up late making sure te plumbing was set up. Luckily for me Lowes is 3/4 mile away but after 3 or 4 trips I quickly grew tired of the routine. So long nights and early morning made for a tired steelcity that week. The Saturday before the switch in the store while figuring out the sump, I saw my temminik wrasse. I had to have him. So I paid for him and had John hold onto him. It was now a race against time.
Wednesday night I was ready. Luckily for me I fish and have some very large fish box coolers so temporary staging/storage was no problem. The fish and corals did great. I put a powerhead in each during the time and had no problems. I used all of my rock from the 55 plus I picked up two 10pound pieces from Richard at Tampa Bay Saltwater. I told him what I wanted and he delivered again. He's 2 for 2 on my orders. I like that I just describe to him what I want and size and he leaves it right outside of his house for me to pick up. It's always killer stuff. The whole switch maybe took 3-4 hours. The next day I went and picked up my awesome temminik wrasse.
So my current fish list is this: Hoeven's wrasse, Temminik wrasse, Bi-color blenny (flame tail), sunburst anthia, purple firefish, yellow watchman, coral beauty, pair of black clowns.
I had to get rid of my whitetail bristletooth when I added the temminik. For some reason he did not like the wrasse and would body check him and keep him confined to a hole. I liked him alot but the new wrasse was beautiful. The wrasse could beat on the whitetail if he wanted to but the "fairy" in him made him a wuss.
Lately I have accquired some nice corals I think. I bought some dendros, devils armor zoos, and pink heart zoos from a guy on ebay. He combined shipping it his shipping cost was pretty low compared to others. I kept a watch on this dendros all week and there were no bids. The auction was for 3 heads that started at $9.99. So like everytime I use ebay I bid last minute and put my highest price at $50. I ended up getting those dendros for the list price. I also go the zoos for $10 each. So with shipping I paid $55 for all three. AND best of all, he tossed in 2 extra heads of dendros. So I got 5.
Locally I picked up a neon green moon brain from a guy for $30. I think it's awesome. The other night a guy posted up on RC locally that he broke off some of his orange cap trying to seperate fish in his tank. It was free. So I ran over there the other night and picked up a very bright orange 2' x 3" piece of orange cap. Then yesterday I picked up the diamond goby (who jumped as posted earlier) and a like 8 headed blue hammer to go beside my torch.
So now it's time for pictures. All are taken with my DROID which has a 5 megapixel. It takes decent pics but stil doesn't get the colors closeup like those canons.