First, here is an updated picture of how the tank is looking now-a-days:
I think it's amazing how much things have changed and grown with the work we've done (all though, Josh has done most of the "work" on it) and the "collection" of corals and a few fish that we've been amassing in just 7 months! From left to right in the picture above we have the following corals and invertebrates: galaxia, hammer coral, frogspawn, candy cane, condy anemone, toadstool leather, flower anemone, feather dusters, mushroom coral, pulsing xenias, zoanthids, and kenya trees. Fish and other animal life include: snails, hermit crabs, emerald mithrax crabs, diamond goby, sea urchin, starfish, bi-color angel, ocellaris clowns, neon velvet damsel, and a yellow-tail damsel. Wow - that's a lot of life to watch! :)
Galaxia or Galaxy Coral:
The two feather dusters:
I also, finally, remembered to take a picture of the sump we set up a while back:
It works something like this... the water is removed from the display tank by the overflow box and sent down into the right side of the sump, where it is filtered through the protein skimmer. The water flows through the baffles on the right side of the sump into the refugium in the center, where the live sand & rock and the chaeto help with natural filtration. Then the water spills over into the left side of the sump where it is filtered through some commercial media (biological, mechanical, and chemical) and finally through the GFO reactor before being pumped back into the display tank.
The protein skimmer (left) removes organic compounds from the water before they break down into nitrogenous waste. The GFO reactor (right) removes phosphates from the water and helps to reduce algae.
