Pictures from March 1998

Water is pumped from the overflow box on the back of the tank, through a channel at the upper corners of the tank, and through the swiveling fittings that you see here. There are three fittings on each side. The bright orange color wasn't my first choice, but this is still less ugly and more flexible than having three powerheads on each end of the tank. If it isn't obvious, the swivel fittings don't move on their own. They simply allow me to manually adjust the direction of the water flow.

This is an overflow box that I added to the tank after the initial construction. There are three PVC fittings glued to the bottom of the overflow box, which I can use to connect this tank to a sump and/or external pumps. I'm currently not using that though. There are PVC plugs screwed into the underside of each of the three fittings. Circulation in this tank comes from the two Maxijet powerheads that you see in the picture. Each powerhead pumps its output through a tube, and into the channels at either end of the tank. The water enters the tank through the orange swivel fittings pictured above.

Star polyps growing on the right wall of the tank.

These are some small hard coral polyps that came on my live rock, years ago. These grow slowly, but the number of polyps does gradually increase.

Look for the small piece of encrusting Hydnophora growing on the back wall of the tank.

Here is my lovely mantis shrimp.

Here the mantis shrimp is checking out the overflow at the back of the tank. It has grown out of its old habit of jumping into the overflow box.