Updates on sump and lighting (and fish)!
We plumbed in the durso that they had in the setup, with the pump for the setup, and found both a bit on the noisy side. Not outlandishly so, but a little more than we wanted for the living room.
We replaced the pump with the Eheim version, which is somewhat quieter, but still wants some coddling in terms of what it sits on, next to, which way the wind blows, etc. It can be amazingly quiet, but nudge it and it goes back to humming, though really only slightly. Hopefully we will work that out. It's (much) quieter than the power head, so that will be a next question.
We changed out the durso and did a herbie, and I have to say it is downright amazing. If you stick your head a foot over the top of the tank, you can hear water... if you stick your head a foot under the stand, you can hear water. Otherwise you don't hear water. I'm very impressed. Some pics of the plumbing are below.
For lighting we ended up getting another Catalina t5 HO, with 2 10ks and a 6500. I like what the actinic coloring adds to all of our other tanks, but for this one I do not care for it, so we changed that out.
Here is a pic of what we have as the current aquascape. It's still a little cloudy as the sand settles.
The tropheus are arriving on Friday, and dwarf petricola on Saturday. So we have a fun weekend ahead. Not to mention, the piping for the second herbie arrives on Thursday, so we can do the second tank too (just tried it for one of the two tanks initially).
The rest of the living room redo is ongoing -- the couch is here, the art/framing is done but not hung, the room lighting is still being figured out, then we have a bit more to paint to drain the 75gall and move the bar to where it belongs. Then clean the fish and construction stuff out of the way to finish up.
Getting there!
