135 Journal

[wetcoast]

This post will chronicle trials, tribulations, frustrations and happiness after moving to BC to take advantage of cheap salt and rocks.

Post is empty so that when this goes to multiple pages you aren't bombarded with images from months back...

(Apologies on Picture Size - definitely not modem friendly)

[wetcoast]

This is my 'second' reef tank - the first was a 65 gallon experiment where I started off with no sump, and a general overall lack of knowledge. I had been living in Winnipeg for a few years, and had to get out due to the cold weather. I started planning a larger system. From a far I started picking up all the supplies I would need - a 225 gallon tank, Pumps, Skimmers, Lights, Ballasts, Heaters, you know, everything.

Boy was I in for a surprise, when I came to BC and realized that my measly money I had invested in a house in the prairies could barely buy me a garage! I had to go into a condo instead of a house and realized that I could not support the 225 on a second floor with the joists running parallel to the tank. I accepted my losses, and ordered a custom 135 (72x24x18) with a center overflow in March of 2007.

I work from home, and wanted to be able to stare at the fishtank while computing regularly, and started the construction. Due to the way the place was constructed, I had to do some considerable work to the room to prepare for the tank to fit where I wanted to. This involved closing the entrance to the room, and opening it up on the other side, while rerouting all the electrical in the room.

Some before shots:
http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20070401_before_kitchen.jpg
http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20070401_before_room.jpg

Heeeeere's Johnny!
http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20070401_heres_johnny.jpg

And it almost finished on the other side of the room. I hate drywall, taping, and sanding.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20070425_almost_finished.jpg


Because I did not know how my stand, canopy, or anything else would work out with my tank I had to stop work and enjoy summer. Finally at the end of August I took delivery of my new tank in the house.

[wetcoast]

Finally, at the end of August, I took delivery of my tank, stand and canopy. It was better than I expected.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-08-23-Canopy.JPG

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-08-23-Tank_Arrival.JPG

(yes, thats chair is for the cat, i made it for him a few years back after he took big interest in my 65 gallon) Finally - a top down shot showing the center overflow and some other holes - more on that later.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-08-23-Top_Down.JPG

Now that the tank was in the house, it was time to get going and finish the rest of the work. First, was the lights. I opted for 3 x 250watt Ice Cap Ballasts housed in Lumenarc Mini Reflectors. I already had a pair for the 225 build, and ordered yet another set online because I figured they would be too big for my tank, thinking I had originally bought the "normal" sized.. Another reefer on this board picked up these new ones I bought and you should be able to see them in his own respective tank build. These things are crazy:

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-08-27-Closeup_Reflector.jpg

And for good measure here's a shot of them mounted in the canopy..
http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-08-27-Mounted%20Lumenarcs-Canopy.jpg

For atinic supplmentation I added 2 36" 54watt T5 fixtures and mounted the ballasts underneath the stand.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-05-IceCap_Closeup.jpg

[wetcoast]

I spent a considerable amount of time reading up on structural stability and decided it would be in my best interest to distribute the weight by building an oversized stand, and housing the sump, refugium and other components in the bathroom behind where the tank was going to sit. This also helped keep down the noise and gave me a bit more room to fiddle with things.

I then started work with cutting through the wall into the bathroom, and simply reinforcing the hole with a dryer vent.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-12-one_hole_cut.jpg

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-12-finished_hole.jpg

With that being done it was time to dismantle the bathroom, and building a stand for the sump. (many pictures simply dont exist)
The bathroom isn't the largest of rooms so I had to rebuild my stand a few times to finally get it right.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-14-sump_stand.jpg

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008025_bathroom.jpg

I had just taken delivery of my Acrylic sump, and while it wasn't what I ordered in the slightest, it worked out in the long run.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-14-sump_closeup.jpg

I am able to drain the sump into the main sewer stack for quick water changes and releases of water (one of my pet peeves from my last tank).

At that time I commenced mounting electrical components in the equipment room underneath the countertop. In the background is an ozone generator, and an Aquatronica Power Bar, again, more on this later.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-09-14-mounting_electrical.jpg

[wetcoast]

Now it was time to make sense of the plumbing in the tank... Keeping with my original plans I went with an Oceans Motions 4-way Closed Loop powered by a Reeflo Dart. The intake is halfway up the back panel of glass, and the outputs exit at mirrored points on either side of the back pane, and the others close to the front corners on either side. I lost a few braincells gluing all this stuff together.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-10-06-the_mess.jpg

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-10-06-backside_plumbing.jpg

Closed loop plumbing completed:

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20081010_closeup%20closedloop.jpg

There were serious delays in getting the remainder of the equipment I had ordered so I took November and December off and drank beer and snowboarded instead.

[wetcoast]

Slowly my other ordered parts trickled in and I was able to complete the plumbing in the equipment room. One being an Ozone Reactor from Aquarium Life Support Systems.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2007-11-ozone_reactor_closeup.JPG

I also built a big Air Dryer for it so that I didn't have to change beads so frequently:

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-02_airdryer.JPG

A calcium reactor that I saved from my old 65 gallon made out of a very large Water container (will detail the build of that once I can find those pictures), and a Kalkwasser Reactor were put in place beside the refugium and QT tank. The Kalk reactor lasted two weeks and pee'd water all over the floor so a new one is being built.

The final piece I was missing was my skimmer. I originally had a Euro Reef CS400, but realized it was far too big for my plans and sold it. I ordered an ATI Bubble Master 250 Skimmer in July and in January just got fed up and purchased a Bubble King Mini 180 as I was starting to get a wee bit frustrated. Since I hacked up my sump stand a few times it made it quite difficult to get a skimmer in and out without draining the sump and disconnecting all the plumbing parts, so this was holding me back. I ended up modifying the stand one more time to make it all work out.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-01-bubblekingbox.JPG

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/200801_sump_inplace.jpg

I then finished off the rest of the plumbing for the return, drain, refugium and to feed all the other components. The Ozone Reactor outputs into a TLF Phosban Reactor filled with Carbon - Another reactor will go in line in the near future. This was during the first phase of testing to see if my ideas actually worked out. There were a few issues with noise, microbubbles, leaking Snapper return pumps, and a cracked Dart Closed Loop pump, but I kept drinking beer and everything worked out.

Took my RODI unit a couple days to end up filling the whole tank, so in celebration I dumped 8 bags of sugar sand into the Refugium and Display. I'm still on the fence whether this was a good idea or not - Atinic Stew:

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-01-atinic_stew.JPG

After that sorted itself out, I picked up 260lb of really nice pieces of rock, and got chewed out by my girlfriend for taking up her counter space.

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20080125_rock.jpg


I arranged the rockwork in both the Refugium and Display tank and let it sit for a long while. While I was waiting, I grabbed a couple pounds of sand, a couple 1" 45 degree adapters, and spread hot glue on them, for my closed loop outputs..

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/20080125_loopdeloop.jpg

[michika]

Very nice so far!

[wetcoast]

While the tank was cycling I started doing alot of housekeeping, and tracking parameters via the Aquatronica computer I have. It allows me to track Water Level (Sump and Display) for adding Top off Water, Temperature in my Room and in the tank, pH for both display and effluent out of the calcium reactor, and ORP for the Ozone Generator. I met a nice fellow on ReefCentral who managed to reverse engineer the Aquatronica Ethernet component and built a monitoring application that blew the included controller software out of the water. I liked his development skills so much from where he was (South Africa) and convinced him that he should come with with me in Canada. He'll he here soon..

I noticed some alarming trends with my temperature, and built a fan array for the refugium and sump out of some variable speed 12v DC computer fans.
http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-01-antec_fan.JPG

The fans turn on when the display tank gets above 79.3F at their most highest RPM, this so far has helped as the display one day made it to 86 degrees with the haldes on!

http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-01_fan_array.JPG


http://www.wetcoast.ca/images/reef/2008-01_installed.JPG

Once march came around I started stocking the tank with some snails, and other invertebrates to help control the algae outbreak that I was experiencing from new tank syndrome. I have a serious amount of Hair Algae growing in the tank that I attribute to the rocks I picked up containing large amounts of phosphate. I am running 8oz of GFO every 3 days to remove the source and constantly plucking it in hopes it will go away. I've since added some crabs, and some fish in an attempt to control it, waiting patiently for the day to be able to get my corals flown in from Winnipeg that a reefer has been holding for me for the past 2 years.

I also added a new refugium light from Litemor Industries (23watt 5000k Compact Flourescent PAR38 Flood) which is helping grow various types of macroalgae. In time I will stock the refugium with some sort of fish or inverts. On the fence on putting seahorses as originally planned simply due to the temperature that the system is running at, and what may come of it once summer arrives. Trying not to go down the path of a chiller, but will revisit that idea in June.

Feeling a bit sheepish about the tank right now with its overgrowth of Hair Algae and Bryopsis, so I have no pictures of the tank from when it started until now. Will fiddle with a camera tonite and post one shortly.

[tang daddy]

Hey Bud looks good so far, I envy all your top notch equiptment, looks like no cutting corners with this set up. Can't wait to see more as this will give me ideas for my next build.

[robzilla]

nice looking setup. great that you took pictures thru the process. keep them coming!!

[Pan]

Looks good....I lalways like to live vicariously through people who PLAN their systems. I wish I had planned a bit more.

[Delphinus]

Wow, that wood for the canopy and stand is "cherry"!!

[Tom R]

Wow your setup look top of the line.

You seem to show very good spirit for someone who had to go through the never never plan of supply. Good luck on the Hair Algae.

Tom R

[wetcoast]

Been a long time since I updated, have added a few new corals, and a sea hare to destroy this hair algae problem, elevating magnesium using mag chloride or tech-m as listed on some forums has not worked..

Sad news is, Looks like I have to move and tear down the tank. This breaks my heart. The place I'm living in just isn't close enough for my girlfriend to Skytrain and quite frankly I'm going a bit crazy here. Here's to hoping I can find a place a) thats not too expensive b) that will let me set it up in it's full glory again. c) i don't get freaked out on by my strata council for doing an unauthorized mod to the building.

[Pan]

Been a long time since I updated, have added a few new corals, and a sea hare to destroy this hair algae problem, elevating magnesium using mag chloride or tech-m as listed on some forums has not worked..

Sad news is, Looks like I have to move and tear down the tank. This breaks my heart. The place I'm living in just isn't close enough for my girlfriend to Skytrain and quite frankly I'm going a bit crazy here. Here's to hoping I can find a place a) thats not too expensive b) that will let me set it up in it's full glory again. c) i don't get freaked out on by my strata council for doing an unauthorized mod to the building.
Richmond is nicer than surrey :)

I think after all this time you should have lots of pictures stored up then shouldn't you...get to it!!

[wetcoast]

Tank developed a leak through a bulkhead, so sadly I tore the tank down and am putting all the pieces back together, and using this as a sign that I should move out of my place. Will set back up once resettled.