Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

This thread is going to happen in semi-slow motion, mostly because the build of the tank is tied to the build of my house, which, as I'm sure you can guess, happens at the pace it happens.

I want to start off by giving the specs, and posting the pictures I have so far.

The tank will be 6ft long X 34inches wide X 26 inches high for a total display volume of approximately 275 gallons. It's being built right in to the house as a divider between two rooms, the dining room and the office, so it will be open on two sides. I don't have a fish room in this house (some battles you have to 'compromise' on in marriage I suppose), so 99% of the equipment will be under the stand, with the only remote equipment being an R/O storage container in the basement below the tank.

The goal: To minimize the amount of manual labour required to maintain the tank. Since it's getting built right in to the house, I had an awesome opportunity to automate water changes as much as humanly possible, and the wall space the tank sits in has been plumbed with a water supply, a drain to the sewer, and an emergency floor drain under the aquarium.

Here's the space the tank will occupy (viewed from the dining room):

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1100.jpg

Closer image
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1099.jpg

Water supply and drain
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1101.jpg

Power supply
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1103.jpg

Emergency floor drain
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1102.jpg

View of tank from office (looking in to dining room and kitchen)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1104.jpg

Still working out the details of the sump with Kevin at Red Coral, but it will be designed so that one half of it can be isolated from the tank, drained, filled with fresh R/O water, mixed with salt, and then returned to the main system without ever needing to hand bail a bucket, or siphon a single drop. I'll post more pics/drawings as it progresses.

[Dez]

Looking good. I love 2 side viewable tanks.

[Coleus]

nice, i wish i can build a tank into the house like that. Maybe my next house lol. Can't wait to see how it comes together

[asylumdown]

I'm pretty excited. There's still some open questions about the tank, most notably how I'm going to light it (it's so wide!), but those will be answered when we get there. The next thing to take care of will be the sump.

The metal stand is being custom built to be a total of 40 inches in height, with 2 inch steel beams. That gives me a 'usable' footprint of 68 X 30 inches of floor space under the cabinet. I want the biggest sump possible, so assuming I need a half inch of clearance between the base of the stand front to back, and 12 inches of open space on the long ends for any equipment that can't be in the sump itself, the sump will be 56X29 inches long.

I also want the sump to hold as much water as possible, I want the sump to hold as much water as possible so if I make the sump 20 inches tall, I can keep the water at 12 inches when the sump is running without risking overflowing the sump when the tank loses power. When the aquarium is turned off, I should have roughly two inches between the top of the water and the lip of the sump tank.

Here is my crude first draft for what the sump will look like. There's going to be two compartments, and the water will flow in a U shape from the point it enters, to the point it exits the sump (green line). I'll be able to turn the gate valves in the middle of the sump isolating one half of it from the tank, with an alternate route for the water when the gate valve is closed (red line). That will allow me to pump all the water out of one half, fill it back up with fresh water, add salt, mix, then re-open the gate valves returning the new salt water to the main system.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Sumpdesign.jpg

I'm trying to decide what skimmer I can fit under that cabinet (it will likely need to be on a 2.5 inch stand) so I can work out exactly what I need in terms of space in all the compartments.

[fishytime]

Looks good man.....envious.......very envious:mrgreen:..........heres a couple lighting options......Im sure both of which you, being the stickler for detail that you are, have probably already thought of......

a) could go with 12 bulbs of HOT5(that should fit in there just right(depending on the unit I suppose, Im running TEKs and they will fit)).....either two six foot units(TEK doesnt make a sixer) or four three foot units.........or
b) something like three 250w MHs with Lumenmax Elite reflectors and some kind of strip lighting on the sides for blue supplementation(either T5 or LED)........or
c).....go with LEDs which I admittedly know nothing about, so someone else will have to chine in here:biggrin:.....


Im sure you'll get it figured out........guess it's all gonna depend on what you wanna do with the tank.....and depend on your budget:wink:......if you wanna do things like LPS on the bottom of the tank then you will likely need the penetration of MH.......if your gonna do things like mushrooms and zoas at the bottom than that will open you up to more options:wink:.....

[asylumdown]

I think I'll probably go with the MH lights. The builder still needs to put in the ventilation to the outside, but the drawings call for one side of the wall above the tank (the office side) to be vented screen doors so I think I should be able to deal with the heat. When it's done, it will look like a solid floor to ceiling wall with a tank in the middle from the dining room (with two small, hopefully invisible access panels so I can clean the glass) with all the doors and stuff on the office side.

I'll check out those reflectors, I was nervous 250 watt lights wouldn't cast a wide enough footprint for such a wide tank, but with supplementary PC lighting on the sides it should be enough.

[asylumdown]

I sat down tonight and re-worked the sump drawing a little and actually drew it to scale.

I want the Deltec SC 2060 skimmer for this tank, which is 23.62 inches high (they say that includes an extra half inch for clearance), so if that happens, I can do this:

Make the sump 55" long X 29" wide X 24" tall. Taking in to account the 2 inch steel beams supporting the stand, that still gives me about a foot of floor space left over in the cabinet.

6" of that will be separated by a full height baffle and turned in to 4 dosing chambers which should be able to hold about 4 gallons of fluid each. They'll be separated from the sump by a half inch baffle. This will make the sump area 48.5"LX29"WX24"H. By making the sump 24" high, I can up the height of the water level in the sump from 12" like I had originally planned to 17", that will still give me 7" of space between the top of the water level and the rim of the sump, which is more than enough to cope with the extra water volume in a power failure.

By keeping the water level at 17 inches while the power is running, the sump will hold 103.5 gallons of water during normal operation, with a total capacity for 146 gallons when the power is off. I will need to put the skimmer on an 8 inch stand, but that will still give me almost 8 and a half inches of head room between the top of the skimmer cup and the bottom of the aquarium.

If I divide the sump perfectly in two, each half will hold about 50 gallons of water when the aquarium is running, which gets me almost exactly where I want for my water change system, as I want to be able to do at least a 50 gallon water change at once if I so desire.

So, assuming there's a half inch baffle between the two halves, that gives me 24X 29 inches on either side. I've given myself a 6x9.5 inch compartment for the drains from the tank. Hopefully that's big enough for two output pipes with enough room left over for me to change filter socks. I then left a 4 inch space for bubble trap baffles. I'm not sure if that's enough room for a bubble trap, I'll be getting Kevin's input on that. Then there is the skimmer chamber, it's just enough to get the skimmer in with a bit of clearance on either side. If this is too tight, I can cheat the centre baffle a couple of inches to the right and make the reactor/water change chamber a little smaller, or cheat the baffle that separates the skimmer chamber/input chamber out in to the refugium section, or both.

I added a baffle that cuts in to the middle of the reactor/water change section to encourage water to flow more in a U shape, as I don't want there to be any dead spaces in the corners. I'm not sure if it's necessary, or if it will make it hard to put in reactors so it might not be necessary. I also am not sure if this sump will allow micro-bubbles in to the display, so I added a possible space for another bubble catcher baffle set after the skimmer. It might not be practical to put one there, but if not there, I don't know where else!

Since I'll keep the water level at 17 inches high when it's running, I made the baffle between the input/skimmer chambers and the refugium be full height, except for a stretch right before the centre dividing baffle. There the baffle height between the skimmer chamber and the refugium drops to 18 inches (or maybe even 17.5) so that when the first gate valve is closed, the water in the chamber only has to go up by one (or half) an inch before it pours over in to the refugium, diverting flow away from the reacto/water change chamber. With such a small rise in water level, the skimmer will hopefully not go nuts when I divert the water directly to the refugium, and the water level in the refugium won't fall very much before more water stars pouring in to it. Once everything has reached equilibrium again, I will close the second gate valve, completely isolating the reactor/water change chamber from the system.

Green line is water flow when the gate valves are open, the red line is when the gate valves are closed. I also flipped it so that the external pump is on the side of the cabinet with the drain (where the RO unit will be), and the top off reservoirs will be right up against the side with the power supply. It will mean that the auto-top off line and the drain line will need to traverse the whole length of the sump, but since I'm only leaving 12 inches of space it lets me keep that 12 inches all on one side (the side with the R/O unit and external pump). It also means that the R/O unit won't have to be suspended above the dosing chambers, as I think that would make it hard to re-fill them.

I'm very open to suggestions, comments, or improvements. The sump will need to be ordered soon as it needs to go in before the stand, and they need the stand in place shortly after they start drywalling.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/sumpdesign2.jpg

[asylumdown]

b) something like three 250w MHs with Lumenmax Elite reflectors and some kind of strip lighting on the sides for blue supplementation(either T5 or LED)........or


I just read a study of the lumenmax and lumenmax elite reflectors, it seems like the elite version concentrate light more and the straight lumenmax spreads it out more. I guess it's the balancing act, but I like having concentrated light. Do you think I could get away with the elite one if I supplemented 10-14K T5's on either side?

[asylumdown]

The stand should have been delivered to Red Coral today (woohoo!). The sump needs to go in before the stand is placed on top of it, so I made more formalized drawings before 'taking the plunge' and ordering tomorrow. If anyone has any input in to this design, please, please, PLEASE let me know.

I sat down with the computer and worked out proper 'to scale' drawings of the sump. I've drawn two versions, version 1 will only fit a Deltec SC 2060 skimmer, and version 2 will fit a Deltec SC 2560. Based on manufacturer specs, the 2560 seems like it's a bit of overkill for my size of aquarium, but I like it for 3 reasons:

1. In V2 the water change chamber is smaller (approx 17% of display volume), so at any given moment I'll have less opportunity to change the water. If that is the case I want to have maximum nutrient export methods possible. I can still do larger, manual water changes, but the point of this tank is to build something that doesn't require me to get my hands wet (though I know I will cuz I love getting my hands wet), so I want to only use the water change chamber to do my water changes.

2. The SC2560 is the smallest size you can have the Deltec auto-cleaner for their skimmer. I won't get one right away, but I love the idea and I want one eventually.

3. Even if I get an SC 2060, I have extra space for a later upgrade (though for how expensive those things are, I will need to start playing the lottery if I'm thinking about 'upgrading').

The other thing I did on both versions that I need some input on to know if it's possible:

In my first design I was afraid that water wouldn't flow through the entire sump, leaving dead spots in the water change chamber (on the right), so I added a central baffle that will force water to flow more in a true 'U' shape. At first I had it so that the baffle had a cut out so that water flowed over the cut out section, but then I realized that I would be creating a dam that would prevent me from being able to completely drain the water change chamber with one pump. I hope that instead I can have that baffle flipped upside down. I drew it on the plans so I hope you see what I mean.

I made the bubble trap section exactly 6 inches wide (total width), which is what I've heard is the standard width for a bubble trap. I don't know how thick the glass needs to be so I really just drew it in as a place holder. I want the water height in the sump to be 17 inches when the sump is running, so I made the middle baffle of the bubble trap be 17" high, I might need it to be 16.5" high, not sure yet. I also left a full 2 inches between the final bubble trap baffle and the baffle that separates the water change chamber and the skimmer/refugium chamber. If I can get away with less that 2 inches let me know as that would give me more space between the drains from the tank and the skimmer.

The other thing I added was a 3.5 inch wide trough between the entrance to the refugium and the exit from the water change chamber. It's only 7 inches high because I don't want to completely isolate the refugium, but it will keep the most forceful stream of water from directly hitting the regium. If anyone thinks this trough needs to be wider let me know, but I would like to keep it as narrow as humanly possible so that the refugium can be as large as possible (this is part of my desire to have as much nutrient export as possible so that a smaller water change chamber isn't such a big deal).

I have also looked up the various reactors I think I'd want. The biggest reactor (the ones that could hold zeovit or biopellets) should be able to sit on the floor to the left of the sump, since I'm leaving 12 inches of space between the sump and one side of the cabinet, and the return pump is only about 12 inches long. At the moment I think I'd at most want two other reactors (3 total), and since I'd be using them for things like activated carbon and a phosphate absorber, they can be the large size TLF reactos that can hang off the side of the sump in the refugium chamber. At best, I need no reactors in the water change chamber. At worst, I need one reactor in the water change chamber, but I would put its pump and output on the other side of the central baffle so that even when I drained the water change chamber, it would remain on, full of water, and never be affected by the water change. This will also leave me the option to add a calcium reactor one day if I wanted (I think)

The one thing I didn't account for was how thick the the baffle between the two sides of the water chamber are. If it needs to be half inch thick, then each half of the water change chamber will be either 14"x23" (sump 1) or 14"X21" (sump 2).

As before, the green line shows the flow of water when the gate valves are open, the red line shows the flow of water when the gate valves are closed.

Sump option 1 (skimmmer Deltec SC 2060)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Sumpoption1.jpg

Sump Option 2 (skimmer Deltec SC 2560)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Sumpoption2.jpg

[dave_C]

from what i can make out of this design, you may have some major micro bubble issues with it. I am just guessing, but it looks like the refug over flows into the return chamber, if the water level in the return chamber fall below the 7 inches you will have some turbulence right in front off you return pump which is not a good thing. also the bubble trap after the skimmer is not needed from what i can tell, bubble traps are usually used just before the return chamber to control the amount of bubbles getting into the pump, you should only have a baffle after the skimmer to control how high the water level should be in that chamber. hope that makes sense lol but i could also be reading your design wrong too:redface: the other problem is the size you have set out for your return area, if it is only 3.5" the largest hole you will be able to safely drill would be like around 1.25" ie 1/2 inch bulk head. just reminder, if you want a one inch return, than the hole size is almost two inches. now also keep in mind the hole also has to be half the diameter for the hole from the edge of the glass to be safe.

[asylumdown]

The water in the return chamber should (hopefully) never fall below 7 inches. In order to be able to do the largest water changes possible, I had to increase the depth of the water in the sump to 17 inches. It will mean the skimmer needs to sit on about an 8 inch stand, but I have a custom height aquarium stand and the Deltec's are 23.62 inches tall (it's why I chose them), so I still have plenty of clearance between the bottom of the aquarium and the top of the skimmer. That will mean that the baffle between the fuge and the return channel will always be under about 10 inches of water. I only created that baffle so that water entering the fuge/return channel from the water change chamber wouldn't be blasting at it's highest velocity over sand & algae, and to hold the sand up from falling in to the return line. If that's the case, do I even need a bubble trap?

If I had no bubble trap, I have 2 options:

1.Put an 18.5 inch baffle right after the skimmer so that the water level in the skimmer/input chamber would be a constant 18.5 inches. I still have plenty of clearance between the top of the skimmer and the bottom of the tank if I make the stand the skimmer sits on 9.5 inches high. Then the water would pour into another chamber created by the space between the 18.5 inch baffle and the centre baffle. During normal operation, the water height in the rest of the sump would be 17 inches, but when I isolate the water change chamber to do a water would, the water in the chamber after the skimmer would rise until it poured in to the fuge. This design would have some water tumbling during normal operation, but it would be tumbling several feet (if the water path was a straight line) before the return pump.

2. Not have any height setting baffles at all. The water height in the entire skimmer would be 17 inches, and the entire sump level would fluctuate with evaporation. When I close the gate valve between the sump chamber and the water change chamber, the water will rise an inch to an inch and a half before it pours over in to the refugium chamber. There's going to be an auto-top off system, so this might be feasible.

Any thoughts?

Also, would making that channel from the water change chamber to the return pump 4 inches wide be enough for a 1 inch return line?, that would leave 1 inch on either side and a 2 inch hole.

[dave_C]

ok i did a crude markup of what i can tell is happen, but there are a few area i am not sure what you had in mind

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump2.jpg
http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump1.jpg

if you can tell me if this is close to what you had in mind or if i am missing something in this.


ok here are the areas that are confusing me

1)where the bubble trap after the skimmer does not seem to go any where
2)the water change chambers, what are they there for and why two?
3)it sound like you want to put gates values under water, i am not sure but i bet that may not be the best option as there is metal screws on the one that i have seem
4)what are you putting in the refug? a drop of 18 inches to even 10 inches for the water is going to make a lot of bubbles, that very close to where you return is

[asylumdown]

Holy crap that's incredible.

The one thing that's missing from that render is the opening in the central baffle that cuts the water change chambers in two. I have no way of drawing in 3-D so I just marked it up in pen on my drawings.

Here's the theory:

When the sump is running, the two gate valves in to the water change chamber are open, so that water enters the sump in the skimmer chamber, goes past the bubble trap, through gate valve 1 in to the front section of the water change chamber, through the opening in the baffle that cuts the water change chamber in two, then through the back gate valve in to the channel in the refugium. Essentially, during normal operation, the full size of the sump (except for the 4 dosing containers) will have tank water flowing through it. The only time water will pour from the skimmer chamber in to the refugium is when I'm doing a water change.

Water changes will happen by first closing the gate valve between the skimmer chamber and the water change chamber. Water will then fill up the skimmer chamber and pour over in to the refugium. Once everything has levelled out again, I'll close the second gate valve between the return area and the water change chamber. This will totally isolate half of my sump and divert the water temporarily directly in to the refugium.

Now, I will have the auto-top off feed line and sensor inside the water change chamber. There will also be a pump with a line directly out to the sewer inside the water change chamber. Once the water change chamber (or two chambers I guess) are isolated, I will kill power to my auto-top off system and turn on the drain pump on that side of the sump. Once the water change chamber is drained, I'll turn power to the auto-top off system back on and let it fill the water change chamber up with fresh R/O water (the reservoir is in the basement beneath the tank). Then I add and mix salt, open the gate valves, and return the water change chamber to the circuit of the sump.

It forces the water to completely change direction in the sump. Originally I didn't have a central baffle that divided the water change chamber in two, but I wanted to forces it to flow through the whole sump and not end up with dead spots in the corners of the water change chamber. I *hope* that it's possible to make the opening between the two halves of the water change chamber be at the bottom of the sump, as opposed to a cut out at the top, as this will allow me to completely drain the WC chamber with just one pump.

The logic behind this design:

I have no fish room, the only remote equipment I can have is the R/O reservoir. Everything else needs to fit under the tank. It's getting built in to the house, so I wanted to be able to automate water changes as much as possible, but not sacrifice sump volume by taking up floor space with a separate water mixing container. I also need to be able to do a significant enough of a water change to make it worth the whole endeavour, hence the height of the sump, and the 17" water depth within the sump while it's running.

Is what I'm thinking about even possible?

[asylumdown]

looking at that in 3-D, it's making me re-consider whether or not the gate valves I have in mind are possible. I don't think that a 2 inch gate valve exists that has a handle 16 inches above the actual valve.

hmmmm.

[dave_C]

ok i think i know where you are going with this:biggrin: you want to be able to keep the tank running will doing a water change. the only thing is you are wasting so much space in the sump with this setup as there is nothing you can do with those two chambers. give me a couple of minutes and see if i can some up with something a little more functional for you

[asylumdown]

Oh man thanks, that's awesome. Yah, I basically didn't want to sacrifice any system volume or sump size to have a second salt water mixing container/storage under the cabinet. I figure if I can build it so that I don't need to hand siphon out water, and then hand ball in mixed salt water from a garbage can, that's optimal. Then if I can keep the volume I would otherwise use for the mixing and storing of water change water as part of my system, even better.

[dave_C]

ok see if this makes any sense to you :lol:
http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump5.jpg

the return chamber is on the right, the middle is for whatever you want to put in ie carbon, reactors, heaters or such. the left is for ro water for auto top

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump4.jpg

the top left is your mixing tank, top middle is for the refug and the top right is for the skimmer. the holes in the brace is for the drains from the main tank.

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump3-1.jpg

the three little tanks with lid are for your three part dosing.

how it works is

1)one drain feeds the skimmer chamber which will keep a water height of 9 inches, than is over flows into a two inch tunnel that feed into the reactor chamber

2) the second drain with a ball value will feed into the mixing tank, with the ball value open it will force the water to overflow in to the refug chamber. than after the refug it overflows in to the same tunnel as the skimmer to end up at the reactor chamber. with the ball value turned off, the mixing tank will be isolated from the remaining parts of the sumps and you will be able to drain that chamber with a ball value installed on the side of the sump. than add water and salt, wait for it to mix and turn the ball value will bring the refug and mixing chamber back in line

here is a top view of how the skimmer and refug overflow into the tunnel
http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad223/conceptaquariums/sump6.jpg


hope that makes sense lol

[lastlight]

Dave's a sketchup ninja. Never know when he'll attack lol...

[dave_C]

Dave's a sketchup ninja. Never know when he'll attack lol...

lol i use to hate it but now i can get thing like this done in under 10 min. you should see the one i muck up of my basement and fish room, that was a 3 day head scratcher for me:lol:

[asylumdown]

Holy crap! Thank you so much.!

So where would the auto-top off sensor need to be in this design? Would it need to go in the return chamber?

The only changes that I would need to make would be to the R/O top off container, do you think I could eliminate that chamber altogether by using my reservoir in the basement (about 50 gallons) as the source of my top off water? The house is being wired so that I will be able to hook a pump in the basement reservoir to the top off sensor. I also don't really have a way to get R/O water upstairs by any other means unless I hand ball it up in buckets (not optimal), so I'm trying to think how I could modify this design to automatically fill the water change chamber via a pump in the basement. In the first design I had used the auto-top off system to do it, but maybe I could just have a second pump in the R/O reservoir that I control manually?

Also, any chance you feel like building a sweet a** sump? ;)

[asylumdown]

I'd probably also still need a pump to drain the mixing chamber I think. The drain that was plumbed in to the wall is about 9 inches off the ground.

[asylumdown]

So, Dave is my hero.

I think this is pretty much exactly what I'm gonna end up building, with only a couple of tiny modifications to account for the limited access I have to the cabinet and the placement of drains. I can't wait to see this thing turn into reality. This sump is so damn cool I wish I didn't have to hide it in a cabinet.

I'm actually giddy.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/adam.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/adam1.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/adam2.jpg

[asylumdown]

The stand has been completed and delivered to Red Coral. Waiting on the sump before we install it, as the stand will need to be lifted over the sump.

Also sorted out the ventilation issues in the space above the tank, an exhaust fan was added to the cavity where the lights will be that vents directly outside. This will hopefully help deal with humidity issues as well. It's currently being wired to a switch on the wall that will have a built in timer, and will run during the hours that the MH are on. I would have preferred for it to be controlled by the controller, but for it to pass code it needs to be wired in to the house.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Exhaustfan.jpg

They've also run an ethernet connection to the aquarium cabinet. I want the Neptune Apex system, and this will allow me to keep all wires contained.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Drainplusethernet.jpg

Whole tank shot (with the bath tub for the master bedroom on the floor behind):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/WTS.jpg

and the world's most embarrassing picture of me with the stand. Have another drink Adam... It's almost exactly as long as I am tall (but it was sitting on a pallet so it looks taller)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Stand-1.jpg

[asylumdown]

Delivery of the stand and the sump happened today. I could barely concentrate at work thinking about it all day.

Here's some pics. For various reasons, we ended up needing to go with a sump design that was closer to my original version, but modified in ways that make it much, much better. One thing is for sure, this sump is a beast, it's bigger than most people's aquariums! When it's running it will hold over 100 gallons of water.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1225.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1226.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1227.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1229.jpg

The sump is big enough that it needed to be in place with the stand lowered on top of it. Thankfully everything fit pretty much perfectly.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1231.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1232.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1233.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1236.jpg

The highest water level in the sump when it's running will be the skimmer chamber, at 18 inches deep (the skimmer will be sitting on a 9 inch stand), then it diverts in to two chambers, a smaller refugium area where I'll culture macro algae for my tangs/grow frags, and the main water change chamber (17 inches deep). Then it exits the water change chamber in to the return area, where the lowest water level will be about 15.5 inches deep. When I want to do a water change, I'll divert the water from entering the skimmer chamber, in to the back of the return chamber, It basically isolates the entire sump from the main tank, but since the water level in the skimmer chamber will never change it will just run on still water while I empty and refill the water change chamber. This design leaves plenty of room for reactors (like, tons of room), and I'll probably still have enough room next to the tank for a single reactor if I want it.

[reefermadness]

Wow....nice planning and great work so far.

I probably shouldnt say this but the only thing I can see that would bug me with the sump is that it looks like it will be a real pain working in there because its so high.

The other thing is I think you will need more light than 3x250w and PC lighting...especially if you want some colourful SPS.

Amazing work and planning so far though.

[fishytime]

Things are starting to come together nicely on this build Adam..... So when is the possession date for the house?.... Seems like you've been building it forever

[kien]

Wow great looking build! I especially like how your builder is building all the infrastructure for you! :-D I need a new house..

:pop2:

[DisneyCoralReef]

Waw! looking forwards to seeing how this is going to finish. Going to be amazing to see it finished.

[asylumdown]

Wow....nice planning and great work so far.

I probably shouldnt say this but the only thing I can see that would bug me with the sump is that it looks like it will be a real pain working in there because its so high.

The other thing is I think you will need more light than 3x250w and PC lighting...especially if you want some colourful SPS.

Amazing work and planning so far though.

Yah, I was a little concerned about that, but all the major stuff is right up at the front, and the hardest to reach areas will only need love once every few months. Since this design pretty much automates water changes, I'm basically trading one weekly pain in the butt for a slightly less convenient cabinet. Everything will still fit inside, and I'll still be able to reach everything, which is what matters.

[asylumdown]

Things are starting to come together nicely on this build Adam..... So when is the possession date for the house?.... Seems like you've been building it forever

Ha! It was supposed to be August 8th. As you can see from the pictures, that's not going to happen. They've pushed the completion date back a couple of times, most recently to a vague sounding 'Before Christmas'.

We still haven't signed off on the design of the stairs, but I've been told that drywall is for sure happening this week.

[asylumdown]

Wow great looking build! I especially like how your builder is building all the infrastructure for you! :-D I need a new house..

:pop2:

I would have LOVED there to be a full fish room in the basement. But the room I originally had my eye on in the plans to be my fishroom ended up needing to be the furnace, hot water, and boiler room. The only other place we could have put a fish room was on the other side of a concrete foundation wall and that was a fight I knew I was going to lose with the spouse. Having them plumb water and drainage to right to the tank was a must however.

[reefermadness]

I don't know how long you have been in the hobby but it is great fore sight to make the system easy to maintain. One of the tricks of being in the hobby for a LONG time is to make maintenance easier on yourself so you don't get tired of it. A lot of new(ish) reefers will forget this part and get tired of skimmer cleaning, top offs and lugging water around for water changes.

[asylumdown]

I don't know how long you have been in the hobby but it is great fore sight to make the system easy to maintain. One of the tricks of being in the hobby for a LONG time is to make maintenance easier on yourself so you don't get tired of it. A lot of new(ish) reefers will forget this part and get tired of skimmer cleaning, top offs and lugging water around for water changes.

Yah, on my 90 it was taking me forever to do a full clean of the tank. By the time I would lug out all the hoses, drain the tank, scrape the glass, mix the salt in a big rubber-maid, hand ball it back in with buckets and put my equipment away two hours would have gone by. Plus I'd make a giant mess on the floor no matter what I did (thank god for concrete floors). With this tank I pretty much decided that if I couldn't make water changes be a 20 minute event, I wasn't going to bother, and it's really easy to set yourself up for it if you're building the house from scratch :)

With this tank, a water change will consist of me turning one valve to isolate most of the sump from the system, plugging in one pump to drain the biggest chamber of the sump, dumping in the right amount of salt, plugging in a second pump to fill the big chamber back up with r/o water, turning on a koralia that will live in that chamber for 10 minutes to mix it, then closing the valve to return the tank to it's normal flow through the sump. The only equipment I'll need to move will be the bucket of salt and the scraper that I use to clean the glass. The whole thing should take no more than 15-20 minutes.

[lastlight]

Really like following along. I'm guessing it's a smaller builder? In my experience the bigger ones don't like to mess with the spec plans as much as you have. Lucky guy!

That high sump will drive you nuts but sounds like it's a necessary evil here. I did water changes in my 225 exactly as you intend to. Easy as pie and only took me maybe 10 min.

[Dez]

I don't know how long you have been in the hobby but it is great fore sight to make the system easy to maintain. One of the tricks of being in the hobby for a LONG time is to make maintenance easier on yourself so you don't get tired of it. A lot of new(ish) reefers will forget this part and get tired of skimmer cleaning, top offs and lugging water around for water changes.

Skimmer cleaning? What's that :mrgreen: I've only cleaned my skimmer 3 times in almost 2 years since my aquarium has been running :redface:

All joking aside, yes - easy maintenance is KEY. I've got my 40 plus gallon water changes down to 5-6 minutes now after I upgraded my water change pump to a bigger pump. Most of the water change time is waiting for the water to be pumped/drained.

[lastlight]

40 dez? Tell me that's not weekly for your system volume lol. I was hoping to only do 40s on my 400 ;)

[Dez]

40 dez? Tell me that's not weekly for your system volume lol. I was hoping to only do 40s on my 400 ;)

Yep, every week like clockwork. I've been doing a bit more than 40 since adding the 5' frag tank since I figured I have more water volume now. A bucket of salt per month :(.

[asylumdown]

Really like following along. I'm guessing it's a smaller builder? In my experience the bigger ones don't like to mess with the spec plans as much as you have. Lucky guy!

That high sump will drive you nuts but sounds like it's a necessary evil here. I did water changes in my 225 exactly as you intend to. Easy as pie and only took me maybe 10 min.

Our builder is Citicore, we bought a house in a 60 year old neighborhood and knocked it down, so the house is 100% custom. It gives you tons of freedom, but we're finding that infinite choices can actually start to be a bad thing. It's easy to blow budgets, and of course, I can walk in to a plumbing show room and pick the most expensive things without even looking at a price tag.

I knew the sump was tall, but on paper it didn't seem like it was THAT tall. All that matters is that the skimmer and all the equip will fit and I can put the stuff I need to access the most right up front.

The house was insulated this week, so drywall should start next week (finally!). Once the drywall is up I'll be ordering the actual aquarium, I'm thinking starphire glass on the two exposed panels.

I'm super torn on the best nutrient export system. I can't decide between the Zeovit method or biopellets. I tried biopellets on my 90 gallon and had a crazy cyano outbreak, but I know others have awesome success with them. I love the look of zeo tanks, but man, daily supplementation just doesn't sound like something I will reliably do.

What do you all think?

[fishytime]

Prodibio???.......same principal as Zeo......no rocks to tumble and a more forgiving dosing schedule

[asylumdown]

Met with Kevin, the project manager, and the interior designer yesterday to discuss the finishes around the aquarium. The dining room side is going to be a clean white wall with a tank hovering in the middle. They'll put a wooden panel in front of the stand and build the entire wall around the aquarium out of mdf that's been treated with a marine level of water-proofing. The tank will be rimmed with a thin strip of stainless steel to hide the returns of the wall panels. Should look hot. The access panels will be as low profile as possible with the goal of making it look like they don't exist.

The office side is where most of the business of maintenance will occur, so the access needs to be equally scaled up. They will be building a frame for a large set of vented/louvered cabinet doors for access to the sump area, with solid panels acting as doors above. Originally the doors above were supposed to be louvered/vented to help deal with heat from the MH, but with the fan running at all times, we wanted to create a bottom up vacuum of air that would also evacuate humidity from the sump cabinet. The fan's a 90 CFM, so it will hopefully be able to evacuate enough heat from the canopy to prevent things from getting dangerous.

[asylumdown]

The house is fully insulated and should be getting drywalled at this very moment. Took these pics on Friday:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/boxed.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Boxed2.jpg

Just in case any of the drywallers were confused as to whether or not they should stand on the vertical surfaces of of the sump/stand's protective box, we left them a handy sign.

[phi delt reefer]

$100 says you catch one of those idiots standing on it with a smoke dangling out his mouth when you swing by for a surprise look in the near future :D

[asylumdown]

Not a whole lot has changed, but the house is 80% drywalled now. Can't believe how much of a difference it makes, actually being able to look at closed walls, finally feels like a house. Mudding and taping starts next week, then it's time to order the actual tank!

[asylumdown]

perhaps these photos of an empty space where a tank will eventually be are a little gratuitous, but I'm excited as hell this is happening, so I don't care! ;)

The fan's been incorporated in to the ceiling:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/fandrywall.jpg

From the office looking toward Kitchen/Dining room:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Office.jpg

From the dining room looking in toward the office:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Dining.jpg

And just cuz it finally looks like a room, the kitchen and dining room (nothing to do with the tank, I'm just excited)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Kitchen.jpg

[lastlight]

perhaps these photos of an empty space where a tank will eventually be are a little gratuitous, but I'm excited as hell this is happening, so I don't care! ;)

Not at all nobody will understand that as well as us! Been through two house builds and a few tanks builds. I envy you that feeling is really tough to beat. Sweet anticipation! Things are looking great btw.

[asylumdown]

Not at all nobody will understand that as well as us! Been through two house builds and a few tanks builds. I envy you that feeling is really tough to beat. Sweet anticipation! Things are looking great btw.

Heh, thanks. As soon as the drywall boards went up, it suddenly started looking like an actual house. I'm in Ontario for the next week, and while I'm here they're putting on the cedar boards and soffit on the outside and prepping the house for stucco. It will be a totally different structure when I get home!

They also apparently poured the concrete in the backyard yesterday, which is pretty thrilling as there is going to be a pretty large water feature in it as well - I haven't worked it out yet but it might actually hold more water than the aquarium.

[asylumdown]

Ah heck, I'll post a pic of that too:

So far they've only framed the exterior walls that will hold up half the backyard, there's going to be a second inner tier of walls that will form a 3 level terrace stepping down from the upper level to the lower level. about half of the long side will be sealed, so at the top there will be an stone bowl that water pours from, down the face of one of the walls in to a shallow pool, then down a second wall in to the lower tier, which will be 2 feet deep and 5 feet wide. The plan is to fill the bottom tier with water lilies, and the middle tier with marginal plants. However, I'm half heartedly trying to figure out if there's a way I can make it a salt water fountain and fill it with animals you'd find in a BC tide pool hehe.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Backyard.jpg

[fishytime]

where are you building, Adam.....obviously an old neighborhood, with an alley in the back...

[asylumdown]

It's in St. Andrews Heights. I have lived in Calgary my whole life and I had never heard of the place until we saw the listing for the house we bought.

It's just off University Drive next to the Foothills. Nice old neighbourhood that seems to be about 10% under construction with new homes at any given moment.

[asylumdown]

I've spent the past 2 days (literally) researching lighting options. I had pretty much discounted LEDs as an option a few months ago as I hadn't done a whole ton of research and I didn't trust the technology to spend the kind of cash I would need for a high end fixture. However, I stopped in at Red Coral on the weekend and saw the Reef Tech unit there and was inspired to do some more digging. I'm thinking that I might have been too quick to pass them over as an option.

After some serious digging, I've come to the conclusion that LEDs might be right for me, but I'm majorly on the fence regarding brand.

The three options I am most interested in are:

Vertex Illumina 260 (6 ft fixture)
- I like the modability of this fixture, but I'm having a hard time finding people who've owned the fixture for many months who are posting reliable pictures. I've also been looking in to the bulbs they use, and while I haven't been able to find the specific 'white' bulb they use on the Cree website, I've found others that are comparable (I think anyway), and they don't seem to have the red peak in the right nanometre range (a peak closer to 550nm, whereas photosynthesis does best at about 675). I don't know how big of a deal this is, but I know that that peak is really critical to chlorophyll, so I'm still not 100% sold on this. I like that it can be updated as technology advances, but I scream at the idea of paying extra for something as tacky as 'lightning effects'. Also, It's a 34 inch wide tank, and if I'm spending 5 grand on a fixture I'm not at all interested in needing to supplement it to get extra spread, it should be a one stop shop. Some people say it's 120 degree spread will cover up to 36 inches, but I've not been totally blown away by anecdotal PAR readings. I do think the sunrise/sunset and moon cycles feature has value in terms of fish behaviour though, and this is a very appealing draw.

Orphek PR-156W - They claim to have developed their own diodes specifically for corals, and I've seen some killer tanks on RC using just these lights. They don't mess around with the gimmicky lighting modes, but the ability to fade on and off would be better. They're less expensive for what I'd need, but I'm confused about their colours - their white is a 16K diode with a pretty weak spike in the 550nm range compared to the spike in the blue range. This doesn't seem any different than the Cree LEDs on the vertex from a spectrum point of view, but I'm by no means an expert on lights. They're definitely on the short list. Also, if I orient them perpendicular to the long side of the tank, they will give me more than enough coverage with 4 fixtures.

ReefTech Prometheus - Hot little fixture, though not sure if it has the spread to cover a 34" wide tank, and again, the idea of needing supplemental lighting of any kind after spending 4000 gives me gas. It's possible that they could be oriented perpendicular like the Orpheks and go with 4 units instead of three, but they're not really that long of a fixture to begin with. The whites on this unit are 7000-8300K, which should have a spike much closer to 675nm, and should therefore be more photosynthetically useful to corals.

I would love some input. I'm also thinking I'll wait to make a decision until the last possible moment (sometime in December), and hope that something more specifically practical has come out by then that addresses all the issues currently facing LEDs.

[lastlight]

New house pics.

You've been too quiet =)

[asylumdown]

hehe, you're right. I've been checking Canreef pretty much every day without logging in. I'm presently tankless so I've not had a whole lot to contribute, but it is definitely time for an update.

Not a whole ton has happened regarding the tank since my last post because the house was being stucco'd and they were getting ready to lay floor tile (we needed more instant leveller than any one supplier carried - we have A LOT of tile). The builder wisely wanted to wait until the stucco was applied before they go further with the interior, as houses tend to settle when you apply that much weight to their exterior. However, they've now completed the floor tile on the main and basement levels, and are almost done applying it to the two vertical feature walls. As such, I've met with the finishing carpenter twice this in the past week regarding the final look of the tank area, and I'm happy to report I will now be getting full access to both sides of the cabinet (above and below) with a series of touch latch doors that will be integrated in to the final look of the tank wall. I'll be getting in touch with Kevin in the next week regarding the final dimensions of the tank so we can order it. They're going to build the cabinetry on the front (dining room) side first, then we'll slide the tank in from the office side and they'll finish the cabinetry around it. I've asked the carpenter to build the back side of the cabinetry in such a way that if necessary I'll one day be able to remove the tank without doing an entire renovation.

Everything looks the same except for the floor right now, but I guess I can share some photos:

Looking from the dining room to the tank. The floor turned out better than I had dreamed. It looks like a cross between polished concrete and tarnished gun metal. Unfortunately, it photographs terribly and the floor (which has now been covered with protective cardboard) was filthy when I took this pic.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/tank.jpg

This is the dining room, you can kind of get a sense of how the floor will look when it's clean.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Diningroom.jpg

and also, they finished the concrete work in the backyard, the water fall/feature is now obvious (it's the tallest tier and the two sections of wall below it). Just waiting for them to back fill the raised section and lay the irrigation system
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Backyardconcrete.jpg

[lastlight]

Yeah that's a nice lookin tile.

And holy cow that's a ton of concrete work for a water feature. My guess is the budget for that makes your tank build seem somewhat minor :lol: Nice stuff!

[asylumdown]

Well, the walls were necessary regardless of if there was a water feature or not, The property has a weird elevation change where the SE corner is the lowest point and the NW corner is the highest, so we've got a half walk-out basement. Because the highest point on our property is also one of the lowest points on the neighbours property we ended up needing a series of concrete walls if we wanted any level space in our backyard. The terraces were necessary due to building codes about wall height, and thus through happy accident I got a perfect place to put a water feature :)

But yes, the backyard has more concrete in it than the rest of our house. That was painful.

I also meant to mention that I think I'm leaning towards the new Ecotech Radion LED's for lighting. I would need 6 units I think to cover my tank, which is not a small investment, so I've been following Mr. Saltwater Tank's experiment with them before I commit to anything.

[mseepman]

In regards to your LED questions...I got to see two of those fixtures in use above tanks at MACNA and I was surprised that the Orphek had the nicest color. Even more surprising was that a Coralife fixture that is shortly to be released had nice color too. I noticed that you didn't consider the AI or the new Maxspect...both very nice and controllable. Lastly, I was surprised when I saw the Coralvue Phobos...it was pretty nice and incorporated some additional colors to broaden their spectrum. Maybe research these as well so you can make the best ending decision. I personally am doing DIY.

[asylumdown]

I did a bunch of reading on the AI, there's a huge thread on RC regarding them (and LEDs in general) right now that sort of turned me off of them. It seems people either love them, and have mind blowing success with them, or they claim they have killed their tank. Also, I don't like the colours, just cool white and blue... it hypothetically is all the corals *should* need for growth, but I think they're missing something.

If the Orphek's were even a little controllable, I'd be more interested. I'm not looking for some cheesy storm effects or anything, but I would like the ability to simulate the sun rising and setting every day, and I want a proper moon cycle. I know Orphek's have a moon cycle that you can program manually on each fixture, but they're missing the integration and controllability in general I think.

I did look at the Maxspect, and Im going to continue to mull that over while Mark Callaghan (sp?) continues to test the Radions. I want something close to full spectrum, and as an out of the box solution the Radions just seem like they've got what I wanted, but it's still a couple of months out before I need to make a choice.

[mseepman]

This light is made by the Chinese...so who knows about the quality...but they've stepped up their game a little.
http://reefbuilders.com/2011/09/20/pharos-led-coralvue/#more-48493
Saw this light...looked okay but wasn't over a tank with livestock (as many weren't, like the Radions).

I also liked the Radions when I saw them, but wish they had put it over a live tank to see what the overall look ended up being like.

[asylumdown]

Driveway was poured this week :)

I'm considering going mostly bare bottom in this tank, and I would like some opinions:

1. I have no interest in dealing with a deep sand bed for several reasons, so sand on the bottom would be purely aesthetic and too shallow to offer much in the way of nutrient reduction (like in my last tank).

2. I was looking at pics of my old 90 gallon and I realize that as my tank aged, I started to develop more and more problems with nuisance algae and cyano, even though I was getting more and more sophisticated in my nutrient removal techniques and technology. There are plenty of reasons this could be the case I'm sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a big contributing factor was the progressive build up of crap in the sand under/behind rocks where I couldn't get a vacuum

3. I'm not really in love with the look of bare-bottom tanks, but I figure you can cover them over with LPS and coral over time.

4. I REALLY love wrasses though. So I was considering building several little 'sand boxes' that would hold a couple of inches of sand each, but in locations that I could easily access for thorough vacuuming.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

[lastlight]

I've considered bare-bottom for my new tank as well but like you want my wrasses to be happy. The sandbox idea sounds good but when I think of the sand-storm my leopard stirs up EVERY night when he goes to sleep I'm seeing those areas depleted of sand pretty fast. You'd be very slowly adding sand to top the areas up while your wrasses gave you a shallow sand-bed over time I think.

[asylumdown]

I've considered bare-bottom for my new tank as well but like you want my wrasses to be happy. The sandbox idea sounds good but when I think of the sand-storm my leopard stirs up EVERY night when he goes to sleep I'm seeing those areas depleted of sand pretty fast. You'd be very slowly adding sand to top the areas up while your wrasses gave you a shallow sand-bed over time I think.

Yah I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I'll just do 1 or half an inch in most places then build up couple 'dune' areas where the wrasses can sleep

Also.. hardwood is 90% installed and the kitchen and closet inserts are being manufactured on site as we speak! Wheeeeee!

[asylumdown]

The finishing carpenter was there prepping the enclosure today. Site meeting with the builder, the finisher and Kevin on Friday to get exact final measures to place the glass order.

Dining room view:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1694.jpg
We had to replace the original top sheet of plywood on top of the stand with a much thicker 3 inch piece of wood in order to have something to drill the door frames in to. Also, the MDF columns on either side needed to be wide enough to cover the steel legs of the stand in order for there to be enough clearance to attach the door hinges. In order to keep this view symmetrical, it means that about 3 inches of the right side and 5 inches of the left side of the tank will actually be covered up.

Office side view:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1695.jpg
When I stopped by tonight, the finisher had also installed an MDF panel on the office side where the purple line is. It matched the front of the tank, but would have meant the tank couldn't have been installed without reducing it's length by 5 or 6 inches. I had him remove it (obviously), and we're redesigning the office side of the aquarium so that you'll be able to see 100% of the width of the tank. Depending on how the finished enclosure looks, I might also do cut-outs on the front side so less glass is hidden.

[mseepman]

Love seeing this coming together! What were the biggest hurdles in explaining what you wanted to accomplish to the builder? I am in the process of building a house around a tank and would love to know before I run into the same issues.

[lastlight]

Wow that is a thick piece of plywood! Certainly nothing I've ever seen at home depot etc.. you don't even need support in the middle with that thing lol.

Keep crackin' the whip I like what I'm seeing!

[asylumdown]

Love seeing this coming together! What were the biggest hurdles in explaining what you wanted to accomplish to the builder? I am in the process of building a house around a tank and would love to know before I run into the same issues.

So far it's been communicating the requirements of the actual tank, which aren't really flexible. For example, the tank has been designed from the start to have 4 vortech pumps (either 4 MP40s or 2 MP40s and 2 MP60s) as the main source of circulation, and I had a really hard time explaining why I needed the joist spaces open on the left and right sides of the tank. I think carpenters are used to being able to make on the fly adjustments when real world conditions don't match drawings exactly, cheating certain measurements here and there, but in the case of an aquarium half an inch can be the difference between being able to use the pumps you want, or the protein skimmer you bought, or having easy access to a critical area.

I've approached it from the perspective of letting them know what my 'givens' are: things that absolutely must be adhered to from a functional perspective, like size of access points, clearances, etc. The outward design I don't care so much about and left that up to the guy who designed the house, so I just said as long as the givens are respected and built around, the finished product from a cabinetry point of view can be whatever it needs to be.

I've been doing it from the start, like after I explained it, the plumber and electrician knew why I needed the ability to bring water from the basement up to the tank cabinet, but I was the only one who ever really understood how critical that part of the design was to the tank functioning at all. So I just had them install the allowances I would need later on to make it all work the way I want. For code reasons they weren't able to run the electrical cords that will connect the pump and auto-top off system to the controller under the tank, so I had them install two empty conduits that run through the floor that are wide enough for me to thread cords and tubing through myself when it's time to set it all up.

Wow that is a thick piece of plywood! Certainly nothing I've ever seen at home depot etc.. you don't even need support in the middle with that thing lol.

Keep crackin' the whip I like what I'm seeing!

I think they actually made it on site, it's more than one sheet glued together. It's actually got a slight curvature to it, so they're building wooden braces on either side of the steel centre brace and installing some monster screws to pull the whole thing flat.

Also, Doug mentioned to me last night that MDF is a dangerous choice for building material in a tank enclosure. We had talked about that on site months ago and I was pretty sure we had that issue addressed, but to be on the safe side I checked with the carpenter today. They're actually not using MDF, it's an MDF like product called Medex which is more water resistant than MDF (and formaldehyde free, which is a definite plus around a tank!). All the Medex cracks/seams/joints are going to be caulked and sealed and then we're going to apply 2 layers of a 2 part exterior grade flexible epoxy coating. It's used in commercial and industrial applications and is also used as a liner material in swimming pools. The company doing the painting deals with marine aquariums all the time so I think it will be OK. It's more expensive than using something a little more water resistant like birch or paintable plywood, but the painted texture of MDF/Medex is a better match to everything else that's going on in the house.

[asylumdown]

Tank enclosure is coming along nicely! Had a meeting with everyone today for final measurements so we can place the glass order. Gained an inch in height, the tanks going to be 27 inches from top to bottom now. I'm probably going to put a 2 inch layer of sand in, so it will be 25 inches from the top of the water.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1701.jpg

[lastlight]

Rock-on man love it!

You sure you don't want to have them do a solid sheet of plywood and then carve those lines with a crappy utility knife?

[asylumdown]

Rock-on man love it!

You sure you don't want to have them do a solid sheet of plywood and then carve those lines with a crappy utility knife?

hehe, if it wound up looking anything like my first design studio shop project... I'm pretty sure I'd be headed for divorce.

[asylumdown]

Crappy dim picture of the backside. There's more viewable area on this side, as we didn't need to put two wide columns on either side for aesthetic purposes. The frame on this side is one solid piece that's been screwed in, so we'll be able to remove it when the tank is ready for install.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/backside.jpg

[asylumdown]

Did a quick sketch of the tank. It's not even remotely to scale, but here's how the drains/overflows, returns are going to work.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/planview.jpg
Two overflow boxes on either side of the tank, each with two holes. The left side is directly above the return pump in the cabinet, so the holes will be a drain and the return. The right side will just be a drain and an emergency drain.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/sideview.jpg
The return will come up above the overflow box and run over the centre of the tank. Since my canopy is completely enclosed and I'm likely going with modular LED lighting, the centre return line shouldn't (I hope) interfere with the lighting. This design also reduces the number of holes I need in my tank and thus the size of the overflow boxes, and it gives me the ability to distribute flow towards the centre of the tank, or to specific dead spots that the vortech's might create.

I will also need 2 return drains and an emergency drain to become completely blocked before I have a flood.

Not sure if I should go with 4 MP40's or 2 MP40's and 2 MP60's though, anyone have any thoughts?

[Zoaelite]

I can't believe I missed this build until now, absolutely stunning so far, I'm stoked to see it filled with water!

Have you finalized on internal overflows yet? My biggest relief on my new tank was finally getting rid of my little bastard of an internal overflow. They are bulky, take up space and are a nightmare when it comes to maintenance (leaky bulk heads, fish overflowing in, ect...).

Another major problem you run into with side internals is that they block valuable aquascape and swimming room.

In the amendment below the red areas are places you wont see when you look at the tank, yellow is area of high flow and blue is your flow pattern.

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/5697/configh.jpg (http://img406.imageshack.us/i/configh.jpg/)

By having your internals placed as such your loosing a whack load of valuable real-estate, another problem with placing them there is the final placement of your MP40W's. When you confine the MP40W's to a small water foot print (with the overflow box and the rear/front tank wall on either side) it restricts the amount of water that can be drawn into the pump decreasing there efficiency.

If your set on internals you could do this:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2266/config2r.jpg (http://img16.imageshack.us/i/config2r.jpg/)

Or if you really want to shake it up and go external you could coast to coast it like this:
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/5784/config3q.jpg (http://img685.imageshack.us/i/config3q.jpg/)

I will post on the radions after I eat supper, quick overview though: GET THEM! :razz:.

[lastlight]

I'm pretty sure your proposed overflow boxes would be blocking a visible pane. Maybe I'm not reading his drawings right but this thing is viewable on two sides is it not?

[Zoaelite]

I'm pretty sure your proposed overflow boxes would be blocking a visible pane. Maybe I'm not reading his drawings right but this thing is viewable on two sides is it not?

Gah, sorry I thought it was like this with one single viewing pane.
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3115/config4.jpg (http://img525.imageshack.us/i/config4.jpg/)

If that's not the case ignore all my crazy ranting please haha :razz:.

[Zoaelite]

I want to start off by giving the specs, and posting the pictures I have so far.

The tank will be 6ft long X 34inches wide X 26 inches high for a total display volume of approximately 275 gallons. It's being built right in to the house as a divider between two rooms, the dining room and the office, so it will be open on two sides. I don't have a fish room in this house (some battles you have to 'compromise' on in marriage I suppose), so 99% of the equipment will be under the stand, with the only remote equipment being an R/O storage container in the basement below the tank.


Derp.

[Zoaelite]

Any idea how you want to position the radions as of now?

[asylumdown]

I had thought long and hard about those overflows. It sucks monster balls to need to have them internal, but it was part of the trade off process that got me the longest tank possible. The tank is flanked on either side by 2X6 studs, which support walls one either side, like in this pic:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/fandrywall.jpg.

I had them use 2X6 boards instead of 2X4 boards to give me extra depth in the stud cavities, but then as the house construction process went on, we ended up needing to put more and more stuff in to those walls. It's kind of hard to tell cuz they've already started painting, but here's the stud spaces:

North side:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1775.jpg
One of the two stud spaces is blocked off so a bank of switches for the opposite wall could be installed (I fought this, but there was no where else to put them). Those switches will eventually be completely sealed in from the tank space. I had them position the switches so there will still be enough space above them for an MP40/60 motor

South side:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1776.jpg
From left to right there's a partial stud space that had to be sealed as it's part of the cold air return system from upstairs, drain and water lines (that get way busier under the tank) for the aquarium and R/O unit, and a drain line for a bathroom that's on the floor above the tank.

At best, having external overflows would have made the stud spaces too crowded to work in them, at worst, I would have had to reduce the length of the tank significantly to get them in.

I would say the biggest 'theme' of this tank so far has been compromise. I'm asking it to be viewable on both sides, while being as large as physically possible in the space, and to do things that would normally require a whole fish room (automated water changes and such), but with only the space of the cabinet to work with. It will be interesting to see if it all works out as planned...

As for the lights, I think I'm going to put them in 2 rows of 3, but probably not evenly spaced. I'm thinking I'm going to do three 'islands' for the aquascaping, so I'll focus the pairs of lights on to those islands. We still haven't worked out what the lights are going to hang from, I'm thinking some sort of frame that hangs from the ceiling that I can raise and lower as one unit, but I would also like to be able to adjust the position of individual light fixtures on that frame.

[asylumdown]

Le Sigh....

The stairs got delivered on Wednesday. Turns out they measured from the outside of one of the support walls, not from the inside, so the landing and both runs of stairs coming off it are the wrong size. This throws off completion date by at least a month.

And last night, the cabinet installers must have punctured one of the in-floor heating lines as there was glycol leaking from the ceiling in the basement. Not sure what that's going to do to completion date, but I assume that a whole bunch of floor tile and several walls will need to be pulled out, so I can't imagine that it will be helpful.

On the bright side, the tank should be finished and installed at least a month before we move in now, so I'll be able to cycle it before we move in...

[mseepman]

Well, the news about the tank is good! :) I know how you feel...house delays suck. Do you figure you will "setup" the tank and just visit daily to check on how the cycle is going or will you do things off-site and move them into the tank once you move in?

[asylumdown]

The tank enclosure should be fully sealed and painted by about Dec. 15, so assuming the tank is ready around that time, I'll have everything installed then plumb it. If the builder has no problems with it, I'll fill it up with salt water and the dry rock around christmas and toss in bag of cocktail shrimp. I probably won't even need to check on it that often (though I do go to the site pretty regularly), and if all goes according to plan it will be ready to receive un-cured live rock by the time I move in

The plan is to order the live rock directly from the source in the Pacific. If I'm lucky, having it skip any intermediate holding tanks should *hopefully* cut down on the chance of aiptasia. I'm also going to be adding it to a pre-cycled dry-rock tank, so there should already be a decent biological machinery in place to process the curing cycle and hopefully reduce further die off.

[asylumdown]

good news! The builder found the leak on the first try and it didn't require pulling up any floor tile. The walls in the room below will still need to be replaced, but thankfully they had only been primed and the carpet hadn't been installed yet.

[asylumdown]

Painters are working on the enclosure and the doors for the cabinet are finished.

Mock up pre-paint. The hardware hasn't been installed yet so I just placed the doors in the frames for the pic. The framing panel that will be screwed in after the tank is in is inside on the left:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1907.jpg

Inside the tank space is now fully plasticized. The stuff feels almost like rubber. They coated everything, drywall, studs, anything that could be exposed to moisture or humidity.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1923.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1924.jpg

Back of the doors. This just happened on friday so the coating is still curing. The door on the top left has louvres cut in to it so when the ceiling fan is running, it will draw air from the furthest/lowest point in the cabinet, hopefully keeping moisture in the sump and tank space to a minimum.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_1933.jpg

If I'm lucky, the tank will be in before Christmas and we can get everything plumbed. Then to cycle! Finally starting to think about scaping options...

[mseepman]

So could you tell me what they coated everything with...I might want to use that.

[asylumdown]

I'll find out the name of it from the guys tomorrow. It's a 3 part system, there were two base coats that were like a cross between black primer and paint, it had a really rough texture and just soaked right in to anything that was porous like the back of the drywall. The final coat has gone on like rubbery plastic almost. They said it's commonly used in swimming pools and truck liners.

[mseepman]

So haven't seen any updates on this lately...what is the latest news?

[asylumdown]

I'm hoping for an update by Monday. I guess when the glass arrived to the builder who's manufacturing the tank, the top edges had been cut by the supplier really brutally. There was too much of a variance in height from one side of the panes to the other for the guy to grind it down in his shop, so the glass had to be sent back to be re-cut. The tank was supposed to be in before christmas, but that has delayed everything.

At this point we're waiting on the tank to start painting the exterior of the enclosure, and if all goes according to plan it should hopefully be installed on Monday.

The rest of the house is motoring along nicely however!

The only other thing I've been pondering is my lighting situation. I was dead set on Radions for the past few months, but I'm seriously re-considering metal halides now.

[lastlight]

Halides will get you going cheaply enough (startup) and by the time you're ready for your first bulb-swap there will be a bunch of new and better fixtures not to mention better diodes (in them or for DIY). You want to get the thing running soon so I like your thinking.

[asylumdown]

Halides will get you going cheaply enough (startup) and by the time you're ready for your first bulb-swap there will be a bunch of new and better fixtures not to mention better diodes (in them or for DIY). You want to get the thing running soon so I like your thinking.

yah, that's honestly what I've been thinking, especially with the kinds of bulbs Cree has been announcing the last couple of months. It would be like 5 grand to do my tank with all Radions, which is so hard to swallow when there's a good chance they'll be obsolete in a year. I fully believe LEDs are the future, but if I'm going to sink 5 Gs on anything, I want it to be a 100% fully proven technology that does every thing I want, and whose limitations and considerations are 100% known. I think Ecotech really stepped up the game in terms of what people are going to expect from now on. Full spectrum LED fixtures is the way of the future and while I think Ecotech did a great job on their first attempt, I don't think they're completely 'there' just yet1 (neither do they, clearly, or they wouldn't have built in an extra un-utilized channel to the radion). Once all the other major players work through what was already in their R&D cycles, I think we're going to start seeing a whole suite of really impressive and compelling fixtures out there. It might even be a matter of simply waiting for Ecotech to release their next round of light pucks that fully utilizes what the hardware is capable of, but if that's the case, I'm certainly not interested in paying full base price plus what I'm sure will be a hefty 'upgrade', times 6, later.

Moral of the story, if I'm going to spend 5 thousand bucks on LED light fixtures, spending it after MACNA 2012 is probably going to get me a heck of a lot more for my money.

[Nano]

might seem like a dumb question, but if you have even considered leds, and by the sounds of it, it has crossed you mind, why not DIY? some modulars would be much cheaper and offer a lot of the same color options as radions. I dont know if they are quite up to par side by side, but for the money you'd be saving, and the fact that they are modular means you could swap out the bulbs in a heartbeat if they came out with a newer more powerful modular bulb.. thats what I think anyway haha

I'm really excited to see how this whole project comes together!

[asylumdown]

might seem like a dumb question, but if you have even considered leds, and by the sounds of it, it has crossed you mind, why not DIY? some modulars would be much cheaper and offer a lot of the same color options as radions. I dont know if they are quite up to par side by side, but for the money you'd be saving, and the fact that they are modular means you could swap out the bulbs in a heartbeat if they came out with a newer more powerful modular bulb.. thats what I think anyway haha

I'm really excited to see how this whole project comes together!

Thanks! I'm pretty stoked too. It's so close now I can practically taste the salt water lol. I had to start a tiny 5 gallon pico here in my temporary condo just to keep me from going batty

I had considered building my own LED fixture, but originally discounted it because I had no time, place, or tools to build one. Now that I think I'm going to start out with MH it's more of a possibility as the new house will have a workspace that I could build something like that in (though I don't have any tools, or technical know how what so ever!) so I could take my time without delaying my tank if I decided to go that route. However, one of the things that REALLY attracts me to the Radions is the software that comes with it, and I'm most definitely not going to be able to reproduce something like that on my own, so I'm still going to remain open to a fixture if one that I fully trust with my system comes along.

[mseepman]

I chose to go the LED route, but I also chose DIY instead of fixtures. $5000 or more was too big a pill to swallow. My DIY light has come together really well so far and with the BJB connectors, it has been soooooo simple. Price wise, I'm looking at less than half the cost and a little elbow grease. I don't know electrical either, but it's coming together. :) You should look at Modular LED as an option. I hear they are simple to put together too.

[asylumdown]

At last! There is a tank!

Kevin and some guys were at the house today installing it. Wish I could have been there to document it (it's HUGE!), but I stopped in to take some pics this afternoon.

Dining room side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2039.jpg

Office side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2038.jpg

Overflows
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2040.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2041.jpg

Now, there's one problem that may or may not be major, and I'm hoping someone here can give me guidance. Kevin is headed out of town for the next 10 days and I don't think I'm going to be able to reach him, and they are literally putting the panel on the office side that will seal the tank in to the wall as we speak. After that, they will be mudding, taping, and tying the drywall in to the enclosure's corners, so removing the tank if this is a problem is going to become exponentially more destructive, expensive and time consuming, so I need to know if this is a problem now.

The plywood that the tank is sitting on is 3 inches thick, they had to build it up so that the cabinet framing had something other than the steel stand to attach to. When they made the plywood, it was bowed and the centre was higher than the sides, so they installed bracing on the underside to pull the plywood flat. It appeared to have worked, but now that the tank is on, I can see that there's like a quarter inch variance in height from the centre of the stand to the left and right sides. On the right side (when looking from the office), you can see all the way under the tank to the dining room.

Here's a pic of the foam/plywood interface in the centre of the tank:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2043.jpg

Here's a pic of the foam plywood interface at the left edge (when looking from the office):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2042.jpg

So my question is thus - how much allowance is there in that foam for compression? Will it compress enough to compensate for the slight bow in the plywood, or am I going to be looking at a snapped tank when I fill it with water? I really could use some guidance...

[lastlight]

That's really bad man. I'd never fill that sorry. Stand needs to be level even with foam. Foam is not really for compensating for an overall unlevelness in a surface but more for imperfections in an overall level surface.

[asylumdown]

yah, I thought so too. I just got off the phone with the builder, they're halting the finishing and are going to try and fix the plywood in the morning. If they can't get it to flatten out by adding more bracing to the underside, the entire enclosure needs to be ripped out.

This would be where I wish we could swear in this forum.

[Magma]

be thankful you caught it now and not later when its enclosed and the tank cracks after you fill it....

[asylumdown]

Man this is gutting.

Hopefully we can fix it with a thin layer of self leveller or something. Literally the entire enclosure is at some point anchored to that piece of plywood.

What's worse, I now need to explain to my fiancé that my aquarium will be the reason for another week or two delay to us moving in to our already months late house.

[mseepman]

Eek...I feel your pain. Every step in my new house feels like I'm centering it around the tank and no-one seems to understand why except me. Things like this seem okay to builders but to us....no way! I'm glad you caught it now.

[Delphinus]

Egads!!! :eek:

You've already been given this advice but you'll hear it once more from me: under no circumstances can you fill that with water. Sorry man! But like said, a delay here of a couple days to a week is peanuts compared to what you'd be facing with a blown tank.

[Mrfish55]

Shoot some expanding foam underneath the foam board you already have on there, don't overdo it or it will lift the tank and don't use the low expansion window/ door foam as it dries soft, you want the one that dries stiff, you can stick a piece of rigid tube on the end of the nozzle so it can reach to the center, works great seen it done a number of times, make sure you level the tank before it sets.

[lastlight]

Can't you build a very shallow dam around the plywood and pour a levelling compound in it? Then you'd have perfection?

[Delphinus]

I like those ideas a lot, you guys think of everything! But on the flip side .. if he's paying professional builders/framers/carpenters/whatever to put this in, then they should be on the hook to make it right. It's their problem to fix.

[asylumdown]

Shoot some expanding foam underneath the foam board you already have on there, don't overdo it or it will lift the tank and don't use the low expansion window/ door foam as it dries soft, you want the one that dries stiff, you can stick a piece of rigid tube on the end of the nozzle so it can reach to the center, works great seen it done a number of times, make sure you level the tank before it sets.

Can't you build a very shallow dam around the plywood and pour a levelling compound in it? Then you'd have perfection?

THose are excellent ideas, they may not even need to take the tank out! I'll broach them both with the builder tomorrow morning. Thank you, I knew I spent hours trolling fish forums for a reason ;)

I like those ideas a lot, you guys think of everything! But on the flip side .. if he's paying professional builders/framers/carpenters/whatever to put this in, then they should be on the hook to make it right. It's their problem to fix.

Too true, but at this point it's about speed. Mark was right though, house builders don't really understand the allowances of an aquarium I don't think. What's 'good enough' for most carpentry jobs can be the difference between failure and not. When Kevin originally installed the stand, he put a 1/4 inch (1/2? can't really remember) sheet of really high quality oak plywood down on top. It was perfectly flat and would have worked great for the tank's purposes. But when the carpenter started working out how he could build the enclosure, I wouldn't let them pierce the steel of the stand to anchor anything to it so they had to replace Kevin's plywood with a 3 inch piece of plywood that they made on site by gluing several different sheets together. I stressed as hard as I could that it needed to be flat, and to be honest, late one night after it was done I went in there with a level and verified that it was myself. It seemed to be perfectly flat a couple of months ago. I'm not sure if I just suck with a level (though in my defence it is a rather large area to check with the tiny level I had), or if the wood has warped slowly as the glue has dried, but it is what it is now. As it stands, they're geared up to have the inspection for occupancy mid February, and that can't happen unless the house is in a state of 'near completion'. If we need to rip out the entire enclosure, the painters basically have to stop on the main floor for a week while the structure is re-manufactured, then they need to re-seal the insides of the enclosure, and all the while electrical and everything else that depends on the painters being done or near done will be on hold, and mid-february inspections wouldn't be possible. I fear I would be headed for divorce if that were to happen.

Again, thanks guys for the suggestions

Adam

[The Grizz]

Don't know what others think of it but there is an awful lot of air bubbles in the silicone holding your tank together there Adam, just my 2 cents .

[FishyFishy!]

Don't know what others think of it but there is an awful lot of air bubbles in the silicone holding your tank together there Adam, just my 2 cents .

+1

It seems odd to have that many. I was wondering if it was just a close up shot and they were tiny, but after a second look, that's a lot of big bubbles.

[Coleus]

+1

It seems odd to have that many. I was wandering if it was just a close up shot and they were tiny, but after a second look, that's a lot of big bubbles.

I thought that is plastic cover, else that is bad

[Delphinus]

I'm not a tank builder so I could be wrong but I thought the space between the panes of glass was more structural, and it's the corner bead that prevents leaks. The silicone to glass bond is insanely strong. I think the bubbles probably don't affect the integrity of the tank - it just doesn't look very nice.

Man, I don't know what to suggest. I understand your frustration of "please just get this fixed" but rushing things now is a mistake.

It might be worthwhile at this point to take the tank out of the equation and continue with the build after possession. This lets the housebuilders painters etc finish their job and hopefully your possession date doesn't get pushed back. Then you can also investigate the silicone bubbles further and explore relevelling options and so on. This is your tank, after this much planning and anticipation, why accept anything less than perfect?

On the other hand though, part of me says if you pay a housebuilder to build a house, it comes with the expectation that they do the job right. Even if it pushes possesion back, this is their fault, not yours. I totally sympathize, we went through a lot of similar stuff when we built our house. It's brutal how much stuff is just eyeballed instead of properly measured.

[asylumdown]

I am going to look in to the bubbles a little further, but my gut reaction is that it's not going to be a problem. To be honest I didn't notice them in person, I don't know if it was the lighting or my camera, but they look considerably more pronounced in the photos than they do in real life. Also, the silicone will all be hidden by framing, so I'm not really concerned with the aesthetics.

Had a little pow-wow with the project manager and his main site foreman today and we talked about both self leveller and the spray foam, and what would need to happen to re-do the whole tank. One way or another, there needs to be a minimum 3 inch thick sheet of plywood under the tank to anchor the doors and the cabinet framing, which will still need to be made by gluing thinner sheets together. There's no guarantee that the second attempt will come out any flatter than the first. It would be an absolute last resort option.

So that leaves us with self leveller or spray foam as a first choice. After talking about it, we ruled out the self leveller because the gap between the bottom of the tank and the plywood starts out really, really tiny, and is only really exaggerated on the one side. There's a good chance that due to air getting trapped/liquid leveller not filling all the right places, there could be large bubbles that get trapped underneath and the leveller doesn't compress at all. So we're going to try the foam route because it can be applied using a long hose, and if there are some imperfections, it's slightly compressible.

fingers crossed.

[lastlight]

Is the metal stand level?

If it was and a person laid a bunch of plywood on top which we can assume are uniformly the same thickness... would the result not be level?

I don't quite follow how if the metal stand is level the top can't be.

Good luck!

[asylumdown]

yep, the stand was definitely level, It was perfectly square and the floor it's sitting on is dead level too. I checked obsessively before and after they put the stucco on the outside of the house because the added weight can cause houses to settle a little (same reason this builder doesn't tile until after the stucco is on).

I think it's because the plywood is actually warped, which blows.

[Delphinus]

I love the attitude of builders and how quality can't be guaranteed and it's not their fault. I remember a toilet in my house that we built that when you sat on it, it was obvious it was badly un-level left to right (left side about 1" higher than the right). I complained to the builder and they were all "yeah, that's the quality you get when everything is made cheaply in China, what are you going to do." I said "Well, *I'm* going to insist that you replace it." "But there's no guarantee that the next one will be any better." "Well then you will replace that one too. This is not acceptable." .. I understand as a builder you have to draw the line at replacing everything for free indefinitely but at the same time there are just some basic tenets of quality that shouldn't have to be insisted upon.

No guarantee that the next attempt at plywood will be any more flat? Yeah, I can see how that could be a problem to build. They have to make a perfectly flat piece of thicker plywood out of flat pieces of thinner plywood over a perfectly flat metal surface. It must be basically impossible to build something like that given the circumstances and all. :neutral:

Hopefully the guy finds some clamps and some weights to put on said plywood as the glue dries. Maybe you need to suggest that they use clamps and weights. Heck, maybe show them a Lee Valley catalog! :lol:

Sorry for my rant. I'm surprisingly very upset for you over this!!! :lol: In any case, good luck, I'm sure it will work out sooner or later.

[The Grizz]

I don't get why the builder is laminating a 3" thick piece, I would have just used 3 - 1" sheets of plywood. Screw the first sheet to the top of the stand, 2nd sheet to the first and so on.

[Lance]

I don't get why the builder is laminating a 3" thick piece, I would have just used 3 - 1" sheets of plywood. Screw the first sheet to the top of the stand, 2nd sheet to the first and so on.

Exactly! What is the big deal? If the stand is level, I certainly don't need to be a rocket scientist to add 3 sheets of 1" ply on top.

[phi delt reefer]

I don't get why the builder is laminating a 3" thick piece, I would have just used 3 - 1" sheets of plywood. Screw the first sheet to the top of the stand, 2nd sheet to the first and so on.

asylumdown didnt want anything drilled into the stand which i think he should allow at this point to help cut his losses. You could just drive a couple screws through the high spots in the plywood to bring them down level with the low spot. Screwing into the stand shouldnt create any issues. I had to do the same on my stand (all wood) to lower some high spots in a slightly bowed piece of 1" plywood.


next time have the builders aclimate the plywood to the house for a couple weeks and make sure it sits perfectly flat. "fresh" wood from the lumber yard will do all sorts of wierd stuff until most of the moisture has come out of it.

[asylumdown]

asylumdown didnt want anything drilled into the stand which i think he should allow at this point to help cut his losses. You could just drive a couple screws through the high spots in the plywood to bring them down level with the low spot. Screwing into the stand shouldnt create any issues. I had to do the same on my stand (all wood) to lower some high spots in a slightly bowed piece of 1" plywood.


next time have the builders aclimate the plywood to the house for a couple weeks and make sure it sits perfectly flat. "fresh" wood from the lumber yard will do all sorts of wierd stuff until most of the moisture has come out of it.


Heh, next time. That's actually really funny. 2.5 years and oh-my-god-how-much?! over budget, I hope to never move again. Building a house is not for the feint of heart.

I'll see what happened there today (I have been at school all day).

On another note entirely, I was in Red Coral in Edmonton on the weekend and saw their display tank with all Radions. Soooo glad I did as it made up my mind almost instantly. I love, love LOVE all the features of that little fixture, but man, it looked like I was looking at a tank with the dimmer switch set at 50%. Every time I would look away and then look back, I felt like my eyes were re-adjusting to a poorly lit room. I kept having to ask if the fixture was at 100% power. I know there's that whole bit about our eyes not being as sensitive to the dominant wavelengths in LEDs and all, and that the Radions can probably do a great job growing corals, but I care as much about how my tank looks to me as I do about how the corals respond, and the light the radion puts out just doesn't cut it for me.

Halides it is.

[lastlight]

Don't let them use glue! Otherwise they grab 3 flat pieces like Greg said level the first and mount the next to it win screws. No glue!

Haaaaalides ;)

[fishytime]

asylumdown didnt want anything drilled into the stand which i think he should allow at this point to help cut his losses. You could just drive a couple screws through the high spots in the plywood to bring them down level with the low spot. Screwing into the stand shouldnt create any issues. I had to do the same on my stand (all wood) to lower some high spots in a slightly bowed piece of 1" plywood.


thats what silicone is for:wink:


next time have the builders aclimate the plywood to the house for a couple weeks and make sure it sits perfectly flat. "fresh" wood from the lumber yard will do all sorts of wierd stuff until most of the moisture has come out of it.

you could acclimate the plywood to the house for a year if you want, as soon as it gets exposed to a humid environment, like above a sump, all bets are off:lol:

[fishytime]

I understand why you wernt impressed with the radions over the display at RCE.... but in all fairness, the tank design and the way the light rack is built made it hard to get the lights hanging where they will do the most good......did you ever get over to see anyones tank that was lit by them?

[asylumdown]

I'm at my house now (cuz staying at school till 10:30 is just the tops), and it looks like they've corrected the problem, I just can't tell how. The back panel is on the tank, so I can't see where the foam meets the plywood anymore, but I crawled underneath and looked at the holes for the overflow and there's no longer any gap (I could stick my pinkey finger in that space yesterday). The tank now appears to be sitting completely flush to the plywood on both the right and left sides.

I can't see and extra expanding foam under there, so they must have figured out a way to force the wood to cooperate. The site foreman had said he was going to try brute force first, it appears to have worked.

I'm gonna find out what they did tomorrow.

Now the only remaining issue that I can see is that the back framing panel is smaller than the front, so the top of the tank, where the euro bracing is joined to the glass, is totally visible. Oy. That's gonna be getting fixed!

[asylumdown]

I understand why you wernt impressed with the radions over the display at RCE.... but in all fairness, the tank design and the way the light rack is built made it hard to get the lights hanging where they will do the most good......did you ever get over to see anyones tank that was lit by them?

No, I would still like to, but I ended up having way less time over the holidays than I thought before I left town. I also stopped in at... Aquarium Illusions (I think that's what it's called) and they have a single radion over a clam tank. I thought the same thing there. I need to see if Levi is available again soon though cuz his pics are baller, but I have a boat load of scholarship/grant applications due in the next week and Kelly is moving back to Calgary, so it might be a bit before I have time.

[asylumdown]

House build is still slow, but steady. We're apparently going to be moving in at the end of February now, but since this is the 5th push back of the completion date and I couldn't extend my lease at the short term place I was staying (the owner moved home and needed it), I'm technically homeless for the first time in my life. Thank goodness for an understanding father with extra rooms.

Assuming we can move in this month (though, to be honest, I'm not really confident that's going to happen), the tank likely won't have water in it until we're in, which is a bummer as I wanted to get the cycle out of the way when I wasn't there to look at an empty box of water every day.

Anyway, the painters are working diligently away in there right now, so here's a roughly finished looking enclosure, sans doors:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2133.jpg

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2132.jpg

On order now through RCC:

Deltec SC2560
Vertex RO/DI
Return pump of a brand and model that I seem to have forgotten completely
2 Ecotech MP60s to compliment my pre-existing MP40's

Need to order still
pump to bring water up from the basement
Auto top off system (details yet to be determined)
pump to empty WC chamber of the sump
Heater
Controller (if I go with Halides)
2 extra profilux dosing pumps for my doser

Still not buying lights. Going to wait until the last, final, gasping moment for that one. I was thinking about it and reflectors are going to get seriously in the way of what I had originally planned for the return piping. Sigh. It's only money right?

[Zoaelite]

Don't let them use glue! Otherwise they grab 3 flat pieces like Greg said level the first and mount the next to it win screws. No glue!

Haaaaalides ;) are really stupid and I totally want to upgrade to LED's and be as cool as all the other people in the LED club.


Brett I totally agree with you man, I think Adam would love to join the LED club, it's a totally rad place to be!

On a side note Adam you have PM.

[lastlight]

Brett I totally agree with you man, I think Adam would love to join the LED club, it's a totally rad place to be!

On a side note Adam you have PM.

The new Orphek DIF units sorta remind me of halides (I like the looks of those!). I'm not ruling out some high-tech single point light sources *some* day. But that's a buttload of paychecks away :lol:

Things are looking pretty damn slick there btw!

[mseepman]

I'm a big believer in DIY...so I would be talking to Modularled and see if Martin has some suggestions.
If you can hold out for the controller, the Cerebra should still be the bomb (if it is ever really released)

[asylumdown]

Stopped in at Levi's place today to check out his mind blowing tank. I have to say, seeing those radions over top of a tank like that makes a world of difference. They are out of this world. A small part of me was worried the tank wouldn't look as good in real life as it does in pictures, but holy crap was I wrong. It looks even better.

My mind must have been playing tricks on me when I was in Edmonton, because the brightness, colour rendition, and basically everything I care about in tank lighting was spot- on perfect. Then the pre-built software...

Took all of 8 seconds in front of that living piece of art to make up my mind. Radions it is. My tank is 5 inches taller though, so I am considering adding an extra inch of sand, and i'll build the hanging rack so that I can buy two extra units if I think I need it.

Thanks so much for letting me come over Levi, you solved in 20 minutes a dilemma I've been losing sleep over for 3 months.

[asylumdown]

So. Close.

I can practically taste the salt water:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_2292.jpg

Except for the doors (which you can see stacked on the other side of the tank in the office) which will be hung last to give us as much room as possible to work, the enclosure is finished from the builder's point of view. I had no idea the p-trap they needed to install for the under tank drain was going to be so obtrusive and obnoxious, but after I took this pic I had them to re-work it so that it's not jutting out directly in to the cabinet space.

I'm hoping to start the plumbing this weekend. I am losing my mind with anticipation.

[asylumdown]

Doors got hung today!

Dining room:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/f49b1795.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a05e5307.jpg

Office side:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a98c8eef.jpg

[MarkoD]

Looks great. Why didnt you go for a basement sump?

[mseepman]

Looks Awesome! Can't wait to see you getting that wet. Take lots of pictures of the plumbing too!

[asylumdown]

Looks great. Why didnt you go for a basement sump?

Originally because my fiancé was only willing to go so far. We're not planning on spending the rest of our lives in this house (though after how much it's cost I'm starting to re-consider that!), so the compromise was to build something that could be relatively easy to remove.

Then later in the design stage we ended up needing to move some stuff around, so instead of having a laundry room with tons of space for fish equipment right beneath the tank, we ended up with the most jam packed utility room I've ever seen. It's barely got enough free space for the R/O reservoir. The laundry room got moved to another part of the basement, walled in on 3 sides by concrete foundation.


Looks Awesome! Can't wait to see you getting that wet. Take lots of pictures of the plumbing too!

Oh you know I will! Had to reschedule the plumbing to Monday so the floor guys could work all weekend without people kicking up dust. I can't wait.

[krazykarl]

Wow, I cant wait to see wait your set up looks like once it's filled with water and lights and rock and some awesome corals and fish.

[asylumdown]

The day has finally come!

First, a massive thanks to Kevin from Red Coral, when I said 'come over on Saturday and we'll plumb the tank!' I fully intended to be more helpful than I was, but I really could have said 'come over on Saturday, and you'll plumb the tank, while I sit around offering suggestions and otherwise being annoying', and still have been correct.

The display is filling with tap water as we speak, but first, here's some photos!

I came last night and spent 2 hours cleaning the entire set-up. There was like a solid inch of construction dust on everything.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/701da16b.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/4a8ab87f.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/cc5afa84.jpg

Bulkheads go in:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a1a4c28b.jpg

Checking to see that the hose attachment works
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/baaee848.jpg

All sorts of 2 inch plumbing:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/b02c98f5.jpg

We went with the Reeflo Dart. This thing is whisper quiet
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/91f45286.jpg

The two overflows needed to be teed together to feed to the gigantic three-way gate we installed.
South end (office and dining room side)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/d86e3327.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/4096050d.jpg

North end (office and dining room side)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/8f7b31df.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/d5d66552.jpg
We put gate valves on both sides in the hopes that we can make a herbie work. Since the two overflows join in to each other then flow in to a 3 way valve, it might not happen (in which case we'll do Dursos), but here's for leaving your options open!

And the main event - the three way valve. The ones on our pool in California are smaller than this! Everything was positioned to provide maximum access, and to not interfere with the skimmer chamber.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/5f60eb44.jpg

Filling the return chamber for a leak test. One minor adjustment and we're leak free on the return side!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/836239ce.jpg

Started filling the sump for real.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/68ff6193.jpg

This is the part I was most worried about, the water exiting the skimmer chamber has to split in two and fill both the frag chamber and the water change chamber. Turns out it works perfectly :)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/e0960438.jpg

And now to fill the main tank... This is where I'm at now, so far it's been an hour and it's not full!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/c16f910d.jpg

Next up - testing the overflow system, and that monster 3 way valve...

[Skimmerking]

looking good man

[mseepman]

Wow, looks good! Always inspiring to hear an LFS getting as involved in helping you as that.

[Zoaelite]

Holy smokes Adam, this thing looks freaking amazing!!!

Kind off topic but what are you guys doing for appliances? Is that a Miele double WO with a built in Thermador F/F combo?

[cale262]

Looks fantastic...now you have me thinking...I needs to build a new house:wink:

[asylumdown]

looking good man

Thanks, many more updates to come ;)

Wow, looks good! Always inspiring to hear an LFS getting as involved in helping you as that.

Kevin has been freaking fantastic. He's been involved since day one, helping me figure out the design, and then the re-design, then the re-re-design, the install, coordinating with the builder and the plumber, coming to my place on his days off, being otherwise awesome, etc. I couldn't have done it without him.

Holy smokes Adam, this thing looks freaking amazing!!!

Kind off topic but what are you guys doing for appliances? Is that a Miele double WO with a built in Thermador F/F combo?

Thanks. I actually dreamed about it last night, the same way I use to dream about tetris when I played too much. And the appliances - I'm gonna admit I have no idea what you just said lol. The stacked combo on the back wall of the kitchen is a 30inch (I think) Miele oven, with a 24 inch Miele steam oven above it with two side panels to make it look like it's the same size. The fridge is also a Miele, and it's the tall cabinet doors to the right of the ovens (we went with built in as opposed to stainless).

How do you know so much about appliances?

Looks fantastic...now you have me thinking...I needs to build a new house:wink:

If you enjoy your time, sanity, and money, I recommend against it.


I'm gonna take some more pics now that the plumbing is *almost* complete, and the tank is running with water in it

[asylumdown]

K, the plumbing is almost complete, and it's currently running with tap water. I'm going to keep that going until the inspection.

Dining room side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/58dd5b11.jpg
the long white PVC pipe is the alternate flow path. When the handle on that huge valve turns to the left, water from the tank flows straight in to the first part of the bubble trap, and bypasses the rest of the sump. However, when I started testing the system, I realized that I had made a critical error when I designed the sump: I didn't account for the fact that when 100% of the flow of the tank is entering the bubble trap/return chamber, it actually raises the level of water in that chamber by a full 3 inches, above the level of the baffle that separates it from the water change chamber. Essentially, as the plumbing is set up now, I can't isolate the water change chamber if there is the correct amount of water in the sump. This was terrifying at first, and had three possible solutions:

1. pull out the silicone on two of the bubble trap baffle, cut the baffle that sets the height of the return chamber down by three inches, and re-silicone it all in. This would mean that the water exiting from the water change chamber would fall 4 inches, and would be loud and splashy. This is the crappiest solution

2. use the herbies to manipulate the water level in the sump when the flow is diverted. I figured out that when I divert the flow, the water level in the over flow chambers falls by a couple of inches (which compounds the existing water level in the sump problem). I'm sure this has something to do with a principle of fluid dynamics that I barely understand. But, I also found that if I go and tighten the herbies up when the flow is diverted, I can cause the overflows to completely fill, then raise the water level in the display tank by about 1/16 of an inch, which is enough to drop the water level in the return chamber low enough to isolate the water change chamber, but still not reach the emergency overflow standpipe. This allows me to use the sump the way I designed it, but leads to 30 freaking minutes of tweaking the herbies to get them back to where I want after after every water change. huge PITA, and not really what I want to do.

3. The solution that we're going to move forward with, that I think is pretty elegant and simple. We're going to install a third gate valve here:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/2bcd4ceb.jpg
Essentially, it will act like a herbie on the herbies. During normal operation, water from the tank will flow in to the skimmer chamber, and the two main herbie gate valves will be set to the perfect spot and never touched. When I want to do a water change, I'll divert water in to the bubble trap/return chamber, and use the third gate valve to restrict the flow in to the sump even further. This way I can use that third gate valve to make the water in the return chamber set at whatever height I want. I'm sure with some playing, I can figure out exactly what setting it needs to be and leave it that way, so when I divert the water, the levels all just set themselves automatically. This will save me from having to fiddle around with the main overflow gate valves, plus, it puts the water change controls all on the same side of the tank, so I won't have to go running around in circle adjusting anything.

phew, that was a whole lot of typing. I hope that made sense.

Office side:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/af03f584.jpg
I assume the reason the herbies naturally set at a different level when I divert the flow from the skimmer chamber is because water has to travel different distances in the pipes between the two outputs. or something. I dropped physics.

I was and am shocked at how much water moves through this sump. I was afraid my design wouldn't work at all, but other than one minor modification to the water change system, it works better than I expected. because the sump is so deep, I'm going to need to put a couple of koralias in the frag chamber and WC chamber to to prevent any dead spots, but I have a closet full of koralias from my first tank, and I'm not worried at all. The koralia in the WC chamber will serve double duty as the salt mixing pump!

And finally: a FTS from the office
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/6a4a7507.jpg
I am happier and happier with the choice to go Starphire. It probably wouldn't have mattered if it was only open on one side, but the cumulative effect of looking through two panes made it soooo worth it. The bottom panel isn't Starphire, so it's reflecting a little green, but once the bottom is covered in white sand, the glass will be nearly invisible.

[fishoholic]

Looks awesome, glad to see water in it :biggrin:

[DCDN]

Wow it looks amazing

[asylumdown]

*sigh*, I wish this was happening faster! But between not actually being allowed to move in to this house yet (the convoluted web of city permitting is infuriating), grad school, and daily commitments, I'm getting maybe one solid evening a week to work on it.

Anyway, here's an update, and I hope everyone has all sorts of comments on my rock work, because I'm not totally sold on it.

Kevin came over last week and installed my R/O unit:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/14956c30.jpg
Because I'm impatient, I immediately filled the sump with R/O water. It took a day and a half.

I also picked up up some plexi and cut long, 5 inch high stripes and caulked it to the euro-bracing
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/429ab6d7.jpg
There was a small gap between the euro-bracing and the framing for the doors above that would have allowed splashed water to seep under the frame structure and run down the front glass of the tank. There was also a 3 inch cavity in the frame itself that I had visions of jumping wrasses getting trapped in. That's all sealed up now.

Then I went overkill with the sand:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/614ebc02.jpg
8 bags was excessive. I needed 5. Note to self: I bought enough to give me a 3 inch sand bed without rock.

Then on Friday I picked up 207 pounds of Marco rock from Kevin at RCC. Note to anyone who's ever wondered: Yes, Marco rock WILL punch large, unsightly holes in the leather of your car's back seats. Take appropriate precautions.

I didn't have the tools or the patience to do any fancy drilling of the rock, so what you see is simply rocks that are resting on top of one another. I hate the 'pile o' rocks' look, so I really tried to avoid that, while creating at least two major cavities that can't be seen from either side of the tank for a larger fish to sleep in (they're against the overflow boxes), and a relatively open structure, with a central 'canyon' down the middle. I'm not 100% sold on it, so any input would be appreciated. The plan is to eventually add about 50 pounds of real live rock from Walt Smith, so I'll likely end up removing some of the Marco rock (or sending it to the sump) rather than just adding 50 more pounds, as it's already a little cluttered for my taste.

Dining room FTS
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/32d5030d.jpg

DR south end
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/25919889.jpg

DR north end
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/0d1a3575.jpg

I'm not as happy with the office side, but also keep in mind that without real lights on, the shadowing from the room makes the office side look WAY more like a 'pile o' rocks' than it does in real life.

Office side FTS
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/1d9f7b6d.jpg

OS South end
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/bef9906c.jpg

OS north end
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/71c884a2.jpg

And here's how it looked when I shut the R/O unit down on Friday (I'm now in saskatchewan for a family thing)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/866827b3.jpg

[bauder1986]

Hey what does RC charge for that Marco Rock?

[fishmanty]

What are your plans for the extra sand you ordered? or did you just dump all the bags in there?

Looks great so far. I have huge tank envy right now.

[Coleus]

Looks great in my opinion.

[asylumdown]

Hey what does RC charge for that Marco Rock?

That's a very good question lol. I think it's around 3.80 per pound, but don't quote me on that. Since I had to get so much stuff special ordered, Kevin just made me one large invoice. The rock was on it, but I can't remember exactly how it broke down. I do know that on Friday he received a shipment of 1500 pounds or something ridiculous like that, so if your'e looking for some he's got TONS of selection right now.

What are your plans for the extra sand you ordered? or did you just dump all the bags in there?

Looks great so far. I have huge tank envy right now.

I'm not sure, I've got three bags left that I might return. I'm considering doing a DSB in my frag chamber, but the relative surface area of that chamber compared to the tank is tiny, so I don't know if there's a point. I'm not sure if to will just cause problems down the line.

[asylumdown]

Looks great in my opinion.

Thanks :) I needed to do this all on a ladder, so the fact that I didn't drop a piece of rock right through the bottom of my glass was a small miracle in and of itself. I've never gotten so sweaty working on a tank.

[lastlight]

Rock looks good as does everything else. I certainly couldn't add any more rock in there... in fact when adding the live rock I'd take more out than I added to achieve a slightly more open look.

[asylumdown]

Rock looks good as does everything else. I certainly couldn't add any more rock in there... in fact when adding the live rock I'd take more out than I added to achieve a slightly more open look.

Yah I think I will for sure. It will all depend on what the actual pieces look like I suppose.

[soaptray]

Awesome build! Keep the pics coming!

[asylumdown]

Started the RO unit last night again. tank is still less than half full :(

[soaptray]

100GPD - Thats a good wait! Can't wait to see that tank all setup. Would love to see it in person some day if you are ever doing tours.

[asylumdown]

100GPD - Thats a good wait! Can't wait to see that tank all setup. Would love to see it in person some day if you are ever doing tours.

I will happily give tours! Hopefully it's worth looking at sooner than later. Right now it's sitting there, running with fresh R/O water as though it were a real tank. It's teasing me, but it's end of term and I haven't had 3 minutes to breath, let alone go and get salt and get the salinity where it needs to be to start the cycle. grrrrrr!

As I age I'm turning more and more in to a weekend reefer.

[lastlight]

As I age I'm turning more and more in to a weekend reefer.

Try tossing a couple kids into the mix lol.

[Triggz]

Pure awesomeness!! Really good job Adam!

[fishytime]

I will happily give tours! Hopefully it's worth looking at sooner than later. Right now it's sitting there, running with fresh R/O water as though it were a real tank. It's teasing me, but it's end of term and I haven't had 3 minutes to breath, let alone go and get salt and get the salinity where it needs to be to start the cycle. grrrrrr!

As I age I'm turning more and more in to a weekend reefer.

gimme the keys.....I'll go put salt in the beast for ya:wink:

[gregzz4]

It's lookin' great from here. Only thing I'd suggest is, because you haven't drilled the rock, you might consider using epoxy to stave off the risk of rockslides.
That is, once you have your live rock in place and are happy with it.

I used small acrylic rods and epoxy to attach my base rocks to squares of acrylic. I didn't want to cover the tank bottom with eggcrate. In my case, even just 1" of sand will cover what I have done.

[asylumdown]

Pure awesomeness!! Really good job Adam!

Thanks!

gimme the keys.....I'll go put salt in the beast for ya:wink:


hehe, beat you to it. Specific gravity = 1.025 :) It took a bucket and a third, plus 24 hours to add, dissolve, test, then add some more.

It's lookin' great from here. Only thing I'd suggest is, because you haven't drilled the rock, you might consider using epoxy to stave off the risk of rockslides.
That is, once you have your live rock in place and are happy with it.

I used small acrylic rods and epoxy to attach my base rocks to squares of acrylic. I didn't want to cover the tank bottom with eggcrate. In my case, even just 1" of sand will cover what I have done.


Yah I'm thinking I'm going to do that when i get the live rock. I'm hoping I'm able to open up the structure a bit, and I can banish some of the cycled marco rock to the sump

and speaking of the cycle... It's started! I added enough pure ammonium chloride to get the ammonium up to 2ppm, and I've got 10 cocktail shrimp in a mesh bag in the sump. I then dumped in a 250ml bottle of Dr. Tim's 1 and only live nitrifying bacteria. I'm not convinced it will 'eliminate' the cycle, but I am expecting it to speed it up a little.

Presently:
Ammonia = 2.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0
Phosphate = 0.10 (I assume it's leaching from my rock and sand)

I didn't have time to test the other ions except Alk, and the salt mixed up to a dKh of 10.3

Next steps:

1. I need to sort out the remote R/O reservoir and top off system. The float valve for the R/O unit is right in the sump right now. That makes me hella nervous

2. The lights are scheduled for arrival in Calgary on Monday, and I need to get the hanging situation figured out soon.

3. The heaters. I have ordered 3 300 watt heaters, but the more I read about heaters, the less I think that was a good idea. I'm thinking I need a larger titanium heater that's controlled by a controller? Any thoughts? I've got two temporary heaters on the tank right now, a 300W loaner, and a fluval digital (e-series I think I can't remember the wattage) from my 90, but together they can't get the water past 23.5 degrees.

4. I need to set up my skimmer and reactors. The Deltec is sitting on the floor begging to go in the tank and suck out the cloudiness from my sand, but the water in the skimmer chamber is 19.5 inches deep. I have the egg crate and PVC I need to make the stand the skimmer will sit on, but it turns out I have neither the tools, nor the skill to cut 4 pieces of pvc the same length and with flat edges. I also don't have the tools I need to affix the egg crate to the legs.
Does anyone know of a place where I can go to get PVC cut so that the ends are perfectly flat? My hand saw skills have no kung fu.

[gregzz4]

About cutting the PVC ...
Ask around your neighbourhood for someone with a mitre/chop saw.
I ended up buying one of these as I had tons of cuts to make and didn't want rough edges

http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/catalog/PVCCUTTER_1200x1200_300_4.jpg (http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductImagesView?D=969709&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051)

[gregzz4]

As for your heaters ....
3-5 watts/g is a good idea. I don't know what your total water volume is or I'd suggest a heater group.
I like having multiple smaller heaters so no single one can cook the tank if it is stuck on and I'm not relying so much on a few to do the job of many.
I have my heaters connected to a controller and they are set 1-2 degrees above my target temp so they always engage.
Also, this way if something goes sideways and they are all permanently on, there's less chance they will thoroughly cook everyone.

[gregzz4]

I ran my heaters one at a time in a bucket with a powerhead and a trusted thermometer to pre-set them

[asylumdown]

About cutting the PVC ...
Ask around your neighbourhood for someone with a mitre/chop saw.
I ended up buying one of these as I had tons of cuts to make and didn't want rough edges



It turns out I go to school in a faculty that has a fully equipped shop, so I got one of my master's of Architecture friends to cut lengths for me on the saw, worked out perfectly!


As for your heaters ....
3-5 watts/g is a good idea. I don't know what your total water volume is or I'd suggest a heater group.
I like having multiple smaller heaters so no single one can cook the tank if it is stuck on and I'm not relying so much on a few to do the job of many.
I have my heaters connected to a controller and they are set 1-2 degrees above my target temp so they always engage.
Also, this way if something goes sideways and they are all permanently on, there's less chance they will thoroughly cook everyone.

Yah, I wanted more heaters to spread out the risk. My total volume is somewhere in the 350-400 gallon range, so I don't think the 900 watts that I was planning is going to cut it.

[asylumdown]

Here's the tank as seen from my desk :)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/07cc1a72.jpg

I can't wait to get lights over it!

I also got my new toy running
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/8b616f70.jpg

Hopefully it will pull some of the cloudiness out of the water over the next couple of days.

The cocktail shrimp in the sump are starting to stink to high heaven. I've got the ceiling fan (which is unacceptably loud, we'll see what my options for fixing that are) running to keep the sump from gagging me every time I open the doors.

Ammonia: 3ppm
Nitirite: Between 0.25 and 0.50ppm
Nitrate: Between 0 and 5ppm. API test kits are sort of crappy for that. It's closer to zero.

The Dr. Tim's appears to have sped the process up at least.

[asylumdown]

I'm starting to think that 10 rotting cocktail shrimp might have been a tad excessive...

Day 5 of the cycle, and the shrimp in the bag are starting to melt.

Ammonia: between 1 and 2ppm, but probably closer to 2
Nitrite: off the chart. It goes to 5ppm, and my vial is even darker and more brilliant than that. It's quite pretty actually.
Nitrate: Between 10 and 20ppm

So the bacterial conveyor belt is working, I think I've just overloaded it :)

Oh well, the rocks will be more than able to support life when it's done.

I'm picking up my lights today!

[soaptray]

Cant wait to see the lights - what did you end up going with again? Don't recall seeing it in your thread.

[asylumdown]

Cant wait to see the lights - what did you end up going with again? Don't recall seeing it in your thread.

I went with radions. Here's hoping they're everything they're cracked up to be!

[soaptray]

I went with radions. Here's hoping they're everything they're cracked up to be!

I'm envious! How many did it take 3 or 4?

Ill be doing my 200g this summer, and would like to do the same if I can get them at a good price.

[Zoaelite]

Haha, 3 or 4? Adam had to one up the TOTM winner and go with 8 :wink:.
Really excited to see photos when you get them!

[gregzz4]

Your tank looks terrific

[asylumdown]

Haha, 3 or 4? Adam had to one up the TOTM winner and go with 8 :wink:.
Really excited to see photos when you get them!

It's officially official now? Congratulations man, I can only hope my tank looks half as good as yours one day! Where's the write up?

I'm envious! How many did it take 3 or 4?

Ill be doing my 200g this summer, and would like to do the same if I can get them at a good price.

And yah. 8. sigh. I blame Levi. If his tank wasn't so damn spectacular under them I probably wouldn't have bought them. It's most certainly overkill, but if I can't use all 8 over my main display, I'll put one or two over the frag chamber in my sump. I'm still getting night terrors over how much they cost. Figuring out how to hang them will be entertaining.


Your tank looks terrific
Thanks! I keep trying to tell my fiancé the same thing, but so far we are disagreeing on how awesome it is that those piles of white rocks are invisibly coming back to life after 65 million years of sterility in the ground.

[Madmak]

8! Yikers, that's the price of a small car! I bet it looks spectacular though.

[fishmanty]

Pics! I want to see what 6-8 Radions look like! and how much you have to turn them down! :P

[asylumdown]

Pics! I want to see what 6-8 Radions look like! and how much you have to turn them down! :P

Well I just picked them up yesterday and haven't sorted out how I'm going to hang them yet (Kevin is helping me come up with something that will allow me to raise and lower them), so at the moment this is the closest I've got to a pic...

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a806182d.jpg

I did however take one of those MP60's and put it in the tank yesterday and holy freaking crap. I'm going to have to do some playing around with rock scaping and power head placement. With the powerhead about half way between the sand and the top of the water, it can cause full blown sand tornados on the second lowest setting! The power of it gives me tingles.

[soaptray]

Jebus! There is $7500 of goods right there. Amazing.

[lastlight]

all i see is sexy tiles contrasting a nice white stand. #JealousAsFrag

[asylumdown]

all i see is sexy tiles contrasting a nice white stand. #JealousAsFrag

These floor tiles are freaking awesome. Best design choice we made I think lol.

[asylumdown]

Finally had a spare moment to take the skimmer apart and I found the culprit:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/e6d0bf9c.jpg

A big ol crack down the side of the intake manifold of the pump. The explains the air escaping from the pump, and I assume probably some of the noise. I'm going to see about getting it replaced

[gregzz4]

How old was that piece?

[asylumdown]

skimmer is brand new, and as far as I can tell so is the pump. I'm not sure when it was actually manufactured though. I've only had it running for a week

[asylumdown]

I've e-mailed that photo to Deltec USA spare parts and the Canadian distributor for Deltec. Hopefully should be able to get a new piece in short order.

In the meantime, the skimmer still works, just not optimally.

[asylumdown]

on the upside....


My ammonia is down to 0.5ppm. Nitrite is still off the freaking charts, but the first hump of the cycle is over

[mseepman]

I've e-mailed that photo to Deltec USA spare parts and the Canadian distributor for Deltec. Hopefully should be able to get a new piece in short order.

In the meantime, the skimmer still works, just not optimally.

Sadly, though Deltec is an excellent product, the Canadian Distributor could not be more painful to deal with. Best of luck for you to get an answer back anytime in the near future.:cry:

[justincgdick]

Can I ask how you had your panels done? What exactly are they?

[fishytime]

Can I ask how you had your panels done? What exactly are they?

he mentioned the product name somewhere but I cant find it.....its similar to "medex" or "extira", exterior grade MDF...... I was gonna post this in your thread but got distracted....Im sure Adam with clarify....

[asylumdown]

Yup, it's medex, the whole enclosure is made out of it. It's a more water resistant, less toxic kind of mdf. Then all interior surfaces were coated with a super thick resin sealant, the brand name of which I never managed to track down (the painters and I were never there at the same time again). The exterior was just painted with the same paint as the walls

[justincgdick]

Oh, okay. I see. Smart move making it match the walls. Thanks for the info, I didn't know such a product existed.

[asylumdown]

I couldn't wait any longer! It took the entire freaking weekend, and most of today, but...

Voila!

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/9eff9e81.jpg

If it didn't take 2 days, a seriously bruised palm, frayed fingers dealing with all that awful aircraft cable, and nearly falling off a ladder and in to my aquarium about 7 dozen times, I would be more ashamed of my awful, awful DIY hanging job. The only saving grace was that it had no requirement to be pretty, just functional. I struggled with how to support all 8 lights, and was going to make a frame out of PVC, when my uber handy friend suggested using wire shelving cut to length that I would hang the lights off of with a caribeaner (sp?)

I had two sections made, each to hold 4 lights. They're suspended with the wires that came with the premium hanging kit, and eventually I will add a pulley system so that I can raise and lower each panel of lights independently. But for now I'm thoroughly over working in there.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/ed7d3a2b.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/b2c97ad0.jpg

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a4aaf119.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/f42fac92.jpg

One major issue is that these lights trip the GFCI circuit on the outlets under my cabinet really easily. If a light is unplugged, then plugged back in, it shuts the whole thing down. I'm trouble shooting with the electricians on a work-around, but so long as I don't have to cut power to any of the units I'm good. Unfortunately, to program the lights you do need to unplug one, so long term there needs to be a better solution, but I've spent about an hour and a half playing with the programming and I think I've got it close to what I want for the next little but once corals are in we'll see what happens. I've got it at 100% power for 6 hours every day, which will probably be too much at first for most corals.

My ammonia readings come back undetectable now, but nitrite is still off the freaking chart. The colour hasn't lightened even a bit in days, so I don't know how much longer I'll need to wait to put something in this tank.

[fishytime]

my eyes!!!!:mrgreen:....holy crap that is bright with eight of them things over it!

[asylumdown]

my eyes!!!!:mrgreen:....holy crap that is bright with eight of them things over it!

I want people to be able to see my house from space

[fishytime]

I want people to be able to see my house from space

mission accomplished!

[bauder1986]

I want people to be able to see my house from space

Mind as well have the home builders remove all the lights in the house now...I cant think of a reason for you to need them.

[asylumdown]

Mind as well have the home builders remove all the lights in the house now...I cant think of a reason for you to need them.

Hah! We've stopped turning the lights on in the office.


Sadly, though Deltec is an excellent product, the Canadian Distributor could not be more painful to deal with. Best of luck for you to get an answer back anytime in the near future.:cry:

I know Deltec got a bit of a bad rap in North America due to problems with customer service, and I followed the Deltec sponsor forum pretty closely on Reef Central until they shut it down and moved the forum to the D-D website. From what I understood, they were taking steps to address the customer service side of the business here in North America, and maybe it's that I'm in Canada, but I have to say I'm more than impressed with the service I've received so far. I've had near instant responses from both Deltec Spare Parts USA, and the Canadian distributor, and I'm happy to say that the replacement piece was delivered to me via FedEx today. So while I'm only one person, they've got a huge thumbs up from me at the moment, and I'm feeling pretty confident in my choice to go with this brand.

[mseepman]

Hah! We've stopped turning the lights on in the office.




I know Deltec got a bit of a bad rap in North America due to problems with customer service, and I followed the Deltec sponsor forum pretty closely on Reef Central until they shut it down and moved the forum to the D-D website. From what I understood, they were taking steps to address the customer service side of the business here in North America, and maybe it's that I'm in Canada, but I have to say I'm more than impressed with the service I've received so far. I've had near instant responses from both Deltec Spare Parts USA, and the Canadian distributor, and I'm happy to say that the replacement piece was delivered to me via FedEx today. So while I'm only one person, they've got a huge thumbs up from me at the moment, and I'm feeling pretty confident in my choice to go with this brand.

That's excellent news since that distributor is the same one that handles Tunze in Canada...so maybe that service will also improve. :biggrin:

[gregzz4]

Jeez, sure some nice lighting going on there. Your in-wall is going to look awesome stocked. Nice job

[mseepman]

Hey any updates on this? Anxiously awaiting to see how it moves forward from here. What does your rock look like now?

[ashr]

Well I just picked them up yesterday and haven't sorted out how I'm going to hang them yet (Kevin is helping me come up with something that will allow me to raise and lower them), so at the moment this is the closest I've got to a pic...

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a806182d.jpg

I did however take one of those MP60's and put it in the tank yesterday and holy freaking crap. I'm going to have to do some playing around with rock scaping and power head placement. With the powerhead about half way between the sand and the top of the water, it can cause full blown sand tornados on the second lowest setting! The power of it gives me tingles.


This picture just blows my mind haha. So much money spent right here.. wow.

Great looking tank and setup!! :mrgreen:

[asylumdown]

Hey any updates on this? Anxiously awaiting to see how it moves forward from here. What does your rock look like now?

It has been a while hasn't it?

Well, I'm not gonna post any pics just yet as I was a little over zealous with the cycling process and caused a nasty algae problem before I even had any fish. Thankfully it's getting better now, but I'm still working on getting my nutrient export system dialled in. NO3 and PO4 keep testing at zero, so I'm having to go visually at how fast the algae that's left is growing.

As for the rocks - I got a 66 pound box of Walt Smith live rock shipped directly from Fiji (thanks Kevin!) and picked it up at the end of April (I think). I put it in the sump to cure it, then left town for most of May. When I got home, the tank looked like garbage, which I was expecting, so right now I'm bringing the tank down to a low nutrient system using BP and GFO, which I expect to take a bit of time and fiddling around

The tank looked WAY too full with all the marco rock plus the live rock in the display, so I took out about 50 pounds of Marco rock. Some went in the frag chamber, some is in my garage. The rock structure looks pretty close to the earlier pics I posted, only now the visible stuff is made up of mostly live rock. I'm going to rescape again in the not too distant future so that there are more hiding places in both rock structures, I don't want there being any aggression over sleeping sites.

I put all the corals I had in my 5 gallon pico in to the tank to test the lights, and at 100% for 6 hours a day, almost every single thing bleached. I lost a scoly (on the sand bed), and am worried that a big chalice (2 inches off the sand bed) and a small elegance (on the sand bed) might not pull through. In all fairness, those 'tester' corals were in the tank before I put 66 pounds of completely uncured live rock in the sump then left for weeks, so they likely had compounding issues, but the chalice coral was about 1/3 in the shade, and only the surface exposed to the light bleached. The clam I had in the pico is about half way up in the tank, and it was barely even opening until I dialled the lights way back. They now come on with a simulated sunrise at 7:30, slowly ramp up through 20K to 12K at 60% at noon, then gradually gain another 5% intensity over the course of 6 hours, and at 6 start dimming down through 20K to a simulated sunset at 9. I added a medium sized open brain coral to the sand bed and one small tester frag of SPS about half way up the rock work this week and am going to use them as my indicators for light levels going forward. The two corals that seemed to have no problem with the lights at 100% were my two Acans frags. If anything they got more colourful under the radions.

As soon as I get the algae issue a little more under control I'll post pics. I'm sort of working against myself a little at the moment as I have started buying fish and I'm having a hard time getting them to eat anything except mysis shrimp. I bought a blue-eyed bristle tooth tang when I got home from hawaii to help with algae clean up, and he won't even acknowledge nori sheets. I've also got a couple other fish that I'm trying to get started on pellets, krill, and chopped seafood, but so far all I'm doing is adding a whole bunch of extra, uneaten nutrients to the water.

[mseepman]

Hmmm...seems like you have your hands full. It would seem that you should halt everything until you get that nutrient issue under control. Otherwise you keep changing the rules and will never figure out the solution.

looking forward to seeing how it all comes together in a FTS when you're ready.

[fishytime]

aw, cmon Adam.....we all go through those new tank blues....dont be embarrassed....show us those "hairy rocks":mrgreen:

[mseepman]

You know, someone could get the wrong idea when you ask another dude to show you his "hairy rocks".:lol:

[asylumdown]

hehe, I may have been exaggerating the problem a little. It was REALLY bad when I came home from hawaii, but what I'm most grossed out by is the sand. I got the caribsea special grade sand, which has grains just big enough for macro algae to take root on it. The rocks are almost totally cleaned of the bad stuff except two minor spots of hair algae and some weird translucent purple macro algae that grew on on of the pieces of walt smith rock, but the sand just looks like garbage. I've got 5 conches in there that are making it better slowly, but I need more I think.

I'm headed to Edmonton for the weekend, but I'll try and take pictures when I get home. LED's and camera sensor's do not get along, I have discovered, I'll have to get some pointers from Levi to figure it out.

The one cool thing that I didn't mention is that about half of the big rock pieces I got from Walt smith were built by what to me looks like a some kind of montipora, and on almost all of them, large patches of the coral that built the rock are still alive. It's not pretty at all, like a tan body with tiny white polyps, but it's pretty freaking cool either way.

[mseepman]

Wow, looking forward to the pics of the Walt Smith stuff! You're scaring me on the sand comments since I've pre-bought 160lbs of that to mix with 60-90lbs of the select.

[asylumdown]

Wow, looking forward to the pics of the Walt Smith stuff! You're scaring me on the sand comments since I've pre-bought 160lbs of that to mix with 60-90lbs of the select.

Nah don't be. Unless you plan on wrecking your tank with a nutrient orgy. My sand is brand new, so there's not a whole lot in terms of micro-fauna living in it yet (I just spotted my first worm against the glass yesterday) and I really over did it with the cycle. Before I left for Hawaii I had been letting between 3 and 5 shrimp rot in a bag in my sump every 2 days for the better part of a month to try and build the biggest possible bacterial population on my rocks in anticipation of receiving 60 pounds of uncured live rock. I give that process partial credit for why the coral on the Walt Smith rock survived curing, but before I left for hawaii, my water was testing over 60 ppm nitrates and 1.2 ppm phosphates. I had also added a small piece of seed live rock from a store here in town to try and trigger a diatom bloom in mid April, and that piece of rock seeded my tank with a really specific kind of pale green macro algae that looks like hair algae from far away, but isn't when you look at it closely. Since it was an otherwise sterile tank, it basically became a massive mono-culture of the stuff, and it grew on the sand as easily as it grew on the rocks. The nutrient issues are largely resolving now, and thankfully that first species of algae was like crack to the bristle tooth tang so he's polished to rocks and over flow boxes pretty effectively. However, he doesn't like to eat it off the sand and I'm having to wait while the glacially slow conches clean it up. In the meantime, the remaining algae on the sand (a lot of it seems to be dead) is collecting detritus, making it look even worse.

Moral of the story, I don't think there's anything wrong with that particular sand, but my process was really hard on it. As the algae continues to recede and get eaten and the population of decomposers builds up in my sand, I expect it will return to sparkling white again.

[asylumdown]

Alright, it's picture time, but be warned, iPhone's just can't seem to cope with LED lighting. Like seriously, after you take the photo you look at it, then the tank, and wonder if it somehow took a picture of someone else's tank.

The algae issue continues to abate. Most of the algae on the sand-bed died, but I was tired of waiting for the conches to eat all the dead stuff (which was basically a magnet for detritus) so yesterday I put one end of a hose in the filter sock and then vacuumed the heck out of the sand to get all the clumps of dead algae up. The tank looks SO much better. I also added another 2 cups of biopellets to my re-circulating reactor, increased the flow rate, and decreased the tumble rate slightly. I've also cut back on my feedings as I'm no longer trying to get my fish to eat all the different kinds of foods I was feeding. I know now what they'll eat and what they won't, so there's far less uneaten waste entering the tank. It's still not pristine, but I'm really pleased with where I'm at at this stage.

I'm still amazed at how different the live rock looks from the marco rock. But since I study biological succession (though from a terrestrial point of view) I'm not entirely surprised. The types of algae growing on the marco rock seems to be very opportunistic and aren't invested in the long term, it's easy to remove with my fingers, and seems less robust in general, with a focus on rapid colonization. The species diversity is clearly really low (some marco rocks have only one or two species on them), and under the algae that's grown the rock is still bright white. The live rock from Fiji is covered with a dark bio-film that clearly represents the 'climax' community of rock covering organisms, and it will be interesting to watch how the Marco rock progresses toward this type of community over time.

But enough talk! I only took pictures from the dining room tonight as there's just not that much to see.

FTS:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/6552241b.jpg

North end:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/f0646a83.jpg

South End:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/32e28d3d.jpg

Marked difference between Marco and live rock. Note how the Marco rock is covered with stringy, early succession filamentous algae. There's also a little nub of coral that hitchhiked in from Fiji in this shot (though you probably can't see it):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/d34a2768.jpg

My first little collection of corals. The pictures are so bad you can barely see tell that there are two SPS frags in this pic
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/82f3f500.jpg

The next two are horrible shots of the spa that hitchhiked in on the rock from Fiji. In full light it's a very light pink with white polyps, and in the shade it's a dark brown with almost green polyps. It's literally everywhere in the tank.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/59898d25.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/5cf1cb10.jpg

The only other thing to note is that so far, I'm using my frag chamber in the sump as a place to house marco rock that I had to pull out of the display after I added the live rock, and all the rubble from the live rock box that I didn't want in the display. It's slowly turning out to be a crypto-fugium of sorts as tiny little non-photosynthetic tunicates are popping up all over the place in there. Pretty cool.

[asylumdown]

Figured out that if I take pictures when the lights are at 12K, it's not quite so horrible.

Spent 300 bucks on frags/mini colonies at RCC yesterday, and I'm realizing just how long/amount of money it will take to get this tank looking full! I had two tester pieces in for the last couple of weeks to see what would happen under my lights/with my water and I was pleasantly surprised. Even with the algae issues, one semi-browned out frag has turned a beautiful cream/lilac, and the other frag's colours just popped.

First, FTS front and back:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/892291d1.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/a1640356.jpg

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/3d718da2.jpg

This was my first tester frag, it was only a little blue when I got it, now it's practically turquoise
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/44d00348.jpg

My second tester coral is the one in the middle. The mother colony has browned out at the store pretty significantly, and when i got it, only the tips still had any purple, the rest were brown. It practically glows now!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/6d505efb.jpg

Edgar thinking he's going to be fed
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/d494df99.jpg

These frags are pretty browned out right now, but I'm hoping something magical will happen under my lights.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/189bc8b6.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/50984794.jpg

These two colonies are so encrusted on their bases I didn't think it was right to break them off. Presently banished to the sand bed until I am sure no aiptasia have hitchhiked in on them. The one in front was in the process of browning out, but I can see from the tips that it has a lot of potential.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/214fa4ec.jpg

And just to totally put the question of whether radions are strong enough completely to bed...
From this:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/f8d682bd.jpg

To this:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/b5bfb1ea.jpg
After running the lights at 100%. Whoops. It's on the sand bed, 25 inches down, a full 32 inches under the lights.

[gregzz4]

Nice corals
Keep the updates comin' :wink:

[lastlight]

You've come a long way! Fish and coral now and they're looking really good too. Not that I qt corals or fish... but pretty brave to place new coral on the sandbed in the display to wait and watch for aiptasia =)

[asylumdown]

You've come a long way! Fish and coral now and they're looking really good too. Not that I qt corals or fish... but pretty brave to place new coral on the sandbed in the display to wait and watch for aiptasia =)

I've become pretty aggressive in my response to aiptasia, the first on I see won't be ignored or treated chemically, but will be removed (rock and all) and blow torched to a cinder. Those two corals are the only ones whose base rock went in, and only because I couldn't easily remove them.

I also added a cleaner wrasse today, that luckily readily accepts prepared food. I know they're no solution to ich and disease, but it's been my experience that they help a lot when it comes to general tank health. My bristle tooth tang and harlequin tusk are almost fighting over him.

I also picked up a 40 gallon breeder today and started seeding some bio balls in a bag in the sump (for a canister filter) so I can run a quarantine tank on demand now. I won't e adding anymore fish until they've been through a two week fattening up period going forward.



---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?gcjxzi

[asylumdown]

Just to put the word out there, I'm looking for frags! Frags frags frags! If you're selling/tossing/moving or what have you, I'm definitely interested. My tank looks like a desert!


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?4z3q1h

[mseepman]

Well all I can say is that's a wonderful looking desert you have there. Love the look of the corals as they've come back under the LED's.

I'm sure you will find things starting to fill out quickly with good water and good light.

As for frags, you're amazingly lucky to have both RC and CoralMaster in Calgary to choose from. I'm sure they will continue to have stuff you'll want.

[asylumdown]

Been a while since I updated this. Lots of changes, some of which have been posts in the main section, so I'll try and be brief.

#1, My ATO system was a danger to itself and others. I knew it, but was waiting on the right equipment to fix it. Needless to say, the disaster happened before I got the chance to remedy the situation. Had a salinity disaster while I was out of town for a long weekend, and toasted almost all of my corals. Thank the universe this was still a new tank. I only took pics of a couple carcasses:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-30.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-29.jpg

This whipped my butt in to gear (even if I couldn't really afford it) to finish my ATO system the way it was designed to exist. My R/O system now feeds a 50 gallon reservoir in the basement (instead of being the direct ATO system), and there are two pumps in that 55 gallon drum that 1. run the ATO and 2. Send up water for water changes when the time comes.

Remote R/O system:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-17.jpg
upgraded Tunze osmolator powered outlet:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-18.jpg
How the whole thing runs through the floor:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-19.jpg
Backflow preventer under the cabinet:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-22.jpg

After the salinity issues, I had a serious outbreak of ich. Like, deadly. I lost about half my fish, and stopped the carnage by catching every single one of the buggers and converting part of my custom sump to a QT system. I had some issues with the cycle this created in the QT system, but as of a week or so ago, all toxic compounds were registering undetectable. My remaining fish are:

Copper band butterfly
Purple Tang
Powder Blue tang (a new addition to the QT system after the cycle was complete, my initial Powder Blue was lost in the ich outbreak)
Harlequin Tuskfish
mated pair of Bengali Cardinals
4 square spot anthias (1 male 3 females)
Longtail tripod fish
Leopard wrasse

My QT procedure has been to lower their salinity to 1.009 for 30 days after the last visible spot (10 days remaining), then I'll dose them with Seachem paraguard for 3 weeks. Then 2 weeks of observation to make sure the ich is gone. This will have left my Display fallow for 10 weeks. Seachem assures me that no part of Paraguard will remain 'active' after the treatment is complete, so I don't need to worry about the rocks and sand in my sump that will have been treated. I added a spare canister filter to the QT system, and both the nano LED light systems and light timer I had laying around, as my sump is normally unlit.

Here's some photos of the QT portion of my sump from today (the QT area is on the left, the return chambers to the main tank is on the right):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-20.jpg
Close up:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-23.jpg
CBB hanging out near the pump that does double duty draining the Water Change Chamber (which also happens to be the main QT chamber ATM), and the return pump that drives the QT system:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-25.jpg


In that time I've had ongoing serious issues with my overflows, as Herbie style overflows are really fickle when you've got your overflow plumbing all connecting to the same outlet in to the sump. I've got a forum thread about this in the main area so I won't elaborate here, but I'll just say that Herbie style overflows aren't always appropriate for every setup. Research them carefully for how they'll behave on your own specific plumbing set up before taking the plunge. I spent today converting my main overflow system to Dursos, which worked beautifully on my last 90 gallon tank. In a normal system they're a little noisier than a Herbie, but since my tank's plumbing is contained within the walls of my office, I don't notice it. Presently, I'm still using my double herbied gate valves (I think I described them a few pages back?) to control the water and bubble levels in the return chamber. This prevents splash-back into the QT chamber. It's not perfectly optimal, but when the QT process is over, I'll have a fickle free sump that still allows me to do mostly automated water changes.

I used plugs with threaded 3/4" holes in the top to cap my dursos, and drilled them just right to prevent full siphon while minimizing bubbles. Right now, since I'm doing this weird, not optimal, hybridized herbie'd durso, I don't have the threaded cap in, which means I'm still sucking some air down the drain pipe, but it's a controlled amount of bubbles, and I've got really fine control over the water level in my return chamber for the time being. It's also not that much louder than my last overflow system:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-26.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-27.jpg

I also took this opportunity to add more lochline to my return line, and switched to flattened outputs, as the rounded outputs I had were creating this nasty jet of water that blasted one area of my rock:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-28.jpg

And finally, I've started replacing some of my lost corals while everyone is in QT. Getting all the fish out meant removing 100% of the rock, so I got the chance to re-scape. I took that opportunity to remove some of the base rock that made my tank look too packed, and I tried to follow a more balanced "2/3 to 1/3" aesthetic ratio that you normally follow for photography while balancing the two sides. I like this much better:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file.jpg

[mseepman]

So glad to see this back on track. Really like this tank and given some of the common "building a house around the tank" issues we've faced, I need this tank to succeed!

[gregzz4]

Crappy to hear about your losses and the MI issue

Glad to see it hasn't got you down

[asylumdown]

So glad to see this back on track. Really like this tank and given some of the common "building a house around the tank" issues we've faced, I need this tank to succeed!

#1 mistake: Not having a fish room with a proper QT system in it. My Fiance was so concerned about resale we didn't put a dedicated room in, but we also didn't leave any logical space for a separate QT system anywhere in the house. I tried taking over the laundry room for a while, but that was met with serious resistance. The only thing that has saved me has been the extra time spent designing my sump. After what I've gone through in the past month, I wouldn't run a system without a full prophylactic treatment regimen for every single new arrival again. People say you can't avoid ich, I've done the research, and I'm fairly confident that you can, you just need to be prepared for it.

Also, you think you've planned for everything, but the devil is in the details. 99% of the work happens in an hour or two, that last 1% can take 2 entire freaking days. Each time something happens, I make the adjustments that will make this tank what I originally intended it to be, but man, getting there has been a labour of love. Planning a house around a tank is hard for all the reasons that you know it will be (contractors, timing, design, etc.), but it's made equally hard because it's almost always a completely unique circumstance, and there's no 'out of the box' solutions. Everything I did on this system was specific to this system and this set up. Some things are working beautifully, others I would change if I had the chance, but what I have to keep reminding my fiance (who hates how much time the tank has consumed) is that this is a brand new system. Almost nothing is perfect in it's first iteration, and each change impacts some other part of the system. I keep thinking I'm 'Done' with the set-up, but I keep finding ways to make it less fickle, and less likely to behave in unexpected and unintended ways.

My best advice is to be prepared for the best laid plans to not turn out the way you intend on a first pass, but if you've put enough forethought in to the 'bones' of the system, nothing is irrecoverable.

[asylumdown]

Also, I should add that while they aren't cheap, buying a sh*t-ton of ecotech product was the best investment I made. So far their service has been above and beyond what I would have expected from any company, and they've been 100% on the ball with helping me make things work properly. You'll notice a dark spot on the far right in the FTS above. The power supply on one of my lights started going nuts a few weeks ago and Ecotech went the distance to get it repaired. I've got a new power supply en-route to me now.

And that concludes my shameless plug.

[asylumdown]

Man it's been a while since I updated.

Tank has gone through some changes. Had a monster ich problem, tried fixing it with cut corners, which, you guessed it, not only failed, but made my display tank look like garbage. I tried using my modified sump as a QT for a hypo treatment. The hypo protocol didn't work for me (likely do to the fact that I couldn't prevent backsplash from the DT and my salinity fluctuated too much), but for all that time, the DT had no protein skimming, no water changes, no GFO, no bio-pellets, no nutrient export of any kind. And I kept feeding the display. Fast forward 6 weeks and the display tank looked like this:

Front:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-37.jpg
Back:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-36.jpg

Basically it looked like garbage. After the fish got ich again in the hypo treatment, I moved them to a separate QT tank and started a copper treatment, and returned my sump to it's normal operation. This had hte nasty side effect of forcing me to reset my fallow clock to 0 days after already having a fishless display for nearly 6 weeks. Needless to say I'm itching for my fish to be back in a proper home. They're banished until November 30th.

Since then I've been aggressively correcting all the problems that co-opting my sump for 6 weeks caused. I started GFO again, tuned my bio-pellet reactor, started doing water changes a couple of times a week (my salt budget has exploded), and got a small army of Mexican turbo snails. I also cut back on the amount that I feed the display. However, none of that was really all that effective. It was obviously working, as I didn't even have to clean the glass anymore, but that nasty hair algae is tough as nails. It's almost like once you have it that badly, you have it. You can slow it down but it's so pervasive that it sucks up the nutrients faster than any of your nutrient reduction systems can remove them. For 3 weeks I was manually removing at least 2 pounds a week and it was still growing back, albeit slower than it had been. So I ordered Algaefix Marine from an Asian seller on Ebay who didn't mind shipping to Canada (it's technically banned here, and most US retailers won't ship it) and started dosing as per instructions. I'm 4 doses in, and this is the tank now:

Front:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-39.jpg
Back:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-38.jpg

I've also gone on a bit of a coral shopping spree, have rescaped the rocks a tiny bit and moved stuff around to make room for all the new things. I've also upgraded my Radions to the TIR lenses and picked up an Apex controller unit, which has made my life oh-so-much easier. Not having to unplug things when I need to clean equipment alone was worth the cost, but the feed cycles are also invaluable. I haven't set it up online yet as the ethernet cable in my cabinet is dead (another thing for the warranty people!), but the control panel is pretty straightforward.

So far the only disasters have been to do with my RO system. I was using a switched timer to bring the water up from the RO reservoir in the basement because I couldn't find any three pronged switched outlets. Basically it had a 'timer' mode and an 'on' mode. I deactivated all the timer points so that it was effectively an off switch. I went out of town for 10 days, and the night before I was refilling all my dosing chambers and must have knocked the timer on the switch with the bucket, which told the timer to switch on at 4 pm the next day. When I was 2000km away. Thank any deity you can thank that my roommate just happened to be home when the pump kicked on called me freaking out. She was literally walking out the door when it happened, and had she left 5 minutes earlier 55 gallons of fresh water would have emptied on to my office floor. Needless to say I ordered proper switches that day.

Anyway, that's kind of it. I'm looking for someone who wants to sell a frag of red planet, Oregon tort, cali tort, or any other 'premium' level frags in Calgary, so if someone reading this has some they want to sell, let me know!

[lastlight]

Well that Algaefix sure seems to have worked... wow! Hope the turn-around continues. Your SPS looks happy from what I can see.

[kien]

I guess you got the memo that October is/was tank rehabilitation month. Looks like things are looking up for sure!

[mseepman]

Love how the tank is looking. That Algae fix sounds like it's working wonders for everyone who has tried it!

Hopefully you've exhausted Murphy and his laws no longer apply to you.

[asylumdown]

Love how the tank is looking. That Algae fix sounds like it's working wonders for everyone who has tried it!

Hopefully you've exhausted Murphy and his laws no longer apply to you.

I doubt it. Every time I think 'nothing can possibly go wrong now!', it finds a new way to screw with me. For example, last night after I posted I discovered that the people who were working on our HVAC system pulled the R/O hose out of the float valve when they were using the rain barrel I store my RO water in as a desk in the utility room. My R/O unit has been running continuously since Friday. The only reason there wasn't a major flood was because I did a massive water change on my tank this weekend, and then a massive water change on my QT tank the next day, so it was only overflowing for a day or two. The water was spilling out the back of the barrel, then running along the wall behind the furnace and hot water heater, so I didn't see it until it started trickling out in to the middle of the room. By that point it had soaked through a bag of left over grout, and completely filled up one of the slab heat access panels in the floor. Thankfully the utility room walls are all plywood, so the water didn't wreck them, and it doesn't seem to have soaked through to the baseboard on the other side.

I've siliconed the R/O hose right to the float switch now. Hopefully that won't happen again. I'm going to look in to setting up an emergency drain on the rain barrel so that if it does overflow again, it will just go straight to the drain in the middle of the room.

[asylumdown]

Well that Algaefix sure seems to have worked... wow! Hope the turn-around continues. Your SPS looks happy from what I can see.

It really does. I am shocked at how well actually. I wish we didn't have to order it from Hong Kong! I'm hoping that with the algae from the rocks gone, the corals will plate out farther and faster. In just a week I've noticed such a drastic change in all of them

[asylumdown]

I guess you got the memo that October is/was tank rehabilitation month. Looks like things are looking up for sure!

lol, it was? I didn't even know that was a thing! But let's say I did and that this was for charity or something...

[kien]

I didn't even know that was a thing!.

oh it totally is man, and you passed with flying (sps) colours.

[Zoaelite]

lol, it was? I didn't even know that was a thing! But let's say I did and that this was for charity or something...

Haha, good to see you back @ it Adam and even better to see the Algae fix is working for you. Are you happy with the TIR upgrade? I opted not to complete it, my Radion has the power to burn my coral @ 45% I don't think adding additional intensity is what I required.

[asylumdown]

I am happy with the TIR. To be honest I can't say I notice much of a difference in how bright it appears to me, but it seems to blend the colours better. I could really see the different colours of lights on the sand bed as they shimmered, and while that's definitely still there, it's way less severe.

Before I got the lenses, the brightest my lights got was 75% with all channels at 100% and that was only for 4 hours in the middle of the day, the rest of the day it was either ramping up or down. After the TIR lenses I actually increased the intensity slightly, I kept the 4 hour period where all channels were at max, but over that 4 hours it increased from 75% to 80%.

I wasn't all that happy with radions in general to be honest, I wasn't digging the colours in my tank, or how washed out it looked, and was seriously considering ditching them and getting halides or plasma. Then I had computer issues, lost my entire windows partition, and along with it, my radion program. I wasn't sure what that would mean for my group, and last time I had to re-set up a group (one of the units failed and was replaced under warranty) it was 6 hours of hair pulling infuriation. Once they're set up and the group is exactly the way you want it they're easy as pie to use, but getting them to that point, modifying, or adding to a group of radions is an exercise in pure, unadulterated rage. It's their biggest flaw, I think. It took daylight savings throwing my lights off by an hour to convince me to try re-programming them, and, much to my very pleasant surprise, the group seems to be stored locally on the units, not in the config utility software. I had to set up a totally new schedule, and I finally see why these lights are awesome. My last program clearly sucked, because now that I've gone back and done it all again with different pre-sets that ramp in to each other better, the tank is practically sparkling.

I will say they still don't hold a candle to T5s in terms of coral colouration. I was just at another reefers house buying some frags, and his frag tank had an ATI unit over it. I've never seen colours that vibrant on a coral before. I picked up a green montipora frag from him that I realized I already have a piece of, only the one that's been in my tank has turned a pale yellow/green, while the one in his tank looks like it's been painted with dark green neon paint. Some corals actually improve in their overall coloration, developing an almost internal glow, but then others really seem to fade and wash out under the radions. I have one mini colony that started life in my tank as a light pinkish green Walt Smith frag. It's now a dark brown/slightly rust coloured colony with the slightest hint of green iridescence when the lights are all royal blue. While I have two other colonies that started out as rust coloured with the tiniest hint of blue on the tips, and are now glowing cyan on the main branches, and electric blue at the growth tips. The frags I just picked up are all super electric shades of green and red, so we'll see if they hold their colours over time, or if they wash out. I've been playing with placement to try and maximize the colouration of each colony, but things are still growing, and nothing is burning, so I don't want to decrease the intensity.

man, a simple question you ask and I give you a novel.

[Skimmerking]

Hey Adam the tank is looking sweet man , I wish that mine looked like that. anyways that is a another story.:cry:

[asylumdown]

Well this morning has been pretty rough. Sometime last night my QT system crashed. I can't figure out what triggered it. Came down to feed them this morning and the water was the colour of milk. Every single fish is dead.

They were only 10 days away from going back in the display. I've never wanted out of this hobby as much as I do right now.

[Delphinus]

Oh wow that is rough. Sorry for your losses. :(

[gregzz4]

Sorry to hear this Adam

You've built such a great tank ... I hope you decide to get some more fish

[mseepman]

So sorry to hear about this. You have built an amazing setup and it would be a shame to quit now!

[sharkbait]

Wow I couldn't imagine how rough that must have been for you! Keep trucking, you tank is amazing!

[asylumdown]

I've done some investigating. We had a party on Saturday night, and every time I went near the laundry room, the door was closed. I kept opening it, but the last time I checked was about midnight. There's indigo stains all over the inside of the wall and door, right at butt height, so you can imagine why the door kept getting closed...

We have a massive server stack in there that powers the home automation and distributed audio/video system for the house. We know it puts out a lot of heat, which is why for the last 7 months the door to the laundry room has never been closed. While I was doing a complete reset to the QT system today, I closed the door to see how hot it would get. After 2 hours it was 30 degrees in there. I've done every test I can think of on the water they were in, but I don't have a max/min thermometer. My best guess is that the water got too hot and the dissolved O2 fell below levels anything could survive in. The tank had too many fish for it's size already, so I doubt there was a wide margin of error for oxygen. It's either that, or a drunk party guest decided the fish needed a drink. Pretty brutal considering how close they were to going back in to the main tank. Between the failed hypo treatment in the sump and then the QT system, I've had them 'in treatment' since August. That much time and effort blown to pieces less than two weeks away from the finish line.

Does anyone know if a tank crash like this will also damage the bacteria bed in a canister filter? I tried to save it by running it in an empty salt bucket with water from the nuked system, and today I cleaned the tank and all the equipment and re-filled it with 100% new salt water. The canister filter is back attached to the QT tank now, so I dosed it with enough ammonium chloride to hit 1.5ppm this afternoon to both keep the bacteria alive, but also to test whether it's going to go through a cycle again. After 6 hours the level of ammonia doesn't seem to have fallen any. I'm not sure if that means my filter is toast or not.

I'm going to be out of town more than I'm in for the next 4 weeks, so I won't be getting any new fish for a while, but I'm going to try and see this as an opportunity to do this whole thing again properly. I'm going to add fish slowly, and only after a rigorous prophylactic treatment of copper. All new corals are going to be quarantined in the new cadlights all-in-one nano tank I just bought to make sure that not a single drop of outside, potentially contaminated water will make it in to my system. It's not going to be easy, but I am going to try my hardest to make my system pathogen free going forward.

I'm also going to take this time to try and deal with my growing aiptasia problem using berghia. I'm pretty sure the reason I never had success with them in my last tank was that a) I let the problem get so out of hand the nudibranch's couldn't make a dent in their short lifespans and b) I had tried peppermint shrimp first (which didn't work) and I'm pretty sure the shrimp were eating both the nudis and their eggs and c) I had wrasses that I'm pretty sure were also eating the berghia. Since my tank is going to be fishless now for at least 6 more weeks (groan!), I may as well try berghia again as there's nothing in that tank that could eat them, and the problem isn't so bad they couldn't clear it out.

Other than that I'm actually blown away at how well the display is doing. Now that the algae is gone, corals that seemed like they were in stasis are bursting to life. Frags that hadn't grown an inch in months are sending out base plates at a rate I didn't think was possible. I had no idea how inhibiting algae could be to coral growth. I tried taking some top down photos tonight when the lights were on their way to being super blue, and man, I just can't figure out how to make the LEDs jive with my iPhone. The photos look nothing at all like it does in real life, it's like the sensor only sees the blue, and then captures is as horribly as possible. I tried adjusting the white balance in photoshop afterwards, and this was the best I could do:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-44.jpg
This coral came to me completely browned out, with only the tiniest hint of blue at the tips. It's probably changed the most out of all my corals. This pic is as close to how it looks in real life as I could get with photoshop.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-45.jpg

[asylumdown]

Was out of town for the past couple of days, came home literally shocked at how much the coral had grown. Getting rid of that algae was the best decision I ever made!

Also, did a 50 gallon water change, skimmer clean, full change of phosphate media and hanna phosphate test in... 45 minutes. Bam! The time and money planning this thing is finally paying off.

Now to get some fish...

[gregzz4]

I don't know what to say about your system Adam as it looks like you have it under control ...

All I will add is you may want to add an alarm for your QT temp ...

Sorry I don't have any better advice :wink:

[lastlight]

Really sad news about your fish bro. You're definitely due some good news for a change hope things only get better from here.

[asylumdown]

Thanks friends!

So I ended up having to cancel my trip to Hawaii because of school, which sucks on a whole different level, but I consoled myself by going on a fish binge today. My QT tank is completely cycled at this point, so it was either keep dosing ammonium chloride, or by something with a metabolism to do it for me!

Most expensive purchase:
Golden rhomboidal wrasse

Most sentimental purchase
Harlequin tusk fish. The one I lost was easily my favourite fish.

Everyone was eating after a couple hours in the QT tank today, so tomorrow I'm going to start ramping up cupramine levels for a prophylactic treatment. If I do it right, I should have fish in my tank again in 3 weeks.

On another note, I took my skimmer apart tonight for it's first ever major cleaning. When I put it back together I realized that for hte past 7 months the adapter that holds the pump to the skimmer body has been loose. I was complaining about the noise it makes way back in the beginning, and did need to get a part of the pump replaced, but now after a simple tightening the skimmer is absolutely silent. Now once I get the bearing replacement kit for my Reeflo Dart return pump, my tank should be near silent.

[asylumdown]

So I'm officially done using copper. For good. Of the 7 fish I bought to replace the guys who died, two survived the prophylactic cupramine treatment. I knew some or all had ich (flashing, came from tanks with visible ich present), so there was no way I wasn't going to treat them, but good lord.

To add insult to injury, I have now done enough research on Cryptocarion irritans to quote it's life-cycle stages in my sleep, and I'm no longer convinced that the recommended course of cupramine (or any copper medication) is sufficient to eradicate ich from a system. It will definitely clear it from the fish, but since you're 'supposed' to leave the fish in the quarantine tank for a couple of weeks after completing the copper treatment, you run a very real risk of the fish becoming re-infected in the QT from tomonts that lodged in places you couldn't clean (the bio-media of your filter, for example) that encysted before copper reached therapeutic levels. Crypt tomonts can easily stay encysted for 5+ weeks, and no one would recommend treating a fish that long. Basically, the 14 day recommended course of treatment on the cupramine bottle is woefully insufficient to clear the parasite based on well established published literature. I think they recommend 14 days because anything longer is dangerous to the fish.

The only treatment method that I've seen that makes any sense from a 'total eradication' perspective is the tank transfer method, which takes the wild card tomonts out of the picture completely. As a result, I've completely re-done my QT system to accommodate for this method:

Gone is the 40 gallon breeder with external canister filter, and in it's place is two 15 gallon tanks, each with their own light, heater, and power head:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-47.jpg

I transferred my two survivors from the 40 gallon (which still had therapeutic levels of copper, I let it run for my two survivors an extra week) to one of the 15s, which was sterile and, taking care to transfer as little water as possible.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-48.jpg

I then bleach bombed everything that had been in water in the 40 (heater, powerhead, canister filter, PVC lengths) and cleaned and dried everything. I was thinking I would then re-set up the canister filter and cycle it in a 5 gallon bucket in the garage so that I could add it back to one of the 15s after the final tank transfer was complete for a future batch of fish, but now I'm thinking that filter might be overkill for a 15 gallon tank:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-50.jpg

Instead, I might cycle the media from an aquaclear 20 in a bucket and just put that on one of the 15s after the last transfer is complete.

For the 2 fish that I do have, I've basically just done the first transfer of the transfer process, but since they spent three weeks in therapeutic levels of copper, and were in that water right up to the moment they were transferred to this new tank, I'm not sure if I need to do the full transfer protocol. There's no tomonts in this new 15 gallon to re-infect them now that the copper levels are zero, so assuming there's no signs of re-infection by thursday, I might just put them back in the display. I bought a 2 litre of prime to deal with the ammonia that's going to result from keeping fish in filterless tanks.

So far, I can say that the biggest fear I had about using this method was the stress to the fish, but while the transfer itself was clearly unpleasant for them, within 3 minutes of being in the new water they were acting totally normally, and ate an hour later, so it's the trade-off of the acute, but highly temporary stress of catching them every three days, vs the stress of continuously subjecting them to poison for weeks and then them being re-infected. I think the acute but temporary stress is better.

[Spyd]

Next time you buy some fish, maybe try Hyposalinity instead of a copper based medication. I have had excellent results in clearing up any ich from purchased livestock and it is 100% medication free.

[daplatapus]

I tried hypo and copper and I lost fish both times. Copper - was my own fault. Didn't know you can't use Amquel at the same time. :(
Hypo - for some reason I could just not keep the pH up.
I've been doing the tank transfer for over a year, going on 12 fish, haven't lost one yet and so far has been 100% effective.
I understand not everyone has the room for it, but it sure beats everything else I've tried. For actually transferring fish, I syphon out everything but 3" or 4" of water and gently use my hand to catch them. This can't be done safely with every type of fish, but everything I have has done great with it. They don't seem to mind, no thrashing around like you see in a net. It's my first choice for sure for ich treatment or QT.

[asylumdown]

I tried hypo, it didn't work for me. To give the method it's fair due, my protocol wasn't exactly perfect, but I don't put much stock in it in general. Copper makes sense to me because its a poison and has been directly shown to kill free swimming stages of the parasite in published literature, and tank transfer makes sense because its designed around breaking the known and published life cycle of the parasite, but hypo works based on an assumption that 100% of the cryptocaryon irritans population has a magic salinity tolerance threshold of 1.009 SG. That assumption is repeated as fact in forums, and seems to work for some people (and thus, some populations of crypt), but it also seems to fail for more people than the other two methods. I have no doubt that some of those failures are due to protocol problems on the aquarist's part, but I would bet money that some of those failures are because some strains of ich can tolerate any salinity a fish could survive, especially if its been acclimated slowly to that salinity with your fish. It's already been documented in brackish estuaries and tidal river systems, so there is definitely a wider range of salinity tolerances in the population than previously believed.

[asylumdown]

I tried hypo and copper and I lost fish both times. Copper - was my own fault. Didn't know you can't use Amquel at the same time. :(
Hypo - for some reason I could just not keep the pH up.
I've been doing the tank transfer for over a year, going on 12 fish, haven't lost one yet and so far has been 100% effective.
I understand not everyone has the room for it, but it sure beats everything else I've tried. For actually transferring fish, I syphon out everything but 3" or 4" of water and gently use my hand to catch them. This can't be done safely with every type of fish, but everything I have has done great with it. They don't seem to mind, no thrashing around like you see in a net. It's my first choice for sure for ich treatment or QT.

Yah, you're experience with tank transfer seems to be the norm. Again, it's forums so take anything people say with a grain of salt, but the posts I've seen where people say it failed, it seems like they either contaminated their transfer tanks with materials from an infected system, or they were mis diagnosing the disease.

I'm using a clear Tupperware with holes drilled in the bottom to drain the water, but that's because one of my new guys is a rabbitfish. No interest in getting stuck by those spines.

[lastlight]

I'm using a clear Tupperware with holes drilled in the bottom to drain the water, but that's because one of my new guys is a rabbitfish. No interest in getting stuck by those spines.

Maybe have the water drain off and pour a jug of freshwater over top to further rinse him off. Not sure that can help any just an idea.

[gregzz4]

Brett, I don't see that doing anything as it's not contact with FW that irritates MI, but rather the interrruption of osmoregulation that kills it

Adam, I hope the tank transfer method will do the trick for you
You've been through enough already
For long-term usage, I'd suggest AM Guard over Prime

For me, I just finished a round of Hypo with a Gramma and Kole and it seems to have taken care of the strain of MI they had
I ran the QT for another 4 weeks at 1.025 and saw no more MI
Of note, I ran my Hypo Sg at 1.008 rather than 1.009
I couldn't keep my pH up past 7.8 most of the time, but all went well

[lastlight]

yeah i mostly said it because it might rinse a few off the surface of the fish but i'm guessing they're attached better than that.

[gregzz4]

I'm sure it can't hurt, as long as the pH is matched

A dip in StressGuard or ParaGuard between tank transfers might help too, especially for those using nets instead of collanders
But I stress following the instructions closely

[Zoaelite]

Hate to say it but I think its time to do away with the quarantine tanks Adam.

Trying to sum up your efforts so far has personally given me a head ache, I can only imagine what its doing to you. Imo quarantine is just too stressful for many species, I have personally never utilized it and have had great success introducing new fish. Purchasing fish with zero illness that will eat infront of you at the LFS and then go home to a well fed and healthy system is key here.

That being said I have never had the brutal experience of Marine Velvet, I'm sure most who advocate for quarantine have experienced this.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

[gregzz4]

I won't knock your procedures Zoa (sorry, can't recall your name), but I'll say that after bringing home some apparently healthy, although MI prone fish, and putting them in a fresh QT, I've recently been through MI and was glad I put them through QT

[Aquattro]

That being said I have never had the brutal experience of Marine Velvet, I'm sure most who advocate for quarantine have experienced this.



That's the biggie, IMO. I agree that quarantining sucks, a lot. Almost as much as losing all your fish. While I hate doing it, if I bring home a new fish, I add up the replacement cost of what is currently in my tank. That's usually incentive enough to go through the hassle..

[asylumdown]

I'm perhaps getting a little neurotic about how far I'm trying to take this quarantine thing, but I guess my problem is that I seem to really love the super sensitive, ich prone fish. Before I started this, I simply couldn't add new fish, every fish that would go in would be fine for the first day, flashing the second, look like it had been dropped in a bowl of sugar the third, and dead by the fourth. I had a few guys who didn't seem bothered, but it got the point where even the most robust were exhibiting distress, then even my "resistant" established fish started to die. I lost half my fish, then quarantine killed the rest. I feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't at this point.

[gregzz4]

I wouldn't say you're being neurotic at all
I think you have been through enough issues, with enough negative things happening, that you are losing your mind like some of the rest of us :silly:

[asylumdown]

Well, for the first time since August 15th (or maybe it was the 18th?) My tank has fish in it. My display tank is now the happy home to a juvenile Australian Harlequin tusk (it still has it's false eye spots), and a very young doliatus rabbitfish. To be honest, if I wasn't going out of town for 5 days tomorrow, I would have probably done a full tank transfer protocol on them, but since I didn't want them to spend 1 second in a copper free tank that could have encysted tomonts waiting to hatch, it was either leave them in full strength copper for a 4th week, or get them out of copper and in to a sterile tank that had no filtration. The tuskfish was starting to lose his appetite, and it looks like he's developing fin rot, so I didn't think the extra week in copper was a good idea.

These two have now been through a three week cupramine treatment at between 0.5 and 0.6ppm, then a tank transfer to a sterile, guaranteed ich free tank for 3 days. The fin rot worries me a little, so I put them both in a paraguard bath for an hour before transferring them to the main tank. Hopefully with perfect water quality and good nutrition the tusk's fins will recover. Everything I know about the biology of crypt tells me that there's no way these fish should be carrying unseen parasites, and my system has been fallow since... late September I think (mid August if you count the days there was no fish in the display, but in the sump, though ich was clearly present in the sump in that time). I've even been neurotic about new invertebrates going in to the display, not a single drop of water from another system has entered mine, and anything with a dead skeleton or shell has been carefully rinsed with fresh water, then brushed with a toothbrush dipped in full strength bleach before being quarantined for at least a week, in which time the water in the 5 gallon QT tank was 100% replaced at least 3 times. All sps colonies and frags have been broken off the rocks or plugs they came on, and re-glued to new, sterile bases before being QT'd for at least a week. If I have any say in the matter, I'm going to have an ich free tank.

[asylumdown]

Picture time!

First, some FTS:
Front:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-56.jpg
Back:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-55.jpg

South Front:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-58.jpg
South Back:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-60.jpg

North front:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-57.jpg
North Back:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-59.jpg

And some growth shots:
Sept. 10, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-95.jpg
Dec. 28, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-68.jpg

June 21, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-97.jpg
Sept. 10, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-96.jpg
Dec. 28, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-67.jpg

[asylumdown]

July 11:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-98.jpg
Sept. 10
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-99.jpg
Dec. 28
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-69.jpg

Oct. 18
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-100.jpg
Dec. 28
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-70.jpg

Oct. 18
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-101.jpg
Dec. 28
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-102.jpg

Oct. 18
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-103.jpg
Dec. 28
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-104.jpg

[asylumdown]

And the birds nest I have isn't doing so hot, so I'm going to replace it with one of these guys when they come out of quarantine:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-91.jpg

And these are the guys I have downstairs going through the tank transfer protocol:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file-54.jpg
I have a swiss basslet in there too, but he's too shy to get a picture of him.

I also appear to have conquered ich, the rabbitfish and tuskfish in the display are in perfect health, not a speck on them since they went in!