Update time.

Since my last post I've been busy. I accepted a whole bunch of Corals to "baby-sit" because her tank crashed. Some beautiful stuff in there, Ricordia's, Acan's, frogspawn and hammer as well as some montiporas. Everything I like is leaning up against the rockwork in case it "decides" to frag itself!!! It was all in fairly rough shape when I got it, but is coming along nicely.

I got a nice birdsnest and monti cap from Fishytime and they're both doing really well. I'll try and get some livestock pic's up tommorow.

On Sunday, ran down to Golds and bought a nice little target mandarin. She's quite pleased in the new diggs and very sociable. My wifes already in love with her! I also grabbed a zeovit starter package.

After doing a bunch of fence sitting and reading about the zeovit system I decided to give it a 6 month trial. My reasoning is that it isn't a whole lot more expensive then running rowaphos and swapping it out every month. In fact it may be a little bit cheaper and it provides some extra benefits that I like. I'm really hoping it helps my zoanthids. For some reason the things will not thrive in my tank. I've got Monti's and 2 birdsnest that are growing like crazy, my lps' have great colour and look happy, but softies and zoanthids do not thrive in my tank. I'm not sure what the problem is, but zoanthids in particular just seem to barely stay alive sometimes.

My mental blocks that have kept me away from it up until now... I was afraid of the time commitment and the cost. Now that I've rationalized the cost all I had to get over was the time commitment, and really it only takes seconds out of my day.

Because I didn't buy a proper zeovit reactor I just put the zeolith rocks in a filter bag in my sump. I don't think this was really doing anything but I wanted them in there even for just a minor effect. So they went in Sunday night, as well I started the full dosing regime that evening. I'm just going with the basic 4 ingredients (zeoliths, zeobac, zeostart and zeofood7). Since then I've noticed my water is clearer, the skimmer is pulling more stuff and the sand-bed looks SLIGHTLY cleaner. I'm getting some nice colour from the one birdsnest frag that I wasn't getting before. The only negative I can see so far is that the LPS are a little "pouty" at night. During the day they're loving life and look great though so I'm not really concerned... probably just an adjustment phase.

Not wanting to spend the hundreds of dollars they seem to want for a "professionally made" zeovit reactor, I decided to make my own for as cheap as possible (just to spite the manufacturers) Quite often, inspiration for DIY aquarium projects comes from my wifes kitchen (much to her dismay) and this time was no exception. After poking around a bit, I found what I needed in the Kitchen section of Canadian Tire. For the reactor body, I found a 1.9 litre juice mixing jug. Cost... $8.65, throw in some plumbing bits and I'm probably up to $18 or $19... not too shabby!

Here are some pics of the construction....

Here's the jug, I drilled a hole in the bottom and just siliconed a barbed fitting in there. The eggcrate you see in there is to support the tray holding the rock.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...tuff/zeo01.jpg

Here's the "Juice Mixing lid and attachment" All I did was glue some plastic mesh to it. I found out that I did have to pull it apart and re-enforce the handle/rod where it joins with the mesh.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...tuff/zeo06.jpg

Cut off the bottom of the jug handle and it clips right to the baffles. In this shot I've got the rocks in and carbon is sitting in a bag on top.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...tuff/zeo09.jpg

I'm running about 60-65gph (240 litres per hour) through the reactor, I'll increase that gradually up to ~100gph over the next month. Overall, I'm already not quite happy with this reactor but for ~$20 how can a guy go wrong. My biggest beef is I'm thinking I should've gone with a little bigger container. If the zeovit works out and I decide to stay with it I'll build something really fancy.

Keep an eye out for livestock pictures coming up!

:D I like it.

Looks good with a ton of potential.

So, a month into the zeovit I'm noticing slightly a little better colour in some of the corals and I'm still happy with water clarity. BUT, I'm still blasting some of that darned bryopsis a couple of times a week with boiling water and still a few patches of hair algae that are hanging on relentlessly. Also, coral colouration wasn't a problem at all for me before.

However, my sand bed looks cleaner and chaeto growth has slowed down to a standstill almost so I think it's doing something and I wasn't expecting miracles overnight, especially considering bryopsis is a mighty tenacious little bugger. Glass stays a little cleaner too, So I'm going to keep it up for a 6 month trial before I make any conclusions.

In other news, Santa brought me a new DSLR camera so I've been playing with that quite a bit here are some of the results...

First, the obligatory FTS
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...f/Fulltank.jpg

Now for some of my favourites, mine and the babysat ones!

This birdsnest has actually grown tremendously towards the camera, but I can't seem to get a decent picture of growth in that direction so you'll have to take my word for it!!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2.../Birdsnest.jpg

This little Candycane is always so happy!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...andyCane-1.jpg

Happy as a Clam
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...uff/Crocea.jpg

I'm just babysitting this Riccorida but I think my wife is starting to become attached
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2.../Riccordia.jpg

And the Devils hand, I just like the detail I could get in this pic
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...DevilsHand.jpg

nice little reactor, how much did the Zeo cost you to start up and How much to run it for your size of the tank.

SO what does the Zeo reactor do for the tank? Can you just run the reactor? Is there any thing special that you have to do to the reactor, or so you just run water through the rocks

I spent about $150 to start the zeovit system, plus say $15-$20 for my home made reactor. That got me... a 2 month supply of zeolith rocks, a 2 month supply of high quality carbon, and probably a 6 month supply of the basic 3 chemical additions (zeofood7, zeobak, and zeostart2). However, being a month into the system I'm not too sure how long the chem's will last. It may be 8 months, it may be 4.

The reactor is basically another fluidized system to force flow through the zeolith rocks, target flow is 100gph per litre of zeolith product. The only thing special about the reactor is the "stirrer" which you use to agitate the rocks twice daily.

Almost a year since I updated this... I feel a little guilty

The bad news is, the old tank is gone. We decided that we were ready to spend the money to upgrade to a new tank with a starfire front so AndyL came up and took the old one off of our hands. The new one is being built through Gold's in Calgary and should be ready any day now.

So here's some shots of the prep work we've been doing... the basement got a new coat of paint, unfortunately I didn't think to grab any pictures of the tear down process, but set ups are always more fun anyways. The new tank will be going in roughly the same spot but will be presented a little differently. We're getting the same size in terms of gallons (110 us gallons) but instead of a 60x18 foot print this one will be a 48x24. I wanted the extra depth for the aquascaping possibilities but I think I'll miss the length a little. What we're planning on instead of a recessed in the wall tank, this one will be sort of sticking out halfway.

Here's where we are so far...

This is a shot of the old system when it was freshly installed (just for contrast)
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2.../inwall022.jpg

Here's the new stand sitting in it's spot... you can see the old stand and part of the wall in the background. Ripping it out was almost more work then putting it in there was!!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera023.jpg
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera039.jpg

Here's a closeup of the stand. Took a couple of suggestions off of the stand template at reef-central. Way overbuilt but I'll sleep pretty good at night!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera024.jpg

You may be panicking... thinking "SLICK, Where are your critters???" but don't worry, I talked the horses into giving up a water trough

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera026.jpg

They're all fairly happy in there, only exception is the 2 clown's are upstairs in the 33 gallon with all the coral because they wouldn't leave their stupid rock with mushrooms.

Got the profilux running the water trough and the sump!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera027.jpg

Now the sump isn't actually connected to any other water. I've got some rocks and the sand-bed in there as well as a new toy, I just acquired a vertex IN-180 skimmer. The Tunze should be somewhere in the Okanagan by now! Just had the skimmer running for a day and a half but so far so good. Here's a gratuitous FSS (full sump shot) for all you junkies out there!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sCamera028.jpg

I can't wait to get the new tank, I've got too many critters spread into too many places. I've got the corals and clowns in a 33 gallon upstairs and none of them are happy up there, I've got all the other fish in the water trough, the sump running and a couple of buckets of LR cooking. Get back to one system to take care of and all will be well.

Heading to town this weekend to see if I can figure out how I want to skin the stand and frame the top canopy. We had been thinking about that ceramic artificial stone you can get at Home Depot but at $100/10sqft, that's a lot of money to do the stand. Maybe a nice hardwood panel.

Cheers

Looking good man. One thing though...If you ordered your tank through Golds it will be xmas before you get it. Shudda ordered it through us :mrgreen: j/k. So what is the gallonage of your new box?

Gonna be 110 gallons total, so same volume as the old one. It'll be 48Lx24Wx22T. I guess I could've gone 2 inches higher and gotten 120 gallons but I've got short arms and found that 24" was just a hair too tall for me to reach the bottom on the last one.

I hope it'll be here soon. They told me 2-3 weeks, Monday will be 3 weeks. I'll buy the next one from you guys just to spread it around a little, how's that sound! I almost never buy hardware locally though, the trouble for me is we have no serious suppliers in Central Alberta so we have to make a trip to the city and HOPE that someone has what we're looking for. Whereas if I order from J&L on Monday they usually have it on my front porch by Wednesday morning. 3 days earlier then I could hope to get to the city. Nowadays even paying for shipping is cheaper then the fuel it takes me to get to Calgary and back. Even warranty stuff gets back to me faster and cheaper then my fuel costs. I'm telling you, the Calgary stores are missing out by not having proper websites that we can order stuff from.