I had it

[KevinK]

I’m totally dun watching my tank, right in the smack middle of our living room, dividing it with the dining room, it is locking tired and to be honest, a bit of a mess.

so 3 years ago we moved, I had a well growing 350 gallon (almost 500 total water V), however was build in the wall, and the new owners wanted to keep it

I was aloud to take a few corals, and some rock to seed a potential new tank.

I had the rock and coral in a frag table for about a year, when our local fish store was shutting down and got a 300 gallon tank thy had standing there.

as we where and are renovating the house, the new tank was standing in the trailer for a few months before I could put it up.

I also got a load of live rock from the store closing (but had lots of red algae on it.

so about 18 / 20 months ago, I put the tank up, and used very little sand on the bottom, as at the old tank, i did not like it to much,

I did get the skimmer from the old 350 tank + the LED rig i had build for it.

then new tank, although running, did not get to much attention, and particularly water changes are a big hassle and mess. and thus, the last one happened 11 months ago (beside the one last week)


some spec’s:

tank 300 gallon
light LED CREE total 240 LED’s some 70 white, 120 mix of blue/ Royal Blue and 24 mix violet and hyper violet
50 gallon sump holding skimmer
4 tunze 6105’s at 24 V on 7095 controller
3 tunze 6065
live rock (about 1 – 1/2 pail of 45 gallon)
bubble magus 3 head doser
running 1500 ml bio pellets

NO Nitrate – nitrite or phosphate

the tank itself has 4 SPS colony’s in it, 2 LPS and some schrooms, meaning it is empty.

fish, well there are 3 wrasers ! yellow tang and 2 clown fish

so what is happening:

1 -
for one or the other reason the tunze controller randomly shuts than one pump off, than the other, unplugging everything and re insert again, almost trying

I think the pins are slightly corroded and don't make good contact. so flow has not always been at top consistency

2-
mainly water changes I’m going to improve this by making it simple and way more often, the more often part has to do with the fact that it is now a mess.
I’m going to move 2 big 55 gallon drums into the basement, on is my mixing tank from where I pump water to the display/sump
the other is my measuring tank, I empty the display tank into this one until water level is at the same hight as the fresh mix batch, and then start the pump to transfer fresh water into the tank, afterwards the measuring tank will gust drain out.

I decided to go for each 10 days 55 gallon, this should go easy and without hassle once the barrels are in place in the basement.

3. I need more fish to make the tank more interesting, as there is not much moving, the tank is not overgrown with red algae, but there is some, and the fish will take care of this (thy did at the old tank).

4 slowly add some more coral

I hate to tell people that come and visit and are ohhhh what a nice tank, this is not nice, this is tired and hanging in, my old one was nice.

so lets go for it, and change my habits, and the procedure that makes my tank hang in, in stead of thrive.


any suggestions on the tunze controller ?

also any suggestions to firmly clean the barrel (thy are PE, used to hold hops for beer making (sorry thy are empty now) I was thinking of rinsing them out, some bleach, than rinse and rinse, than peroxide to remove remaining organic solids, than rinse and rinse again, followed with some test runs using RO-DI water and measure all I can measure

[WarDog]

Sounds interesting... and a lot of work. Pictures or it didn't happen!
Your idea about cleaning the barrel seem solid. Rinse and repeat rinse.

[monza]

One little simplification for water change is to skip the draining into 55g, do it a few times and mark the level of tank or sump or both and then just drain to that level in the future. Moving forward I'd use one 55 for ro/di water storage the other 55 for saltwater mixing and storage.

Tunze controllers I'd start by thoroughly cleaning every thing, including all electrical contacts and see what happens. Your storage container cleaning sounds fine, if not even over kill, it was only beer not some toxic chemical.

Get into it, work on it, change it and I'll turn around for you and you can be proud of your tank again soon, we all get lazy in this hobby once and a while.

[KevinK]

Originally Posted by monza

One little simplification for water change is to skip the draining into 55g, do it a few times and mark the level of tank or sump or both and then just drain to that level in the future. Moving forward I'd use one 55 for ro/di water storage the other 55 for saltwater mixing and storage.

Tunze controllers I'd start by thoroughly cleaning every thing, including all electrical contacts and see what happens. Your storage container cleaning sounds fine, if not even over kill, it was only beer not some toxic chemical.

Get into it, work on it, change it and I'll turn around for you and you can be proud of your tank again soon, we all get lazy in this hobby once and a while.

reason why I will work with 2 x 55 gallon is because thy are in the basement, and because of that, I cant see the water in the tank when preforming the change.

I will have a solid line running from the sump to fill the measuring drum (if the line came from the tank, it could catch a fish as it is a 1 -1/2inch line.

with the 1-1/2 line a 55 gal water change should last about 2 minutes from emptying to filling, currently it is a scenario that takes a hour, floor wet, drums in the living room for 2 days mixing, we hated it and thus did not do it.

also decided to do lots of water changes, maybe each 10 days as it should go fast (my approach to turn this thing around is to try a year or maybe 2 to invest in water changes more, than dumping in additives ..

after a year or so, I can re-asses what the increase water changes have dun for me


the pumps,

I always kept clean, soak in vinegar and such, and so far I can only conclude that that is not it, it must be the contacts (the little pins),

I got the pumps new 3 years ago, but controller and cables where used, and kind of from the beginning I have been struggling a bit.

i have all cables nice on a board in line and numbered, but than unplugging re adjusting cables made a mess of of it, and I'm at the point that I gust had it with the mess, it needs to work and things need to develop, not hang in there, and when I open the door of the filter room, I see a spider web of wires (in front of a board with all nice lines drawn with numbers)

[KevinK]

Originally Posted by WarDog

Sounds interesting... and a lot of work. Pictures or it didn't happen!
Your idea about cleaning the barrel seem solid. Rinse and repeat rinse.

it is interesting, hmmm, more the challenge, as it is not a case where everything is dying, it is not, but it is gust hanging in there, and I had to leave all nice things and fish in the old tank, leaving me with almost nothing, and did not get/buy new fish.


it should not be to much work to turn this tank towards the up hill, it is a mater of changing habit (and more simplify habit)

there are the 2 main things I have to work on, and from there build the tank to become more interesting

-make water changes something speedy, that last less than 2 minutes
- clean all electrical connections and pins from the tunze controller (this could be a messy, frustrating one)