450 Gallons, My Peninsula build.

[wishntoboutside]

So I got pretty lucky and did not have any crazy fish die offs. All of that went pretty smoothly for me. I had 3 yellow tangs. 2 blue tangs. about 6 varies gobies in pairs. 2 regular swallowtail angels.
I got some design stuff back from someone from 8020 that was helping me with my project. my goal was to have a floating light rack. I wanted to be able to raise and lower it depending on lighting or cleaning.

 

[wishntoboutside]

My adult erector set arrived. At this point my UPS driver started to ask me what the heck I was doing and he was blown away. This was a project on its own. It would have been so much easier mounting this on the wall if the tank was out of the way. I had to measure it all from the laundry room. I was bearly able to slide the bolts thru the wall.

 

[wishntoboutside]

At this time I was working at Euroquatics so naturally the idea was to put their Angel Led units on the aquarium. A total of 8 lights were to be used to light up my little ocean.

 

[wishntoboutside]

Well I finally figured out how to put it all together to find out it is way to heavy to lift. So next was to take it apart and do it above the aquarium. Trying not to drop things inside the aquarium along the way.

as a one man army or a few buddies. I had to take it mostly apart and start putting it back together. The aquarium was definitely becoming a time magnet.

 

[wishntoboutside]

 

[wishntoboutside]

Let there be light.

I was able to check the lights of the list. It was bright and had a great glow I felt like a reefer again. Sense of accomplishment getting that done. I did have an issue. The whole floating canopy looked great but it sagged. If I recall it dropped about 1.5 inches to the front side. Being the reefer that I am the fix for about the first year was more scheduled 80 scrap pipes

 

[iani]

Let there be light.

I was able to check the lights of the list. It was bright and had a great glow I felt like a reefer again. Sense of accomplishment getting that done. I did have an issue. The whole floating canopy looked great but it sagged. If I recall it dropped about 1.5 inches to the front side. Being the reefer that I am the fix for about the first year was more scheduled 80 scrap pipes

Very nice. Can't take the suspense, what does it look like now haha.

 

[wishntoboutside]

This is at the point when everything started to go wrong. I got a box from Poland. This was my calcium reactor

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Fantastic start to a beautiful system. So why the angel leds? They haven't been around for a decade it feels like
Edit: it's been a timeline from 7 years ago. Makes sense. Apparently I can't read

 

[Sophie"s mom]

Wow! What an amazing project! I will be following for sure. I wish I had the room and funds for such a build.

 

[wishntoboutside]

When I was doing this build the goal was to put a calcium reactor on it to maintain the parameters. This was going to be an SPS dominate system. I was looking into the Dastco reactors and came across the Pacific Sun version. These seemed new and had some interesting features.

 

[wishntoboutside]

From this day forward I have never seen any box packed covered with more bubble wrap on the outside then inside the box. It was a head scratcher for sure. I guess that is just the way that they ship things in Poland. I reached out to to them ASAP on this. They advised me that I needed file a claim. I was like no that is on you. I only received the package. This went back and forth for at least two weeks. It started to get ugly. After a month or so I finally got the part replaced. I get it all together to find it leaking at another spot. The body was leaking at the seam.

 

[wishntoboutside]

At this point I realized a few things. First I will never buy anything with thumb screws

as this reactor was tearing my fingers apart each time I had to mess with it and remove the lid. Next this reactor was a true monster. I don't think I needed it to be this big. Lastly and the most important thing I have learned. I will never buy or use any product that does not offer support in the USA. Every time I needed a part it was at least 2 weeks plus turnaround. I do think Pacific Sun was trying there best but This product at least in the large size was kind of under built. Acrylic to thin and minimal glue was used.

 

[wishntoboutside]

As I was dealing with this. Two more issues cam up. The first is the sump stand that was made was not level on the top. This was realized when the reactor was drained multiple times to mess with it. The stand was not made correctly. The center brace in

the back was 1/2 higher then the rest the stand. I had wobbly plywood. I was pist. how did this happen? How can I fix this. Yes I put unions on the sump and could take it all out to access the stand. Haul stand down to welder and have redone. The more and more I thought about this the more unrealistic it was do do it. I eventually decided not to mess with it and just leave it as it is. knowing that when I put a frag tang on it I may have to address this again.

 

[wishntoboutside]

My second issue at this time was the controller I bought to run my aquarium. I was never an Neptune fan as I had a temperature probe go bad years ago and it left a bad taste in my mouth on controllers. I also am not a true technical person when it comes to IT stuff. I Decided to buy a Vertex Cerebra. This was an interesting device that they were truly trying to make a perfect device. I got it all up and running to fin out with would not work as a PH Controller. what the heck I thought this just makes no sense. Shortly after this period all Cerbra users were advised to trade in and trade up their device for a newer one and this never happened. It was a complete flop. The company had now folded and owner Jason disappeared. I had to go back to an Apex. I recall around this time on some forums getting into it over the Calcium reactor issues. Still having troubles getting it to work correctly. By this time there was a hand full of us trying to get things to work and all had issues. It was a complete mess. I honestly was not enjoying the new build at this point and the forums were not a good place for me as I was just frustrated with many things at this point.

 

[twentyleagues]

Nice build! Its never smooth but that is to be expected. Waiting for more of the story....

 

[wishntoboutside]

Reefapoolza Cali was going on.
I was able to work out a good deal with a vendor and buy out some of their nicer corals. It may have been a little early for some of this but the deal was too good to

pass up. I always liked the idea of going to a frag swap and getting all frags to fill the tank in a few swoops. I had some coraline algae coming in so i thought it was ready. The frag plug phase real and begun.

 

[wishntoboutside]

 

[wishntoboutside]

All the corals were mounted all of the aquarium. It was nice at this time this point to see some progress. The Aquarium went from white to pink slowly. I had added hundreds of red leg, blue leg crabs. Turbos, Astrea and Nassarius snails. Lots of life and avoided the ugly stages by doing this.
I also was really digging the led lights. As it was my first true led set up. I liked the sunrise and sunset ramp up and downs. It was super cool. Being I was using halides or t-5s I did not experience that before. Connectivity was now an issue at times thou.

 

[wishntoboutside]