Cilyjr's 180 in wall

[cilyjr]

Looking forward to updates and to see how the foam spray looks as it matures.

Here's a pic from Sept.

 

[cilyjr]

I built that about 2 years ago now maybe almost 3. It took a very long time for coralline algae to start to grow on the epoxied sections of it.

 

[cilyjr]

I was posting here about switching back to metal halide and @Dan McNertney told me he was looking to sell his mh stuff. The price was great so I did it (dan was a great seller btw buy from him with confidence). So I pulled down the sols and put up the mh again and could not be happier. This was maybe a year after the breakdown and reset.

Lumenmax elite reflectors

Bulbs and ballasts. I am using the radium 250w aquastarblue blue (commonly called 20k) but I will switch to the Hamilton 14k next round. I tried one and it's a necessity crisp light.

I added 2 of the sol blues back in later for the sunrise/sunset/moonlight effects because I noticed when the mh turned off all the fish spooked for a second and I felt bad. So now the sols ramp up for an hour before mh on than ramp off. The other 2 sols are over my frag tank.

 

[cilyjr]

Picture of the current mh setup with 2 sol blues 2 fans and a vent fan above the whole system that vents to the home exterior.

 

[cilyjr]

I had been using jebao rw 20s for water movement but switched to vortech mp40 the last sale they had. The jebao worked fine for me for a long time and I've got no complaints but the difference between them and the vortech is pretty amazing. Not quite sure if it is almost $500 more amazing but amazing none the less.

The vortech make less noise and they pull much more water than I would have thought and with the wxm module for the apex programing was very easy. Also the plug and play battery backup is good.

I'm not saying don't buy jebao, they're fine and will absolutely get the job done. I used them for years. The vortech is with out a doubt a superior product. That was something I didn't want to admit to for years.

The big disadvantage to the mp40 however is the sat that you cannot aim them as they need to be aligned with the motor. So it can be a bit more difficult to set them up and not blast a coral or 2 with direct flow. Even at some distance they can be troublesome in this regard.

 

[themcnertney]

I was posting here about switching back to metal halide and @Dan McNertney told me he was looking to sell his mh stuff. The price was great so I did it (dan was a great seller btw buy from him with confidence). So I pulled down the sols and put up the mh again and could not be happier. This was maybe a year after the breakdown and reset.

Lumenmax elite reflectors

Bulbs and ballasts. I am using the radium 250w aquastarblue blue (commonly called 20k) but I will switch to the Hamilton 14k next round. I tried one and it's a necessity crisp light.

I added 2 of the sol blues back in later for the sunrise/sunset/moonlight effects because I noticed when the mh turned off all the fish spooked for a second and I felt bad. So now the sols ramp up for an hour before mh on than ramp off. The other 2 sols are over my frag tank.

That's awesome. Glad to hear all is well.

 

[cilyjr]

Thanks Dan all is going great.i can't give all credit to the lights as I've made many small tweaks recently but I do give them much of it

 

[LbulletM]

Looks great! Looking at setting up an in wall myself. Following along!

 

[cilyjr]

Thanks for looking. I'll post more tomorrow

 

[cilyjr]

My skimmer is an old asm g3 that I modded to be a recirculation skimmer. I drilled 2 more holes in it. One for the new inlet and another for the pump to pull from the skimmer. The skimmer in its original set up was fine but you are limited to the pump rating for pulling water (500gph). In my setup I can feed the water slower and increase dwell time in the skimmer body (I run about 350gph) but the pump pulling at 500gph in effect makes it more like a taller reactor because it's recirculating water that's already been in the chamber.

 

[cilyjr]

I seem to have deleted the pictures, I guess I'll take new ones

 

[cilyjr]

I forgot I made this thread. Here's some full tank shots.

This was shortly after rebuild Oct 2016

This was Feb 2017

This Nov 2017

Dec 2017

And Jan 2018

March 2018

 

[cilyjr]

I seem to always be taking pictures around 7pm. How do I know? The auto feeder is at the top left of the tank

 

[cilyjr]

I guess can keep updating post #33 to add progression pictures. So I'll do that until I can't

 

[cilyjr]

I changed the frag tank to a 30 breeder from a 20 long. The 30 breeder is a hard to find tank for sure. Irs the same footprint as a 40 breeder but only 12 inches deep. Making it so I did not have to modify where it sits.

 

[cilyjr]

I reworked the left side. There were 2 large chalice colonies I wanted to remove. Each was between 8 to 10 inches and taking up too much real estate. As usual it became a much bigger project than anticipated but I'm happy over all. I'm keeping a roughly 4 inch piece of each (Miami hurricane, watermelon) and cutting up the rest which I'll sell later.

Newly redone left.

Middle.

Right.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

I reworked the left side. There were 2 large chalice colonies I wanted to remove. Each was between 8 to 10 inches and taking up too much real estate. As usual it became a much bigger project than anticipated but I'm happy over all. I'm keeping a roughly 4 inch piece of each (Miami hurricane, watermelon) and cutting up the rest which I'll sell later.

Newly redone left.

Middle.

Right.

Looking great!

 

[cilyjr]

Thanks. It's moving in the right direction. The reworking of the left side was something I wanted to get done. There is some cyanobacteria in there but that seems like a normal for me. I get rid of it and it's gone for a month or two and then it comes back. It's never a lot but it always seems to be there

 

[cilyjr]

Ok making a real push to get rid of the cyano!
I'm trying to get my nitrates up to about 1 ppm but I don't just want to feed cyano.

Dumping in some boyd chemiclean and using some bacterial supplement to try to out compete the cyano....fingers crossed

 

[cilyjr]

Just some pictures. Phone cameras have sure come a long way.

Stylophora (I can't remember this one's fancy name)

Montipora (Mystic sunset)

A. Yongei (green slimer)

A. Gomezi I think (my wife called pink unicorn)

Rainbow montipora just getting started