Seanislav
Rectangular Money Pit Addict
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2015
- Messages
- 228
- Reaction score
- 268
- Location
- Salem
- What state or country do you live in
- Oregon
I started my first aquarium in 1986. It was an old 29gal high that my parents received in 1973 as a wedding gift, but never set up, as I was born two months later. I was freshwater until Y2K came and went...then I switched to reefing. Simply stated, I've had my hands in one type of aquarium or another for over three decades, and considered myself at least moderately able when it came to successes in reefkeeping. Always room for improvement, but I knew enough to have either surmounted many of the common pitfalls one encounters in this hobby, or just by pure dumb luck (more evidence for this option), avoided them altogether.
In May 2017, I shut down the 300gal DD reef that had been running in our dining room for about 3 years. We had accepted an offer on the house, and had to start condensing our various whatevers in preparation for moving. I passed the bulk of the livestock onto the LFS I purchased it all from and had them sell it, and give me a cut as store credit to be applied to the new system when it became operational after the move. I kept the equipment (mostly EcoTech stuff...Vectra, Vortechs, and Radions), gave the LFS the rock, ditched the sand in the back yard, and sold the tank and stand, as it took 5 grown men to get the thing into the house, and I wasn't about to move with it.
Start fresh in a new house in a new locale. After some discussion with the owner of the LFS, we came up with an idea of how to have a new tank and stand custom made. Move was completed in late June...the tank and stand were ordered in mid August.
This was to be my first peninsula style system. Since I prefer larger systems (I have to have me some tangs), and the old tank had been broadside against the wall in our old dining room, I needed to use the dining room window for access to elements in the back of the tank, as my 5'7" frame couldn't reach the bottom of the tank any further in than about 8" from the front glass. The idea of having visibility of the tank's inhabitants on both long sides as well as access from both long sides was quite appealing. The tank was to be acrylic, as it was going into a basement. The garage is on the same level as the basement, but there are about three tight corners in rapid succession as soon as you come in from the garage, and attempting to maneuver a glass aquarium on end through them seemed a bit too daunting.
As soon as the tank and stand were ordered, I had a utility sink plumbed into the "office" where the tank was to go, and hooked up and mounted the RO/DI system. I also had a pair of electrical circuits run from the main electrical panel (conveniently on the other side of the wall separating the office from the laundry room) into one wall box that could hold two duplex outlets, each with its own GFCI...two circuits being redundant, so that if something like a heater or light were to overload and pop one GFCI, I wouldn't have the entire system shut down.
I got an Apex 2016 and finished replacing my MH lights (originally 3 X 250W units, one of which had been replaced by two Radion XR15 Pro Gen 4 fixtures). I bought 4 more to replace the other 2 MH units.
The tank arrived later in September, once the stand was built. The stand wouldn't clear the doorways to get it into the office. After much thought and no small amount of effort to get it where I originally wanted it, plans changed and it went into the family room...still in the basement, but in a direct line from the door to the garage. The stand was a steel frame, powder coated to withstand the harshness of saltwater, with kind of an IOU by the builder for a skin (trimwork and panels to cover the stand and neaten the appearance) and a matching canopy. Work got weird schedule-wise for a few weeks, so I didn't start plumbing the system until late October.
I put the sump I had the owner of the LFS source for the old system (otherwise stated: custom built) into the new stand and plumbed everything in. The overflow box is external, so real estate inside the living area of the tank doesn't compete with any of the plumbing from the drains or the returns. The box had 4 X 1.5" inch holes drilled, two as primary drains, the third as an emergency drain, and the fourth as a conduit to direct cables from lights and pumps to a cabinet I mounted on the wall adjacent to the tank to keep electronics out of the stand wherever possible. All looked good. I ran about 30 feet of icemaker tubing from the RO/DI unit to the tank and turned it on. It filled in just under two days...and I found that the nuts securing the bulkheads inside the overflow box weren't tight enough, and water just poured through, right onto the floor. With the proximity to the wall, I couldn't get a pipe wrench in to be able to tighten the nuts securely. I drained the tank, moved it far enough from the wall, tightened everything, then filled the box with water and waited. When it remained dry, I moved the tank back into position, and commenced to refilling it.
I used dry rock this time, since ich and other undesirables had found their way into the previous system. I added salt, sand, and the rock, and cycling began in late November.
I'm not the most patient soul around. This ordeal by this point had tried my patience more than I thought it would. I was getting antsy in wanting some color and movement, having never been without at least one aquarium since the age of 12. My wife missed several of the fish we'd had before the move...and the kids were pretty bummed when the move prompted the shutdown of the first 300gal.
I splurged. I dropped and insane amount of money in a very short time. I did cycle and test,and all that good stuff. I wanted to go Triton, as the sump area gave me enough space for a decent sized refugium...but BRS couldn't keep the base elements in stock long enough for me to even order them. After two months of waiting, I finally gave up on Triton and went with ATI instead. The LFS uses it in one of their DT's, and the essential elements are readily available--and less expensive.
My only experiences with quarantine tanks years ago were outright failures. No fish I ever quarantined made it into any display tank. They died well before they ever would've been ready to make the move...so I quit quarantining. I figured it was too stressful for the fish, so I would rely on picking out healthy specimens, and after acclimating them, dropping them directly into the display tank. That was my undoing.
Fast forward a month and a half. There's ich. Well crap...thought I'd picked out clean fish, but someone brought some in. Sigh...so much for the sterile tank I'd started with. Oh well...it's not the end of the world...the other system had flare-ups, and they settled down after a few weeks, and even a powder brown tang lived pretty cleanly with minimal effort.
But wait...the clownfish have something weird happening. THAT's not ich...what is that? One dies. I fire off a text to the LFS. "Is this brook?" "It looks like it." I start treating for brooklynella. Fish start dropping like flies. I shut the pump down for a day and a half to separate the plumbing for the return from the plumbing supplying the two UV units and the calcium reactor. I put a Vectra L1 on the return line, and the original M1 is now relegated to peripheral equipment duty, with a tee and a ball valve to run the return, should the L1 fail.
The interruption does in half the remaining fish at this point. The original purpose for separating the return from everything else was to be able to run appropriate flow through the UV units, since the M1 couldn't run them and get enough flow back into the tank...but it wasn't enough. I soon found out why.
Velvet. That's why. I managed to get the trifecta. Never before had I had brook. Never before had I had velvet. Well...there's a first time for everything. Up went the old 28gal Biocube that had been in storage, now doing duty as a hospital tank. Lesson learned. I think.
We started at about 30 some-odd fish. There are now three, after I just sent the male flame wrasse to the great beyond (he apparently checked out soon before I arrived home from work)...and two of them are not out of the woods yet.
We're 16 days into a 76 day fallow period in the display tank. The corals look good. We stocked up on clean up crew inverts to get a handle on the hair algae that seems to be holding its own in spite of having to compete with a refugium full of chaetomorpha. It sucks, and it hurts...but I'm hoping to soon have my act together and start over with a fresh perspective. Time to rein in that impatience.
In May 2017, I shut down the 300gal DD reef that had been running in our dining room for about 3 years. We had accepted an offer on the house, and had to start condensing our various whatevers in preparation for moving. I passed the bulk of the livestock onto the LFS I purchased it all from and had them sell it, and give me a cut as store credit to be applied to the new system when it became operational after the move. I kept the equipment (mostly EcoTech stuff...Vectra, Vortechs, and Radions), gave the LFS the rock, ditched the sand in the back yard, and sold the tank and stand, as it took 5 grown men to get the thing into the house, and I wasn't about to move with it.
Start fresh in a new house in a new locale. After some discussion with the owner of the LFS, we came up with an idea of how to have a new tank and stand custom made. Move was completed in late June...the tank and stand were ordered in mid August.
This was to be my first peninsula style system. Since I prefer larger systems (I have to have me some tangs), and the old tank had been broadside against the wall in our old dining room, I needed to use the dining room window for access to elements in the back of the tank, as my 5'7" frame couldn't reach the bottom of the tank any further in than about 8" from the front glass. The idea of having visibility of the tank's inhabitants on both long sides as well as access from both long sides was quite appealing. The tank was to be acrylic, as it was going into a basement. The garage is on the same level as the basement, but there are about three tight corners in rapid succession as soon as you come in from the garage, and attempting to maneuver a glass aquarium on end through them seemed a bit too daunting.
As soon as the tank and stand were ordered, I had a utility sink plumbed into the "office" where the tank was to go, and hooked up and mounted the RO/DI system. I also had a pair of electrical circuits run from the main electrical panel (conveniently on the other side of the wall separating the office from the laundry room) into one wall box that could hold two duplex outlets, each with its own GFCI...two circuits being redundant, so that if something like a heater or light were to overload and pop one GFCI, I wouldn't have the entire system shut down.
I got an Apex 2016 and finished replacing my MH lights (originally 3 X 250W units, one of which had been replaced by two Radion XR15 Pro Gen 4 fixtures). I bought 4 more to replace the other 2 MH units.
The tank arrived later in September, once the stand was built. The stand wouldn't clear the doorways to get it into the office. After much thought and no small amount of effort to get it where I originally wanted it, plans changed and it went into the family room...still in the basement, but in a direct line from the door to the garage. The stand was a steel frame, powder coated to withstand the harshness of saltwater, with kind of an IOU by the builder for a skin (trimwork and panels to cover the stand and neaten the appearance) and a matching canopy. Work got weird schedule-wise for a few weeks, so I didn't start plumbing the system until late October.
I put the sump I had the owner of the LFS source for the old system (otherwise stated: custom built) into the new stand and plumbed everything in. The overflow box is external, so real estate inside the living area of the tank doesn't compete with any of the plumbing from the drains or the returns. The box had 4 X 1.5" inch holes drilled, two as primary drains, the third as an emergency drain, and the fourth as a conduit to direct cables from lights and pumps to a cabinet I mounted on the wall adjacent to the tank to keep electronics out of the stand wherever possible. All looked good. I ran about 30 feet of icemaker tubing from the RO/DI unit to the tank and turned it on. It filled in just under two days...and I found that the nuts securing the bulkheads inside the overflow box weren't tight enough, and water just poured through, right onto the floor. With the proximity to the wall, I couldn't get a pipe wrench in to be able to tighten the nuts securely. I drained the tank, moved it far enough from the wall, tightened everything, then filled the box with water and waited. When it remained dry, I moved the tank back into position, and commenced to refilling it.
I used dry rock this time, since ich and other undesirables had found their way into the previous system. I added salt, sand, and the rock, and cycling began in late November.
I'm not the most patient soul around. This ordeal by this point had tried my patience more than I thought it would. I was getting antsy in wanting some color and movement, having never been without at least one aquarium since the age of 12. My wife missed several of the fish we'd had before the move...and the kids were pretty bummed when the move prompted the shutdown of the first 300gal.
I splurged. I dropped and insane amount of money in a very short time. I did cycle and test,and all that good stuff. I wanted to go Triton, as the sump area gave me enough space for a decent sized refugium...but BRS couldn't keep the base elements in stock long enough for me to even order them. After two months of waiting, I finally gave up on Triton and went with ATI instead. The LFS uses it in one of their DT's, and the essential elements are readily available--and less expensive.
My only experiences with quarantine tanks years ago were outright failures. No fish I ever quarantined made it into any display tank. They died well before they ever would've been ready to make the move...so I quit quarantining. I figured it was too stressful for the fish, so I would rely on picking out healthy specimens, and after acclimating them, dropping them directly into the display tank. That was my undoing.
Fast forward a month and a half. There's ich. Well crap...thought I'd picked out clean fish, but someone brought some in. Sigh...so much for the sterile tank I'd started with. Oh well...it's not the end of the world...the other system had flare-ups, and they settled down after a few weeks, and even a powder brown tang lived pretty cleanly with minimal effort.
But wait...the clownfish have something weird happening. THAT's not ich...what is that? One dies. I fire off a text to the LFS. "Is this brook?" "It looks like it." I start treating for brooklynella. Fish start dropping like flies. I shut the pump down for a day and a half to separate the plumbing for the return from the plumbing supplying the two UV units and the calcium reactor. I put a Vectra L1 on the return line, and the original M1 is now relegated to peripheral equipment duty, with a tee and a ball valve to run the return, should the L1 fail.
The interruption does in half the remaining fish at this point. The original purpose for separating the return from everything else was to be able to run appropriate flow through the UV units, since the M1 couldn't run them and get enough flow back into the tank...but it wasn't enough. I soon found out why.
Velvet. That's why. I managed to get the trifecta. Never before had I had brook. Never before had I had velvet. Well...there's a first time for everything. Up went the old 28gal Biocube that had been in storage, now doing duty as a hospital tank. Lesson learned. I think.
We started at about 30 some-odd fish. There are now three, after I just sent the male flame wrasse to the great beyond (he apparently checked out soon before I arrived home from work)...and two of them are not out of the woods yet.
We're 16 days into a 76 day fallow period in the display tank. The corals look good. We stocked up on clean up crew inverts to get a handle on the hair algae that seems to be holding its own in spite of having to compete with a refugium full of chaetomorpha. It sucks, and it hurts...but I'm hoping to soon have my act together and start over with a fresh perspective. Time to rein in that impatience.
