I'm a reasonable man. I do reasonable things.

[907_Reefer]

The fact that not everyone has a tank this size is absurd!

Do you have to register this new body of water with the Department of the Interior?!

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

The fact that not everyone has a tank this size is absurd!

Do you have to register this new body of water with the Department of the Interior?!

I DID have the local police department over for a picnic like "yo please don't raid me I'm not growing weed". however the primary use of this aquarium is to be a haven for Lil' Purp. if you don't know the legend of Little Purple, here's a primer.

 

[Devaji]

Absolutely following this, love your tank, LOVE your humor.

I can relate slightly with the house fixing portions, I bought an old house and from the surface looked good, just ugly so we redid the kitchen from metal cabinets to wood and ended up redoing siding, windows, the whole flooring including floor joists, all the plumbing and sheetrock. Windows leaked, plumbing under sink leaked and an old chimney leaked for years so they're was hidden extensive water damage. That was fun while pregnant. We did all the work ourselves and I was still painting when I went into labor and then I installed the wood flooring a week after birth. However having so much of my house open we really got to looking at build quality and we found out the house is really beefy, all full dimension lumber, rough cut, not like today's wimpy 2x4s. Then all walls,floors and ceiling is thick tongue and groove under all sheetrock and subfloor. So much wood in this house.

But now you know your windows aren't leaking anymore and your power supply is definitely more than ready for all the crazy things you'll be using! Great build! I'd throw out my couch for that tank! Who needs to sit when you can look at that all day?!

Oh yeah not pictured was a huge renovation project. New hvac new roof new hot water new heater, rewired the whole house, smart housed way up, security system, new floors new siding, new windows. Now I just gotta do the bathrooms.

As for the furniture there is a tank watching couch and I'm on the hunt for the most epic of recliners for my man chair.

sounds like my project. bought a "fixer upper" thought we where just gonna do some cosmetic stuff 1.5 years later and almost a new house...
pic in my build thread if you wanna laugh.

 

[907_Reefer]

I DID have the local police department over for a picnic like "yo please don't raid me I'm not growing weed". however the primary use of this aquarium is to be a haven for Lil' Purp. if you don't know the legend of Little Purple, here's a primer.

Pretty sure if you told them you're putting "a lil purp" in there, they'll still think you are growing weed

 

[Joe Glass Cages]

@

Once upon a time, I started keeping reef Aquariums. About ten years after that, I got a degree in Marine Biology. About Ten years after that, I saw where an ocean was not, and in defiance of decisions of gods, the ways men, and the natural law of order, I built an 800 gallon reef tank.

These are the voyages of the gigareef.

So how does someone get into something like this? Well, it kind of started when my kids showed an interest in my 80 gallon frag tank which was a display for a plywood coral farm I was running as a hobby at the time.

I started getting lots of help, and I was asked why we couldn't see my big corals, only my little corals in the 80.

When you reef, you reef together, as everyone knows:

So we embarked on a two year pandemic project journey to see the big corals, per my kids request.

The first thing we got was a skimmer, I chose the Rk2 AC8, because it was taller than the AC5 and my buddy insisted I get one that was at least five feet tall, so I did

Here it is put together, next to my nano skimmer for my 20 for scale

Much to everyone's surprise I hadn't used a UV skimmer before, and I guess since I was building there's a first time for everything, I got one of those too, this is the 6 foot long RK2 XLF5-150H rated for up to 2000 gallons :



I got some small cannisters for media from bashsea

fun fact, I buy media in five gallon buckets.

I got a few rocks (1 ton, from pristine rock, they're great I recommend them www.pristinerock.com)

I rinsed my sand in a 100 gallon rubbermade bin soon to be my sump and turned my sidewalk white

Made a few LIGHT changes to the floor.

Fun fact the owner of the house before me didnt' wait for the concrete to dry before rafting an engineered wood floor on the extension so I had to repour concrete in the whole house, we discovered my windows were not watertight and had to do a reside-ing on the house. I got new windows, it was fun.

BUT! Back to the floor. I poured and leveld concrete, than lay slate tile. it was BIBLICALLY level. We're talking true level here Morty, I got familiar with the bubble.

IS very nice.

Then came time to weld and powder coat the stand. getting chromolly steel during the pandemic was hard, I got my welding friend to help, he did most of the work to be honest, and I got my aerospace friend to sign off on the structure engineering numbers and xray our welds:

put some PVC, started playing with rocks for visualization

put in a BUNCH of work cutting, leveling, skinning in plywood, tapping in and drilling leveling feet:

since i couldn't get the stand under my drill press, I was using dewalt clamps and jigs

kinda looked like a chicken with the leveling feet, so i cut them all down and re-threaded them

once the stand was done, we had to use a test aquarium to see if it worked out

next post: the wiring and plumbing, probably.

The tank is from Glasscages, they're great. Their support is great, their team is great, and their prices are great. I had an error on MY part cause a leak and they wanted super hard to support me, but I made the mistake, so I paid for it.

@DigitalFishAquariums So impressed with everything you have done! You have been through a major test of patience. Love seeing your journey. I have really enjoyed working with you. Some of the calls better than others for sure. You have taken everything is stride and made an incredible display. I am really impressed. I am following!!!

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

@

@DigitalFishAquariums So impressed with everything you have done! You have been through a major test of patience. Love seeing your journey. I have really enjoyed working with you. Some of the calls better than others for sure. You have taken everything is stride and made an incredible display. I am really impressed. I am following!!!

Good or bad, ugly or perfect, I set out with a drawing I made when I was 8, "none such exist" I said, so I had to make it myself. Thanks for being a part of it.

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

Small update, I was all overconfident about my ugly stage, because i skipped the cyano diatom era, but yo velvet came in on some frag or CUC, and the hair algae is REAL right now with all my tangs in QT.

C'THULU IS REAL AND HIS MADNESS LIVES IN MY LIVING ROOM.

 

[rmorris_14]

Small update, I was all overconfident about my ugly stage, because i skipped the cyano diatom era, but yo velvet came in on some frag or CUC, and the hair algae is REAL right now with all my tangs in QT.

C'THULU IS REAL AND HIS MADNESS LIVES IN MY LIVING ROOM.

I would do what you can to remove as much as you can... You don't want that getting out of control. Also check your phosphates. Likely high if that is showing up. If so, you want to get them down but not to 0. Phosphates can get absorbed by sand and rock and then continuously leach back into your system feeing GHA in the future. Its awful, ask me how I know.

Edit: I just realized who's thread this was. You probably know all that...

 

[BZOFIQ]

Great thread, great build, great sense of humor.

Keep going - subscribed.

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

I would do what you can to remove as much as you can... You don't want that getting out of control. Also check your phosphates. Likely high if that is showing up. If so, you want to get them down but not to 0. Phosphates can get absorbed by sand and rock and then continuously leach back into your system feeing GHA in the future. Its awful, ask me how I know.

Edit: I just realized who's thread this was. You probably know all that...

It's good my man, keep me honest! Yeah phos and nos has been close to undetectable forever I'm just trying to get up a critical mass of bioload.... It helpa the skimmer takes 5 gallons of skimmate out a week.

 

[907_Reefer]

5 gal/week from the skimmer

 

[907_Reefer]

Mine be like, 5oz, 6oz OVERFLOW OVERFLOW

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

Sadly, you can't win them all.

In the last post I alluded to having caught velvet, and the uglies taking over. We're not fallow yet, but many fish are missing, presumed dead.

I QT all fish in 24 10 gallon tanks, I'll make a whole post about that later, but here's my 24 day plan:

We all have our ups and downs, but in the spirit of transparency.

Noooooooooooooo my babies!

But in lighter news, I got a snazzy new gong brush, and it's great at large scale algea brushing.

 

[kevgib67]

Wow, great thread. I feel like I’m reading a novel! I wish I was a reasonable man! I will be following until the end. Keep it up.

 

[hockeyhead019]

Holy epic build! Definitely going to add this one to my list of tanks to follow

 

[DirtDiggler2823]

That picture doesn't exist, my friend

no one has that picture!!!! if anyone had it i would absolutely do it.

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

OK so through the power of never being able to catch all my gobies, I tried a non-fallow thing (H2O2, UV) with the velvet.

But first, THE SCIENCE.

You may not know this, but Marine Velvet (oodinium) is stupid deadly, and even more stupider hardy. It's a dinoflagellate so it can swim and it generally likes to detach from it's host in the dark.

You also likely know that the adult velvet feeds on the fish as a white spot, it reproduces and the young free swim.

You probably know this as well, but there are a few common ways to generally kill or remove anything in the water column, the first four are "reef safe" and the fifth is not. At all.

1) Oxidation
It's often thought that Hydrogen peroxide can destroy microorganisms in a free swimming stage. It does this by oxidation (H2O2 is highly oxidative) the extra oxygen aggressively attaches to things and often kills them.

Ozone (O3) is the same, but more aggressive, and while I have ordered a new ozone generator (post later) it's not hooked up. the extra Oxygen breaks and produces oxygen (O2) and some energy, but the thing that kills is actually the loose O- molecule from the breakup, that O- is gonna attach and burn/oxidize organic tissue.

2) Direct application of energy
Or you know. UV. Scrambles genetics (specifically thymine) so the organism can't reproduce, doesn't kill them outright.

3) Mechanical filtration.
Filters out organisms, you can even filter out SUPER SMALL ones like velvet. Works, but huge pain to keep clean.

4) Going fallow.
Take all the fish out of your tank for 72 days, and the parasite starves.

5) Copper/treatment
Copper is rare, invertebrates need it because their blood uses it instead of iron. If copper is present in higher than natural concentrations, invertebrates absorb it and die from metal poisoning, before it's toxic to fish if you do it right.


My experiment is as follows, for 40 days, a regiment of hydrogen peroxide as follows:

• Turn off UV
• 1 ml of 3% H2O2 per 5 gallon of saltwater twice a day, once an hour after after lights are off
• Wait an hour, turn on UV, max rated flow through the UV (5,000gph)
• Turn off UV
• 1 ml of 3% H2O2 per 5 gallon of saltwater twice a day, once an hour before lights come on
• Wait an hour, turn on UV, max rated flow through the UV (5,000gph)
• Change filter socks daily

Ozone was not used. I Did run activated carbon, but only during the daylight hours.

Fish stopped dying, no velvet has been observed. I added a tester fish i specifically starved and mistreated a little before i added it and no velvet was observed.

I added a few tangs, no velvet has been observed.

It should be noted my UV is a little nuts, and is rated for 5000 gph and to treat 2000 gallon tanks, is 6 feet long.....so don't take this as a resounding endorsement of the hydrogen peroxide method, but it worked for me. I think. So far.

updates to come.

 

[mitten_reef]

It should be noted my UV is a little nuts, and is rated for 5000 gph and to treat 2000 gallon tanks, is 6 feet long.....

ya know, gotta stay with the reasonable theme....

Glad it all seems to work out so far!

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

ya know, gotta stay with the reasonable theme....

Glad it all seems to work out so far!

100% reasonable. 100% not a theme.

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

When you've created a garage full of water, for years, and you always get 200 gallons per day (GPD) and total dissovled solids (TDS) has been 0 forever.

SUDDENLY the GPD drops to almost nothing, it's time to check your RODI membranes:

Left is ~10,000 gallons and ~4 years old, middle is ~10,000 gallons and 4 years as a second membrane, right is new.