oh boy, 40g breeder build

[count krunk]

the frogspawn is spreading out quite nicely.

I am curious how it will look under the metal halide. It is more green than that, but I will need to bust out my nikon to do better. Not until i get it on a table will that happen! It's just sitting on the floor of my patio right now.

A low-quality goby pic, but you can just make out his trademark frown. The ricordia has also opened up nicely.

 

[A sea K]

Frogspawn is looking pretty good and appears that it will have a good amount of green when it gets fully settled and colors up. The YWG is cool but still looks a little blurred out from the trip!

 

[count krunk]

the tank is still on the ground.

A recent week in Mexico and house projects have stalled further progress. I am hoping to get the 10g off of the ground and the glass cut for the sump this week. We shall see haha.

I have mapped out what I am going to do, sump wise. It will be interesting to see how it works out. I picked up some thin glass from home depot to cut it with some WD40 and my cutting wheel. It SHOULD go much better than the much thicker glass cutting wheel/circular saw attempt.

The idea is to have a sump free of reactors, filter floss, and especially filter socks.

The flow will go as follows:

1) A dark zone - The idea here is black out the exterior glass for this section on the side and back. I will fill it with various sizes of live rock rubble. Nothing too small though. At some point, i will try to get some sponges etc growing in there. I am curious about what life will emerge and be sustained in such an environment. I may also black out its baffle I am undecided on this point. Also contained in this zone will be my HOB reef octopus skimmer. For the first time ever i will be running my skimmer on a timer. going to start running at 18 hours a day and see what it do.

2) refuge. I am going to try and make this much more than a cheato tumble zone. More a @najer zen twin sort of vibe. There will be sand and a couple of decent pieces of live rock. various macro algae will be added. I will also add 1-3 mangroves just bc i like how they look. Crabs and snails will dwell here. Perhaps some sort of fish if i can keep it from getting to the return section. I will also run heaters in this part of the tank. I will use a reef light over it as I would like it to contain some gorgs/fans and soft corals.

3) Return. Will contain the ATO sensor, ATO fill line, and perhaps dosing lines.

Hopefully I will have some sump pics by the end of the week!

 

[count krunk]

Pictures to come tomorrow!

I have managed to pick up two Chinese black boxes, and one sea side aquatics es5 skimmer for $70!

The skimmers sicce needle wheel pump appears to be shot. It's Rusty as well. A new pump of the same model is $70, so quiet a good deal for a $250 skimmer!

The skimmer appears to be very high quality. I'm am quite glad of the haul.

There is also a beat up jebao and Max spect gyre. I am dubious if I will be able to get both performing well again. The jebao is turning on and pumping at just one speed it seems. The gyre barely moves at all.

I have cleaned everything and the vinegar water in my bucket was NASTY when I was done.

I will let the pumps soak some more.

The lights have two channels, 3 fans, and two knobs that control intensity of each channel. I am torn between running my MH with one LED or just using both LEDs. I will most likely go with both LEDs to save some heat.

That frees up the MH and hob reef octopus skimmer to be used elsewhere [emoji48]

 

[count krunk]

The Sea Side Aquatics mainly assembled internal space saver skimmer

the Black boxes

they need a little TLC. Going to replace the hardware and give it a fresh coat of paint. Will also clean it up as best as I can

the GUNK that came off of everything. The skimmer was NASTY

 

[count krunk]

I took apart one of the black boxes into its main pieces.

Going to replace all rusted hardware with stainless as well as give the outside a fresh coat of paint (will stay black). Will also clean the dust off of everything.

The lights have very handy quick disconnects making taking it apart to this level very easy.

Here is the top that has the fans, power bricks, and power sockets as well as the on/off switches

Here is the bottom piece that holds the glass water guard as well as has lots of vents for air movement. The previous owner put painters tape over the red LED's.

Here are the LED's themselves. The heat sink is 1/8"

And here is how the LED's sit in the bottom. Very dusty! I already removed the tiny screw and washer that (x4) that holds it in. You can also see those handy quick disconnects.

Build quality seems quite solid. The solders are very smooth, shiny and completely cover the solder.

 

[count krunk]

Was able to finally clean up the garage some.

I believe I will be able to start and finish my sump over the next few days!

Step one, clean up the tank!
also going to paint the trim black

 

[count krunk]

Well, I thought I was going to finish tonight, and you will see what happened!

very simple two baffle design. It flows to the right
general > fuge > return

I want to use bulkheads on the drain as it cleans up the look A LOT imo. So I was drilling it out and the thin glass cracked I think it is just too thin. I will see if HD sells some thicker glass or acrylic.

 

[count krunk]

I picked up some a 2-3 head utter chaos and 5ish head eagle eye from @TopShelfAquatics father's day sale.

Going to pick it up (love living in Orlando ) on wednesday.

I got them to give me some more pressure to get my breeder going. I am mapping out the plumbing parts needed now. Take two on the holes in the sump happening tomorrow. If that fails again I will have to get some thicker glass cut to size at a glass shop.

 

[count krunk]

Also Bean Animal's website is down! I think he pulled the plug on it

I am doing research on his bean animal drain as I will be building it soon and discovered that.

Does anyone else know one place that has captured some or all of his info?

 

[NY_Caveman]

Try searching google with “archived websites” and you will find several tools to help.

Like this
https://web.archive.org/web/20190118115114/http://beananimal.com/

 

[count krunk]

I tried that but couldn't get the actual webpage to pop up.

Oh well I have figured it out. It's heavily documented across several forums and YouTube.

It's pretty simple as well.

I am going to go with the style that is

Full siphon
Durso standpipe
Emergency straight pipe

 

[count krunk]

Hello again everyone!

Not much to update. Was at a wedding in GA the past few days.

This past Wednesday I was able to pick up my Fathers Day sale order from @TopShelfAquatics. Daniel was the employee who helped me out and he was great. I knew they had a growout facility so I asked if it was on site and if I could see it. Daniel was nice enough to show me! They have around 6 large frag tanks (maybe more) back there just packed with frags of all sizes. They also have a 2 or 3 that are dedicated to growing colonies.

All of their coral tanks are fitted with Ecotech Radian lights and MP40's with some gyres mixed in.

I didn't acclimate the zoas, because well they are zoas and the 15 min drive from my house to TSA isn't long enough for the temp to change much.

The utter chaos started opening up right away, with the eagle eyes to soon follow.

The colors are great! They don't look so bright in the below pics, but that is more on my pixel 2 and PC light from umm 2007 (bulb from around 2012 maybe) haha. I am hoping to have the breeder wet in a month. Take two with the sump bulkhead drilling will occur tomorrow. If this doesn't work will need to reach out to the professionals for a thicker piece that is cut to size.

The utter chaos open nice n big and looking happy

The eagle eyes, smaller polyp size, looking nice n happy as well tho

 

[dantimdad]

How did the lights turn out?

 

[count krunk]

I haven't had much chance to work on them. I can't pull long hours like you! I have taken them apart, removed all the hardware I think I am going to remove on one of them.

Next step is to make sure the replacements I got fit snuggly, then it is time to take everything off of the box itself so I can give it a fresh coat of paint. Then it is reassemble and get all the dust off. Shouldn't take too long, mainly the painting I imagine will take the longest.

I decided to focus on getting the sump built and tank fully plumbed before I started back on those lights though. Finish one job before you start another kind of deal so I can this tank running!

 

[dantimdad]

Cool. I will be watching.

And by pulling long hours if you mean having insomnia, then yes, you are correct. LOL!

 

[count krunk]

I mean you can DIY in 30 minutes what takes me a few hours.

I will get there someday, just not today haha.

 

[dantimdad]

Wish you lived closer.

 

[count krunk]

Take 2!

FAIL

The glass is just too dang thin. Will be calling up some shops over the next few days. If any central FL reefers @jsker perhaps? Knows a decent local glass shop let me know.

I need a tiny piece 3.5" x 11.5" the same thickness as a 29g tank (1/8?) should be plenty.

On the bright side I was able to swap a hose in my toro weed eater, get the tiny tiny clamp on it, and get that running again! I bought it and 3 attachments for $35 about a year ago. It didn't run when I bought it. About $15 in parts later its good to go! I got it running previously, but the hose I originally used was a hair too thin and too thick for the clamp.

The engine is from like 2006, but running good as new! #DIYking (in training)

 

[count krunk]

no update on lights or sump, but I have priced out 3/4" bulkhead and drill bit so I can get the return drilled. Will be seeing if I can ship the forumfit colored PVC to home depot via homedepot.com to avoid a shipping charge if i ordered straight from forumfit pvc website.

I am going to go with the purple and gold pipe color scheme. It will look nice with the white interior color of the stand, and I am an LSU football fan for life, so gotta rep! If I have to order from forum fit I could get everything (minus gate valve) for around $75.

My goby is very lonely and it is hard to feed just one fish, so I went and got him an acquaintance and a bff! Well, hopefully, they will be bff's some day.

Two cool critters and have joined the crew.

a red carribbean pistol shrimp

he has taken up residence in this tunnel thru the liverock, visible from the front and rear of the tank.

An emerald crab, to pick up some slack on the CUC

He felt at home right away

My astrea's finally gave me some more confidence in my water quality. I have what looks like one single itty bitty baby astrea snail. He is about the size of half a bb. I say one, but there could be two or more. So tiny so hard to know its the same one. The glass is also crawling in pods.

There is some various algae, but I am not surprised. Definitely overfeeding, will be less so know with the addition of an emerald and pistol shrimp. Doing a WC tomorrow and will get must of it out.