180 Gallon Frankenstein

Now to explain a few things. I added the two MH reflectors that I made, they are working pretty well. The bulb on the far left os over a year old and needs replaced. The one on the far right had blown out and I am borrowing a bulb from a friend that is obviously not the same color temp. It's a 6500. So it really looks odd. But it is coming along. As the budget allows both bulbs will be replaced with new 14k's. I am thinking Radiums right now.

The middle light(s) will also get replaced with a single 250 and it will get an electronic ballast.

Also for right now, the rockwork, not too spectacular is it? I need more rock and when I get more, I will be doing something along the lines of the following:

Starting from the far right, It will get a cave stack. Something big with a nice selection of holes and gaps and dark underhangs and little caves. About the center under the future 250 will be a nice solid pillar section that tapers a little out to the left and right, but none the less, a pillar type structure with the front and back opened up. Then to the far left is going to be a sandy flat. with maybe some rubble sticking up just a little.

I used the old sand from the 55 and it some pretty coarse stuff. So that isn't going to go in the sandy flat. I will get some fine sand to put over there and I will move the rest of the sand accross the tank to the other end.

I am going to keep lots of open swimming space for fish to swim around in. I like the tangs quite a bit and they have lots of character so I want them to be happy.

This will end up being a mixed reef with mostly SPS and some LPS and more fish than I have now.
 
i also made those reflectors made mine a little bigger than the diagram made mine 16x16 i noticed after 2 days that they had hot spots right above the bulb so i drilled a hole put a an in each box works great and the whole fixture iscool to the touch love diy i used a roll of roof flashing 18x50 feet i know but its all they had so i have plenty of material to experiment really want to pean the corners with a hammer and put that next to one not peaned also tryed mothers polish to get them to shine no luck its more of a brushed alluminum look i think they would be alot better if i could get a good polish on them maybe 1200 grit saand paper then mothers
anyways your build rocks man i thought for sure you were going to use garden hose for plumbing!lol
awsome build we all started some were keep up the good work it allways pays off!!!
 
tangtang clown said:
I like the build. Keep up the good work. What kind and size wood did you use for your canopy? Do you plan on enclosing it.
Click to expand...

The frame against the tank is 2x4 and the rest of the framework is 1x2.

Originally it was meant to be fully enclosed. But there is part of the HVAC ductwork enclosed in this thing that sticks out right in front of the tank. I did lots of measureing to see how much room I was going to have in front of the tank's hood so I would know how much room I was going to have for the door to the hood, but I just couldn't get a comfortable feel for it in the garage. So I left the frame open for now and set up the tank. Now that it is in the room, I am going to start working on a new hood that will be fully enclosed and I can get a much better idea for the space limitations. The ceiling is only 2-3/4" above the hood currently and the HVAC protrusion is 9" from the front of the hood.

So however I make the enclosed hood the front of it has to come off or pivot up in such a way that it doesn't hit the ceiling or the part of the wall that is sticking out.
 
thegasman2000 said:
dude we all learm from our mistakes, thanks for posting yours so I can learn from your too!

looks good now :)
Click to expand...

No Problem. Success is nothing more than a well planned series of corrected mistakes.

It will get better with time. There is plenty more to do, more stuff to automate, and LOTS of space to add coral and fish.
 
paullisa51708 said:
anyways your build rocks man i thought for sure you were going to use garden hose for plumbing!lol
awsome build we all started some were keep up the good work it allways pays off!!!
Click to expand...

No garden hose. But I do have plenty of that laying around. I have my garden hose before the pressure regulator for the house. I haven't met a garden hose I couldn't blow apart withing 6 months. The last one was the longest surviror that made it almost the full summer.

But I do use quite a few items that you can commonly find or source locally.
 
So I live just outside Chicago, and it's snowing like crazy today...i'm trolling through this forum and find your expose.....after 2 hrs of reading, laughing at your cussing and thinking about your design i've come to the conclusion that you must be a priest, or some other godly type man because I am sure no other mere mortal would have the patience for this, LOL!
I have had many grand illusions myself about making a frankenstein tank, I am a plumber so you can imagine the teeth gnashing that were goin on in your plumbing section ha!
All in all though you did a great job, was wondering why you made your reflectors so complex and didn't just make some simple rectangle or square jobbies to get your feet wet.
Also, when you were building your stand I was pretty nervous about the legs you used, is that 2x10 or 2x12 rated for that kind of weight? 180*8.33=1500lbs of just water....you have a small car sitting on those legs lol :)
Now if I can figure out how to subscribe to this I will certainly be looking forward to more...

Happy Holidays!
Mike
 
lamzy said:
So I live just outside Chicago, and it's snowing like crazy today...i'm trolling through this forum and find your expose.....after 2 hrs of reading, laughing at your cussing and thinking about your design i've come to the conclusion that you must be a priest, or some other godly type man because I am sure no other mere mortal would have the patience for this, LOL!
I have had many grand illusions myself about making a frankenstein tank, I am a plumber so you can imagine the teeth gnashing that were goin on in your plumbing section ha!
All in all though you did a great job, was wondering why you made your reflectors so complex and didn't just make some simple rectangle or square jobbies to get your feet wet.
Also, when you were building your stand I was pretty nervous about the legs you used, is that 2x10 or 2x12 rated for that kind of weight? 180*8.33=1500lbs of just water....you have a small car sitting on those legs lol :)
Now if I can figure out how to subscribe to this I will certainly be looking forward to more...

Happy Holidays!
Mike
Click to expand...

I hope I didn't make you cringe too much. I need to take photos of the way the plumbing is set now. It did end up looking a little different.

As for the stand. It is all 2x12. I am no engineer, so I can't say how much weight the lumber will stand up to on it's end, but it is tons, at least one. I estimated the tank with everything pretty close to 2000 pounds.

The legs do a great job, with the angle to them, there is no movemet. While it was full of water in the garage I pushed on it pretty hard back and forth and got no movemet. I even splashed around it a while and got a nice wave going to see how it would handle it.

Seems to be doing pretty well. I will get some more update photos soon. I really need a new skimmer, soon. I figure right after the holidays I will be getting one.
 
Calcium automat is installed. Idiot me, I didn't check do a water test before I installed it, so I have nothing to compare it to. I do think however that I will be building a new reactor chamber. Probably that upflow downflow reactor that there is so much chatter and split threads on.
 
Did I mention I plan to get a new skimmer soon. I am growing tired of this one overfilling and flooding the floor over night. Something about this one, you get it set, it works like a champ for a few days and come down one morning to a wet basement floor. I am getting sick of it.

Not to mention it isn't big enough for this system anyway, but if I didn't have a concrete floor I would be getting into trouble soon. It has happened too many times. Not to mention it screws with the salinity everytime it does it.
 
I had a loss yesterday. Fishy loss.

It is very fishy. I came down to check out my tank yesterday morning like I do every morning and there is my 5'" diamond spot goby over in the corner upsidedown on the bottom of the tank looking like he is choking on something. I grabbed a net and caught him. Checked to see if he was actually choking on something (hey you never know). and nothing. I thought maybe it was him swim bladder because he was upside down, I have seen video's of people using a needle to poke a swim bladder and get them neutral again. But I am no expert, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense anyway since he was clear at the bottom of the tank and fighting to stay there.

At that point he was still alive but pretty well at the point of no return. So he went to a chilly grave in the freezer. RIP my cleaner shrimp eating friend.

Now what is really odd about it is, I haven't added anything new in over a week and all I added a week ago was the CA RX and nothing else was effected. No new corals or fish in 3 weeks.

So it does seem pretty strange. Anyhow I am going to do a water test today and see what I come up with. PH is a little lower then when I started using the CA RX. I was running between 8.2 and 8.1 Very consistantly. Now down to 8.15-8.03. I have the CO2 set to shut off below tank PH of 8.05.

Any ideas?
 
QuarterTang said:
Did I mention I plan to get a new skimmer soon. I am growing tired of this one overfilling and flooding the floor over night. Something about this one, you get it set, it works like a champ for a few days and come down one morning to a wet basement floor. I am getting sick of it.
Click to expand...

Have you thought of a remote collection cup for the skimmer - one that would shut down the skimmer when it gets full?

I have done two kinds - electric float switch and a mechanical float using a 5 gallon bucket and a toilet flapper. I think I still have the 5 gallon one and could fix you up next time you are over.



Too bad about the fish.
 
I use a remote collection cup. The skimmr drains to a 5 gallon bucket. As far as a cut off what do you have the float switch shut off? The problem is that it seems to increase the internal water height and then pumps out tons of very wet skimmate and overfills the 5 gallon bucket.

I don't know if shutting off the venturi would do it or not but aside from electric shut off of the pump that's all I could see as a good shut off.
 
If your collection cup on the skimmer is fairly snug, closing the remote container will cause enough back pressure in the main skimmer that the bubble level will drop significantly.

Try it by just closing off the hose from your collection cup when the skimmer is running.

Just remember, the lid on your collection cup needs to be snug for this to work.
 
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