alin2
New member
First of all, my thanks to the RC community for all the shared knowledge.
After a 2009 tank disaster (while on vacation) spilling hundreds of gallons of saltwater, losing all my corals, and causing 5 figures of damage to my 1st floor and basement from saltwater, I've always wanted to reboot my tank.
In 2012, I decided to go with a custom ELOS tank and placed a deposit with ELOS USA but was burned when ELOS switched distributors to Coralvue. No deposit refund (which was never forwarded to ELOS but kept by ELOS USA from what I was told), multiple family members getting seriously ill, and general family schedule craziness, the reboot get indefinitely delayed again.
So, you would think after a tank disaster and a "lost" deposit on a custom tank, I would deem this project doomed and give up.
But, NO! I'm either stubborn enough or stupid enough (probably both) to try to get this project rebooted again starting in the fall of 2014. And, after 1 years planning, installation of the system is starting next week.
Happier days with my first tank when first set-up:
It was an custom peninsula acrylic tank on the first floor plumbed into a "fish room" that was my utility room (mistake #72).
Even when the tank was doing well, there were several things that made it a PIA including cleaning the tank panels required Houdini like contortions from the canopy. Keeping the sump and other filtration equipment in my utility room (even with a dehumidifier) caused premature rust in my HVAC system.
So, when I decided to reboot based upon the mistakes I learned from our tank disaster and the failures in design of the first tank, I wrote what I hated most about my original tank:
1. The Houdini contortions required to clean the tank "glass."
2. The unavoidable scratches on the acrylic
3. The noisy overflows regardless of any tried modification
4. The difficulty in water changes (hauling trash bins around, running downstairs to the sump room, spilling waste water on the floors, etc)
5. The poorly designed plumbing in media reactors, Ca reactor, etc which made it difficult to change media without spilling a lot of water
6. The nearly unusable refugium in the custom MRC sump
7. And, of course the absolutely doozy, the large spill while we were on vacation from the tank causing water damage and destruction of the aquarium stand and about $$$ of damage to our floors, basement etc!
I wanted to design the new tank around these principles:
1. In addition to the obvious need for the system to nurture beautiful aquatic life to thrive, I would like the system to be designed around these principles: safety, sustainability, silence, and convenience.
With convenience tied intimately with sustainability IMO. More convenient to maintain…more likely to maintain long term…
2. Tank placement, life support placement, aquascape all with an eye towards ease of cleaning.
3. Tight control and automating as much as possible with controller/computer.
4. Ease of adding/cleaning/removing/replacing media reactors (carbon, GFO, ?bio-pellets?)
5. A large UV unit for the display tank.
6. Ease of water changes and salt mixing.
7. LED lighting.
8. Near dead silence at the display tank.
9. Placement of the tank in the basement where a spill won't run down multiple levels.
10. A dedicated fish room with a dedicated humidity control system.
11. And MOST OF ALL: A GLASS TANK!
And, so it begins...
After a 2009 tank disaster (while on vacation) spilling hundreds of gallons of saltwater, losing all my corals, and causing 5 figures of damage to my 1st floor and basement from saltwater, I've always wanted to reboot my tank.
In 2012, I decided to go with a custom ELOS tank and placed a deposit with ELOS USA but was burned when ELOS switched distributors to Coralvue. No deposit refund (which was never forwarded to ELOS but kept by ELOS USA from what I was told), multiple family members getting seriously ill, and general family schedule craziness, the reboot get indefinitely delayed again.
So, you would think after a tank disaster and a "lost" deposit on a custom tank, I would deem this project doomed and give up.
But, NO! I'm either stubborn enough or stupid enough (probably both) to try to get this project rebooted again starting in the fall of 2014. And, after 1 years planning, installation of the system is starting next week.
Happier days with my first tank when first set-up:
It was an custom peninsula acrylic tank on the first floor plumbed into a "fish room" that was my utility room (mistake #72).
Even when the tank was doing well, there were several things that made it a PIA including cleaning the tank panels required Houdini like contortions from the canopy. Keeping the sump and other filtration equipment in my utility room (even with a dehumidifier) caused premature rust in my HVAC system.
So, when I decided to reboot based upon the mistakes I learned from our tank disaster and the failures in design of the first tank, I wrote what I hated most about my original tank:
1. The Houdini contortions required to clean the tank "glass."
2. The unavoidable scratches on the acrylic
3. The noisy overflows regardless of any tried modification
4. The difficulty in water changes (hauling trash bins around, running downstairs to the sump room, spilling waste water on the floors, etc)
5. The poorly designed plumbing in media reactors, Ca reactor, etc which made it difficult to change media without spilling a lot of water
6. The nearly unusable refugium in the custom MRC sump
7. And, of course the absolutely doozy, the large spill while we were on vacation from the tank causing water damage and destruction of the aquarium stand and about $$$ of damage to our floors, basement etc!
I wanted to design the new tank around these principles:
1. In addition to the obvious need for the system to nurture beautiful aquatic life to thrive, I would like the system to be designed around these principles: safety, sustainability, silence, and convenience.
With convenience tied intimately with sustainability IMO. More convenient to maintain…more likely to maintain long term…
2. Tank placement, life support placement, aquascape all with an eye towards ease of cleaning.
3. Tight control and automating as much as possible with controller/computer.
4. Ease of adding/cleaning/removing/replacing media reactors (carbon, GFO, ?bio-pellets?)
5. A large UV unit for the display tank.
6. Ease of water changes and salt mixing.
7. LED lighting.
8. Near dead silence at the display tank.
9. Placement of the tank in the basement where a spill won't run down multiple levels.
10. A dedicated fish room with a dedicated humidity control system.
11. And MOST OF ALL: A GLASS TANK!
And, so it begins...
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) and decided to try to make my utility room (with H2O heaters, furnace, etc) my sump room/equipment room. I also mixed saltwater in a covered Brute in the same room. The relative humidity in the room was consistently >50% even with a dehumidifier (running constantly and noisily mind you) and that, along with salt creep, caused significant rust amongst my HVAC ducts. I was going to consider alternatives like moving everything under the stand when I had my disaster.
