430gal., L-shaped display

[EnglishRebel]

Bummer

 

[EnglishRebel]

Andy
We're all foaming at the mouth awaiting an update (with pics of course )
Thanks

 

["Umm fish?"]

I guess I'd better get busy, then. I hate to see you all foamy and not have it be from beer. Sorry. It's been a busy week. I'll take some photos next time I get over there.

Nothing has changed visually with the tank this week. I did find a local guy who designs concrete zoo exhibits (go figure) and he's going to make some nice concrete rock work covers for the closed-loop intakes. That should be cool. Plus, we got him in for roughly the same price as the live rock I was planning to cover them anyway. So, that'll be pretty much a wash financially and should get some nice aquascaping out of it, too.

So, photos coming soon!

 

["Umm fish?"]

Howdy, y'all! More tank photos!

The steel guys finished and installed the powder-coated stainless bullnose under the tank in the bathroom, so the tile guy could finally finish up the tile above the tub deck. In fact, I think he's pretty close to finishing off the bathroom, period.

Here's a close up of the bullnose:

The steel really gives it a nice, smooth, solid finish.

More house pictures here: http://www.ummfish.com/remodel.html

 

[supersurfer12]

sorry if this was answered before but why is there loads of graffitti in ur basement? BTW nice tank!

 

["Umm fish?"]

Those damn clownfish gangs. They are taking over everything. You just can't have anything nice anymore....

Thanks!

 

[supersurfer12]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13917114#post13917114 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"
Those damn clownfish gangs. They are taking over everything. You just can't have anything nice anymore....

Thanks!

Haha

But seriosly r u harboring pieces of the berlin wall or something or were u just bored?

 

["Umm fish?"]

Fair enough. I'll be serious.

I've always wanted to tag a wall but I feel a certain antiquated sense of social responsibility. I figure that if you want to tag a wall you should own the wall. So, now that I have a big concrete wall....

Clearly I'm just an old-timer.

 

[supersurfer12]

no its an interesting concept and myslef i dont like to destroy public property but if its mine well...................

 

[erics3000]

Hey hey lets not set any bad examples....ahahahahhh..Your Bathroom is coming out sweet. I will be nice to relax and check out the fish.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Thanks, Eric! That's the goal: Relaxing, dark colors to really make the bright tropical colors stand out and make it a good experience. Well, for everyone but me. "What?!? More algae? I'd better get out of the tub and take care of that." Sigh.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Well, I got a wild hair and started putting together a BRT (= blue round tub, right? ) this afternoon. It was a gorgeous day--no coat weather--and I was watching my kiddo in the yard. Tomorrow is supposed to get down to -5 degrees F. So, I needed to do _something_ outside.

I'm pretty much ready to slot the PVC overflow tubes, Krylon the whole shebang black, and add mesh screen to the tubes. Woohoo!

Well, okay, I still have to plumb the sucker, but it's a step.

 

[Untamed12]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13936630#post13936630 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"

I'm pretty much ready to slot the PVC overflow tubes, Krylon the whole shebang black, and add mesh screen to the tubes. Woohoo!

Well, okay, I still have to plumb the sucker, but it's a step.

What are you making here?

 

[klondike4001]

I believe it's going to be a RDSB, Remote Deep Sand Bed.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Nope. Nice guess, though! That's what one of the 90 gal. tanks is for.

Round tubs are the new wave in fish and invertebrate larvae rearing. The return comes right down the center of the tub to near the middle of the bottom. Having the round container with return at the bottom is supposed to give much better flow dynamics than using a glass aquarium. Sort of like a kreisel except with the circular flow in sort of a doughnut shape all the way around the center return pipe. Containers similar to these are supposed to be the "secret" to the success of the aquaculture firm in Europe that's turning out all of the captive bred skunk cleaner shrimp.

Besides, this is a lot cheaper than a kreisel, too. Not as great a way to watch jellyfish, though.

So, on the overflow pipes, you slot them both and cover them with different sizes of mesh screening. You set them up so that one at a time gives you surface skimming. One of the screens has tiny mesh that lets you retain rotifers inside the containers. The other mesh is larger and lets you clear out the rotifers while still retaining the larvae. Both pipes are removeable for replacement and cleaning.

 

[rEd86]

Andy,

Do you have a good thread/resource that gets into the details of this topic?

Thanks.

--Ed

 

["Umm fish?"]

Sure, Ed!

I was first introduced to the idea here:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Illu...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229274012&sr=8-1

The discussion of the European aquaculture place is here (ouch, it's best to hit up a library for this one):

http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Orname...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229274110&sr=1-1

And, unfortunately, it looks like the MOFIB site (http://www.marinebreeder.org/) is down right now, but there's also tons of information there. Especially interesting is "Witt"'s (Matt Wittenrich, the author of the first book) thread on captive breeding mandarin dragonette's in the Dragonette subsection of the forum. I believe that it's that thread where he starts talking about how environment is, in his opinion, far more important for larval development than even prey density. In fact, he got batches of mandarins through meta with far smaller prey densities than should be possible, and he thinks the reason is good flow dynamics. The idea is that it doesn't really matter if you have less than optimal prey densities as long as the larvae can set themselves up in places in the tank where water flow will bring prey to them without the larvae having to expend huge amounts of energy to hunt.

It's interesting theory, and it seemed to be what I saw when I was raising the cardinalfish (on a much larger scale, of course). The tank I raised the cardinals in had much more flow than most larval rearing tanks. The cardinals set themselves up in places where obstacles would divert the currents (so they didn't spend much energy) but also where there were lots of eddies that would bring food right to them. I still think that's why they took frozen much earlier than most people see: The food was moving too fast for them to really get a look to see if they wanted to eat it or not. They just had to try it.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Looks like MOFIB came back up. So, here's where Witt starts to expand on this:

Feeding larvae is never a straightforward issue and never as easy as looking at the food alone. I have raised a good number of mandarins now on nothing but rotifers. Obviously, mortality rates are quite high, but it can be done. So, it goes without saying that supplementing whatever number of copepod naups you can will produce better survival. The 2/mL scenario was an extreme example that I used to pull emphasis away from the food and toward the environment.

On this page: http://www.marinebreeder.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1963&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150

That's not a lot, granted, but I can't find the place yet where he goes more into it. There's certainly a lot more in the book.

That thread's a great one to browse, though. Lots of eye candy!

 

["Umm fish?"]

I found a good quote out of the Wittenrich book (thanks for the inspiration to pick it up again ):

A seldom used but worthwhile technique is to move water instead of air to achieve water circulation. By locating a water inlet near the center of the tank floor, a reversed-flow regime can be established in the absence of air bubbles. A flow of water is directed down at the center of the bottom of the tank. Minimizing the gap between the water inlet and the tank floor will maximize flow. Water hits the tank floor and spreads out evenly (page 116).

 

["Umm fish?"]

I found a good quote out of the Wittenrich book (thanks for the inspiration to pick it up again ):

A seldom used but worthwhile technique is to move water instead of air to achieve water circulation. By locating a water inlet near the center of the tank floor, a reversed-flow regime can be established in the absence of air bubbles. A flow of water is directed down at the center of the bottom of the tank. Minimizing the gap between the water inlet and the tank floor will maximize flow. Water hits the tank floor and spreads out evenly (page 116).[\quote]