58g Reef (re)Build

[papagimp]

everyone always talks about how plague like kenyas can be but I've never really had an issue keeping them under control, probably due to the fact that I mess around in my tank way to often, so I'm removing sprouts as I see em and all but I do appreciate the heads up anyways What I've done in the past with corals such as kenya and gsp's is to simply let them take over an entire "chunk" and then sell/give away that chunk and replace it with some new rock. Unfortunately my current setup is aquascaped with 4 very large chunks which would make this technique next to impossible, not getting rid of my favorite pieces of LR Being so far away from having the funds for the LED project, I'll be happy to have a kenya forest in the meantime lol. May try to get my hands on a green nepthea soon to take the place of the kenya or at least add a splash of color to a fairly bland tank.

 

[papagimp]

Algae Scrubber

Algae Scrubber

Everything still going smoothly. Got my skimmer ordered this weekend (Nwb-150 reef octopus) and while waiting on that, I decided to toss this together:

Found an old hang on the back refugium that we bought but never used, so I hacked it up, tossed some spay paint on the back, busted out the dremel and so far so good.

i had gone to home depot and bought a crapload of random stuff and wound up finding almost all this in the garage, go figure. Honestly, there was a severe lack of any and all planning in this design, just kinda winged it and I'm happy with the results. I still have to rough up the screen , this is just preliminary leak testing. The scrubber will be almost completely useless until I rough it up. Then we'll see what happens

Now on a different subject.. sortof. Ya'll see this center piece between the two doors..

I was looking at it, and they beveled the end pieces so the screws go straight up and down into the rest of the stand, seems awfully flimsy and I'm curious if this is a purely aesthetic piece or does it actually support weight? If I can temporarily move this center piece, would make getting the sump out to rebaffle for the new skimmer a whooooollleeeee lot easier. thoughts?

 

[papagimp]

So made a few more changes this evening. First off, the Reef Octopus showed up :thumbsup: and secondly, one of the overflow pipes kept leaking out of my ATS splash guard so I had to redo that entire line. This gave me the opportunity to add in a union so I can remove the ATS unit with less trouble.

The bubblenator. This is the nwb-150 model, fresh out of the box, about a 45 minute rinse through freshwater (thanks jess ) and cramed in the barely large enough section of the sump I've yet to rebaffle, and fired right up like this.

Heres another angle:

and finallly, the union fitting on my ATS lol, simple enough but man o' man what a difference in this new pipe. I guess my last one, the slot that the screen is stuck in, must have been too narrow and long, cause this time around I'm getting a perfectly even flow over the screen. Which is what you want for even coverage of both flow and light to optimize algae growth. Between the Skimmer, the Algae Turf Scrubber, and the 4 koralias in the DT, I expect this system to fair much better than previous projects had.

 

[papagimp]

http://www.reefnook.com/reefrx/users/884-papagimp/reefs/781-58g-reef/notes

 

[papagimp]

guess this ain't to shabby for first day uh?

 

[Lytehouse]

yeah,
nice skimmer

wait till it gets broke in well

 

[papagimp]

Added in a couple carbon 'reactors' to my 75g and had some extra pvc, so tossed this together for the 58g. Used slip quick release fittings hooked up to a maxijet 400 (same type of fittings used for the BRS reactors to hook up the maxi jets) worked out nicely.

 

[ghellin]

Very nice DIY work!

 

[papagimp]

thanks! I wanted to do similar with the 75g but those quick connect fittings get pricey for the amount I needed and had funding for, that and I can't seem to find all the pieces I need locally, I'll just have to place an order online to get a quick connect valve and some quick connect 90 elbows. This gives me a decent carbon source (or other media) with an algae scrubber, and then the carbon/gfo dyi setup with skimmer on the other tank. I'm hoping I can get a decent comparison of using both systems out.

 

[ghellin]

Any updates on the turf scrubber yet? Lets see some algae!

 

[pierced_rainbow]

Here are some updated pics of the tank. I will try to get some pics of the scrubber sheet tomorrow before I clean it.

 

[pierced_rainbow]

So with finding out we have a 2nd baby on the way we have decided to combine our two tanks into one. The 58 will be emptied and set up in kid #1's room, most likely fw for ease of maintaining only one sw tank.