60x26x24 A.G.E upgrade-

[mc-cro]

In January of this year (2011) I purchased an awesome AGE tank from a fellow reefer in Cincinnati, and started a build thread on the local LMAS forum. I have been keeping that thread up to date for 10 months, albeit very, very slow. Now that progress is being made at a faster rate, I figured I would go ahead and start a build thread here on RC in our local forum as well. So, over the next few days I will be updating this thread, most will probably be cut and paste, but I will try and cut out stuff thats not relevant.

Jan 9th, 2011 I slightly underestimated the time frame for this project)

Well, after 10yrs with the 72g bowfront, I have finally decided its time to upgrade the tank. After some discussions, my wife and I initially decided on a standard 180g. But, something kept bugging me, I wanted something a little more unique with some more depth to it. I suggested we go with a 30" wide tank. Problem is, I didn't want to pay to have a custom tank built. If I was going to go custom, I would want starphire glass, eurobraced, external overflow, etc. and I just couldnt justify the price

Then a few days ago I ran across a guy on reefcentral from cincy selling his custom A.G.E. hybrid tank. 60x26x24, 3 sided Starphire, acrylic eurobracing, external adjustable overflow, and a 1" PVC bottom. Its not 30" wide, but its close enough. Although the asking price was still beyond what I wanted to spend on a tank, I had to at least call and see what kind of deal I could make. A few emails and phone calls later, a deal was struck.

So, I have several weeks( or months) coming of planning and upgrades. The first is the stand and canopy, then closed loop plumbing.

 

[mc-cro]

Feb 07,

Here is the post from Feb 07, and some shots of the my 72g tank, and the room before we did some painting.


Here are a couple pics of the tank and the room. The wife is still trying to decide on colors, and I still got to figure out if I am going to pay someone or redo the hardwoods myself.

Here is the wall where the new tank is going

the fire place and bookcases. Still deciding what to do, if anything. Most likely put mantle in, and paint the bookcases. Maybe a fireplace insert?

I spent the entire day yesterday tearing down the 72g. I moved the pump and lights saturday night, so yesterday all I had to do was move the corals,a small amount of live rock, and a few fish downstairs. then just scoop out the sand and move the tank out to the garage. Sounds simple enough, and it was, but it took me 7hrs to get it done, and I missed the 1st QTR of the superbowl.

 

[mc-cro]

this post is a week later still Feb

I was really disappointed with how poorly a single 250w halide covered my frag tank, so I decided to just build a quick VHO fixture. Not including the new bulbs, I have less than $30 in aluminum that I had to buy. I had everything else laying around. I still need to buy some thin sheet metal, paint it black, and use a break to wrap the fixture.

So anyway, off to Lowes again......, grabbed a 6 pack of adult beverages, and hammered out a new fixture.

 

[mc-cro]

We have been busy the last couple of days between working on the tank, my birthday, and working on the den. I think I have made 7 trips to Lowes in the last 2-3 days because we keep finding little projects. I also had to fix the kitchen ceiling where we had a leak in the bathroom upstairs a couple weeks ago. And I will spare you the drama of the wife picking colors and the whole HGTV stuff I accomplished.

Here is the tank related stuff I have been working on. First, last week I set up the frag tank that has been sitting dry for about 5yrs. I tied it into my existing sump, then just moved the corals down and took down the main tank. You can also see the unfinished light fixture I have been working on.

Here you can see the clam, I am a little concerned, he has been ticked off for 5 days now, every since I put him down there. He opens about half way, but I have yet to see him open all the way. He is under the same 250w MH from the main tank, and the lighting is within a few inches of the same distance.

My full size Lumenarc III came in, I can believe how freaking BIG they are! I meant to take a picture with a beer can for scale, but I drank it and forgot.

 

[mc-cro]

Since I was taking down one tank, and putting up another, it was a perfect opportunity to refinish the hardwood floors in that room

I really hate sanding floors

 

[mc-cro]

UPS dropped off a couple of boxes, my reefkeeper lite, plumbing parts, and misc supplies was in one box, and the rock was in the other box. All I can say is WOW! This rock is exactly the type of rock I was hoping for.

This is 60# of Pukani, its light, porus, and has tons of places for fish and stuff to hide. It is clearly old dead coral heads and not really rock. Its actually kinda brittle, so I was really amazed that there was literally only a handful of rubble pieces in bag from shipping. It so brittle, I am a little concerned that when I go to drill it, I may break it.

I also grabbed a quick pic from Saturday night when I pulled my clam out for a good scrubbing.

 

[mc-cro]

At just past the 60day mark, things are progressing, although slowly. I still don't have the stand. My fathers wood shop got flooded when we had all that rain about 2 weeks ago, and the sides got water damaged so he had to pull them back off and start over. We took that opportunity and revamped the design of the stand. I am losing the doors in the front, but I like the new design better. I will not have any equipment under the tank, so only having side access isnt that big of deal.

I also decided to return the RKL and go ahead and purchase an APEX Lite, PH probe, and extra EB4 instead. I am not going to use even half of the available features, but I figured by the time I built up a ReefKeeper Lite to do the few things I wanted, I was in the APEX price range, so why not. It will probably take me another 60 days to learn how to program it. although the pc and web interfaces should make things go easier.

I did decide on the new aquascaping. It just so happens that my work bench was almost the exact same size as tank, so I used it for mock ups for a week or two until I settled on something. I like the less is more type of thing, so I am only going to have 3 large pieces of BRS pukani rock. With this layout I have A LOT of sand bed, good water flow potential, and still have lots of real estate for coral because I can see 3 sides of my rockwork. Plus, I have somewhere to put that big clam right in the middle of the tank. So today I drilled the rock and used some orange fiberglass driveway markers as rods.

pics of the rods, I covered the orange with some 5 min fiberglass epoxy and sand.

My assistant:

I am going to have a 4-5"DSB so you wont see the brown base rocks, they will be buried.

The wall is the same space away as the back of the tank, so you will be able to see down the lenght of the back wall

out of focus shot

One of the rocks was kind of square looking, so I grafted on a large piece of rubble to round it out.

After I drilled them, I took them back apart and put the new dry rock in a tub with some of the live rock that I have been cooking for the last 2 months. I figure I might as well and get a head start on getting the rock to cycle or cure or whatever. It should be live rock by the time I actually get to put it in a tank.

 

[mc-cro]

After I drilled my dry rock, I went ahead and started curing it. Threw it in a rubbermaid with an old ETS downdraft skimmer. There must have been a lot of dead organics in the rock, the skimmer went nuts for about a week, the whole basement smelled foul, and the water turned as yellow as pee.

My Apex Lite came in, looks cool, but I havent even started to think about programming it yet. Although I did buy about 50ft of USB cable to connect it to my router. It was cheaper to buy USB cables from monoprice.com than purchasing a wireless gaming adapter, plus it seems I have to reboot my router once a week. So, that would really tick me off if I couldnt access it while on traveling because my router needed to be powercycled.

I also stopped in at premium when I was in Indy last week and picked up 300lbs of Tropic Eden's Aragasnow and 60lbs of mini flakes. The Aragasnow looks really nice and clean, it will make a nice DSB. The mini flakes will just provide a thin layer to decrease the sandstorms.

I went to Lowes to pick up some 1" flexible pvc, and couldnt believe how much they wanted! I ordered some from Savko, and picked up all the black pvc plumbing to do my overflow, and had it all shipped for the same price as what I would have paid for just the flexible pvc at Lowes.

The overflow needed some modifications, the previous owner had the return line running out through the teeth in the overflow. I am going to use a bean animal overflow system, and run the returns over the back of the tank. I had to cut some acrylic strips and custom fit them into the whole.

I forgot to take pics until about half way through, so at this point, I have already ground down the teeth some with a dremel, cut the strips to size, and already glued 2 of them in place. The blue tape is so I wouldnt drip acrylic glue all over everything. Forgive the dirty tank, I still have not had a chance to put water in it and clean it, since my stand hasnt come back yet.

Here is the finished product:

 

[mc-cro]

Several delays and months later, the stand was brought in and the tank set in place for the first time.

Here is pic of the stand when we brought it in:

The inside of the tank was all dirty from sitting inside the garage for the last 9 MONTHS, so I had to bribe my 5 yr old to get in and clean it. The back wall still has corraline on it from the previous owner, I will give it a good vinegar bath when I do the fresh water test.

some pics of the tank and stand. I decided against doing a full canopy, and leave it as open top. So my wife and I are trying to agree on some designs for a floating canopy. She wont go for just a hanging fixture.

 

[mc-cro]

During the planning phase I ran into a couple of reasons not to use the standard 3/4" loc lines for the returns as was the original plan. I ended up going ahead and getting the 1" oceans motions omni flex nozzles. They are obscenely overpriced, and surely not worth the money. But, I didnt want to regret going the cheap route later.

http://www.oceansmotions.com/store/...id=41&osCsid=b4e26c0e0051a73f5d86678e90c12bfd


Either by design, or by dumb luck, they left plenty of room in the center of the overflow between the original bulkheads to drill another 1" bulkhead. So I measured everything out, centered and drilled a 3rd hole in the overflow. This allows me to use a modified "bean animal" overflow. If your not familiar with it, it uses 1 line at a full syphon, a second durso line to accomodate fluctuations, and yet another line for absolute emergency use should both the 1st and 2nd drains become blocked. Its a rock solid design when implemented correctly.

So, after ordering a few more fittings I forgot about, I finally had all my parts and was able to plumb the back of the tank. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I can run the lines down inside the wall, through the ventilation returns and across the basement.

The way the tank will be situated,from the kitchen you will have a line of sight down between the tank and the wall. because of this I decided to do all black plumbing. I also cut a couple sheets of plywood and made a block of wood to match the overflow box for plumbing support.


Here is the back of the tank

 

[mc-cro]

Progress is being made quickly now, and I am getting all giddy like its christmas or something. I was able to run the plumbing through the ventilation ducts in the basement and up into the wall and connect them to the tank. It wasnt easy but I got it done. From the fish tank room, the bend to go up into the wall was about 5ft from where plumbing exited the duct, and from upstairs down, me nor the wife could reach the bottom to grab the pipes, so I had to go into another room in the basement and access the ventilation ducts from that side. It was still about a 2.5ft reach, but I was finally able to get the pipes turned and run up into the wall.

underside:

behind the tank: I didnt have any black flexible pvc, so I just wrapped the last foot or so with black gorrilla tape.
Not the best, but I think it will work long term. besides, nobody should be looking at it once the tank is full.

I also went ahead and plumbed in a small 30g rubbermaid as a temporary sump. I also got the added supports in a couple of weeks ago. Here is a quick shot, the fish tank room is a disaster, but it tends to happen when your re-arranging stuff. The small rubbermaid will allow me to keep the new system isolated until its ready.

Next I will go ahead and fill it up with tap water, check for leaks( I really, really, hope there arent any) then pour several gallons of vinegar in with the water to give it a good cleaning for 24-48hrs.

Soon, very soon, there will be salt in that tank :mrgreen:

 

[mc-cro]

I talked my wife into letting me skip the kids soccer practice so I could finish up the temporary plumbing and start filling the tank, after about an hour or so of messing around with some final details, I got the water hose and waited..........over 45mins to fill, but

Woo-Hoo!!! its got water in it!!

filling...

filling some more...

ahh, its full....

And its pretty close to being level

I did have one major scare, I was standing outside while it was filling, and I heard a really loud bang. thinking the tank just exploded I ran back in the house only to find that the dog and cat had knocked something over chasing each other.

So far there are no leaks in the permanent plubming. thank goodness. I did have to glue a connection on the temporary sump, but I was trying to not glue as much as that as possible, so no big deal.

got the vortechs hooked up, dumped in a few gallons of vinegar, and will let it run for another 24hrs or so. then I will clean it, drain it, wipe it down and be ready for salt. which reminds me, I better get the ro unit going, I got a couple hundred gallons of water to make.

Now all I need to do is actually make the canopy and put rocks and sand in it.

 

[BHD]

Very nice looking.
What kind of fishes are you going to keep in there?

 

[mc-cro]

Thanks, I will be keeping several different types of wrasse, a couple of clowns, some goby's, including a jawfish. some active filler like some chromies probably.

I doubt I will have a tang, as I have my 18"+ Derasa clam as the center piece.

I am having a tough time possibly reconsidering my lighting plan. I really like the growth and look of the VHO actinics with 10K bulbs. So I had planned on using my existing 250w MH ballast, and VHO tubes. I purchased a pair of LumenArc III 's earlier this year and also went ahead and built a tray to hold them. My dilemma now is that I am afraid the canopy will be too big. The lights plus vho are 12"tall, plus I want an additional 4" in height toa shade the light so it is not right in your eyes like a lot of open tops.

So just go with one of the nicer all in one fixtures right? holy cow, I know nothing about DE fixtures, T5/s ballast, and all that. I really dont have the time or energy right now to go researching to make sure I get what I really want. Plus, most 60" fixtures only come with 2 DE bulbs, and a lot of people are not happy with the spread on such a large tank for 2 bulbs. I would really hate to go buy a maristar or one of the new hamiltons for $$$$ and then find decide I am not happy with the coverage of only 2 bulbs. I also am keeping an eye towards LED's in the somewhat near future, so no point is shelling out tons of money for a new fixture now, for even more cash in a just a few years. well, maybe. those geissman fixtures are SEXY.....

I figure I would go ahead and make up a "mock up" of the floating canopy that I want. just something to give me and the wife and idea on what it may look like.

light tray,

start of wood cutting

the somewhat finished mock up.

I think its a monster, but the wife actually thinks that it is not long enough, and that it should be the length of the tank. Will think on it for a few more days and see what happens.

After all these months and water changes, my Pukani rock from BRS still has a fairly high p04 reading, so I am trying some pool and spa p04 remover that I have been reading about. It just takes a few drops, and the water turns cloudy as it attracts the free p04, and the skimmer looks like its pulling baby powder out of the water. will test later on tonight, but I am thinking the last of my phosphates should be gone. I am not sure if I would do it on a live tank as others have done, but with cured rock and nothing else, there is basically no risk. At least I know I wont be putting p04 laden rock right into a fresh tank.

I have about 150g of salt water made, just about another 50 or so to go. The plan is place the rock, sand, and water in the tank, either tomorrow or wed.

oh man, its getting close, just need to make a decision about the lights.

 

[mc-cro]

So last week was the big day, I even took a couple vacation days just to get ready to put rock sand and water in the tank. I didnt get any shots of me putting in just the base rock and display rock,( we couldnt find the camera) but once my wife found the camera, she got several shots of me just adding sand.

I am really digging the aquascaping, its a good thing, because it cant be changed without tearing everything down. There are rods that are drilled down into the base rock that is buried in the sand. what do you guys think?
I really like the large open area of sand bed, plus keep in mind there will be a giant derasa clam between the 2 bommies

 

[mc-cro]

ready for filling

 

[mc-cro]

My helper thinking we were going the fresh water route again, uhh no son I have "special" water downstairs.

Filling

Its a little cloudy, but not even remotely close to the old southdown milkshake days. this is right out of the bag no rinsing at all

And here it is the next morning. clearing up nicely. the skimmer hasnt really kicked in yet, all the new sand and water has it flat for now.

Now for the waiting game. Not sure how much of a cycle is going happen since the rock has been curing since about march (6months). At one point it had plenty of pods and stuff, and was ready to go in as live rock. but I have abused it fairly well recently. dosing all that P04 remover, then water overheated at one point several weeks ago getting up to over 90*, plus it was out of water yesterday during the set up for probably close to 2hrs. so, it may take a little while, I will add some live rock from the current set up, plus I still need to figure out lights.

 

[mc-cro]

I took a basket of live rock rubble that has been in my sump for several months and placed it in the middle of the sand bed. I have been feeding the sand bed every few days, hoping to get it going. I also took a scoop of sand from my frag tank and spread over the sand bed. So far, I got a couple of the little white/clear worms out in the bed. I saw 2 pods one day in the basket, along with tons of tiny filter feeders and at least 1 large bristleworm. But none of them have started to colonize outside of the basket.

 

[Endy0430]

Looking good...:thumbsup:

Question what kind of sand did you use looks very fine.. Also were did you get your plumbing parts?

 

[mc-cro]

Thanks!

the sand is a mix of about 5 bags tropic eden aragasnow, and 2 bags mini flakes. With the vortechs in there, natural looking 2" ripples are being created, looks really good IMO.

I got the plumbing parts at Savko on line.