A Reef Tank in the Desert - +/- 1,400 gallon system

[danfeig]

Exhausted!!! Home at last, back to reefing!

Exhausted!!! Home at last, back to reefing!

It was a long, long, trip home.

We had to leave for the airport in Madrid at 9:00 PM, Thursday evening, Tucson time and didn't get back to our house until midnight, Friday. It was an exhausting trip home.

Our plane was delayed in Madrid as the plane had mechanical issues and US Air ended up needing to bring a new plane to the gate. When we boarded, we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 90 minutes as they rerouted our trip to Tucson, via Charlotte - because of weather issues. The resulting rerouting and delay of almost 3 hours forced us to miss our connection in Charlotte. After changing our flight plan to go through Phoenix and a 4 hour delay in the Charlotte airport, we boarded the plane only to be delayed again, 90 minutes because of storms across the midwest. This caused us to miss our connection in Phoenix. Fortunately, we were able to get on the last Phoenix - Tucson flight and made it home safe and sound. Just several hours late.

I had a few surprises waiting for me when I got home.

My package from Avast came in along with my self-cleaning head for my Deltec 3070. Thanks Dave, great call!

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My GFO/Media Reactor also came in along with 3 cases of Miracle Mud for my sump and 3 bags of live sand for my refugium. My hanging kits also arrived from EcoTech after waiting for 2 months. After briefly looking at them, I am sure they will be worth the wait! I also received a package from Marine & Reef that included a 48" gravel vacuum, a "pool cleaner" type tool(4"x10" algae scrubber on a pole) to assist with the cleaning of my glass.

I was too tired to mess with anything last night. I did go into the fish room immediately and with the exception of the humidity in the room, everything was looking good.

I woke up at 6:00 this morning, 3:00 PM in the afternoon - Madrid time, and went to work. I gently poured the contents of the 3 Miracle Mud cases into its proper chamber in my sump and the three bags of Live Sand into my refugium. Immediately my sump and refugium went from being crystal clear to cloudy and dark. I had shut off the pumps to spare the tanks all the mess and ran my canister filter in the sump for a while.

I figured that since the pumps were off, I would tank advantage of the situation and jump into the tank and move two the towers back 6 inches or so. This was a suggestion my lovely wife had made. I also wanted to use the opportunity to add some live rock between the towers to hide some of the lock line.

Everything was going smoothly until around 8:30 or so, my next shipment came. I immediately jumped out of the water to meet the FedEx man:

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One afternoon while the girls were shopping in Madrid, I went online and place an order with Reefs2Go. I had never ordered from them but constantly saw their banners here on Reef Central. I figured I would order a few things...

Several hundred dollars later I ended up with a large cleaner package, several thousand pods/copods, several crabs, hundreds of snails, shrimp... I also ended up ordering a few wrasses, dotty backs, gobies, sand sifting starfish... I am impressed with the company! Everything arrived in what appears to be great shape and alive. Even all of the Peppermint Shrimps!

Because of all of the livestock, I ended up turning on the pumps sooner than I wanted. Therein lies the problem. I was looking forward to seeing everything that I purchased, but unfortunately, the water ended up looking like a big, dark, dust storm (because of the Miracle Mud and sand for the refugium).

Tomorrow will be another big day. I am going to try to tackle the hanging of my EcoTech Radions. It won't be a permanent setup. I still haven't found an electronic winch or pulley for the lighting system. So I am not exactly sure how I will handle that issue. I also intend to install the self cleaning head for my skimmer and perhaps my new GFO reactor.

I will have more updates tomorrow!

 

[DCBB]

looks like an awesome set-up subscribed

 

[Dazed1]

Wow! That's a big shipment. Can't wait to see the pictures with the live stock in them!

 

[BigOldReef]

Dan,

Thanks for remembering us

I'm taking my niece to the circus in the morning, but expect crystal clear pictures of everything posted by the time the 4 year old with the cotton candy sugar rush is back in my sister's hands.

Dave

 

[Commandoe]

This is an outstanding build! Thanks for letting us live a little through you!

 

[rogerwilco357]

would like to see a pic of the water sensors and placement..maybe you should have had a drain put in just in case of water loss my tank is in the basement and luckily by the drain side also have the main port to the in house sump available to port all my rodi water out to that drain..nice build cannot wait to see what you do with the lighting...love your RKE and it will love you back or at least your tank lol..

 

[TYSDADI]

Let me first say, welcome home. :wavehand:

I have been thinking of using an electric chandelier winch for my lights. If they can hold a 500 pound chandelier than they should be able to hold a hundred pounds of aquarium lighting right?

Oh and I can't forget to say.....
EPIC BUILD!

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

Glad you are back. Christina has some great buys and awesome sales. I see you took advantage of that. Nothing like coming home to boxes.

 

[EnV]

Subscribed!
Love the build!

 

[danfeig]

looks like an awesome set-up subscribed

DCBB:

Thank you. Welcome on board. It has been a lot of fun and I still feel like I am just getting started.

I see that you are up in Phoenix. I certainly hope that you are not one of those Sun Devils :lol:

 

[danfeig]

Wow! That's a big shipment. Can't wait to see the pictures with the live stock in them!

Dazed1:

You would be really surprised. The tank is pretty much empty. The shipment was primarily crabs, snails, more snails, shrimp and 12 small fish or so. At any given time, I only see 4 fish. They are all hiding in the rocks or the tank is so large that you just don't see them until they are close to the glass.

After my fish order that I place this week comes in, I will shoot some more pics.

 

[danfeig]

Dan,

Thanks for remembering us

I'm taking my niece to the circus in the morning, but expect crystal clear pictures of everything posted by the time the 4 year old with the cotton candy sugar rush is back in my sister's hands.

Dave

Dave:

I hope that you had fun at the circus. I will never forget going to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum Bailey Circus with my grandparents when I was around 6 years old. The highlight for me was when one of the huge elephants took a dump. I never saw such a thing and laughed at amazement!

Anyways, I am sorry to disappoint you. As anxious as I was to work on the tank today, family matters kept me out of the house. We had to meet the in-laws for brunch to catch them up on our summer trips. Somehow another after that, I was convinced to go to the movies.

The only work I got done on the tanks today was a little work on the hanging kits for the Radions. I was planning on hanging them onto some sort of rail, but have decided to hang them directly from the ceiling. I still will be able to raise them manually when I need to clean the tanks or install/remove corals... I just couldn't find anything that I really liked.

I am hoping sync all of the lights onto the computer tomorrow and then finish installing the lights by Thursday or so.

It is my sincere hope to be able to start breaking down and transferring over my livestock from my 150 gallon this weekend.

 

[BigOldReef]

Dan

I figured Jet lag kicked in and you just crashed.

Circus, was Ringling Brothers. Not as "amazing" and "astounding" as when we were kids. Sadly the clowns were the biggest disappointment, but the 4 year old seemed entertained. And an elephant did poop!

I have a pair of 22" linear actuators that I bought for my light rack, but they are sitting in my tool room unused.

Are the fish you put in the tank before you left visible ?

Dave

 

[techreef]

i swear just looking at those pictures of all the new boxes of equipment and livestock gives me a rush! lol. This is a great phase of the new tank setup. Thanks for sharing Dan. Can't wait to see the pics of the tank once it clears.

 

[danfeig]

This is an outstanding build! Thanks for letting us live a little through you!

Thanks Cammandoe!

Hey! it's still just starting!!! A lot more to come.

 

[danfeig]

would like to see a pic of the water sensors and placement..maybe you should have had a drain put in just in case of water loss my tank is in the basement and luckily by the drain side also have the main port to the in house sump available to port all my rodi water out to that drain..nice build cannot wait to see what you do with the lighting...love your RKE and it will love you back or at least your tank lol..

I have not installed a water sensor system yet. Being away for a month...it hasn't been my top priority. I will be following David's system: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1958259

I wish that I could put in a floor drain. It's not possible without a lot of saw cutting. The lighting should be completed this week. The light kits from EcoTech are great! It is just time consuming!

Thanks for the compliments and following along!

 

[MattyO]

Never actually seen the filter u talked about a few pages back that needs darkness but can u put a dark sheet over it? That way it's protected from light but u can always peak to see what's going on

 

[flakey]

Dream build....

 

[Al Bundy]

Dan,

I have a friend who store water 50g at a time for weekly water changes. Once a week he adds salts, then within an hour dumps the salt water into the system, and then fills the storage tank back up with RO. The RO water was kept circulated and heated.

Well about a year ago his tank started to go downhill. Not only was he slowly losing established corals and established fish. But all new fish added to the system were dead within 24 hours. Corals were STN'ing at a very very slow rate -- Months and months to take out a small colony.

We checked for bug and parasites. We did massive water changes. We changed RO cartridges. Tested everything and couldn't find an issue.

We found the corals actually were doing worse after a water change.

So, there is a company close to me who supplies me with my RO system needs and they design high end water purification systems.... For the likes of NASA.

They walked me through numerous steps which we had taken, and then came up with a bacterial disease that can form in static water. So we did a Petri dish test and grew out all kinds of bacteria. Came back that the bacteria was toxic to fish, and was formed in the fresh water storage barrel. Adding the salt didn't knock the bacteria out, and in fact added to the toxicity of it.

They recommened UV or Ozone for the water barrel. We opted and put on a small Aqua UV unit on the circulation pump. Did a water change and Voila the tank is a success once again.

This was on a 225 display tank with 300+ gallons of sump and changing 50g a week, plus a couple of liters of carbon a week and running RowaPhos.

Since you are plumbing the Mag pump in to circulate consider adding a UV as well. Especially since your water may be standing for long periods of time due to the Dialyseas unit.

Dave

First off sweet a$$ build im only on page 9 but eager to get to the next page. In the mean time i found this gem of extremely use full info and i just had to thank BigOlReef, I think he may have solved my problem. So Thanks Dave.

 

[danfeig]

Let me first say, welcome home. :wavehand:

I have been thinking of using an electric chandelier winch for my lights. If they can hold a 500 pound chandelier than they should be able to hold a hundred pounds of aquarium lighting right?

Oh and I can't forget to say.....
EPIC BUILD!

Thanks TYSDADI! I appreciate the welcoming and the compliments. It is great to be home!

The chandelier winch isn't a bad idea if you have the room. I was at first looking for something electrical. With the flip of a switch I could raise or lower...then I decided a more simplistic approach. This evening I finished screwing hooks into the ceiling anchored by drywall screws or toggles. I purchased stainless steel eye bolts that will screw into the EcoTech Radion hanging kits. My plan is to hang each light fixture (2 Radion units per fixture) individually. They are light enough to move or set aside when I am cleaning the tank, adding or fragging corals.

I hope to have the lights up by Thursday evening. Tonight I programed the first two!!!