Captain Bunzo Tank Thread : 55G @ Home

[captbunzo]

Ladies & Gentlemen. I wanted to post a few pics detailing the progress I am making toward getting my tank at home set after the disaster that occurred before Christmas.

And yes, I know this isn't as exciting as the OTHER Paul's new tank thread, but well, I'm pumped.

Getting Ready to Drill (pm me if you need a link to the guy on eBay selling inexpensive diamond hole saw)

Drilling the Tank

Grrr... Tempered Glass Sucks Amazingly enough, we'd actually drilled for about 20 minutes and had gotten halfway through the glass before it shattered.

Anyhow, I bought a replacement glass panel and drilled that a couple days later. Before drilling the full piece of glass, however, we drilled some test pieces. First hole, we were slow and patience. Took something like 30-45 minutes to drill the hole. On a whim, we drilled a second test hole, applying much more pressure to see how much stress the glass could take before it cracked. It didn't and the hole was drilled in about 2 minutes.

So, needless to say, the real holes went a lot faster then the first.

The drilled panel, ready for installation...

 

[captbunzo]

Gratuitous baby shots?

 

[captbunzo]

Caulking all holes, crevices and cracks because, after all, crack kills!

Ooo-hoo! The wife helping paint! Good thing, since I HATE PAINTING!!!

I love my Kreg pocket hole jig. It made canopy construction much easier then if I had to make REAL woodworking joints...

Stand and tank frames painted. Notice the water cube inside that I'll be using for a RDSB.

Here are a couple of zoomed in pics of the overflow I built inside of the tank. Please ignore the horrible acrylic joint that I made. It's messy, but strong. This long horizontal overflow is about 2 x 4.5 inches in size and should allow a thin layer of nasty, skimmer ready water to flow over the top.

Ok, that's all the pics for now. Work slowed a bit do to some required events around here. Hope you enjoyed them!

 

[pwhitby]

looking good.

Welcome back.

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

Ah, I see you have been taking lessons from the great Anthony Calfo I never knew he advocated full length overflows until I started frequenting his forum for the short period of time I was able to. I had planned on my 125g to have one. But, nay, I had to have it sold. Also, by RDSB, you mean Really Deep Sand Bed, right?

All in all, it looks great. Its good to have you back on the board sharing with us. The craftsmanship is outstanding. How did you get the silicon all nice and neat on the replacement pane? Since, soon, I will finally be replacing the bottom of the sea horse tank any pointers would be handy.

 

[captbunzo]

Thanks, Paul. Glad to be back. Though the week off was nice.

RDSB = Remote Deep Sand Bed. Stay tuned in about 2-3 months for an article on that by me posted somewhere. Or just go read the thread in All Things Salty. Basically a bucket filled with sand and plumbed into your tank system. Demonstrated to provide many of the NNR (Natural Nitrate Reduction) capabilities of a DSB without quite as much of the risk. Easy to install, remove, change out, etc. Very cool, IMHO.

For what it's worth, everyone who tried a RDSB over in All Things Salty have come back in a month with claims of significant nitrate reduction results. I guess I will see how it works for me!

As for neat silicone, that is the result of doing far too much of this. Let me try to post a quick list of the IMPORTANT tips I have learned.

SILICONING TIPS BY PAUL T.

1. Use blue painters tape to tape where you want the silicone border to be. Keep in mind that you need tape on both sides of the silicone joint and on both pieces being joined. This ends up being about 4 strips of tape along every joint.

2. The wider the tape, the better. Never underestimate your ability to get silicone everywhere. And the stuff is SO freaking easier to avoid making a mess with then to clean up later.

3. When you get everything taped, grab a WHOLE roll of paper towel and a cup half full of warm water with about 6 drops or so of dish soap mixed in. You want the soapy water to be slightly bubbly and all mixed in.

4. Apply some silicone. Use enough, but not too much extra. After you run beads all over the place, get your finger wet and soapy. Then run that finger along the joint, making it look pretty. Use paper towel liberally to wipe the extra silicone from your finger.

5. Accept the fact that you are going to waste a lot of silicone.

6. Your goal is to make nice pretty rounded joints along inside corner edges, and to smooth things off nicely, leaving as LITTLE silicone as possible on outside corder edges.

7. I have discovered inside corner edges to be best taped at around 1/4 inch from the future joint. Out side corners edges are best with almost zero clearance.

8. Work VERY efficiently as you apply and prettify your silicone. It skins over fast and will not work as nicely anymore.

9. If you assembly is complicated enough, apply some extra pieces of tape to hold everything together.

10. When all is done, set a timer for about 15 minutes or so. Maybe a half hour, I don't remember. Anyhow, when it goes off, IMMEDIATELY REMOVE the border tape pieces. At this point, the silicone is prettified. If you don't remove the tape now, it will screw up your silicone joint later when it's more dry. Basically, you can pull the tape off as soon as the silicone is pretty.

11. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to create a lovely joint, then wait to long and make it look nasty when you pull the tape off.

12. Let it dry for 12 hours or so. Maybe less, more is always good. And then use razor blades to clean anything else up. Don't cut too deep or you'll screw up your seal.

There we go. How's that?

 

[n8duncan]

awesome possum paul. I always wondered how to make it all pretty

 

[MyMonkey]

Very nice. Nice stand and canopy too.

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

Thank you VERY much actually. I was going to take a little more time to make it look nice, but now that you say that you need to work very quickly, you may have saved me a lot of trouble and headache.

 

[captbunzo]

Let me know how it turns out!

 

[dugg]

Nice job Paul. One thing on the horizontal overflow. I WISH i had made mine an external box instead of internal like i did. The overflow does block a lot of light from the bottom. I have actually been considering building another cement tank to correct this. Just thought i would share that with you before you reach the point of no return. I plan on replacing the back glass panel with a new panel that is 1/2" shorter than the original and mounting a glass box on the outside, with the plumbing drilled into the bottom of the external box. The internal would be fine on a deeper tank like a 75 gallon or larger, but the shallow (front to back) tanks like ours, need all of the surface area open that they can get for light penetration.

 

[captbunzo]

Thanks for the suggestion, Dugg! I actually came very close to doing exactly that, especially since I was replacing the back panel anyhow. In the long run, though, after my experience with my last tank cracking, I decided to go on an interior box to keep the stress on the back panel low.

I am sure that a solid, uncut back panel would be fine. But decided not to risk it anyhow.

 

[captbunzo]

Gee, it was hard to find this old thread. Perhaps that is because I never updated it.... Funny stuff..............

Anyhow, I had a request by someone recently (I think in my 47g tank log) for some updated pics of my new tank. So I thought I would post some here. And yes, I have too many corals in the tank - it is looking way too cram packed. But that's good for you all, show up at the next meeting and maybe I'll give something (if I remember to frag and bring things up then).

Now, this first set of pictures is particularly special. So special that I gave them their own thread. I took these pics using a quirky little lens called a Lensbaby.

This thread has some pics I took with a lensbaby.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=965394

And then there are MANY more pics I have taken of the tank. To see ALL of the new pics, check them out on flickr. Here is a link to the FIRST of the new pics.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/captbunzo/288682997/in/set-72057594143172842/

And here are some highlights from these new pics...

Obligatory Whole Tank Pic

Ok, crappy pic. I get a real bad reflection on the glass during the day when the sun is out and shining through our living room windows.

FISH PICS!!!

Pajama Cardinal


New Goby (week old in the tank), I scored major points when I sent this home to my wife (thanks again, Chris & Brook) because my wife LOVES purple. Btw, does anyone know any common names or the Genus & species for this goby?


Rainford Goby, also special even if it only sifts 6 grains of sand at a time.....

 

[captbunzo]

(continued)

SOFT CORALS


Toadstoal leather, grew up over the last 6 months from a 1x1 inch square or so sized frag. Thank you Kirk!


Zoanthids rock... (on a rock, too...)


Ricordia rock as well....

HARD CORALS


Orange Montipora digitata


Galaxea archelia - I actually posted this so that folks can see what Rapid Tissue Necrosis (RTN) looks like. This Galaxea is from my tank in Dallas. And if you read over in that thread, you'll discover that I am having some troubles due to a led moonlight that fell and soaked in the tank for about 18 hours, electricuting stuff and releasing who knows what metals and other toxins into the water.


Some sort of brain coral - anyone know what these are called?


Frogspawn (Euphylia of some sort)

 

[captbunzo]

(continued again) - 2 last pics


Tridacna derasa - this is another transplant from my 47g tank in Dallas. It, fortunately, seems no worse for the wear.


And a neat view (IMHO) of a rather ordinary feather duster....

 

[MyMonkey]

Looking great Paul.

 

[captbunzo]

Why thank you, MyMonkey!

I sure can tell you it is very encouraging to a reefers heart to come home to a wonderful happy tank like my 55g tank when my tank in Dallas is having such issues. Like my orange Montipora digitata which is growing like gangbusters and encrusting over the rock it's mounted on finally and just doing wonderfully.

Happy moments....

 

[captbunzo]

Ok, another quick update here.....

Things are going decently well with my home tank. My ocellaris (false perc) clowns have started hosting in my anemone for about the last 3-4 weeks, which is interesting.

And we seem to be having some trouble with some sort of tissue necrosis of our couple Montipora capriconis corals. One of them is easy to explain as it has been being attacked by the anemone for a while and we just didn't have anywhere to move it to. the other one, I am less sure about the cause. That one, at least, seems to be getting better.

Whatever the case, I put some of my Haitian Lettuce Rock in the tank to complete THE FOURTH ARCH... That gave me room to spread some things out a bit (read: give the anemone enough room). And I moved a brain coral forward. And took some pics... As usual, click on the pics for a link to their page on flickr where you can post comments or see bigger versions...

These pictures were brought to you by Mo, the Pajama Cardinalfish. For some reason, he seemed to stick in the field of view for many of my pics that day.... Silly fish.



Obligatory whole tank shot. The white with cyano rock on the right is the new rock, of course...



Here's a picture of the new arch, complete with some Monti digi frags on top. Those also look pretty bad due to some anemone agression. They, however, got moved farther away and have been recovering well...



Always attempting to be creative with my placement of corals, etc, I am taking advantage of this spot slightly lower in the tank and slightly shaded to place a nice green Ricordea. I love Ricordea. And better yet, they seem to thrive in my tank. Woot for me!



I found this asterina star on the glass and thought it was just beautiful. And I got a pretty decent picture. (At least I thought so)



Three pieces of a lovely orange Montipora digitata frag that I got from a COMAS meeting back in the spring. It has grown nicely (been fragged back to the donor program) and seems to be relatively hardy.



This open brain coral was back in the right corner back bottom part of the tank before I put the new rock in. It got to move forward some and seems to REALLY like the new spot. It is probably fluffed up to 150% of what it normally is. This is my wife's favorite coral in the tank...



And another shot, from another angle. Can anyone guess what the shiny spots are in the left top part of the picture?

(That's it for now, have a good day, happy new year, etc, etc, etc....)

 

[cmc0814]

Christmas lights?

 

[cmc0814]

Christmas lights?