No wine needed for me. I've been gluing PVC pipe in a non-ventilated crawl space under the tank for a week. When the fumes get too bad a unicorn chases me out or a leprechaun bites me.:wildone:
BTW, the plumbing under the tank is complete. Peter will post some pics soon. Probably before my spine straightens back out and the bumps on my head heal
Actually, Mr. Wilson understates the progress this week. A great deal of effort with a fair chunk of man(person) hours has gone into finishing the fish room expansion. I haven't taken too many pictures because the loyal individuals in this community have a pretty fair idea what the principle elements look like. I will be taking pictures soon as the majority of 'messy' original and spare parts piles are beginning to diminish so it should be easier to tell whats left underneath the covers so to speak. Mr. Wilson as noted above occasionally creeps out of the abyss under the tank and actually uses the fresh air time to continue retrofitting the mars bars.
On that note I will take credit for the decision to acquire them in the first place. The rational to have 27 separate tanks added to the fish room inventory came about from lurking through many of the large tank builds on this forum. All too often, the majority of support environments for large display tanks end up looking like the boiler room from alcatraz...a maze of pipes and hoses accommodating a patchwork of additional equipment and tanks not foreseen from the beginning of the journey. I decided that I would try my best to anticipate that kind of longer term requirement and in fact even have some left over for emergencies but with a better system of organization. I also wanted to try and improve the work flows for standard operating procedures as well as improve the prospects of maintaining high standards for best practices for maintenance.
My good luck or should I say our community's good luck in having Mr. Wilson join the team was on the issue of incorporating the mars bars into our fish room design was that he identified a number of shortfalls and improvements that have almost rebuilt the Mars bars to meet the objectives I laid out above. I frankly would not have discovered certain elements that were NOT conducive to a saltwater reefing environment until it was too late or worse, I may never have discovered the deficiencies without Mr. Wilson's willingness to treat my initiative with respect. I thank him for that and humbly point to this specific dynamic as being an important benefit to the culture for the folks working directly on this build. Thank you Mr. Wilson. I will be posting Pictures of the 'renewed' mars bars for everyones benefit. Mr. Wilson has improved the flow, UV sterilization, RO/DI auto water top off, chiller performance, skimmer effectiveness and better configuration management of each of the separate tanks. We (our community) will be indebted to Mr. Wilson for his discipline in getting things right, not skipping the mundane and raising the bar for best practices in this hobby.
As a side note I have to mention the incredible job Jamie and the cleaning crew(the Bros Grimm) did on making those mars bars absolutely indistinguishable from brand new product. They actually gleam and there is NOT a single hint or trace evidence of foreign chemical to be seen, felt or tasted. They have taken the same high standards they have applied to my Bentley in the auto detailing business and brought them to the fish room. Also demonstrating the ability to manage a number of activities and projects on the fly, the kids have acquired the proper acrylic egg crate panels and cut them with geometric perfection to prepare the display tank for the live rock aquasculpting process next week. Again we are all going to be the beneficiaries of those high standards down the road. I am very proud of their passion and determination to learn and grow from this project. Our society would be a better place with those kinds of attitudes as a general outlook on life from our youth. Well done guys you may take a bow!!
I have not tried to go too far in commenting on the re engineering of the flow for our tank By Mr. Wilson. It has been completely redefined and I think we are honestly on the road to a world class architecture that addresses most if not all the concerns raised earlier in the thread. The drawings need to be updated by Mr. Wilson and we need to add a considerable narrative to the presentation of this new data as I think in some ways we are breaking new ground......or at least so we hope. It is truly beyond my abilities to adequately describe all the elements of this new environment so I will defer to Mr. Wilson's time and availability to provide this valuable information to our community.
Another active member of our team has been recently instrumental in helping us with guidance and assistance in acquiring the materials for the aquasculpting phase of our project and I would like to thank him publicly here. ChingChai has been with us from the beginning and was an integral part of my decision to undertake this project in the first place. His influence on almost every part of this build cannot be overstated. I have yet to meet anyone one this forum who has been more humble, more generous with his time, unselfish in sharing his education in this hobby and absolutely the poster child for best practices in this domain............we all owe him a debt of gratitude for his support of our project to date and as we go forward. Thank You ChingChai you will always have your own key to our front door.
Finally and no less significant have been you ...........folks who have been following actively from the beginning, folks who have been silently lurking, folks who have joined us late but have had enough interest and respect to go back to the beginning and just plain get caught up in this phenomenal journey I thank you. Apart from the obvious ego gratification this kind of attention can bring a person I can honestly say that your continuing support throughout this build has been central to my positive attitude in looking always to the future. Your presence and interaction keeps this 'imagineer' dreaming about what could be better, how can we build on what we have learned and what are the ways we can strengthen the notion that this really is a community tank and most important we really can share in this experience in a material way................
There are a ton of other activities going on at this same time which I will soon be photo documenting for the textually challenged out there. Don't worry we still love you :love1:
On the subject of lights.....we still have some distance to go. However we have started to gather some preliminary data on a variety of configurations. One advantage we have is that we have almost 50 ft of linear over tank track on which to compare, trial and test in a consistent environment for research purposes. We would hope to take the phenomenal analysis that has come out of Sanjay's thread and apply it to this environment. For the moment however we are stocking up on equipment like PAR and LUX meters to begin quantifying our measurements once we are ready to begin.
So where we are is....................
Fish Room expansion and shower room floor integrity improvements finished.
Mars Bars reconfiguration just about, almost, completely finished.
Closed loop under tank plumbing completed but not tested.
closed loop system in the fish room in progress.
Filtration equipment fish room sled in progress.
Additional controllers, pumps, tanks, Ox bottles etc have been identified, ordered and in some cases acquired.
Next week, hopefully, we will be heading into the live rock aquascaping phase of our build.
Peter
