Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

[cpl40475]

25 yr old scotch!!!!! lol my 38 yr old wife wont let me have a 25 yr old something or another :beer:
18 yr old scotch is best served with friends.
Barq root beer is the ONLY rootbeer if you ask me....hmm wonder how good 18yr old Barqs would be chilled over ice?

 

[Briney Dave]

25 yr old scotch!!!!! lol my 38 yr old wife wont let me have a 25 yr old something or another :beer:
18 yr old scotch is best served with friends.
Barq root beer is the ONLY rootbeer if you ask me....hmm wonder how good 18yr old Barqs would be chilled over ice?

my guess is pretty flat LOL

good compay scuh as we have here makes even warm, flat, diet, rootbeer good.

Peter, my tank finally has the live stock in it. I am having closed loop troubles too. I did not have the luxury of being able to pre-test the pump as all my live stock was sitting in tubs waiting to go back into a tank. I had a dart to power the closed loop on my 240 and it did an ok job. We all know its limits etc but I was ok with that pump.

now on the new tank (412) with twice as many ports the pump feels like a trickle coming out

I am thinking of replacing it with two pumps and was hoping for a suggestion from the team. All the ports are on the floor (two 1.5 drains) and 8 1" returns. I was going to add the ocean motion devices but am still on the fence about it.

cheers and thanks so much again for all the time you and your team give us in sharing the knowlege

David

 

[stewmiester]

New member tagging along. Very nice tank! Keep up the good work.

 

[Moddy]

Your wish is my command.......

Thank you again.
Peter

This look very familia a very cheap but the best epoxy i ever used compair to all the expensive brands.

Your Tank set up and the fillter system looks amazing.

 

[mccorry]

Subscribe! Simply awesome build!

 

[nineball]

my guess is pretty flat LOL

good compay scuh as we have here makes even warm, flat, diet, rootbeer good.

Peter, my tank finally has the live stock in it. I am having closed loop troubles too. I did not have the luxury of being able to pre-test the pump as all my live stock was sitting in tubs waiting to go back into a tank. I had a dart to power the closed loop on my 240 and it did an ok job. We all know its limits etc but I was ok with that pump.

now on the new tank (412) with twice as many ports the pump feels like a trickle coming out

I am thinking of replacing it with two pumps and was hoping for a suggestion from the team. All the ports are on the floor (two 1.5 drains) and 8 1" returns. I was going to add the ocean motion devices but am still on the fence about it.

cheers and thanks so much again for all the time you and your team give us in sharing the knowlege

David

David, good to hear from you. Mr. Wilson will for sure comment knowledgeably and I will leave the archetectual plumbing questions to him. The operating principles however are mine. Mr. Wilson just seems to have a phenomenal knack for actualizing those principles so very well.

With an emphasis on corals the principle objective is to be in control of managed chaos. So first off "trickle" doesn't cut it. I am learning about different pumps and technologies and I have to admit that the real science of flow can get pretty heady. I never knew for example that under most circumstances there is an ideal pump size for each tank circumstance. That means you simply can't run out and buy a more expensive bigger pump to solve a problem and I suspect there are far too many of us that do that and far too often. Get the basic flow architecture correct and sizing become considerably less onerous. Having said that there are new and improved technologies that are coming on stream that up the bar on flexibility and optional configurations. Keep in mind it doesn't change two things I have mentioned......managed chaos (equal emphasis on both words) and ......matched pump size to the requirement. I say this because I observed that the more complex and confusing the options became in my tank the more tempted I was to compromise and I had to struggle to hold on to those principles in tact.

Ingenuity doesn't hurt either. Because of the discussion happening on this thread we fell over an innovative possible solution for the flow in the mars bars which have been undergoing a considerable metamorphic evolution once we decided they were going to become a serious central part of our coral and fish management in the fish room. We have 27 separate tanks in our three part cluster. The existing flow was a "trickle" as you put it. We tried a bigger pump and that failed to work for a number of reasons, most of which fell into the principle of matching the requirement to the size. Then we came up with the penductor. We tried comparing the flange to a passive penductor and the result was dramatic. There was not a single area in the tank that was untouched and yet the flow itself was suitable for fish and reasonably delicate organisms. I will be doing a photo update on the mars bars shortly. We are very excited with this discovery and are hoping that the same can be applied to the larger tank with a properly sized pressure tank for the top of the water column. I am just about to update the progress on the closed loop in the display tank this afternoon so you might want to check back. I just have a few chores to do first.

Peter

 

[kinlayan]

hmm thanks for showing that putty again , did you mange to ascertain whether the fungi resistance will cause any problems , i know Chingchai has used it with no problems but so far? Most of the aquarium made epoxy puttys are weak and dont work very well for sticking rocks together

 

[nineball]

hmm thanks for showing that putty again , did you mange to ascertain whether the fungi resistance will cause any problems , i know Chingchai has used it with no problems but so far? Most of the aquarium made epoxy puttys are weak and dont work very well for sticking rocks together

Kinlayan, after talking with the company and taking into account language issues, the best we can asertain is that there is no 'active' ingredient to deal with fungi in the compound but there are no ingredients that will support or encourage fungi growth natively in the substances themselves. So any reference to fungi resistance is purely passive in nature.

The performance however is beyond doubt. It is incredible stuff. As ChingChai stated in one of his posts it really does harden like steel. It is soft like putty in it's shipped state and very easy to work with. It does take a couple of hours to harden enough to leave unsupported but we could not separate the test rocks we used to assess bonding behavior. We took a variety of live rock and smooth river rock and applied some in salt water and some dry exposed to air. In all cases after four hours the results were identical. The rocks of every different type were identical. The colour of the bond was a fairly muted taupe which seemed neutral and the finish could be as smooth or rough as you wanted. In fact you could with very little effort create the illusion of sponges where there would be no compound obvious to the casual observer.

I cannot imagine a better result as we will hopefully be demonstrating this weekend. Photos to come soon!

Peter

 

[nineball]

This look very familia a very cheap but the best epoxy i ever used compair to all the expensive brands.

Your Tank set up and the fillter system looks amazing.

Thank you very much for the support. I probably shouldn't say this out loud but I would pay considerably more for this product because it works extremely well and does what we need it to do. I will be showing the results in photos soon. It seems a lot of good things come from Thailand I guess!!!

Peter

 

[nineball]

Here are some shots of the river rock which we figured would be excellent test material as they were very smooth and likely to break apart under pressure as there is nothing to hold the grip. We were unable to pry them apart. Even hitting them doesn't seem to work..........

We discovered that you can actually have whatever texture you want as a finish if you are the least bit creative with a mold that could emulate anything from a worm or sponge or any kind of sandy substrate. Its very easy to work with.

Peter

 

[Elliott]

Peter, did you find a source for the Epo Putty that we can order from?

 

[nineball]

A special request to this thread community !!!!

A special request to this thread community !!!!

Fellow members, guests and fish room ladies,

I am going to post a ton of pictures on the re-engineering of the tank and fish room. There won't be a lot of narrative because I am a very very slo typist and there is a lot of ground to cover.

I want to ask that you not include the pictures in any reply you make unless it is vital to your question or comment. If we don't try and do this the thread will get unnecessarily longer than it should be and as most of you know its already too long for most folks to possibly get caught up. so comment as much and as often as you would like, just don't keep repeating the pictures if you can possibly help it.

I'm sure the entire group will thank you.

Peter

 

[nineball]

Peter, did you find a source for the Epo Putty that we can order from?

Elliott pm Mr. Wilson.....he has the info I believe.....

Peter

 

[mccorry]

OK... who wants to write a recap of the past 152 pages for the rest of us?

 

[nineball]

The Tank

The Tank

This group shows the tank after we took everything out and started all over. The closed loop hardware was completely redone and these shots include the acrylic egg crate (florescent light thingy's) which must be a certain type or composition (I need Mr. Wilson's lexicon) but you all know the answer to that one anyway......Right?

Jamie gets credit for going in the tank and meticulously doing the cutouts for the drains and intakes to fit exactly. I decided the egg crate was necessary because of the aquascape design requiring something to stabilize the base. I am willing to run the extra mile (kilometer) to deal with the well known consequences as the Bros Grimm have to maintain the tank three days a week so there will be something for them to do..........

Peter

 

[nineball]

OK... who wants to write a recap of the past 152 pages for the rest of us?

I think the good Capn Highlyner is pretty close to maintaining a log of this thing without the repetition or fluff. We just have to figure out how best to deploy it I think.

Peter

 

[gig]

fellow members, guests and fish room ladies,

i am going to post a ton of pictures on the re-engineering of the tank and fish room. There won't be a lot of narrative because i am a very very slo typist and there is a lot of ground to cover.

I want to ask that you not include the pictures in any reply you make unless it is vital to your question or comment. If we don't try and do this the thread will get unnecessarily longer than it should be and as most of you know its already too long for most folks to possibly get caught up. So comment as much and as often as you would like, just don't keep repeating the pictures if you can possibly help it.

I'm sure the entire group will thank you.

Peter

bring it on!!!!

 

[dave.m]

Peter, perhaps, in the end, you could set up your own web page for this tank that will include all the facts of the final configuration. You can leave all the gab here, and people can use this forum to refer back to your web page. That way you will have one clear, uncluttered source for all the data, plus photo galleries as appropriate, and everyone will be able to find what they're looking for quickly and easily, while continuing to trade insights back and forth here, where it all began.

Dave.M

 

[nineball]

Drains and Intakes

Drains and Intakes

These are the major 'in tank' components covering the drains X 2 and intakes X 4 as well as the intakes on either side of the overflow boxes at each end x 4 fed from a well hidden overhead piping system. Each of the intakes either has its own pump or shares a maximum of two intakes and the drains share opposite end couplings to the closed loop intake. Please check back on Mr. Wilsons most recent drawings for a graphic map of the layaut and design. As you can see, Mr. Wilsons skill in hiding the components is second to none. He can share his secret formula with you if you ask. None of the plumbing or flow fixtures from the filtration system (open system) is in any of these shots yet. That whole sytem will be updated separately from this group. The shots that follow however will be a bit soft and grainey because we haven't removed the plastic wrap on the tank untill the aquascaping has been completed........

and there are four of these........

I still have to go back under the tank for under the tank pictures with my camera. This experience is not far off the tunneling experience in the great escape with Steve Mcqueen except I don't have the little cart to slide around on......but at least the air is better............. Still, thats a fifty foot tunnel.......25 ft one way but I have to do a loop back because there is NOT an opening into the fish room. It is completely acoustically and environmentally soundproofed. This was a design choice which I am proud to say worked perfectly as I cannot hear ANYTHING sitting in front of the tank.....Awesome even if I am the only one to say it.

Peter

 

[nineball]

Time for a Water Test

Time for a Water Test

Peter