crvz's hole in the wall

[crvz]

Alright, a handful of days later and things are on the mend. Sunpentown sent me a new air conditioner, and they're paying to ship the old one back. I havent fired it up yet, as I'm letting the refrigerant settle after shipping, but hopefully tomorrow I'll know if everything is back in business (I expect it is).

Also, 100 pounds of marcorock. I think I'll start curing it in the sump along with the rest of the rock I have from the old tank.

 

[Padrino]

Chris,
Good to hear about air conditioner. Glad to see they are taking care of their customers. Also nice rock. I think ill go the same route with a dry rock when i build my next tank, pre drill all of it so i can peg all corals and then seed the tank with a good flora fauna. In larger systems, having pest is very hard to battle and frustrating im sure

Rob

 

[AJP]

Marco rock is so awesome. I wish they could drop it in the ocean for a few years can you imagine the quality of live rock it would make?

 

[prop-frags]

But last night I was really irritated. As in, thoughts going through my head about just scrubbing the whole project. Extreme, I know, but it's hard when a hobby demands more resources (particularly time, as I was up late last night troubleshooting this AC unit) than I'm willing to give. Long term I certainly get so much joy out of it I knew it would be a mistake, so I did nothing drastic, but it was one of those nights.

Can I ever relate to that feeling, Chris.
Your corals are really starting to shape up!! A couple of cold beers, sitting and looking at that gorgeous German blue will alter your perspective!

Also great to hear the AC company is standing behind their product. That's refreshing.

 

[crvz]

Chris,
Good to hear about air conditioner. Glad to see they are taking care of their customers. Also nice rock. I think ill go the same route with a dry rock when i build my next tank, pre drill all of it so i can peg all corals and then seed the tank with a good flora fauna. In larger systems, having pest is very hard to battle and frustrating im sure

Rob

That's what I'm trying to do now... get rid of any pests that I don't want in the new system. I don't have anything significant, but some brown leaf algae and a few other things that I would like to eliminate now. Oh, and poccilipora (that stuff is a weed!).

Marco rock is so awesome. I wish they could drop it in the ocean for a few years can you imagine the quality of live rock it would make?

That would be sweet. I've moved it all into the sump, as well as about 30 pounds of old rock that's been in hyposaline water for a number of months. I doubt there's much of anything alive on it anymore. I started making some water to fill up the sump.

Can I ever relate to that feeling, Chris.
Your corals are really starting to shape up!! A couple of cold beers, sitting and looking at that gorgeous German blue will alter your perspective!

Also great to hear the AC company is standing behind their product. That's refreshing.

If only that german blue still looked like that! I've got some work to do to get it back in tip top shape, but I'm hopeful. I've got the new AC fired up, and it seems to be in good working order. I've got the old one packed up, so I'll have to drop that off later this week.

 

[Taqpol]

I'm a little bit confused as to how your AC works without piping that heat to a different room. I was planning on doing something very similar by mounting a window AC unit in the wall of my fish room between the fish room and the garage. This would pump the heat basically outside and the condensers would remove moisture from the fish room as well. My problem is that I have only lived in a dry climate and was wondering if pumping all that extra heat and moisture into a garage that was already hot and moist (North Carolina) would be a bad thing for cars and tools. Any thoughts on this?

Since I'm running all LEDs and have Central AC in the house I am not as much worried about heat buildup in the fish tank/fish room as I am in increased humidity and all the problems associated with that. Does my window AC unit even sound like a good idea or would it be better to install something like a bathroom vent fan to dump fish room area directly outside or to the garage (The fish room is on an outside wall and the garage wall, but the HOA is very finicky about any mod that changes the outside appearance of the house...)?

 

[AJP]

I'm a little bit confused as to how your AC works without piping that heat to a different room. I was planning on doing something very similar by mounting a window AC unit in the wall of my fish room between the fish room and the garage. This would pump the heat basically outside and the condensers would remove moisture from the fish room as well. My problem is that I have only lived in a dry climate and was wondering if pumping all that extra heat and moisture into a garage that was already hot and moist (North Carolina) would be a bad thing for cars and tools. Any thoughts on this?

Since I'm running all LEDs and have Central AC in the house I am not as much worried about heat buildup in the fish tank/fish room as I am in increased humidity and all the problems associated with that. Does my window AC unit even sound like a good idea or would it be better to install something like a bathroom vent fan to dump fish room area directly outside or to the garage (The fish room is on an outside wall and the garage wall, but the HOA is very finicky about any mod that changes the outside appearance of the house...)?

If you look at the image below you can see a hose that goes outside. That vents out all the heat.

 

[jdm18honda]

any updates

 

[Taqpol]

If you look at the image below you can see a hose that goes outside. That vents out all the heat.

Ok, that makes perfect sense. That would be a much smaller hole to drill as well!

Still, for Chris or anyone else with experience: I feel like I am going to have to do something to deal with humidity and heat (hopefully in that order) in a 5.5'x8' fish room with one wall bordering the garage and one the outside. If I think humidity is going to be my biggest problem, what would be the best course of action...

1. True portable/window AC, heat plumbed into the garage.

2. Bathroom style vent fan, plumbed outside or into the garage.

3. Room de-humidifier.

I like three because is the water tests out free of impurities I might be able to just add it back into the top off tank.

 

[gotfrogs]

Taqpol - You will not wat to add the de-humidified water back to your tank. Go ahead and forget about that idea.

 

[crvz]

any updates

I have few tangible updates. Just plugging along with what I've got, doing things here and there, and waiting a bit before ordering the display. No good reason for the delay, other than waiting for the time to present itself. I've got a large number of small projects to get in order before I need the display, so once those are checked off then I'll go order the tank. I did put a remote start in my wife's honda, and then we enjoyed a stomach virus at home (hurray, little kids!), so that's keeping me from making good progress.

2. Bathroom style vent fan, plumbed outside or into the garage.

If you're convinced that the room will otherwise have adequate temperature control, this is your best solution. I'm planning on doing this even with my AC unit, and for ~$30 for a fan and then another $20 (at most) for duct work it's the cheapest solution. Your best bet is to put the fan on a timer so to come on/off for say 20 minutes and hour (or do some tests to determine run time to achiever proper humidity level, in the 40-60% range). If you use a dehumidistat, you run the risk of frequent on/off cycles that could result in greatly decreased fan life. And, I would vent outside in any case, but ESPECIALLY if you end up with an AC unit. The heat dumped into the garage will be excessive, and you won't be happy with the end result in the summers. That hot, humid air will play havoc on things you store in the garage (way worse than just whatever nature throws your way).

 

[crvz]

I believe I'm overdue on an update. 3 weeks. The shame!

Well work has sucked recently, not for any reasonable scenario, but because the program I work on has been yoinked around by the Executive Office. As in, THE Executive Office. As a result, I've been mentally wiped out and havent spent a ton of effort on the tank. On top of that, we're still waiting on our tax refund, which is also unreasonable (and the delay on ordering a tank). So I've been rather disenchanted with the federal process of late. But, distance makes the heart grow fonder, and the last day or so I've moved forward on a few things. I ordered the rest of the aluminum tubing for my light rack, and I've been cleaning stuff up around the hobby room. Here's a recent picture of the stock tank.

It actually looks better than the picture, and everything but the acros are doing wonderfully. I wasnt sure why the acros werent doing well, but come to find out (mostly because I hadnt tested in over 6 weeks), my alk was under 6 dkh. So, I cranked up my calcium reactor and have it back up to about 10 dkh, and I'll monitor it to more frequently. Also, all the algae that had been growing is pretty much gone. Next two pests; vermetid snails (which don't really bother me) and lobophora (which I will try terribly hard to keep out of the new display... I've read sally light foot crabs are a good solution).

Also, I've place the 130 pounds of rock in the sump I built and have been curing that for about 2 weeks.

 

[MeuserReef]

Very nice acrylic work there spaceman! Are you still going with MH on this new tank?

 

[crvz]

Very nice acrylic work there spaceman! Are you still going with MH on this new tank?

At this point, yes. I actually have all the hardware for MH over a big tank, and I have a great lead on this icecap fixture to use over the stock tank for future frag growth or QT purposes.

 

[crvz]

Another week, but some actual progress! I bought all the lumber needed to make a stand, and I've cut it all down to approximate length. I'm hoping to get time in the next week or so to joint and plane it. I also received the aluminum tubing, so I'll play around with that this week. Finally, I removed the frag rack in the tank and put some more rock in place. So far it seems to be fine, but I'm getting continued STN on one favia that I really like. I'm hoping a few water changes will squelch that, but we'll see. I'll try to nab some pictures sometime this weekend.

 

[crvz]

Couple of pictures that I alluded to.

Removed the larger frag rack from the stock tank.

I'm having STN on this favia, which is a shame as it's my favorite.

I have all the wood and aluminum available for building a stand and finishing the light rack.

 

[MeuserReef]

Well, since there's been sawdust produced, I guess the build is official.

 

[Padrino]

Chris,
Looking forward to seeing this progress.nice work!

 

[dragenfire0]

may have to do a iodine dip it helped mine staring to grow back now

 

[crvz]

Thanks, guys. I did feed that favia specifically today with some small mysis, so we'll see if that helps. The tissue loss is really slow (compared to SPS that I've lost in what seems like hours), but I do hope it recovers.