daves 185 build

[lemkerailroad1]

12000 grit? Where did you find that?? I have up to 3000 grit at home right now.

Did you buff after with a plastic polish like Novus?

I took some searching and a hole lot of phone calls, but if I remember it was 3m corp that I got it from,

as far as buffing, yes I did, little red ball and the foam cone from one of the foose wheel comercials and a dewalt cordless drill, I didn't use novus, I used a plasic polish made by mequiers its for their plastic bumpers and headlights, also used micro fiber towels, cheap through napa stores, but the towels feel kind of weird when you grab them as they feel stickey. their ia somestuff that you spray on the outside of the tank to keep it clean and I wipe mine with "aqua armour", I use this spray once a week and use it to polish the exterior,

as far as keeping the inside clean------ wet dry at 6000 or better on the magnet scrapper and keep working it on the inside until your happy and the hase is gone or what ever your heart desires, but mind you this is when the tank is full of water

 

[lemkerailroad1]

well I am going to be going out and buying a bigger heater as mine burned up, I have been watching the temp over the last few days and it never increased. it was a back up in another tank and all so I am glad it is happened now instead of after fish and coarls are in the tank

I will be putting my controller on this tank as well, especially now that I saw the red glow light of the heat stick on and it was dead cold........love my apex for this reason, gonna get another setup and put it on the new system

 

[Sethjamto]

I took some searching and a hole lot of phone calls, but if I remember it was 3m corp that I got it from,

as far as buffing, yes I did, little red ball and the foam cone from one of the foose wheel comercials and a dewalt cordless drill, I didn't use novus, I used a plasic polish made by mequiers its for their plastic bumpers and headlights, also used micro fiber towels, cheap through napa stores, but the towels feel kind of weird when you grab them as they feel stickey. their ia somestuff that you spray on the outside of the tank to keep it clean and I wipe mine with "aqua armour", I use this spray once a week and use it to polish the exterior,

as far as keeping the inside clean------ wet dry at 6000 or better on the magnet scrapper and keep working it on the inside until your happy and the hase is gone or what ever your heart desires, but mind you this is when the tank is full of water

Perfect, and thanks! I'm headed out today to find finer than 3000g sandpaper and see if I can find some locally without having to order. I already have the same Meguiers stuff that you mentioned and will finish off just like you did.

 

[lemkerailroad1]

Perfect, and thanks! I'm headed out today to find finer than 3000g sandpaper and see if I can find some locally without having to order. I already have the same Meguiers stuff that you mentioned and will finish off just like you did.

make sure you rinse it very well on the inside of the tank to remove reside but works great

good luck with your project and let me know if I can be of more assistance

 

[lemkerailroad1]

well today was a good day, sort of.......

I wanted to do some major maintenance to the tanks and found out that the heater in my new build took a dump.........
my wife had other plans for me instead I found out and I would have to squeeze some of the work in today but will have to do most of it during the week, before or after work.

went to breakfast and it sucked, went to a hydroponic shop and found some titanium heaters.......never seen these
went to a LFS and didn't find a heater that I liked so went and checked on these heaters, everyone had good and bed but they don't hurt the reef tanks
so I picked up 2 300 watt units by sunwaves, included led remote display and separate temp probe.....1st problem solved

second problem.....was told that we were going to the grand-babys house to celebrate her 1st b-day..........ok, cool.
went to wally world and found a learning toy, it was a train with a box car she can sit on and push herself or disconnect it and walk behind the engine......lots of noise, lights and sounds besides learning blocks and other things to go with it.........BOUGHT IT!!!!!!!!!

went hunting around for 6" exhaust fan duct work and finally found a real nice unit, then I ended up going back to the hydroponic store and found a CAB-4 controller, which controls temp, humidity, co2, and night. unit has 4 outlets and it runs on 120v, tried it in the shop and seen how it worked and all. I bought it, now I can address the humidity and temp levels in the new saltwater floor of the house

came home and used one of my windows in the room as access to the outside for temp / humidity discharge. wasn't to bad of a job to fab up something real quick like. went to the g-babys party, and boy did she make a mess of all the paper and boxes.......lol
but the best was yet to come...........she opened our present and that's all she wanted, no mini mouse, or blue hippo or anything else, she wanted that train. She started to learn how to use it to help her on the walking issue, she ate ice cream and cake........actually wore more of it than ate......lol, took a bath and went back to playing with the train and walking with it.......dad - 0, grand pa - 1

but what started out as a bad day turned out ok after all

 

[lemkerailroad1]

ok I have 2 questions

1 ---- how long do I leave the shrimp in the tank to cycle the system????? until it fully dissolves or just a week or two????

2 ---- how long should I let the tank cycle for being all the rock I used was dead????? im used to getting rock from a lfs and putting it in the tanks....lol

thanks in advance

 

[lemkerailroad1]

well tonight was sort of a great working day on the tanks, my oldest son is going to do a reef tank.......YES!!!!!!!!!!

well as you all know im cycling my tank, what a long boring chore this is.....lol
but it has begun looking at my arch today I see crap brown starting to grow, cleaned the algea scrubber for the 2nd week and it had green on it so its doing its job, and im gonna pat myself on the back for this one, I didn't think it would really work, boy was I surprised........

poo poo growing

but heres the real thing I was fixing to start and finish, my red mangrove wall with 2 deep sand buckets in line for denitatefying system. Each bucket will d 90 gallons so with 2 buckets I have it all covered. All I need to do is hang some lights for the mangrove seeds to grow. Hopefully my step son, that's in Florida, will bring me back about 15 seeds so I can get things going. Finished the closed loop system, didn't use sea swirls but I think I will be ok the way I am running it.

also worked on the tank stand, installed magnetic door latches and exterior pull handles. Got a lot accomplished today, tested water and ammonia is close to 0, nitrite is 2.0ppm, nitrate is 40ppm, wont be much longer I hope.

 

[lemkerailroad1]

ok I need help on a few topics

I want to run a auto water changer, can I use a buble magnus to accomplish this???

I have cavitation on the return side of my closed loop, is it normal to have the ball valve turned about 30% closed to cure this or do I need to do something different??

thanks in advance

 

[lemkerailroad1]

I need a math genius to make sure I figured this out correctly. I am planning on having a automatic water changing system on this build and if everything goes right I will do this on my other tanks as well. I am looking at using a BRS 50ml dosing pump.



This is the info as follows:

10% water change divided by 155 gallons = 15.5 gallons/week or 2.21 gallons/day

55 gallon salt mix divided by 2.21 gallon/day = 24.8 days before refill

1 gallon = 3785.41 ml

2.21 gallon/day = 8365.76 ml/day

8365.76ml/day divided by 12 doses/day = 697.15ml/dose

697.15ml/dose divided by dosing pump operation of 50ml/min = 13.94 min


so if I am correct in saying this, if I dose every 2 hours 697.15ml the pumps will run for 13.94 min???????

can anyone concur this for me please

 

[TropTrea]

I need a math genius to make sure I figured this out correctly. I am planning on having a automatic water changing system on this build and if everything goes right I will do this on my other tanks as well. I am looking at using a BRS 50ml dosing pump.



This is the info as follows:

10% water change divided by 155 gallons = 15.5 gallons/week or 2.21 gallons/day

55 gallon salt mix divided by 2.21 gallon/day = 24.8 days before refill

1 gallon = 3785.41 ml

2.21 gallon/day = 8365.76 ml/day

8365.76ml/day divided by 12 doses/day = 697.15ml/dose

697.15ml/dose divided by dosing pump operation of 50ml/min = 13.94 min


so if I am correct in saying this, if I dose every 2 hours 697.15ml the pumps will run for 13.94 min???????

can anyone concur this for me please

A little note here. I have found that doing simple 5% water changes every week is better than doing 1% daily changes. So rather than a constant change if you can set up a system to drain about 8 gallons of water every week and then refill it you would be better off.

Now keep in mind that you will also have an evoraration issue. My evaporation rate varies from about 3 gallons per day during the summer time to peaking around 12 gallons a day if we hit a winter cold spell with below zero temperatures. If you go with an auto top off system it could be an issue with your water change system if you do it in such small increments.

 

[lemkerailroad1]

A little note here. I have found that doing simple 5% water changes every week is better than doing 1% daily changes. So rather than a constant change if you can set up a system to drain about 8 gallons of water every week and then refill it you would be better off.

Now keep in mind that you will also have an evoraration issue. My evaporation rate varies from about 3 gallons per day during the summer time to peaking around 12 gallons a day if we hit a winter cold spell with below zero temperatures. If you go with an auto top off system it could be an issue with your water change system if you do it in such small increments.

the auto top off is hooked directly to my ro/di fill lines, so it don't even come out of the fresh resivour tank, so evaporation I don't know how much it is using at this moment.

I was going to use the apex to pump in fresh salt water into the display tank, then 30 seconds later have the 2nd pump kick in and remove the waste water from the system so the auto top off float would not even engage until its normal need

does this make sense?????

I didn't think 5% would be enough, this is why I went with the 10% figures.
I want to keep the parameters steady in the tank, and I know doing a consistent water change will help this out by stabilizing the system, still having to add trace and 2 part, etc......

does 5% work good for this stability?????

 

[msderganc]

You may want to consider adding a reservoir...RODI units aren't very good at starting and stopping often. I've got mine hooked up to a solenoid that refills five gallons at a time based on float switches, but you could do it manually too.

 

[worm5406]

While I have thought of the same thing.... Planned it out bought the extra floats and everything.... Did the calculations for an OSC statement for an apex.

Problem:

If a pump gets stuck ON or OFF... you will either Drain or offset the balance.

An actual waterchange device/system, in this example, would be better.

 

[lemkerailroad1]

ok, thanks for the replies

gonna have to go back to the drawing board and rethink this through,
nice to get some honest feedback

 

[TropTrea]

the auto top off is hooked directly to my ro/di fill lines, so it don't even come out of the fresh resivour tank, so evaporation I don't know how much it is using at this moment.

I was going to use the apex to pump in fresh salt water into the display tank, then 30 seconds later have the 2nd pump kick in and remove the waste water from the system so the auto top off float would not even engage until its normal need

does this make sense?????

I didn't think 5% would be enough, this is why I went with the 10% figures.
I want to keep the parameters steady in the tank, and I know doing a consistent water change will help this out by stabilizing the system, still having to add trace and 2 part, etc......

does 5% work good for this stability?????

Big think is your changing 10% every other week divided by 14 days. While I'm changing 5% once per week. So the total volumn change come out the sme over a to week period.

Yes smaller changes create a more stable enviroment however the reason for changing is to get rid of the toxins. You can do a calculation were if your 1000parts of a toxin and do 14 sepearate 1% changes in reality you reduced your end up with 868 parts of the toxin after 14 days. But if you did a single change of 14% the same total volumn you would end up 860 parts of that toxin. Not a big difference but it is a difference.

For another example you have John changing out 5% of his volumn every week and Charlie changing out 10% of the volumn every other week. After one year they both used up the same amount of salt. Charlie has 7% less toxins in his tank after one year.

The big thing is to keep the water changes simular to the water in the tank. Making sure Salinity, Calcium levels, Alkilinity Levels, and Magnesium Levels and temperature are simular. But even with a 10% water change if you realy goof up and had Walinity at 1.025, Calcium at 1000, and Alkilinity at 400 and used pure RO water you would only drop to 1.025, 900 and 360 which would not kill anything.. Hopefully you do a chemical check after a day after each change so you would be able to adjust your water before the next change.

I know these number are just rough but there are other factors to consider like how much toxins arerelay being created inside your tank. If you have a fresh reef with very little natural chemical filteration the bigger and more frequent changes become more important to pull the garbage out faster than it is created. But in a perfect situation the water changes with ideal protein skimming, and biological filteration the frequency and/or volumn of water changes become less important.

My tank is roughly 8 years old now. When I started it the first few months I was doing 10% changes almost twice a week. But now I notice lkittle effect if I ocassionaly go a month without a water change.

My personal feeling is the most you should change is 10% at once without making stability issues. The fequency should be no more than every other day and that frequency should only be in emergency situation. In a near perfect situation you can do a change every 2 or 3 weeks without issues. A perfect condition is imposible to achive with never needing water changes.

 

[TropTrea]

You may want to consider adding a reservoir...RODI units aren't very good at starting and stopping often. I've got mine hooked up to a solenoid that refills five gallons at a time based on float switches, but you could do it manually too.

I agree here I have a 40 gallon drum for my RO water. I only fill it when it under 1/4 full with my 120 gpd unit. It takes normaly 6 hours to fill but if it is not filled in 10 hours I know I need to change out filters on the RO unit.

 

[biecacka]

Any updates?

Corey

 

[lemkerailroad1]

its been awhile since I have posted anything up on the forums and all so I think its time for a quick update..........

been in the middle of a 2 frag tank build and setting up the wifes 90 gallon but after a long slow road traveled I am making some headway.
this pic was takin in a rush due to several people asking for updates, acros are growing real good, and my mystery coral, that I don't even know what it is has tripled in size over the last 3 months. better pics will come of the 185 as well as of my frag tanks, 90, and mangrove wall to come

...........

need help in uploading pics, don't know why it wont work but if you need to see one please go to http://www.*********.com/forums/large-aquariums-180g/124208-daves-185-sps-tank-3.html#post1824926



as I try to work this out

 

[lemkerailroad1]

lets try this again guys and girls.........

 

[dave.m]

Very nice.

Dave.M