Deeper Well - An Acquasole 60

[jedimasterben]

So my 40 gallon breeder setup started leaking, and I was planning on replacing it soon anyway, but my timeline for that suddenly got WAY shorter. Luckily, my friends at Coralvue came through and had an Acquasole 60 system in Orlando with Ricardo, so I could go and pick it up! Also, I must be cursed, because as Ricardo was showing me his big tank, I noticed he had a small trickle of water coming from the bulkheads in his sump, which had had the gasket installed on the wrong side for quite some time, but had picked that very moment to start dumping out water! Luckily it was a somewhat quick fix.

I got everything home, and then I started to get to work.

Got the stand bottom I cut prepped (they don't come with bottoms). Going to silicone it in place tonight.

Corals and fish are doing well so far.

Put a buttload of felt slidy-jiggies under the stand so it wouldn't scratch the floor any when moving it around.

Thinking I'm going to put it back on the far wall instead of on the wall to the left where the 40 was.

And a test fit of the sump, skimmer, and return pump.

Ordered sand this morning. Going to see if 20lbs of Nature's Ocean Samoa Pink #5 (1.7-2.5mm grain size) is enough. Can always add more later. It is the same kind of sand that I used to have in my 80, but this is a slightly larger grain size.

I'm still deciding on what to do about the aquascape. I don't want to use all dry rock, but with live rock I'll be limited as to what I can do since I can't keep it out of water too long. Decisions, decisions.

 

[Greybeard]

I've had my 60 cube up for nearly a year now. Been very happy with it. Hope you enjoy yours!

 

[jedimasterben]

I've had my 60 cube up for nearly a year now. Been very happy with it. Hope you enjoy yours!

This one is only 36 gallons, I still have no clue why they call it the '60' system lol. Scaping is going to be interesting, for sure, especially since I'm really picky when it comes to getting a scape that I like enough to stick with.

 

[jedimasterben]

Got two bags of sand. One bag of Nature's Ocean oolite, and one of Samoa Pink #5, which is 1.7-2.5mm grain size. It is not as 'white' as the #2 size, but it can DEFINITELY withstand way more flow.

An hour, some cement, acrylic polymer, and a little vision, and you can turn a bunch of rocks into a pile of rock.

Another 30g or so of water ready to go to finish filling the tank (will only need to use 10 gallons or so of the water that is in the holding tub).

 

[jedimasterben]

Was a good morning for a tank fill.

I may or may not have had the Gyre outputs turned so that they were facing straight up when I plugged it in.... oops.

 

[Greybeard]

I may or may not have had the Gyre outputs turned so that they were facing straight up when I plugged it in.... oops.

:lolspin:

Been there, done that, cleaned up the mess... Not the kind of thing you do twice!

 

[jedimasterben]

:lolspin:
Been there, done that, cleaned up the mess... Not the kind of thing you do twice!

Yeah, I knew I should have tried to do it last night before I went to bed instead of giving the cement more time to set and getting up an hour early to get it done before going to work. :lmao:

 

[jedimasterben]

Got the 8020 mounting for the Ethereals on Friday and got it in place on the wall. That stuff is so awesome.

And then this.



I replaced the drain with a piece of FlexPVC and glued it in, but this morning after running it all night I saw a drop of water at the top, I don't know yet if it was because I didn't have it on tight enough or if it's just that the female threaded piece of the tank itself is crap.

The return tubing is this super thin silicone, and it had a couple of small holes that were invisible to the eye, but water dripped right out of once pressurized by the return pump. I was able to cut that inch or so off, but the tank did not come with any clamp to hold it to the barb fitting, so I just used a large worm-drive clamp I had, and it was too large, I believe, so it still has a very very minor drip leak.

This is all on top of the tank being so loud with my return pump pushing the minimum amount of water. I sent some pics to Coralvue and they said that I am missing some parts that they'd send over. Converting the drain to FlexPVC instead of the ribbed garbage it came with reduced noise significantly, but being a standard open channel drain with no plumbing to adjust airflow into the drain, it will never be quiet, hopefully the parts I'm missing will do the trick. It went from sounding like someone was filling the tank with a garden hose from five feet above to a muffled water gurgling sound. When I fully close the stand, it's tolerable as it is, but the inside of the stand get so humid in such a short time that I will need to vent it or I cannot keep any electrical hardware in it.

After all that, I couldn't sleep, so I got the Ethereals hung up. There is no hanging kit yet, so I literally just took some copper wire I had left over from my Sunpower build and have that tied together. The stuff can hold probably 40lbs of weight or so, so the two Ethereal is nothing, and the wire sleeve is tacky enough to hold extremely tightly when tied. 10 cents in wire holding up $1200 in lighting

Got them plugged in, they connected right up to the ICV6 wireless controller, and were ready to roll.

 

[jedimasterben]

oh snap.

 

[jedimasterben]

i hate flickr sometimes.

FTS 8/8/2016

 

[jedimasterben]

Whoop whoop, looks like all the leaks are done, the stand was bone dry inside when I checked today. Well, bone dry except for the near 100% humidity inside it. Still gotta figure out an easy way to get rid of that. Might just buy something like this and clip it on the inside of the stand pointing up through the overflow cutout, that should do it cheap and easy, so long as it can be directly powered via USB.

I am going over what fish I want to add to the system. I am definitely getting another betta, they're my favorite fish and relatively care free. And if I can ever find a pygmy hawkfish that will live more than a month I'd love another. A springer's damsel will add some blue pop, and a Talbot's is a nice addition.

I'm also thinking of a yellow candy hogfish,Bodianus bimaculatus. Beatiful fish, but lots of conflicting reports of them being angels or *******s.

 

[jedimasterben]

Got a coral beauty angel, a solorensis fairy wrasse, a blue knuckle hermit, a candy stripe pistol shrimp, and a sand sifting starfish yesterday. Solorensis eats Larry's Reef Frenzy like a pig, and the coral beauty is interested in it, but seems confused as to why there is so much of it

 

[jedimasterben]

oops.

 

[jedimasterben]

Waspfish is already eating frozen LRS like a champ.

 

[jedimasterben]

 

[jedimasterben]

So I just opened up the little USB fan I got on Amazon. It comes with a 3.7v lithium ion battery, but I'm not too keen on having some Chinese battery inside the stand, so I tested it over just USB without the battery installed, and it does work, but it has no speed control. At the rated speed, though, it is plenty fast enough and moves more than enough air, so it's good. Ordered an Aukey dual USB charger so I can plug it and my Maxspect ICV6 controller on just one plug. Surprisingly I couldn't find either of the dual port chargers that came with my Moto X a couple of years ago, so another $10 gone lol.

 

[jedimasterben]

I'm glad I don't give a **** about the tang police

LFS was having an anniversary sale, that thing was $80. Aww yiss. Also got a two headed duncan frag and a bleached zoa frag for $5. yeaahhhhh.

 

[jedimasterben]

Anyone here know of an easy way to do a dual-layered cabinet of sorts? I want it to sit next to the tank stand and hold a 10 gallon tank in the bottom for topoff with kalkwasser and the top layer will hold my electronics. Wanting to make I out of 1/2" plywood. Both the bottom and top need to be easily accessible to refill the topoff container and to access the electronics to activate feed modes, and it needs to be easily toddler proofed.


Also, last night I fed some LRS, I left it in decently big chunks instead of stirring it up before putting it in after thawing, and the waspfish came out of nowhere and swallowed a piece that was about 1/4 the size of its body!! :O

 

[jedimasterben]

Cleaned the glass today. This stand is just too tall for its own good, I have to stand on my toes to get my arm into it. On top of that, my friggin starry blenny decided to start nibbling on my arm!!

I fed some more LRS after taking that and decided to snap a couple of pics, so you'll have to deal with the low res FTS

This fish is so cool.

 

[jedimasterben]

Well, this really sucks, pulled the angelfish, rabbitfish, wrasse, and starry blenny. No clue what happened. The tank has a weird film on the top.