In-wall 380gal tank - cut out options

Nice updates on the thread Karim. Really impressive with everything so far. This is one of those threads I was excited about when you first posted and it's cool to see things come together.
 
Thanks. It's been a wild ride.

I had some major learnings along the way and recently hit a major setback.

Here are the three biggest learnings:

1. My Kalk reactor works well except when I have to add kalk (once a month). I designed it to be simple and inexpensive but I forgot to make it easy to maintain. I didn't add a drain to the bottom, so I need to remove some water before adding more powder. Unfortunately, one time, I forgot to remove the output hose from the DT and caused thick kalk sludge to flow into the DT. This killed or burned a number of my favorite corals.

2. I went out of town and my monster skimmer went nuts. It exported 200gals over a week. In a 600gal tank, that removed all the water in my surge, aux sump and most of my main sump. I asked a buddy to check it out. I remotely turned off my skimmer and he was able to add 200g fresh RODI from my reservoir. We added as much salt as I had ~ 100g worth. I was running pretty low on salinity (experimenting) with 25ppm (it was going great, by the way). That dropped my salinity down to 15ppm for a week and most of my hard corals died. I could see the reading but I had an angry wife who wouldn't let my buddy back in to add more salt.

3. I use several float sensors and use a mix of the lever type and the ring type. Most are the lever type and they run to my Apex to control refill and surge. Unfortunately, this type of sensor can get caked with organics and calcium. And when I travel, that seems to be when they get stuck. I'm working on replacing them now, but it stopped my surge and refill from working. No life was lost but what a pain...

Also nature was working against me. First diatoms, GHA, then cyano and dinos! The dinos came at the same time I got hit with marine velvet and lost most of my fish. Unbelievable.

Some heartbreak and waste but I'm not discouraged. I'm letting everything settle and working on closing out all the root causes and corrective actions to get a more failure proof system.

My parameters are great now: 35ppm salinity, pH of 8.2, Alk 9dKH, Calc 500ppm, Mg 1500ppm, no phosphates, nitrates, ammonia or nitrites.

I'm getting coralline growth but my rocks and shells have turned green with endolithic algae. I think it's my light intensity or spectrum.

Overall- things are better and moving in the right direction.
 
Here are some views before the 'events':

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/690DA732-4457-4911-BBAD-9605BA1F794C_zpsedarehmn.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/690DA732-4457-4911-BBAD-9605BA1F794C_zpsedarehmn.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 690DA732-4457-4911-BBAD-9605BA1F794C_zpsedarehmn.jpg"/></a>

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<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/B6AD50F9-9DAB-4A2C-9595-9FB4C561E1C0_zpsodi0bsrf.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/B6AD50F9-9DAB-4A2C-9595-9FB4C561E1C0_zpsodi0bsrf.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo B6AD50F9-9DAB-4A2C-9595-9FB4C561E1C0_zpsodi0bsrf.jpg"/></a>

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/916D6679-4A2E-4493-BC81-396DF700DB3E_zpsjhrxjcib.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/916D6679-4A2E-4493-BC81-396DF700DB3E_zpsjhrxjcib.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 916D6679-4A2E-4493-BC81-396DF700DB3E_zpsjhrxjcib.jpg"/></a>
 
Now I'm working on building up the coralline base

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/97E4628F-7B76-43DB-8785-3CC629F6C038_zpswqnkriqj.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/97E4628F-7B76-43DB-8785-3CC629F6C038_zpswqnkriqj.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 97E4628F-7B76-43DB-8785-3CC629F6C038_zpswqnkriqj.jpg"/></a>

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/A8C2C255-6C83-40E9-87C7-31EE90C440C9_zpswmbrlbnj.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/A8C2C255-6C83-40E9-87C7-31EE90C440C9_zpswmbrlbnj.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo A8C2C255-6C83-40E9-87C7-31EE90C440C9_zpswmbrlbnj.jpg"/></a>

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/7A49B398-2A22-4CB6-840A-AB6C885B1602_zpsnhkrgpji.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/7A49B398-2A22-4CB6-840A-AB6C885B1602_zpsnhkrgpji.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 7A49B398-2A22-4CB6-840A-AB6C885B1602_zpsnhkrgpji.jpg"/></a>
 
Today, I'm building a second low power LED fixture

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/E09CE6BF-8E22-4B3C-8E2B-EBEADD6C41F4_zpsbvhne7v9.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/E09CE6BF-8E22-4B3C-8E2B-EBEADD6C41F4_zpsbvhne7v9.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo E09CE6BF-8E22-4B3C-8E2B-EBEADD6C41F4_zpsbvhne7v9.jpg"/></a>
 
The part I didn't share is that I didn't clean the cup for 6 months (traveling). The solid waste buildup was about 5lb of thick dense brown gunk. It got so thick, it popped the acrylic seam in the cup... This video was the restart after the cleanup. But here's the "event"

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/0517848D-5C74-40ED-A4F9-E9D1617496EA_zpsvjcyhqsj.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/0517848D-5C74-40ED-A4F9-E9D1617496EA_zpsvjcyhqsj.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 0517848D-5C74-40ED-A4F9-E9D1617496EA_zpsvjcyhqsj.jpg"/></a>
 
Monster export in nice but I was expecting it to be mostly liquid waste. The solid waste mass was more than I had expected
 
Results have been good though
<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/B64EB535-D962-4C1C-9C06-733078F1CBEE_zpsadgb6bbh.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/B64EB535-D962-4C1C-9C06-733078F1CBEE_zpsadgb6bbh.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo B64EB535-D962-4C1C-9C06-733078F1CBEE_zpsadgb6bbh.jpg"/></a>
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Took me a few hours but I read through your whole project. What a piece of art you have created. Very creative and innovative in many aspects. Super build. Thank you for sharing it with us.
 
That's got to be challenging, as much travel as you do. The corals look great. I especially like the RBTA/clown pic.

What's next?
 
Not culturing. They're spawning in the tank.

Probably due to the refugium, chaeto and phyto feeding

That is really astounding. I know you have had some challenges but to get the shrimp spawning is why I have gone to all the trouble of both a refugium and cryptic...I'm still not there. Where did you obtain the shrimp?
 
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