Jacob's 360 Gallon Build

Been much to busy lately, mostly school to keep up with everyone, much less visit this site.

Thats a good calculator. I made a similar one in excel that I used in my design stage. It was fun to play with to see how much your bill will increase.
 
Here are a couple pics from my grungy QT. I have a handful of corals in there right now.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30740619@N08/4457502401/" title="2010-03_4917 800x533 by Dinardi Family, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4053/4457502401_bdc5ef73e7_o.jpg" width="800" height="533" alt="2010-03_4917 800x533" style="border:4px solid #000"/></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30740619@N08/4458280900/" title="2010-03_4918 533x800 by Dinardi Family, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4458280900_de8a3dd00d_o.jpg" width="800" height="533" alt="2010-03_4918 533x800" style="border:4px solid #000"/></a>


As grungy as this tank looks, it's really close to ideal (IMO). The nutrients are being taken up by the algae, no additional nutrient load is present (no fish, no food), and I'm not even running a skimmer right now (no reason). Over the last couple of years I have realized something about keeping a bare bones tank, like a QT...

1. A sterile, sparkly clean tank looks great but it's stressful on fish and coral. The onset of algae growth is a good indicator that the tank is "ready"... being cycled isn't enough in a sterile environment.

2. With no, or minimal live rock ammonia can become a problem easily. As a rule for success with fish; stock very lightly or plan for lots and lots of water changes.



Anyway, this is what I have in there now and where they came from:
Nuclear Greens
AOG (I think?)
Pink Yuma +1 extra
...all donated by Lak, well the yuma was mine it was on vacation from my tank for a bit.

Tubs Blues... donated by Jesus
Keds Reds (I think?)... from Kalypso
Misc Gorgonians... some captive propagated by Live Aquaria, others from The Aquarium Showroom
Misc Xenia... captive propagated by Neptune Aquatics

I never did find my bam bams or yellow fiji leather. Will have to keep looking, but for now these are stewing for a few more weeks then I'm going to be adding some more fish.
 
A sterile, sparkly clean tank looks great but it's stressful on fish and coral. The onset of algae growth is a good indicator that the tank is "ready"... being cycled isn't enough in a sterile environment.
I have been trying to tell people that for years.
 
I spent a good part of yesterday and today reworking the doors on my stand. I wish I would have listened to CTripi and built them like his stand from the get go. Anyway, just about done now. I'm finally texturing the lower part of the stand and will be painting it to match the walls.

A little here... a little there. Too many other projects going on.
 
I think well have all waited way to long for fts. I know its not to your final standards but i wold still like to see it with the light on and everything fully open.
 
NP Abe. I'll snap one as soon as possible. I have a few dirty spots on the glass that I missed last time, after I clean those up I'll post a FTS.
 
Jacob, I think you owe us some updates!;) I hope you don't mind me posting this pic of your beautiful carberryi anthias. Yes, I have been stalking you, lol.

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LOL... stalker.

Yeah not much to update on. Had tank problems a few months ago, lost most fish (I had mentioned that on another thread). All my corals have been in, and still are in my QT because I don't have the energy to move them all back. They're starting to go downhill which isn't good :(

In the tank I have about 2 dozen carberryi anthias, the rhomboid, and my little blue tang. In QT I have a Vrolik's wrasse. Luckily he is healthy since I can't medicate with my corals in there too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do fish-wise from here. I wanted to keep it simple and maybe add a large angel or harem of Genicanthus then call it quits... but I doubt I will be able to stop... I love fish too much!

Here are some more pics of the anthias which my stalker has already seen...
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They have had some color loss which is why I posted those pics in the fish forum... still trying to figure that one out.
 
LOL... stalker.

Yeah not much to update on. Had tank problems a few months ago, lost most fish (I had mentioned that on another thread). All my corals have been in, and still are in my QT because I don't have the energy to move them all back. They're starting to go downhill which isn't good :(

In the tank I have about 2 dozen carberryi anthias, the rhomboid, and my little blue tang. In QT I have a Vrolik's wrasse. Luckily he is healthy since I can't medicate with my corals in there too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do fish-wise from here. I wanted to keep it simple and maybe add a large angel or harem of Genicanthus then call it quits... but I doubt I will be able to stop... I love fish too much!

Lol, sorry! I was looking for your quarantine thread and stumbled into that one;) Those are beautiful fish, if you ever decide to sell a few of them, put me first on the list!

Would also love to see pics of your Vrolik's wrasse!
 
Here are a few pics of the water room lately. The electrical box houses my two ATO's and some future components/wires... and yes I still need to ground it... and also yes I did run pipe instead of conduit, working with 24vdc here and it was convenient to just use pipe since I have tons of it in all sizes sitting around. I'm sure Paul could tell me a dozen things I did wrong here :)

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Schematic:
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Looks great I love how sanitary it all looks.. I love nice clean setups like yours I can't wait to setup a big tank
 
Thanks guys. The level of organization out there varies a lot. I needed space to work so I cleared out all the salt buckets, misc tubes and pipe parts, etc... I have all the same stuff laying around that everyone does :)

I recently cleaned the QT tank and moved my corals back to my DT. They've been out there a long time under old lights and generally not in the best of conditions. There was a ton of detritus in that tank. Most of the corals are looking pretty unhappy.


Next task is getting my RO/DI dialed in. Right now I'm getting almost a 1:1 ratio... that's bad news for my membranes. They may even be shot. I need to test them. I have both of my home-made RO/DI systems plumbed together at the outlet and running through a single flow restrictor off a 120 GPD unit... I think this may be contributing to the problem. It was a temp. set up to get things running, needs to be fixed now.


I'm looking for some RO/DI related parts if anyone has them...
- Inline TDS meter (new or lightly used)
- 2x Pressure gauges
- 1x Bulk-Reef style media cartridge (I have one of these already)
- 2x filter housing (standard 10") for above
 
Here are a couple pics of my Vrolik's wrasse. He just came out of QT.

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Snacking on flatworms
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Rhomboid got jealous and wanted some attention
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I'm sure Paul could tell me a dozen things I did wrong here

Not really except you used plumbing fittings for the electrical conduit but I won't tell anyone. The rest looks perfect.
 
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