Jims reef in a barn

I love it...barn and the tank....one of these days I will have a fish room of my very own...lol

I want that bucket o worms...lol
 
You've done a marvelous job on both your home and tank. I was just wondering about the heat issue in the fish room since it is obviously up at the roof line. Have you gone thru a summer there and how have you dealt with the heat in terms of keeping the tank temps in check?
 
Wow! Unbelievable job on the tank and the whole place! Looks like a lot of work to me! lol That's aweomse. Gotta love peninsula style tanks. This was very inspiring. This tank is really maturing well. Fantastic job.

Oh yeah, that first pic of the fish room... didn't know if it was going to be used for aquarium equipment or building microchips! lol

I'm curious to know what happened when the power went out? What precautions did you take (besides the generator) to prepare for the inevitable and prevent a flood?
 
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Thanks for compliments.

Heat
The fish room does not have a vent from the central unit. The kitchen is on the other side of the end wall of the fish room. I framed in a spot for a louvered whole in the wall & hung a 20" box fan to circulate air through the fish room. Also have a 1/2 horse chiller. I rigged it up so in the summer the hot exhaust air goes out side & in the winter the hot air blows into the fish room. I'll take some pix this weekend of the rig, it was a pain to build but recycles a lot of heat back into the house in winter. We have gone through two summers now & has work out well.

As far as possible overflow during power outage. The generator kicks in after 10 seconds. But I leave my sump (65gal tank) water level down about 5-6" so there is enough room for water level to even out. So far it has worked out OK.
 
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Chiller outside fish room. This is set up for summer time.

chiller3.jpg


Air is drawn in through air filter.

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Hot air blown out the other end.

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In the winter, I remove the ply pieces in the back corner of the fish, & take the air filter out from the box around the chiller & put plywood over the air filter hole & the end of the box. Then air is drawn in the bottom & hot air blows back into fish room through the top. You see the pipes feeding the chiller near the floor. Like I said, a pain to build but keeps heat out in summer & recycles heat back into the house in winter.

Jim
 
Amazing work Jim. When you told me you live in a barn, that's not what I pictured! Since you are sharing more than just tank pics, how about the horses?
 
Hey Mike! Good to hear from you. I really miss my NPS & all the people in that group. It has taken my all this time to get my system back to normal (sps normal). Aptasia infestation is only thing left to take care of. Maybe one day I'll put together a stand alone NPS system.

Sure pix of the horses can be done, it will take a little digging to find them.

Jim
 
This is one I found on my computer, wife has the horse folder on hers.

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This is Ozzi scratching his butt on the fence (Ozzi is my horse, the best ever!). This was couple springs ago when we had good rain & the horses hadn't eaten the flowers yet. I'll go through Donna's folder in a day or two for more of the horses. I need to get a pic of the funny face Ozzi makes when I scatch his belly button.

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Donna (wife) & her horse Pepper. Our horses are so rotten they're more like big dogs than horse.
 
Looks like you live in your own slice of heaven. Beautiful horses too. I don't know much about them but I will soon.

Aiptasia are the biggest problem for me right now. I've added 2 matted filefish and I've started breeding berghia nudibranch.
 
It is nice living in the country, just a lot of miles when you need to go to town.

I just finished looking into matted filefish. When I was ready to order them DD was out of them. Hopefully they will get some in soon. To many things in my tank that would eat berghia.

Jim
 
What about a Copper Banded Butterfly? I know mine is my favorite fish, and has eaten all the aptasia. If you make sure they are eating and get them from a good supplier you shouldnt have any problem...
 
Actually I did get one from LFS. They had 4-5 of them so I took some small rocks with aptasia on them to see which one would eat aptasia the best. Put him in what was my NPS tank 36" long 17" tall 30gal. He did eat all the small ones but not interested in the larger ones. Just last week I took that tank out, & put in a 30 breeder. The 30 breeder will be a frag tank with a 250w MH. So the Copper Band is now in the 180gal. He seems to be doing fine, but there is only larger aptasia in the 180. Luckily they are really nice fish so if he doesn't eat any of the larger aptasia it's OK. I'll post some pix of new frag tank when I get the light from a friend that is breaking down his tank.
 
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