JJ Stecchino's new 180g Starfire reef tank

[jjstecchino]

8-12-09 Ubdate

Today I had a little bit of free time to work on the tank. I finally finished the plumbing. It will "cure" for 24h then I will test it with fresh water.

Here are some pictures:

The closed loop intake and back returns. The white pipe has been painted with black Krylon Fusion as suggested. Two 1.5" strainers are mounted on the CL intake.

Sorry for the flash on the glass but I dont have a tripod handy.

Here is a shot of the pumps area. The right one is the sump pump. The left one is the CL pump. It is connected to an Ocean Motions 4 way with a 1-3, 2-4 sequence. This will alternate flow between the front outlets and the back outlets

This is a shot of the plumbing inside the stand. It looks like a bunch of "spaghetti" but should be functional. I tried to have gentle swipes using spa-flex and I used 90° elbows only where absolutely necessary. It would appear I could have used more 45° elbows but I have a lot of space constraints and 45 would have teken too much space. I have to fit the calcium, carbon and PO4 reactors still.

Here is the main return to the sump

Here is the return to the refugium

Here is a shot of the plumbing on the back of the tank

 

[Taqpol]

VERY nice looking plumbing, I don't see a drop of PVC glue anywhere!

 

[melev]

Looks really good. Are you getting excited yet?

 

[jjstecchino]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15521408#post15521408 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Looks really good. Are you getting excited yet?

Very much so.

 

[jjstecchino]

With the plumbing done, I went ahead and filled the tank with tap water to check for leaks.

This Hammerhead magnet proved itself quite versatile. It is very strong and held the hose in place without problem

The closed loop is on. The Ocean Motions 4 ways is alternating flow from front and back returns. Flow is quite vigorous

The sump looks and works great! I had to throttle the dart pump back. Full open it was like the Niagara Falls. Way too much flow for this little sump!
One minor screw up I glued the probe holder a little too low. Now I need to cut it out and glue it 1/2" higher.

I wonder what is the best way to cut it off. I was thinking along the line of a dremel.

With the tank full and both pump going there is a nice surface movement, however most of the action happens under the surface. It is fun to stick a hand inside and feel the changing currents from the closed loop

Overall I am very happy. Things are working out better than expected.
After a few hours I found only a minor leak at the sump pump intake. Just a very slow drip. All I had to do is close the ball valves, slip a plate under the sump line to the pump, slowly loosen the union. Let water drain on the plate while an aqualifter was getting water from the plate to a bigger pan. I managed to drain the pump without even a drop of water on the wood. I redid the teflon on the fitting between the return line and the pump intake and .... Voila'. No more leaks.

I am looking forward to drain, aquascape, fill with sw and officially start the reef.

 

[melev]

You can probably snap off that probe holder, but does it matter? The tops can get wet.

Remember that saltwater will flow differently, so don't worry about the Dart's flow quite yet.

 

[Herogien]

Looks GREAT, hoping when I start my new 210 project tank its comes out looking like that... difinetely looks good and shows you really put some thought into it ...

 

[jjstecchino]

8-16-09 Update

After successfully testing the plumbing with fresh water and fixing a couple of minor leaks, all from threaded unions (Do not be stingy with Teflon!) I went ahead and drain the tank. This was done siphoning with a garden hose. The process is quite effortless. Place the hose in the tank, turn on the water until the hose stop bubbling, then turn off and disconnect the garden hose from the water faucet. If you have a good drop off (my tank room is i few feet above the garden), the hose will siphon quite vigorously. It took about 30 minutes to drain tank and sump.

I then went ahead and aquascape. I placed a thin layer of sand, Partially fill the tank with sw (in case a rock drop down falling in water will somewhat slow the fall and make less damage) and place the rocks. Then I beefed up the sand bed with more live sand.
The rocks have been joined together by zip ties and purple epoxy resin. I wanted rocks enough away from the glass to be able to easily clean with the magnet. I also wanted to hide the front returns as well as create several caves for the fish to hide. Here is the final product:

I then went ahead and install the Apex controller

And finally place the new calcium reactor in the sump. It is a dual chamber Coralvue Octopus. It is very well done and quite easy to refill (The caps are screw in and very solid)

I am making more salt water. I can't wait fill the tank completely. I still have to install the carbon and PO4 reactor. This will be the project for the day.

 

[jjstecchino]

The tank is up and running. Here is a full tank shot.

Here is the first animal to get in it

The fish are still in the quarantine tank getting a copper treatment. They had ich long time ago, got over it but they may still have some parasites on them. I would hate to bring ich into the new tank so I am playing careful. I am planning to quarantine any new addition.

 

[jjstecchino]

Sept 5, 2009 Update

The tank is done. The rocks have been kept on a vat for 6 weeks with SW, heater, power heads and skimmer. The sand was cycled as well.
The tank has been filled and has been flowing for 20 days now. I did not experience a cycle, ammonia spike, nitrite, nitrate. Possibly due to the pre cycled rocks and sand. Fish has been introduced about a week ago and are doing well.

Water parameters are still reading 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, 0 PO4.

A light diatom bloom has just started. It is more pronounced inside the refugium.

I bought a powder brown tang that did not make it through quarantine. It had severe ich, it was treated with copper and did not tolerate that well at all despite proper levels.

I then tried quinine but the medication arrived too little too late.

I am going to wait a while before buying new fish.

Here is a full tank shot of what it looks like

The lights are 4 t5 actinic and 3 mh SE on lumenbright mini wide pendants. The sides are 250W Reeflux 10K (I like their color very much). The center is a 400W 20K radium. As you can see the center is quite blue. Next bulb swap I am going to use a 10K reeflux in the center as well.

The stock canopy can barely contain the lights. The MH are quite close to the surface and they heat the water quite a bit. At about mid day the temp increase is about 3°F and the controller shuts them off. Also access to the tank is very limited with this canopy

I am going to rebuild the canopy from scratch and make it 18" tall in order to have higher clearance between light and water as well as better access to the tank.

Here is a pic of a new addition. A beautiful coco worm (protula bispiralis/magnifica)

Here is a frag of leather coral that was given as a gift by the LFS when I got the lumenbright. It was all shrunk down. I glued it to a piece of rubble and placed on a high flow area. It perked up nicely and I do not know if it is my impression but in just a week it grew some.

By the way exactly what kind of leather is it? A stubby finger perhaps?

Finally this is a pic of one of the clowns. The anemone went into hiding and the clowns did not find it yet.

I got a new clown fish, smaller than the remaining male I had (his female died about a year ago in the old tank). Both were placed in the same quarantine tank. Just upon introduction they were fighting so fiercely with the new clown having the lower hand. I think the smaller new clown was going to be killed. So I removed the old larger clown and placed him on a 10G. tank for a few days. The tanks were adjacent and I believe that the fish could see each other through the tank walls. I kept the old clown segregated for 3-4 days and then reintroduced it to the main QT tank. Upon reintroduction there was no more fights between them and they looked like best buddies. I think they are pairing.

I do not know why but jail time worked.

 

[mullinsd2]

Your rocks are really nice and full of texture; your aquascape is cool,too.

 

[asonitez]

what did you use to cut your acrylic?

 

[jjstecchino]

Your rocks are really nice and full of texture; your aquascape is cool,too

Thank you. They are from MarcoRocks, the Fiji kind. They have been soaked in vinegar to eliminate the outer layer that may have bound phosphate, than they have been left curing for about 6 weeks. They are very light and quite nice.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15654496#post15654496 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by asonitez
what did you use to cut your acrylic?

The acrylic shop where I bought it cut the main panels for a nominal fee (about 20 bucks). The remaining I cut it with a carbide 80 teeth 12" table saw.

I decided to have the shop doing the main cuts because their equipment is more precise. I found that the trick to success working with this kind of material is to have perfectly square and precise cuts in order to have perfect leak proof joins.

If you are interested on building a sump I suggest you look at Melev's Reef web site. Melev has posted a wealth of information on how to work with acrylic, the tools used and some very thought out sump designs. I had no experience working with acrylic but using the info on his web site I was able to build a very nice sump.

 

[joeyb24]

Looks good

 

[Taqpol]

Any updates?

 

[jjstecchino]

Any updates?

Here is the update

I built an aluminum contraption to house the lights but it simply did not work with the stock canopy.

As you can see the entire space inside the canopy is taken by the lights. This did not leave any room to work on the tank at all. Also the lights being so close to the water were causing significant overheating problems. The contorrler would shut them off and they would be more off than on.
So I decided to build a new taller canopy.
Here is the new canopy getting a paint job

Ballasts and fans installed

Here is the front of the canopy. It opens as a piano, plus has doors to access the tank without having to open the canopy.

Here are the MH on their support (it also needs painting at this point)

Here is the Actinic holder, made of welded steel

Here is the new canopy with the lights installed. The lights are mounted on sliding rails so they came out for maintenance.

A lot more clearance from the water and a lot of working space. I put up the lights today. I will have to see how water temperature will go. I hope it will be a lot better than before.

 

[jjstecchino]

Also a few new additions:

A nice green toadstool leather

A powder blue tang

A very cool diamond goby that is continuously sifting sand

The diamond goby is a little bit thin in the belly but he is eating well and hopefully he will fatten up.

 

[melev]

While I'm glad you made a better canopy, they still look like they are too close to the water.

With these reflectors, the distance from the surface of the water to the actual bulb should be 16 to 18". Or 12" to the base of the reflector. This isn't only about heat, it also has to do with light spread and to avoid hot (exceedingly bright / PAR) spots.

Are they 250w bulbs? What spectrum?

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Marc is correct, those salad bowls were designed to be a good 5-6" higher than it looks like you currently have them. Your canopy work looks sharp though.

I do have to say I am REALLY digging the look of the 20K Radium shooting down between the 2 10ks. You should keep that, it's quite unique and interesting.

Marc, didn't you do that for awhile but in the opposite scheme- with 2 12k Reeflux on the outside and a 10k in the middle?

 

[jjstecchino]

While I'm glad you made a better canopy, they still look like they are too close to the water.



With these reflectors, the distance from the surface of the water to the actual bulb should be 16 to 18". Or 12" to the base of the reflector. This isn't only about heat, it also has to do with light spread and to avoid hot (exceedingly bright / PAR) spots.

Are they 250w bulbs? What spectrum?

Marc remember these pendants are the wide variety. The canopy is 18" tall so the bulb on this set-up is about 14" form the top edge of the tank plus about 1.5" between top edge and water. This should be a total of 15.5".

With the wides I hope it will be fine. I could not do the canopy any taller. I am limited by the ceiling at this point :lmao:

The MH are Reeflux 250W 10K on the sides and a radium 400W 20K in the center.

One question for you. This is about the calcium reactor. I use coarse arm media. What is the optimal ph for it. What ph do you have your controller set up at?