Maroun 150g Build Thread

[chrismunn]

you could probably go in with a few other hobbyists and split the cost of the algae? the stuff grows like a weed, so even if you didnt purchase alot, you could just keep it all in one tank for a couple of weeks till it grows bigger and can then be split up.

are you allowed to bring stuff like that back on a commercial flight from one country to another? it would deffinatly be alot easier to do it that way, but with all the federal aviation laws present in the U.S. i doubt packing it back on a plane with you would be allowed? maybe if you check it into baggage claim? when you find out let me know, ide be intersted to know just for a little fun fact

 

[maroun.c]

So far I never had anyproblem getting livestock with me from Holland and Dubai. From Dubai I just pass to an ofice near the airport where a vet checks the corals or fishes and provides me with a helth certificate and license to ship. Only costs me 25 bucks but I do get some softies from tehre a lot cheaper than here. From Holand I just took a copy of CITES license of the stuff as it contains Hard corals. Usually I just put the stuf in a foam container in Checked luggage and stick the certificate on teh box along with a note that the box contains live animals that are sensitive to air. Never had any luggage opened in my presence or absence.
Will try to check conditions to ship out of US too, however its very different from one State to another AFAIK.

 

[spleify]

Nice stuff!!

Spleify

 

[chrismunn]

this is America. you cant do anything here easily :lol:

 

[maroun.c]

Thanks spleify

 

[maroun.c]

Chrismunn,
You should see how hard things can be in some different parts of the world and then you'll realize how easy things are in America.
I visit 2-3 countries every month and I can tell you things are much easier in the states.

 

[maroun.c]

some new updates on the build.
To start with I had to start/finish the aquascaping which is something I was never good at.
I had removed my BTA which was stuck on a large piece of base rock to the 80 G refugium. the anemone never detached so I transferred the rock and anemone with the hosting maroon clown to the 150. I also got an RBTA from the LFS as their braking up a tank and finally selling whatever they had in it. This is a great looking RBTA that I always wanted so I couldn't skip it even though the tank is a bit new. so I ended with 2 anemones and a clown in the tank with the rocks spread divided into large ugly base rock, nice big pieces, smaller nice rocks... to make aquascaping a bit easier.
My 8 yrs old anemone and its clown. It bleached for the time being but looks to be making a recovery.

Clown found it around after 2 hours in the tank as he was hiding under a rock at first.

and my new RBTA:

I'm hoping it will keep such a dark colour and hopefully split.

And couple of shots of my clown, 1st fish in the tank.

 

[maroun.c]

So I ended with this mass of rocks to aquascape.

 

[maroun.c]

Got all my corals from the 80 and placed them in my refugium, frag tank and return section.

Also went to the LFS and got some small rocks with coraline alga on them to boost my coraline in this tank. In the 80 I used to get a much darker red coraline alga which did not look as nice as the purple one so hopefully these will seed my tank.

I also scored a very nice large flat piece of LR which will go at the center of the tank with the nicest corals on it. It had one coral attached to it which broke of while I was transporting it will post pics of it later for ID.

It weighed around 20 pounds, and the additional rocks with coraline wieghed around 10 pounds, with an additional 20 pound of the rock the RBTA was attached to. so in total around 50 pound of new LR to help reseed my old LR.
As I mentioned before they were

 

[maroun.c]

and then came the new corals from the LFS.
I know it's not good to add to the bioload of a new tank. however the frag tank and sump and skimmer had been running for over one month now with the skimmer pulling a little dark and smelly skimmate so I assume there were things cycling at least some detritus that came on the LR. I had all my old LR in addition to 50 pounds of new rocks that were at the LFS main display tank for months so I don't believe I will have any cycle going on. thing is I always wanted to buy these corals but they would never sell them as they were in their own display so now that they are relocating their just looking for someone to take them off and at very discounted prices.

Will post close ups of them for Some ID and some positioning and care info later on.

 

[maroun.c]

now for a bad surprise.
I dropped my arm swing hydrometer (I know they are not accurate but ts very hard to find a refractometer here) so I went to the LFS and got me a new one. Put it in saltwater for 48 hours before measuring with it and it turned out I'm running my tank at 1.029. It was a friday evening and I couldn't go buy another one. so I slowly added fresh RO water taking out some water fromt he tank till I got down to 1.026 over 2 days. I thought this would bring me down to a real 1.023 if the new hydrometer was wrong and that would still be safe enough. Headed to the LFS to cross check my hydrometer against theirs and was lucky to find they had a used refractometer to sell. it had been used for few months by someone who stopped his tank so I got it. its a Milwaukee refractometer (is it a good one) I know for sure it should be better than those arm swing hydrometers and the struggle with airbubbles to get a good reading.

Tried to calibrate it with distilled water but it read a perfect 0 so there was no need to calibrate.
the second surprise is that I now was at 1.026 which means I was running my old 180 and this tank at around 1.030 I checked my 80 and it was running at 1.026 now eventhough I had removed too much saltwater out of it and replaced it with fresh water as all my corals were out. on crosschecking them that day my new hydrometer is only around0.01 off so I can use it for a quick check if I don't need to take out the refractometer. does this high salinity explain the decrease coral growth I so far had in my old tank? I had many muhrooms, GSP and zoos that were surviving but not spreading. my leathers were doing very bad but Iwas able to keep the few LPS pieces I had.
I also found this digital PH meter which should make follwoing PH much easier. Calibrated it and checked it against my stripps and it read fine. so that's one less hassle.

 

[Linkblaze]

Great thread, just got done reading it. I too am setting up a 150 but this is my first tank.

How is your water level doing? From what I've been reading on plumbing it seems to me that the problem is you're trying to pump more water then your drains and overflow can handle. If you don't already have one, a gate valve just after your return pump will allow you to throttle that back. Use this gate valve to adjust your water level...don't use the valves on the drains to adjust the water level (drains shouldn't be restricted...just think of all the junk that is building up on the back of those ball valves...).

 

[maroun.c]

Thanks linkblaze.
Actually my problem is with the screen leading to the overflow and not with the overflow. I'm currently running a 675 GPH Ocean runner only which my drains (2x1 inch drains handle easily) My drains did also handle adding a second pump an Ocean runner 950 GPH so in total they handled 1625- some headloss. the water level in the overflow was always at the lower level of the elbow however the tank water level rose till around the upper lev el of the screen. Anyway I don't think I will be running more than the 650 GPH for return as that matches with my skimmer, If I need more flow I will add powerheads in my powerhead partition beihind the overflow and link them to a CL or to direct tubing. with this pump alone my water level is around 1/2 cm below the top of the screen and I will make the screen higher if I have any fish jumping in the overflow.
how far are yo uin that 150 build? do you have any build thread? feel free to ask any question in case you need helpw ith yuor tank.

 

[Linkblaze]

I do a lot of reading also on wetwebmedia.com They suggest (conservatively) that a 1" drain in a real world application should only handle around 300gph; though it probably can handle more but noisily. What I was more referring to though is the actual weir that the water is flowing over. Based on your tank dimensions I'm guessing you have about a 12" linear weir. The calculator here on RC recommends about a 10" weir to handle 650gph...but the calculators here may be on the liberal side. I'll be using that same OR 3500 for my return pump using an external horizontal weir that runs the entire width of the tank and two 1.5 inch drains. I figure one drain of that size can handle the expected 650gph I'll be getting after headloss but I wanted to make sure I had some redundancy.

I don't have a build thread yet lol. I've been doing tons of research, talked myself out of it once already, and now have pretty much decided everything I want. I'm just a very cautious person by nature and now I'm having a hard time "pulling the trigger" and getting started. I'm probably the only reefkeeping expert that's never had a reef in existence!

 

[maroun.c]

Linkblaze,
Sorry for the confusion.
I also guess one other factor in the weir is the space between the teeth I don't think one can indicate a length for it as how wide the teeth are can make a difference.
the Ocean runner 3500 does 950 GPH not 650. What I have for return pump is the ocean runner 2500 which does around 650 or a bit less after the headloss.
if you go for two 1.5 inch drains you will be able to run more than 950 anyway. as a single 1 inch drain (after closing one of the drains completely) can handle the 650 GPH alone. One thing to do to make your setup more less noisy is to have a durso one size larger than your drain.
Melev had suggested that I increase my durso to 1.25 or better yet to 1.5 inch. The 1.5 did not fit in my overflow so I ended increasing the size of the durso to 1.25 and then a 1 inch drain tube which made the bubbles decrease a lot and I hear no sounds from the drain now.
For the time being 2 1 inch drains are fine with the amount of flow I have and even a bit more, still if I ever brake the tank up for relocation or whatever, I guess I would try to make one or both drains bigger if they would still fit.
"I'm probably the only reefkeeping expert that's never had a reef in existence"
Good one. I was like this for the last 3 years collecting info and stuff for the the big tank but still many things went wrong or at least were much harder than I expected when I started the build. So my advice is to get on that tank quick and have a build thread here as the amount of info yo uget is just great.

 

[maroun.c]

Just take out those plasters from the doors.

Joee you can relax now I just took those "plasters" out.
Man the door handles choice was much harder than I expected. The first set I got was stainless steel colour to match with the living room door handles. But it looked to sporty on the wood design. Then I got a more classic one which turned out to look much more classic than I wanted. went to the store for the 3rd time and was about to get some fish design handles but then I decided these would take out from the serious look of the woodwork so I ended with these which I like and which go along with the straight lines design of the wood.
Choices choices... even this proved to be a challenge.

 

[maroun.c]

Finally great progress was done on the tank:
Finished Aquascaping and placed all corals in the tank.
Pictures to follow shortly

 

[maroun.c]

After hours of trying this is the aquasquaping I finally got.
It's not perfect as I never was good with aquascaping but I guess it's what I'll stick with. It got me a Sunburned or better yet a MH burned right arm for working under MH lights for so long and it was painfull for two days. I placed the corals as what I think they need or according to what lighting and flow that they had in my tank before or at the LFS. But pfeel free to suggest if yo uthink I should move some of the corals to less intense lighting areas.

 

[Screename_116]

I like the scape.

 

[maroun.c]

Ok couldn't hold myself not posting a few more pics. so here goes.

LT side

Rt Side

View from rt side of the tank.
This Side still needs some more corals I guess.

I tried to creat some coral groups or gardens in certain areas of the tank as this was easier for me to place the corals in one areas that gives similar light needs and then modify my flow to meet with the flow needs. don't know if I should separate them in the future when I have more time to work on corals placement.

Zoo garden on the LT:

That GSP rock was intentionally put on the glass hoping it will grow on it and hide thte overflow. So far I ws able to keep GSP alive but never had them spreada s wildely as described by others.


Mushrooms garden middle:

Problems I still see with this scaping is that it does not allow too much Mid level coral placement areas.
I still have to get the wood cover for the overflow from outside as well as insert a poster from behind to hide the wall and electrical outlet behind the tank. I was wondering if I should go with blue or black and decided to go with a gradual darker/dark blue poster that I got months ago so this should be coming soon.
At this stage I still also have to finsih my electrical setup and hide it between the left side of the tank and wall.

finally I had to travel for few days so I decided to move my fish to the new tank which I did one day before traveling don't know if this was a smart move or not, however they seemed to be doing fine on the day I traveled and my wife updated me that all of them look ok for her. so hoping not to have anything go bad when I go back.
Any input on the aquascaping or corlas placememtn is appreciated.