Maroun.c 390 G build thread

And to end the sequence with the faster grower in my tank by far.
A wild colony which looks the same as the Paletta pink tip green acro.

Oct 2015
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March 2016 top down shot
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since Mar it's being fragged every other week from the front side to decrease shading of corals below it.
June 2016 ]
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Amazing corals, growth and pictures.
Crazy documentation and attention to detail in this build thread.
Let's see some updated tank shots.
 
Amazing corals, growth and pictures.
Crazy documentation and attention to detail in this build thread.
Let's see some updated tank shots.

Thanks.
I tend to use my build threads as a tank diary to track growth and changes to the tank... Must admit that this is not even close to the details and how much up to date my previous tanks thread had and this is due to being much more busy the last few years.
Will post some shortly.
 
Time to re-update this thread :)
A roller coaster of updates for this build.

So around Sep I relocated to Dubai for a new position at work. As my family will not relocate with me, and after loads of thought we decided to keep the tank running and my wife will keep taking care of it and I would do water changes and other stuff when I travel home on weekends every other week...
As thrilled as I am to keep the tank this meant that serious preparations needed to be taken for this not to turn out into a recipe for disaster.

Started by installing a controller (Apex) to have more visibility and some control on things. The extensive wiring on my setup (tank and Basement setup) was modified to accommodate the apex and still have a set of plugs that my wife can switch to, in order to bypass the APEX just in case it failed..
Apex also had to be placed partly in basement with some modules near DT. Which made it a bit more difficult.
Disregard wiring mess as it was tidied up after :)

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Also as we're on 220V here and Apex powerbars are limited to 8 Amps per Power Bar, this meant that I would need an extensive amount of power bars for my setup as i have the following at least to control:
DT Return pump from basement 4 A
Return pumps for basement frag tanks 2 A
Filtration pumps (Skimmers and reactors) 2 A
lighting for DT alone 7A
Frag tanks lighting 5 A
chillers 6 A
heaters up to 10 A in cold days.
so went with relay switches so that Apex powerbar only provides the signal to a relay that takes power from an outlet to tank equipment. I can now have up to 16 A total draw per outlet of the APEX which so far is more than I need.
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Couple days after installing the Apex I get couple emails notifications about tank temperature.. With me being new to the controller I thought it might mostly be a newbie setup mistake. Email alarms keeps coming so I end up checking fusion and see my tank temperature at 26.5 and it keeps rising Called home to see what wrong and to ask wife to turn of the halides as they can raise temp by 1-1.5 degrees per hour"¦ and she tells me halides are off but LEDs are on! Of course Apex was programmed to shut them down!!! So I head home and monitor temp while on the way and Its at 27.5 when I get home. Check the system to find out one of my 2 chillers has failed. Home AC doesn't help much as basement is not on AC.
I call the LFS for replacement and they're out of stock and expecting new stock in few weeks (was looking for a 1.5-2 HP one so not frequently available. So LFS owner lends me a used 1 HP chiller he had!!! This solves it yet the spike costs me STN on a couple of colonies one of them my Paletta pink tip which keeps STNing for weeks till it's totally lost as well as frags from it!.
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So with that incident alone Apex paid for itself :)
 
The Saga continues and few days later I wake up on a dead skimmer. Check it and it’s a broken impeller!
Easy fix as I have a spare one, I immediately replace it and its working fine. Go to work and come back to find second impeller broken. Call the LFS thinking it’s a faulty impeller and they have a replacement in stock luckily (airblaster 10000 ain’t a common size so not many spare parts) I install the new impeller and wake up next day on a broken impeller as well. At 90usd a pop this is not fun and now it’s clear that my pump is faulty and causing impellers to shatter!
Call LFS and there is no pump replacement, it needs to be ordered which will take a week at least. LFS asks me to come pick up a temporary skimmer while my pumps ships and when I arrive they offer to lend a brand new in box skimmer to use while waiting for pump. I insist on refusing it as it doesn’t make sense to open a brand new skimmer. They had a much smaller one that I said I would borrow, but they insisted it wasn’t enough for my tank size and took off the skimmer they have on their DT and lend it to me till I received my pump which unfortunately took 3 weeks! In a country with very little customer support this was a first.

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On a positive note new external chiller arrived. got a 1 HP external chiller. compared to internal Deltec and REsun 1 HP internal chillers I have on the setup, each alone can barely keep the temp stable where as the external one at same power draw is able to lower the temp at same power draw.

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And for the saddest update I have had in my reefing years. Couple years back I started noticing tiny bubbles in the left front seam which somehow looked to increase very slow. I discussed them with tank builder and also with couple of other builders and the input from all after inspecting the bracing for stress mark and the look of the silicone was that this was either a normal occurance with time (although only at the 5 years mark) or a bad patch of silicone (after the bubbles started looking like a dry area of silicone and I could see either water or vacuum in) they agreed on that in a worse case scenario this would lead to a minor drip and that could either be fixed by silicon injection in the seam, an internal resilicon of the seam or an internal/external glass being added on that side to seal it if it happened.
With time my concern grew especially after I could see water moving inside the seam. The fact that I was now remotely located made it more annoying as I didn’t want my wife or family to struggle with a tank leak or burst when I’m away which most probably would result in total loss of the livestock, water damage and most important risk of injury electrocution or fire.

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The idea of the tank failing kept getting worse that I decided despite all reassurances, to have a new tank made and do a 1 day swap of the glass. So I flew back to Lebanon on Dec 1 and we had the new tank assembled by Dec 5th.
Although previous tank was built beyond safety factors, and that I couldn't attribute the seam issue to the build I decided to make the following changes:

Glass thickness: from 15 to 19mm glass with starphire front
Bottom pannel: from 15+10 mm glass to 2x19mm glass pannel and front pannel in front and not on top of bottom pannel. Also bottom pannle is made in 2 pieces for lower glass and 3 pieces for upper part which would give a bit of flexibility to the glass.
Bracing: from 2x12mm Euro bracing with no front to back bracing to 20 mm horizontal front and back braces and 3 front to back 19mm braces on top of those. I have grown to love a braceless design, and although I didn't atribute the happening to bracing I felt that this would proved an added security that is higher priority than flexibility when scaping or adding corals or a bit of shadowing. I had hte braces made from starphire glass for less shadowing.
Overflow: still external and in same position but made it a bit deeper for easier tuning.
Tank dimensions: made the tank a bit higher to allow for a higher wave without seing water/air so from 220x85x75(88x34x30) to 220x85x81 (88x34x32.5) 1400L (365G) 1515(410 G)

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Believe the clarity of the bracing will minimize shadowing.
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Double bottom
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front to back braces added
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Front and back braces added
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I got the wood work from the cabinetry removed so that we can directly proceed to tank swap when I'm back.
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few months before I was considering an additional frag tank or a SPS with angels and butterflies tank... so had one made but never filled it as i had to reloacte. so decided to leave it empty and use it to hold the corals and fish while replacing the tanks. It sits on the stand above my sump in the basement and I had done the drain plumbing to the sump.
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This is the last picture of the tank as it looked before I flew back to Dubai on the 5th of Dec and plan was to come back on 20th of Dec for 2 weeks for christmas vacation and replace the tank.
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One would expect things to always go as planned especially when the whole swap was made to just be on the safe side or at least that's what I thought.
Same day I left to Dubai at 2:00 Am I receive a call from my wife. Alarming as it is at that time, something inside told me it was about the tank. While picking up the phone I notice an Apex automatic leak detection alarm as well.
Picked up the phone and had that confirmed. My immediate concern was to have wife shut down tank electricity. then to know if this was a whole tank failure or just a leak. as wife had told me teh water was all over the house in 2 living rooms, kitchen and 3 bedrooms which was scary as I had a drain besides the tank. so i was fearing a total pannel failure.
I get the first picture from my wife and to some relief front panel is still there but tank is leaking severely from top to middle of left front seam. water was like a Jet.
I shut down the basement return pump by Apex (as it has a power supply independent from the house) to avoid more water being supplied to the tank.
at that moment I realized that I'm risking a complete loss as my wife is definitely not able to handle this.
I make a call to the LFS owner who built my new tank at 2:05 AM and to my relief he answers and instinctively knows my tank has failed. in 20 min he's at my place with an assistant, I still dont' believe how. I wake up the building concierge as well who goes to my basement in the mean time and prepares buckets and hoses...
He starts by putting thick scotch tape on the front glass and pressing it on the side glass (as he didn't have clamps since he was at home) and this stops the leak, At this stage water was at 3/4 of the tank so the intensity of the leak had reduced. they run the hose from home to basement and syphon the water to the tank I had previously prepared months back. they catch all the fish and move the rocks with the corals down. couple big rocks didn't fit in the holding tank so they break off corals on them and lace the corals in the tank. they also connected a return pump from the sump to the holding tank. Another issue we realized is that the ATO container had been all pumped into the system (around 120 Litres 35 G) luckily the salinity was still at 1.025 so we didn't even add salt.
I book the first available flight home and arrive the same day at midnight. During the 4 hours flight i was mentally prepared for the first time to take down my tank and kept thinking it could have been worse with the electricity being close...
Arrive home and my wifes first words are, its good that you have the new tank ready so it should be easy to get it going again right?!!!
I just couldn't believe my ears after all she had been through.
Check the tank and I come back to this.

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To think that this

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was reduced to this

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in only 4 hours , was simply heartbreaking.

chekcked the fish and corals in the basement and luckily everything looked fine except for couple of fish that were stuck in the rocks that didn't fit in the holding tank which I found dead between the rocks (flasher wrass and a fridmani) this was sad but an acceptable loss so far.
i quickly added 3 LED lights I had over that tank (2 orpheks and 1 razor) and set them at low intensity as my corals are mostly used to halides and minimal LED.

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I stay for two days just to make sure that all is well with the setup, remove old sand and cleanup the tank to avoid any die off in the sand bed causing bad smell. then I fly back to Dubai and Come back on the 20th as planned for the tank switch.
I also realize a big mistake I've done 3-4 years back when we drilled the flouring to pass the filtration to the basement I added one hole tat acts as a drain tot he open garage just in case there is a leak. At the time when they sealed the holes they inserted a tube to keep the drain open which I was supposed to take out a few days later but I completely forgot for years. I hope this pipe never goes into action again but I saw it off anyway. Luckily damage has been limited considering that I calculated the tank leaking around 1500 Litres (400G) of water which flooded most of the rooms.
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Old tank is removed which was easier than expected
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New tank is lifted in. always a crazy scary process.

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Overflow was built in position, made it 45 cm (20") deep VS the previous overflow at 15 cm (6") to better control the level of water in it and minimize noise. also added a Gate valve Vs ball valve on the main drain for better control.

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Incredible support from your LFS. Kudos to them.

Your story should convince anyone of how important it is to patronize a good LFS. You never know when you will need them but it is great to know they are there when you do.

Dave.M
 
Indeed i still cant imagine what would have happened if it wasnt for his quick intervention.specifically in my case as i have relocayed and can only guide my wofe to basic things i do rely on such support for emergencies...
Again totally agree on the importance of having excellent relationship with nearby LFS, in my case its easy as the guy is great :)
 
Quick question, how come your eurobracing doesn't go all the way around the tank and include the end panels? Don't you think if it did you'd have greater strength holding the tank together?
 
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