Marty's 450g- New House Old Love

[marty9876]

Below is a summary of my adventures in the wonderful hobby of ours. The ultimate goal for me is "bunch of SPS with a bunch of angels" tank. I've half way there.

Back story- I was big into this hobby circa 1999-2004 working in a LFS and having more tanks than healthy. After moving 200 gallons from MN to Pittsburgh and then to Dallas (and turning my ex-girlfriend at the time into a airport pack mule for fish - thanks again Trisha) when I moved back to MN there was no way the tank was coming with me.

Enter 2011 and my wife and I decide to build a house... fish room!!!

Cliffs:
- built a house
- had a 180g left over I'd been dragging around for 7 years, hey lets use that
- replaced that with a 450g made by Miracles

House pics:

All looked good on paper, the building inspector was ****ed with putting on the plans things about fish tank

Ended up going 24" into the nursery/wife office so the tank would not take up too much room in the 1st floor great room

Yup, still just love having just this under the tank

Green board, ceiling exhaust fan (never used yet), 2x quad 20 amp electrical behind the tank and 15 amp circuit in the ceiling (never used yet).

NOTE: Run a cat 5 drop to you tank... I ended up stealing a drop out of the nursery to make up a run for the Apex.

Being a 1st floor install, falling through the floor was always a concern. The tank sits on a 2x6 wall tothe basement slab, 3x micro limbs where installed in front of the tank and a extra wood ibeam on the back of the tank.

2x 2", 1x 1.5" and 1x 1" runs into the fish room

Need one of these!!! (floor drain)

Fish room:
- 2x 20 amp circuits, 1x 15 amp circuit, exhaust fan, sink, painted floor

On well water (I can't use DI resin too much CO2 in the water and I don't want to degas it) but we upgraded the well pump. Pressure makes a happy RO unit!

I'll skip to the end of the 180g (new tanks suck along with my picture taking ability). 180g dropped on 10/31/13

 

[marty9876]

Fish room has evolved over time (the original pics are embarrassing)

Stock tank, fuge, other sump (3 sumps in there basically)

I know lets add another skimmer

Better idea, let's add a ATS and 75g "fuge" to the system also

This is about to change

Super size sump, a LFS was going out of business so I picked up their sump and spent more on acrylic to modify it than I did buying it in the first place. I had too much junk going on and needed a bigger sump for the planned 400. Also, I wanted lids on everything. Controlling humidity has always been a big deal to me, doing damage to a brand new house is not something I'd like to do.

Long day

Making progress

Why is it if you have a piece of equipment, it must be plumbed in... let's add that ETSS back in

In theory this is all tame (and about to get worse)
75g QT, 75g fuge, ATS, sump

 

[marty9876]

Yeppie, my soon to be screwed up tank (somehow grew from 400 to 450 gallons)

Another long day

This is gonna work right?

Kid shot (wife was 9 months pregnant, something about me + mermaid = pregnant mermaid threw her off)

Enter drama:

Miracles didn't drill the holes per my specs, they lost the email. So basically they drilled the holes for their SCH 80 bulkheads (huge monster things) and they put the overflow box too close to the holes. I knew it was screwed the second I say it but what's a guy to do once he's dropped the 180, moved everyone downstairs and got 8 guys over to move the tank into the house. I had to wait a week for their bulkheads as mine were the wrong size. Then I had to wait another 3 weeks for them to fly a guy down to cur out the box and glue in a new one. All the while, my wife gave birth to our kid (which this whole aquarium thing was to be done weeks before this) and the day after delivery I'm ducking out to meet the fist tank repair guy who flew in from Toronto. Yea, all makes sense right. Thanks Adam (local fish club member) to taking over on that one.

Nice message form Nathan on the work bench we used to drill/glue things for the replacement box

To hold everyone downstairs was:
58g
75g
Moved the 180g
Old fuge

On the plus (or minus) side I now have a 180g tied into the system along with the 75

My plumbing is getting a little better

 

[marty9876]

Bad idea:

I tried to do a Bean animal through the bottom of the tank. The internet said it would work, the internet was wrong. Might work in theory but the water fall drop would create a ton of noise negating the whole purpose. So much googling wasted. Ended up with a basic herbie with a extra fail safe overflow. I miss my service drain at the fish tank (stick a hose in the tank and into the service drain which leads to the sink drain, no buckets ever) so I might cap one of these some day. An extra emergency drain ain't a bad thing either.

Got tank

Got fish

Iwaki 100 out, Pan world 200ps in (1/3 less juice draw) and Jeabo DC1200 in

1/2 lids, 1/2 screen is where I ended up

Ok, fish room too small. Mechanical room next!

Whole point of the mixing bin setup was this auto water changing pump

Going for automation, larger ATO bin

So, now all I need is lights and corals... 2x ATI 48" Powermodule LED Hybrids have been on order since 12/5 basically. Just a giant screw around and UPS has them lost as I type this.

Next steps: Get the lights up, go crazy with SPS stocking. Thinking og a monster skimmer, can't get my head around the benefits of that (no mechanical filtration would be nice). I'm not happy with the in tank circulation yet.

General specs:
- dosing 1 part
- 80w UV
- 4x Jeabo WP-60's in tank
- 2x educators in tank
- ATS
- Fuge
- SWC 250 skimmer & ETSS 800 skimmers
- Apex
- soon to be crazy about of light

Fish:

Sohal tang is being a ***** (in 180g downstairs now), not too bad yet but I'm having 2nd thoughts about things. Only been in a week, see how they all settle down. Semilarvatus Butterflyfish eats the Frogspawn (and any aiptasia in the tank now!)

Current fist list:

Emperor Angel
Queen Angel
Regal Angel
Blue Line Angel
Multicolor Angel
Potters Angel
African Flameback Angel
2x Flame Angels

Blonde Naso Tang
Purple Tang
Desjardini Tang
Achilles Tang
Power Blue Tang
Sohal Tang
Cheveron Tang

Magnificent Foxface
Blue Midas Blennie
Starry Blennie
Flame Hawk
Flame Wrasse
Semilarvatus Butterflyfish
2x Indian Ocean Lyretail Anthias

Have a few in QT too

 

[benihana]

Nice recap Marty!!

 

[1fishkeeper]

Looks like a very nice screwed up tank to me. But what do I know I am all screwed up in the head.

 

[mariusmeyer]

Very nice. What is the actual display dimentions?

 

[marty9876]

Very nice. What is the actual display dimentions?

95"x36"x30". I had to take an inch out to get things in the alcove

 

[TankWater]

I love your Angels! (especially that Queen)

I'm more of a FOWLR guy right now looking to go Reef but I have large Angels too and always thought they would nip at the corals . I'm guessing your Angels leave the corals alone?

 

[sfsuphysics]

Have to save never seen cement board used as "drywall" before, with tiles attached sure, but never "naked" heck you even cut out outlet/switch holes too

Oh and nice tank too lots of colorful fish.

 

[Mark...]

That was fun to read!

With all that you are doing, why not degas your well water after RO? I use a cheap Whisper air pump on my RO water and in 12 hours my TDS drops from .150 to .009

Thanks for sharing your build...

 

[Northside Reef]

I have got to make that June meeting Marty. Sucks I had to miss the last one. More info on the auto water changer please

 

[marty9876]

I love your Angels! (especially that Queen)

I'm more of a FOWLR guy right now looking to go Reef but I have large Angels too and always thought they would nip at the corals . I'm guessing your Angels leave the corals alone?

Not really. I'm trying the Copps theory on angels in reefs, a sick coral will not last long but a healthy coral will be fine. In theory. Still waiting to see how this all pans out. There are many inverts angels won't touch, zoa's didn't last long,

 

[marty9876]

That was fun to read!

With all that you are doing, why not degas your well water after RO? I use a cheap Whisper air pump on my RO water and in 12 hours my TDS drops from .150 to .009

Thanks for sharing your build...

My water comes out the ro at 1 to 2 tds. double membrane system I figure this is good enough. Need a separate holding system, separate pressure pump and all that just haven found the need for it yet

 

[marty9876]

Have to save never seen cement board used as "drywall" before, with tiles attached sure, but never "naked" heck you even cut out outlet/switch holes too

Oh and nice tank too lots of colorful fish.

Yea, 1/2 way though I noticed the writing was on the 'wrong' side. Cheap, inert, catches the studs. The plastic 4x8 sheets for lining showers/wet rooms is crazy expensive.

 

[dave.m]

I'm not sure what you mean by "micro lambs". Are you referring to the laminated beams you have sistered to the floor joists?

For the fish room you might want to consider FRP boards to keep the humidity out of all that exposed framing.

For CO2 in the water, have you looked into Liqui-Cel?

Dave.M

 

[marty9876]

I have got to make that June meeting Marty. Sucks I had to miss the last one. More info on the auto water changer please

There is a pretty in depth thread on here about these pumps. Seems to be a few core options for a AWC system. 1. Genesis system 2. complete DIY with floats/pumps/timers 3. dual head peristaltic pump

Option 3 sounded like a good idea.

Pump: http://www.lockewell.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=160

In hindsight I might have gone with the larger model, run less. It's a time based system not a volume based system run off Apex as a timer. No reason to get an adjustable flow pump if you have a time based variable.

Pickup in the mixing vat with another pickup in the sump. Outputs are in the back of the sump (input ahead of output) and then to the daylight floor drain.

Redundancies- Risk is you either take out more than goes in, or put more in than goes out. Float switches all need to be in agreement before this runs

- Fresh SW vat (don't run if you ain't got nothing to put in)
- ATO reservoir float (ATO runs before AWC, don't run is ATO isn't happy and has water in it)
- Sump low (don't run if low,)
- Sump high (don't run if high)

I might add the actual ATO float to the program. Right now it runs before the AWC. 4 floats need to agree before AWC runs, can change that to 5. I might add a Apex leak detection to the drain as that's a day light drain and maybe could clog some day

Apex:
Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Time 20:10 to 22:10 Then ON
If Outlet SWBin = OFF Then OFF
If Outlet Sump_High = ON Then OFF
If Outlet ATOLow_A4 = ON Then OFF
If Outlet Sump_Low = OFF Then OFF

 

[marty9876]

I'm not sure what you mean by "micro lambs". Are you referring to the laminated beams you have sistered to the floor joists?

For the fish room you might want to consider FRP boards to keep the humidity out of all that exposed framing.

For CO2 in the water, have you looked into Liqui-Cel?

Dave.M

Microllam Beams I think is what I meant to say.

FRP yea, I might regret that some day. I have a exhaust fan which runs 15 minutes ever hour. Humidity stays below 55% in the summer in the room.

Liqui-Cel - thanks! Off to google I go.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yea, 1/2 way though I noticed the writing was on the 'wrong' side. Cheap, inert, catches the studs. The plastic 4x8 sheets for lining showers/wet rooms is crazy expensive.

Tell me about it, something like $30 a sheet for those FRP sheets that are so thin they need to be attached to something, a 3/4" plywood sheet ain't that expensive!

 

[pwahrn]

Great pics! I'm in the NW suburbs...