Mhucasey's SPS obsession

[mhucasey]

Looking great Matt gonna have to check out that new tank one day

Give me a heads up in advance of next time you are in North County

 

[mhucasey]

My name is Matt and I'm an SPS addict.

I moved almost all SPS except the plating montis over to the new tank for temporary holding. This is what the old tank looks like now:

Some of the Corals were downright huge:

There are lots of tanks I see here that have less coral than this. Now, here is what is over in the new tank now:
SIDE A:

SIDE B:

I am running low on room for corals....

 

[Wazzel]

I am running low on room for corals....

Apparently you did not go bigger enough. Looks good.

 

[mhucasey]

I replaced my old wood stand for the Protein skimmer with a built-in aluminum channel stand.
Old Stand:

I used 1010 framing, 1" square:

Ill be topping this with 1/2" HDPE and 3/4" foam, for now I am just using a piece of plywood.

It works great:

 

[cugly]

Give me a heads up in advance of next time you are in North County

Will do. Hey where did you get your aluminum framing stuff is it local?

 

[mhucasey]

Will do. Hey where did you get your aluminum framing stuff is it local?

Amazon.com is the best price, search for 80/20 aluminum extrusion.

 

[sahin]

Superb work done here. New setup looks great! :thumbsup:

 

[mhucasey]

I like Automation and Precision, probably because of what I do in my day job. I automate this kind of equipment:

 

[sahin]

Holy smoly! What's in the large containers? :crazy1:

 

[mhucasey]

Cell culture growing anti-cancer antibodies...

 

[reefmutt]

Cell culture growing anti-cancer antibodies...

That's crazy!! I want my tank at home to look like that!!
I thought it was for milk pasteurization.
Anti cancer cell culturing is way cooler!!

 

[mhucasey]

That's crazy!! I want my tank at home to look like that!!
I thought it was for milk pasteurization.
Anti cancer cell culturing is way cooler!!

Yup, being involved with helping people by making medicine is a very cool part of my job If you were to get milk out of our system it would probably cost you a couple hundred dollars per gallon...a mountain of money is poured into a facility like ours to make sure that the drugs that are produced are safe and pure. It gets a bit surreal how desensitized you can get to the high dollar amounts for equipment and materials, I routinely place orders for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment or software.

The facility is state of the art, and it definitely gives me inspiration for setting up equipment, wiring, and plumbing at home with the tank

 

[JB NY]

New setup looks great Matt!

 

[mhucasey]

New setup looks great Matt!

Thanks! I'm really loving working with this Aluminum Channel. Now that I know what I'm doing with it it might be worth it to get it cut and milled for me by the MFG, but its not all that hard to do.

I'll be working more on the second tank's stand tonight, so Ill hopefully have pics of that.

I moved the last of what was in the naughty tank/display refugia to the smaller tank Wednesday night, including the Magnifica anemone and its Fireclown. First thing he did was evict the three Percula clowns from their Purple long tentacle anemone
Then last night all three Percs were in the Maginifica, looking very happy. And I can see them because its up front!. Im excited to display some amnemones and LPS in this new Set-up!

 

[JB NY]

Thanks! I'm really loving working with this Aluminum Channel. Now that I know what I'm doing with it it might be worth it to get it cut and milled for me by the MFG, but its not all that hard to do.

Yeah that Aluminum channel is nice, I have not used it on anything yet. It looks pretty easy to work with, but it looks like you are not cutting it just using stock sizes?

 

[mhucasey]

I buy the 72" and 48" stock sizes and cut it using a grinder blade in a standard chop saw. It cuts very easily and cleanly. After cutting, I run a metal file over the ends to remove any burrs and dull sharp edges.

I used anchor fasteners for the first stand, it took a little time and patience to get the hang of the milled holes for the fastener. The second stand is using end fasteners, which only requires tapping the ends of some of the pieces and drilling holes through the sides of others for T-wrench access. So far, its easier than anchors. I tapped all the pieces in about 30 minutes using a high speed tap and standard drill.

The easiest to use is the corner L-brackets or Gussets, no machining required at all. I didn't want the brackets visible and wanted to learn how to do the machining so I am only using them for tying the two stands together, but they work great and are a good option.

 

[JB NY]

Thanks for the info Matt, I'll have to play around with them the next project I start.

 

[mhucasey]

If you want something dead-on straight, very strong, with very little bulk this is great stuff. The various anchors not only tie the pieces together, they also bring the channel into perfect alignment with each other so the are straight. I'm going to build some non-tank things with it next

 

[mhucasey]

The three clowns hanging out in the Maginifica Nem are friggin adorable:

And I took a few pictures to show the warehouse of corals I have now in the new tank, a couple of nice ones. They seem to be coloring up under the 12 bulbs quite nicely. I expected everything to go brown for a while with all this upheaval:

 

[mhucasey]

And the structure of the new stand for the smaller tank is done! I just need to do some work on the HDPE top tomorrow and then Ill be ready to swap out the stands

I used double end fasteners on this one, way easier in the drilling department. A high speed spiral point tap is essential for this. You can tap the holes by hand with an off-the shelf tap from the hardware store, but with a spiral tap you can do it with a drill!