My Aquapod 24 - Finally !!

kg4izw

New member
I finally broke down and learned how to post pics on this site.

My wife an I loved our 9 gallon tank so much, we decided to get a better tank as a Christmas present to each other. Although it is just now coming together it's turning out great.
It is an Aquapod 24 with 150W HQI.
Here is why it took me so long to complete:
I pulled out the old pump and replaced it with a Maxijet 900. Then I drilled a hole in the rear partition, installed a bulkhead, and plumbed a second pump, a Maxijet 1200. I put two locklines on the bulkhead to more effectively distribute the water. I also installed a third pump, a Minijet 404, facing downward behind the live rock to insure no dead areas behind that large structure. I put a 50W Hydor heater and some bioballs along with a bag of ChemiPure in the left rear compartment. In the right compartment I trimmed down one of the sponges (because of the pump) and then put some polyester fiber fill on top of the sponge to gather the majority of the trash that enters the rear pump areas.
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The main tank area has about 30 pounds of live rock, a pair of Percula clowns, and one Firefish who is scared of the camera. There are also several types of corals that are common and easy to identify. My silver pulsing Xenia is by far my favorite. But every time I photo it, the silver is so bright, it is almost unidentifyable.
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I installed an ICA 2.0 chiller with upgraded power source and computer CPU fan. It is straddling the two rear compartments. There is also a small pump in the right chamber that brings the water up and through the chiller; the chilled water then returns to the tank into the left chamber and flows back into the display area. My home-made cover can also be seen in this photo. It was made from a styrene flourescent light fixture cover, trimmed with a dremmel, and painted with reat resistant black primer.
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I wanted to build a tank that I did not have to stick my arm down into each week and siphon gravel. So I build this one with no substrate and made sure it has LOTS of water movement.

Thanks for looking, Paul B.
 
Looks great, that will grow in nicely. All your mods look great, looks well thought out and exectuted. I like that chiller mod as well.
 
Great nano.. Those MH fixtures are very nice. Have you tested to see how much cooling the chiller gives you.. IE run it one day then not the next to see the difference? Just wondering.

Will
 
With three pumps and 150W lighting on top cooling was a major concern. The first thing I did was toss the glass top that came with the tank and make the vented one.
The halide runs from 12pm until 8:30pm. Without the chiller I was hitting 82 or 83 degrees near the end of the lighting cycle.
With the chiller, the temp has yet to reach 80. OH, the chiller is programmed to come on at 2pm and turn off at 10pm. So technically, it is only running one third of the day. If it ran all day, it would be fighting the heater. And that, in my opinion, would be a horrible waste of resources.
Right now the time is 4:15 and the tank temp is 76.5.
(The heater turns on at 76.)
The room temp is 66.
Sorry, I just gave you a complex answer to a simple question.
 
UPDATE !

UPDATE !

After reviewing this thread the other day, I realized how different my tank looks than it did just two months ago. Here are a few more recent shots.
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and then one with no flash
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It was white styrene that is used to cover fluorescent lighting fixtures bought from Home Depot. I cut it with my dremmel tool to fit, and painted it with black FUSION paint from a spray can.
 
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