New tank at Strong Museum!
- Thread starter museumguy
- Start date
museumguy
Active member
Wow, what a night! Thing are still a bit craaazy here playing catchup and preparing for the new tank so I won't be getting into too much detail about stuff in this post. But I think last night was a huge success.
Everything went very smoothly. We had a great crew on hand starting at about 5:30 pm and the tank was empty by about 10 pm, great timing. Sadly there wasn't a whole lot of new discoveries on the stuff coming out of the rock... a couple scallops and a couple mussles which were neat, and some funky sponges.
As of today I don't think we lost any fish, at least no dead fish... we are still missing a couple fish that I can only assume hitchhiked into the live rock bins. We have 3 150-200g bins filled to the brim with live rock.
Corals came out pretty well all things considered. We had huge montipora colonies encrusted all over the place which broke into a ton of pieces, but we managed to save some of the big pieces. If anyone wants a free orange montipora cap frag feel free to stop by sometime this week, just let me know ahead of time and bring a bag or a bin.
Tomorrow we take down the tank, we have a rigging company coming in. I'll try and take pictures.
At some point when things calm down a little I'll add some more pics of the events from last night. One week till the new tank arrives, I can't wait.
Cheers,
Tad
Everything went very smoothly. We had a great crew on hand starting at about 5:30 pm and the tank was empty by about 10 pm, great timing. Sadly there wasn't a whole lot of new discoveries on the stuff coming out of the rock... a couple scallops and a couple mussles which were neat, and some funky sponges.
As of today I don't think we lost any fish, at least no dead fish... we are still missing a couple fish that I can only assume hitchhiked into the live rock bins. We have 3 150-200g bins filled to the brim with live rock.
Corals came out pretty well all things considered. We had huge montipora colonies encrusted all over the place which broke into a ton of pieces, but we managed to save some of the big pieces. If anyone wants a free orange montipora cap frag feel free to stop by sometime this week, just let me know ahead of time and bring a bag or a bin.
Tomorrow we take down the tank, we have a rigging company coming in. I'll try and take pictures.
At some point when things calm down a little I'll add some more pics of the events from last night. One week till the new tank arrives, I can't wait.
Cheers,
Tad
chrisqueenz
New member
Wow, that has got to be some fun to set-up the new tank! Hey Tad are you going to set-up the filtration system, plumbing, lighting, Etc. on your own or is someone coming out to take care of that?
Brent Thomann
New member
yes please do, would love to see photos of everything!
museumguy
Active member
Crazy day. I'm dead exhausted, but at 6am we started offloading the tank, and we finally had it filled with water around 11pm.
Too tired for more updates, but we have it stacked and I think Tom did a great job. Somewhat minimalistic, but I think once the corals are in it and start to grow out it will be absolutely primo.
Later this week watch for pics, I took a bunch. Livestock returns in a couple days.
Cheers,
Tad
Too tired for more updates, but we have it stacked and I think Tom did a great job. Somewhat minimalistic, but I think once the corals are in it and start to grow out it will be absolutely primo.
Later this week watch for pics, I took a bunch. Livestock returns in a couple days.
Cheers,
Tad
museumguy
Active member
Sorry for lack of replies. We've been buuusy here. Here are some pics of the rock stack that Tom did. Please note in the 5th picture that the rock doesn't go more than about halfway up to the top of the water, so both the open water fish as well as the fast growing coral will have lots of room. We are still finishing up the cabinetry around the tank, so there are barriers up and I have yet to be able to do a FTS from far enough away that you can see all of it.
One of the 1000w halide lights we got from Coralvue was incorrectly sold to us as a 14k, when it is most likely 10k, so one portion of the tank looks more white/yellow than the rest, and we are awaiting a replacement.
One of the 1000w halide lights we got from Coralvue was incorrectly sold to us as a 14k, when it is most likely 10k, so one portion of the tank looks more white/yellow than the rest, and we are awaiting a replacement.
museumguy
Active member
A bit of a recap so far with the equipment. The filtration system is great, and once completely setup the ease of use for this will be like no other system I've seen.
I'll give a 'verbal tour' of the system best I can, for more than this you'll have to stop by and see it for yourself (or hope I put pictures up when I get a chance).
So the water overflows into 2 return PVC pipes which are I believe 6 inches in diameter. The water is gravity fed to the sumps which are located behind the tank against the back wall.
There are two identical systems for the following, one for each return:
First the water passes through a large mesh swimming pool filter, which is basically just intended to catch snails or fish and keep them from going any further. The water then passes through PVC pipe into the CADS filtration system where it goes through 100 micron mesh. As this mesh accumulates particulate matter the water level will rise, and a float switch kicks on. The water is diverted around the filter, and the filter chamber is allowed to drain. A vacuum cleaning mechanism then engages and the screen rotates around the suction hose, as high pressure water is sprayed underneath the filter dislodging all detrius that has accumulated. The vaccuum then sucks up the crud and it travels to a special box where the water and crud is pulled out of the vaccum's suction and discarded down a waste water drain. After one minute the vaccuum turns off and the water is redirected into the filter.
There is one skimmer attached to the sump. It was custom built directly into the sump, and has a dedicated 40 gallon per minute pump powering it, with a ball valve controlling the flow and rate of skimming. The skimmer cup has a hose fitted to it, so that any skimmate buildup flows directly down the drain. Waste water from the Dialyseas filtration system drains into the skimmer every 30 minutes, flushing the cup clean. There is also a small bio-balls compartment attached to the skimmer.
All that I previously mentioned is on the bottom level of the sump structure. On the top level we have the Dialyseas unit itself, another sump that can be used to run carbon or other media if needed, as well as the salt reservoir, 5 UV steralizers and 4 chillers.
The Dialyseas unit is basically a fancy water changer that does a few other things. It uses an artificial human kidney to filter ions out of the water (Nitrates, Phosphates, etc) 48 times per day, on the half hour and hour. You program the amount of water you want changed per day and it filters 1/48th of that amount every 30 minutes. It is constantly monitoring water level and salinity. If it detects the water level float switch to be too low it turns on the internal RO systems until the water level rises accordingly. If the salt water level is too low, it pushes tank water through the salt bucket adding super concentrated salt water to the sump in small doses. There are lots of other impressive features such as redundant safety cutoffs, but I'm not going to list them all right now. Theres also an internet monitoring program that I've yet to use.
After the water has done everything in the sump it is returned to the tank through 2 1.5" PVC pipes that run inside of the overflow pipes.
We've had a few small problems arise, but nothing we have not been able to fix. One of the coverings inside the tank that goes around the overflows arrived damaged and will have to be replaced. The tank was filled and the internal supports removed and a small leak formed two days later. We replaced the supports and the leak went away. The silicone he uses takes 90 days to cure, so we will be leaving the supports in for the next couple months until everything is 100% tight in place. We still have some micro bubbles, but I think they are getting better each day. He says most of his systems have them for about 2 weeks until everything breaks in and the water chemistry adjusts. We've learned that we have to be careful with the skimmer. It is fully adjustable from only the thickest of skimmate to very watery. If you leave the skimmer on watery mode all night the sumps start to run very low. We've had a few leaky gaskets here and there, but I think that is to be expected after a 2000 mile drive, and most of them just needed an extra 1/4 turn to fix them.
Overall we are still figuring things out, but I can already tell you that its a million times easier to maintain than our last system, and I think our livestock will stay happy and healthy in the system too!
We have yet to reintroduce livestock, but that will likely begin sometime in the next couple days. Stay tuned!
Cheers,
Tad
I'll give a 'verbal tour' of the system best I can, for more than this you'll have to stop by and see it for yourself (or hope I put pictures up when I get a chance).
So the water overflows into 2 return PVC pipes which are I believe 6 inches in diameter. The water is gravity fed to the sumps which are located behind the tank against the back wall.
There are two identical systems for the following, one for each return:
First the water passes through a large mesh swimming pool filter, which is basically just intended to catch snails or fish and keep them from going any further. The water then passes through PVC pipe into the CADS filtration system where it goes through 100 micron mesh. As this mesh accumulates particulate matter the water level will rise, and a float switch kicks on. The water is diverted around the filter, and the filter chamber is allowed to drain. A vacuum cleaning mechanism then engages and the screen rotates around the suction hose, as high pressure water is sprayed underneath the filter dislodging all detrius that has accumulated. The vaccuum then sucks up the crud and it travels to a special box where the water and crud is pulled out of the vaccum's suction and discarded down a waste water drain. After one minute the vaccuum turns off and the water is redirected into the filter.
There is one skimmer attached to the sump. It was custom built directly into the sump, and has a dedicated 40 gallon per minute pump powering it, with a ball valve controlling the flow and rate of skimming. The skimmer cup has a hose fitted to it, so that any skimmate buildup flows directly down the drain. Waste water from the Dialyseas filtration system drains into the skimmer every 30 minutes, flushing the cup clean. There is also a small bio-balls compartment attached to the skimmer.
All that I previously mentioned is on the bottom level of the sump structure. On the top level we have the Dialyseas unit itself, another sump that can be used to run carbon or other media if needed, as well as the salt reservoir, 5 UV steralizers and 4 chillers.
The Dialyseas unit is basically a fancy water changer that does a few other things. It uses an artificial human kidney to filter ions out of the water (Nitrates, Phosphates, etc) 48 times per day, on the half hour and hour. You program the amount of water you want changed per day and it filters 1/48th of that amount every 30 minutes. It is constantly monitoring water level and salinity. If it detects the water level float switch to be too low it turns on the internal RO systems until the water level rises accordingly. If the salt water level is too low, it pushes tank water through the salt bucket adding super concentrated salt water to the sump in small doses. There are lots of other impressive features such as redundant safety cutoffs, but I'm not going to list them all right now. Theres also an internet monitoring program that I've yet to use.
After the water has done everything in the sump it is returned to the tank through 2 1.5" PVC pipes that run inside of the overflow pipes.
We've had a few small problems arise, but nothing we have not been able to fix. One of the coverings inside the tank that goes around the overflows arrived damaged and will have to be replaced. The tank was filled and the internal supports removed and a small leak formed two days later. We replaced the supports and the leak went away. The silicone he uses takes 90 days to cure, so we will be leaving the supports in for the next couple months until everything is 100% tight in place. We still have some micro bubbles, but I think they are getting better each day. He says most of his systems have them for about 2 weeks until everything breaks in and the water chemistry adjusts. We've learned that we have to be careful with the skimmer. It is fully adjustable from only the thickest of skimmate to very watery. If you leave the skimmer on watery mode all night the sumps start to run very low. We've had a few leaky gaskets here and there, but I think that is to be expected after a 2000 mile drive, and most of them just needed an extra 1/4 turn to fix them.
Overall we are still figuring things out, but I can already tell you that its a million times easier to maintain than our last system, and I think our livestock will stay happy and healthy in the system too!
We have yet to reintroduce livestock, but that will likely begin sometime in the next couple days. Stay tuned!
Cheers,
Tad
Capt_Cully
Active member
That's incredible. No one stacks it like Tom!
Capt_Cully
Active member
HOLY energy bill!!!!
Conesus_Kid
Premium Member
Wow! Can't wait to see the FTS.
chrisqueenz
New member
Wow that is incredible! That is one tall tank!
backdraft79
New member
um... WOW
scuba namena
New member
HEY ALREE !!!
Looks great! Great stack! Excited to see it in person.
Looks great! Great stack! Excited to see it in person.
belgian_waffleman
New member
Are the rocks and branches held together or are they loosly stacked?
Nice setup, I can't wait to see it in person.
Waffleman
Nice setup, I can't wait to see it in person.
Waffleman
