o2manyfish 750g Tank, 1500g System "Built" Thread

***************************** Time for a Summary Update ****************************

Well the past 5 months have been bits and pieces of my fish addiction. And now that we have opened the door to the next part of my aquatic addiction history I thought I would try to sum up everything and bring everything up to speed.

So on St. Patrick's Day I treated with Salifert Flatworm Exit in the 560g display tank only. And less than 2 hrs after the treatment the majority of the fish in the aquarium just fell out of the water column dead to the bottom of the tank.(Over 120 fish) We had done only a 70% of the recommended dose. We were running carbon. But the fish death was immediate and unavoidable.

This was the heart break of late Thursday night of St. Patrick's Day. This was then superceeded by Saturday morning when we woke up to find that the 300g sump tank outside had blown a seam. The topoff had come on at dawn, and tried to fill a sump that was constantly draining and converted the system to fresh water. This event wiped out every single piece of coral (less one) in the system. For a grasp as to the quantity of corals we are talking about --- Hundreds of colonies. Hundreds and Hundreds. Just dead. Trash cans full of coral skeletons. This was definitely the double gut punch.

I was in total shock and heart break. After a week of trying to get my head wrapped around the loss we had taken, I realized that this might be a big sign for me.

I was at a tough point in the hobby. If we jump back 15 months earlier our 400g reef tank had a seam start to come apart. In an emergency state we had replaced the 400g with a 560g peninsula tank. The 560g was the most beautiful aquarium I had ever owned. But was also impossible to work on with a depth of 36" (Tank was 120x30x36t). And about a month after setting up the 560g we had a bout of velvet run through the system and deal us with a bunch of losses.

I had spent 15months with an aquarium that I loved the look of hated everything else about. We were also going thru a phase where the panels on the 560g were turning fuzzy green every 24 hours. Having to algae wipe that much acrylic every 24 hours and hating every minute of it. Not being able to feed the tank without grabbing a stool. And not having arms long enough to mount any corals except in the top 10" of the tank. I was not in a great hobby mindset.

So when the current disaster hit, it was gut wrenching. While the tank had been doing really well, and fish had been spawning, and things were pretty - I really hadn't been enjoying the hobby.

When your Electric Bill is greater than most people's mortgage (infact my utilities are greater than my own mortgage) and your looking at 1400g of dead rock and a 20 odd fish. It seemed to me to be a sign that it was time to take a break. Who could fault me right?

So I told my wife I think I'm going to shut the system down for awhile. I don't think I had even finished the sentence before my wife adamantly said NO.

My wife who has always been super supportive of my addiction, was now even more so.

My wife told me to get a new tank. Get whatever I wanted that would make me happy. She didn't care what, where, why, or how much - But she made it clear - I was not getting out of the hobby.

In anticipation of an upgrade from our 400g tank 3.5 years ago we remodeled our living room and built it to house a giant peninsula tank. We built a fake ceiling soffit to hide lights and electrical. We ran dedicated circuits under the floor. And the plan was for a 120x60x30 glass peninsula tank.

We had infact bought a dissassembled 120x48x30 starfire tank which was sitting in a crate in our back yard for the past few years.

After having been so careful with my acrylic tanks for decades, I was ready to go glass for my next tank.

But when the sump blew a seam, only being 3 years old, I remembered why I didn't like big glass tanks. Because they come apart alot more often than acrylic.
 
When we did our remodel we opened up our living room in the center of the house removing a few walls to make a much more open floor plan. I was really enjoying the open feeling of the house and decided that I didn't want a big tank in the middle of our house. So that brought me back to putting a new tank in what we called the fish room.

Our 400g (96x33x28.5) was the maximum size that fit on the wall in the room. But I didn't want to go back to what I had. I'm an addict, I wanted more.

When the 560g arrived the 400g was still up and running, so we had setup the 560g peninsula in the middle of the room, and flipped the couch to where the 400g fish tank had been. This layout worked well for us. Other than I had learned an important lesson that my lazy butt did not want to constantly clean 4 big viewing panels.

So we ordered a new Acrylic tank from Brian at Titan Aquatic Exhibits in Az. I had met Brian years earlier at a MACNA and we had become friends. For a tank in this size range Titan Aquatic Exhibits was the call to make. We ordered a 120x48x30 - I know it seems kind of silly to order a brand new tank with the same dimensions as a dissassembled tank sitting in a box in our yard - But the cost of the tank is minimal compared with the investment of coral and fish. And I sleep better at night not worrying about the tank staying together.

Working with Titan was great! He gave me an 8 week lead time to build. And sure enough after 8 weeks I got a photo of the first piece of acrylic being cut on their CNC.

You would think I would have learned my lesson with the 36" tall tank that I am a short fat guy with stubby arms and don't have all that much reach. The reason that the 400g was 28.5" tall was that is the length from my arm pit to finger tip.

Now I had just ordered a tank that was 48" from the front to back. Which means reaching the bottom back of the tank is like a 5' stretch.

Titan doesn't just cut some acrylic and build a box. They have an enginner who designs all their aquariums and specs the material size for the particular build. I knew the acrylic tank was going to have a top on it. While I had loved my 400g which was entirely open topped. Over time the 8' length of the tank had bowed almost 2" in the center of the tank. I had to clamp it and pull it back in - and it might have been this excessive bowing that had led to the failing of a seam.

So I asked Titan if they could engineer the top braces of the new aquarium to support my weight. This way I could lay across the tank to reach the back. They took down some of my key dimensions and designed a top that supports my girth/gut over the width of the tank.

Titan also sent me the CAD file for the aquarium - this gave me the exact locations of the bulkheads so that I could build my stand at the house weeks before the tank arrived.

Everyday Titan sent me a picture of the production of my new tank. While putting so much work into getting the house ready for the new tank, it was really neat to get the build photos to know what we had been working toward. Even though all the filtration was built and running. Setting up for the new tank still had some projects that needed to be done.

With a tank of these dimensions I knew that I needed to be able to have full access to the top of the tank - And with my bulk that meant being able to move the lights out of the way to have enough room to lie across the top of the tank. I have several friends that have built motorized lifts for their lights using cable systems and electric winches. But their light racks were all hidden behind closed cabinets. I wanted to keep the area around the tank as open as possible so the tank didn't look like such a massive box in the room/house.

I settled on a lift system by a company called Auxx-Lift.com - This is a sleek unit designed to lift storage racks up onto garage ceilings. It's about as clean and minimal as a lift system for my application. It comes with a storage rack, but the rack wasn't ideal for the light rack I had in mind.

I built a light rack out of 8020 TSlot Aluminum. The rack looks great. But what a pain in the butt to work with the lights. And I dread the day a light needs to be removed to be repaired/replaced. The error in my rack is that I used the T-Slot to slide mount screws which screw into the lights. At the last minute a 3D Printer Engineer had fabricated some mounts that slid into the T-Slot and then the Radions mounted to the mount. I opted not to go with the mounts - thinking this was just another point of failure/maintenace. But the hindsight is they would have worked better.
 
And the lighting well the week I put the deposit down on my new tank Ecotech announced the G6 Radion. I had 7 G3 Pros and 3 G4 Pros from my existing tank. But given everything was going to be ceiling mounted above the center of the tank, if I was ever contemplating upgrading lights, before rather than later seemed like the wise decision. And a few weeks before the tank was delivered 12 Radion XR30 G6 Pros arrived. I spent some time on the phone with Jake Adams before making this decision. He had been one of the first people to get hands on with the G6's and had tested the spread and brightness. Jake's recommendation was for me to install 24 XR15 G6 Pros over the tank. The thought of 24 lights was a bit overwhelming. While the spread may have been better I have to say that the spread with the XR30's is great over the tank. The only place the light seems a lil dim is in the front corners of the tank. I haven't done any par readings yet, so I don't know if it's actually dimmer or it's just that there aren't 2 lights overlapping each other. I am really happy with the decision to go with the G6's and a dozen of them. Most people could probably get by with 10 over a 10' tank. But I wanted to make sure I could grow acros anywhere I wanted.


The tank was completed right on schedule. Unfortunately the week the tank was finished and ready to be shipped my wife and I got COVID. Once again Titan Aquatic Exhibits was super cool when we asked them to hold the tank until we were healthy. Titan shipped the tank via Fedex Freight. It was pretty cool to see the tracking information of Fedex picking up the tank on a Monday morning in Az and it being dropped off at the Fedex Hub 7 miles from my house that evening.

Fedex will curb deliver to a residential address, but it was my responsibility to get the crate off the truck. The tank was obviously too big for a lift gate. The tank was too wide to roll through my side yard. While it's not far to go down the driveway, the sideyard and around the back of the house - Titan didn't recommend flipping the tank on it's back - inside the crate - to roll it to the house. And the thought of taking it out of the protective crate to roll it through gates and shrubbery didn't sound like a relaxing experience. So we opted to crane the tank over the house. Crane rental is not that expensive - At least in Los Angeles it wasn't bad. Quotes ranged from $500 to $1800.

Fedex gives a rough 4 hour delivery window. The cranes will show up on time. But for $650 they show up and do their job. If they have to wait then the rate can be the $650/hr for the crane to sit at your curb. There was too much worry about coordinating Fedex and Cranes in the same time frame. We opted to rent a U-Haul flat bed trailer for $24 for 24 hours. This meant the crane could come whenever to move the tank.

The crane company had used a satellite image to confirm it was about a 70' reach from my driveway over the house to the back yard. The tank spec said the tank weighed 1100 and with the crate we estimated under 1500

The crane showed up and I immediately didn't have a good feeling. The crane operator was looking at us to rig the crate for lifting and wanted us up on the roof to signal the crane. With my Dad watching, my wife pissed off and filming and a friend coordinating I climb up onto the 2nd story roof to guide the crane operator. The tank goes up in the air. The crane swings over the roof of the house. The boom starts to lower. The tank is spinning in the wind. And the crane operator says - It's too much I can't reach. He was 25' short of getting into the back yard.
 
Then It was a rough week. The weather here was in the 100’s every day this week. It took a day for me to complete the exterior plumbing from the tank to the underground pipes. It took another day for me to complete the plumbing under the tank. It took 3 days to cover the back wall of the tank with live rock. It didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. When I did this on my previous 2 tanks I was able to flip the tanks onto their backs and then mount the rock with the weight of the rock pushing it down into the pond foam.

But this tank was already too heavy and was too big to be able to put someplace on its back where I could get access into the tank. So I did it all by hand using bags of salt as sand bags and a couple of telescoping poles to push rocks onto the back wall.

During this process I only had 2 pieces of rock fall off the wall. Which out of 50+ pieces of rock is pretty good. But it was tough because I didn’t know which rock or how much to use. I had half the rock in a pile in the sump and half my rock sun bleached in the yard. And I didn’t want to break up any big pieces of rock to make smaller puzzle pieces to fill in the holes. I’d been planning for months to mount pieces of 3” pipe on the back wall to put the Tunze Stream 3s in – And after months of planning and desigining, I totatlly forgot to install the Tunze Pipes.

On Thursday I finished the rock wall and finally connected the underground pipes to the existing system. I was so happy when the water came back on that there were no leaks at the connections between the 2 systems. Then I hear a water fall coming from outside the house by the tank….. I used those rubber and clamp connectors to join spa-flex to ABS – And I forgot to tighten them It was a few minutes of using the dewalt in the middle of a 1.5” firehose water fall – but I got it all sealed up.

On Friday my friend came over and with the help of the kid in the guest house (we let the youngin lift all the heavy rock) we brought all the rock that was in the 560g into the fish room and laid it out on the floor. Then I tried to fit the rock onto the fibergrate structures. I wanted to try to keep that big swim thru hole that we built in the 560g.

We emptied the sump and ran out of rock to fill in the fibergrate structure. Waiting to see what the live rock looks like coming from Solomon to figure out if Solomon or Austrailia is the better rock for covering the structure.

The RO system filled up the 750g tank in 6 hrs and 20 mins. At about ½ way filled the tank started getting cloudy. I was adding salt as the tank filled, but it didn’t seem like normal cloudiness. After settling out for a few hours the water had a grey brown look to it. The tank was not yet connected to the system and I was really worried that the Citric Acid I cleaned the rocks with didn’t get fully rinsed out of the rocks.

We had put about 500lbs of rock in a tub and let it soak with 5lbs of Citric Acid for 36 hours. Then emptied the rock and pressure washed it to blow everything off. Then soaked it in tap water. Then sun bleach for a few weeks. Then another tap rinse and pressure wash and then a few more weeks of sun bleaching.

When we emptied the rock from the tub after the citric acid bath. The citric acid produced almost 16lbs of sand. I measured it. I couldn’t believe it had turned rock into sand. But I had a bags worth of beautiful white sand.

I went to sleep on Friday night expecting to wake up Saturday morning to a tank that had settled out and cleared up.

But I woke up on Saturday morning to find brown soup. I had left the Vectra L1 in the tank circulating the water and the tank had turned into a brown mess. Visibility was about 8” into the tank. Couldn’t see any of the aquascaping, just muck. To say I was a little upset is an understatement. The water felt silty when I touched it.

So I said fuck it and drained out 750g of new brown salt water.

Unfortunately as the water level dropped, so did the rock on the back wall. The weight of the wet rock was too much for the pond foam to hold. And about a dozen rocks (big ones) came tumbling down as more and more water was pumped out of the tank. This really upset me and I was out of sorts as to what to do now that everything was wet. But the pond foam was releasing from the acrylic it was firmly attached to the rock. So I took BSI IC Gel and smeared it on the pond foam and stuck it back onto the back wall of the tank – and it worked.

Filling the tank a second time was less rewarding and enjoyable. I had to add salt as I filled because I had 500+ lbs of live rock in the tank mixed into the aquascaping that I wanted to keep alive. Everything was looking pretty nice and clear till it got to the ½ way point. Then the tank started to cloud again.

By the time we added the last bags of salt and the tank was full of water the visibility was down to 2’ in the tank. But this time it was grey – like fresh salt water – not brown mucky. Around 6pm the tank had settled and cleared a little. I was still really worried that there was Acid leaching out of the rock. So I caught a Molly out of the frag tanks and thru it in. Of course silly me grabs a silver molly to throw in a grey cloudy tank, with a back ground of dry rock – Could have caught 1 of the 20 gold mollies and been able to spot it in a 750g tank. But no I picked a grey one that just vanished into the gloom.

Around 9pm I finally spotted the molly – Alive – So my first fear of the acid tank was slighty put aside. But then I am studying the molly going – Is it struggling to breathe – is it gasping…

Sunday morning I woke up and the tank had cleared quite a bit. And the molly was alive and even swimming to the front of the tank where it could be seen on the webcam.

Sunday I was tempted to open the valve and connect it to the system. But I was headed to Reef-A-Palooza – and thought connecting the new tank and driving away was not a wise choice.

Went to the show and it was nice, Very Social event for me – First time to see lots of people we hadn’t seen in 3 years. I went with Scott Fellman.

I got home on Sunday evening. The Molly was still alive and appeared to be breathing normally. So I opened the valve and connected the tank to the system. The tank was still cloudy but it was the kind of cloudy you expect when you fill up a brand new tank with fresh salt water.

Over the first few hours the tank cleared up quite a bit. I checked the fish outside in the frag tanks and they were still all alive and well. So while it was dark I went and caught as many of the fish as I could and moved them into the 750.
 
Here is the light rack that I built out of the T Slot with a the AuxxLyft motorized lift.

750g Light Rack 1.jpg




750g Light Rack 2.jpg





750g Light Rack 3.jpg
 
Everyone who gets a big tank gets the obiligatory mermaid pic of their wife, girlfriend, or kids sitting in the tank for a size reference shot. While my wife is supportive of the tank she was not keen on putting on her bikini and climbing a ladder to get into the tank. So sorry folks, there has to be a mermaid pic.......



750g - Merman - Low Res 11.jpg
 
This is the sand that the citric acid created by bathing 500lbs of rock with dead tissue for 36 hours. We weighed this out at almost 16lbs of sand off of solid rock.

750g - Citric Acid Sand Box.jpg
 
If you have a big tank and are looking for a flow solution - then check out the Abyzz Flow Cannon. This is the unboxing and setup of an Abyzz AFC-150. Watch for future videos where I compare it to my Panta Rhei Hydrowizard ECM 63 and also we install not 1 but 2 Abyzz Flow Cannons in the new 750g reef tank. Tank is doing really well by the way.

Dave B


 
o2manyfish said:
If you have a big tank and are looking for a flow solution - then check out the Abyzz Flow Cannon. This is the unboxing and setup of an Abyzz AFC-150. Watch for future videos where I compare it to my Panta Rhei Hydrowizard ECM 63 and also we install not 1 but 2 Abyzz Flow Cannons in the new 750g reef tank. Tank is doing really well by the way.

Dave B


Click to expand...
That thing is huge. Are you going to try and hide it behind your rock work?
 
cellingson said:
That thing is huge. Are you going to try and hide it behind your rock work?
Click to expand...
For the initial testing we had it mounted on the right end blowing down the front of the take - So not a pretty sight. But it was off camera for the webcam - so it was invisible to everyone who tunes in to look at the tank. We also have a link to the webcam in our theater to keep an eye on the tank - so it was out of sight for us at home most of the time. But this afternoon I have moved it to the back side of the tank - but still hanging off the right end of the tank. It's now visible on the web cam - Not sure how much farther I can move it out of view. Once I play with this configuration for a few days and see how I like it I have a 2nd one to mount on the back wall, in the far right corner blasting to the front right corner of the tank - Same configuration as the Panta Rhei Hydro Wizard on the Left end of the tank (mounted on the back wall point forward).

Dave B
 
Here is the 2 month update on the new 750g tank. The day after taking this video I added about 35 of what I call doinker fish. Doinkers are the inexpensive fish that add so much life and movement to the tank and yet you don't really think about them. This batch of Doinkers included firefish, blennies, damsels and cardinals.

In addition we added a Lineatus wrasse thanks to Eric from Amoung the Reef. The Linneatus spent a day making sure everyone in the tank knew he was the biggest fish and then settled in and started eating just about everything we have thrown in the tank.


Lots of coral additions in the last few weeks. A coral show locally brought home almost 40 frags and then we picked up some corals from some people shutting down their tanks. Starting to get corals spread throughout the tank.

Dave B

 
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