aquaenthusiast
Member
Dave your dedication is amazing, you have gone through some rough times, but you pull through and now you have another amazing tank, my hat goes off to you sir:beer: Extremely inspiring!
o2manyfish 750g Tank, 1500g System "Built" Thread
- Thread starter o2manyfish
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RJT
Member
Hopefully there will be lots of updates on the growth of this fish for a long time to come !
Dave B[/QUOTE]
Yes! I look forward to the updates. I check out your tank a couple of times a week. I still saw wow when I look at it.
Have you had any fish that got too big or agressive for this tank?
Dave B[/QUOTE]
Yes! I look forward to the updates. I check out your tank a couple of times a week. I still saw wow when I look at it.
Have you had any fish that got too big or agressive for this tank?
reef_of_flames
Member
I have a 25 year old Harlequin Macaw, who is 42" from head to tail. Sometimes he hangs out in front of the tank.
He has no problem fragging corals, and can bite through Zeo Rocks
Dave B
Had to look up the Harlequin macaw, and my first thought was "wow, this looks like a Catalina Macaw!" It's a beautiful bird.
You should check out this link to other hybrid macaws. There are many beautiful combinations!
http://www.harlequinmacaw.net/
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
Over the years I have had the tank I have lots of fish get too big. I love tiny/small fish. So when the yellow, chevrons, and purples get to be large size I trap them and swap out for small ones.
I have some yellows and the blue hippos that are getting kind of large.
In the past I added a Chrsyrus (sp?) angel which demolished lots of expensive Zoas and I trapped him.
Someone also thought they were doing me a favor and gave me a Peppermint Hog (Scott Fellman many years ago). We added the Hog into the tank and he swam 8" and bit one of my yellow assesors in 1/2 and then 3 seconds after than grabbed another yellow asseosor and flung it into a rock and broke that fish in 1/2. I got the trap out and caught that guy in 2 days, but lost my 4 assesors.
Dave B
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
I travelled quite a bit and visited public aquariums across the country and seen lots of tanks with surge devices. But they were always noisy and disturbing to the tank.
I have been a huge fan of gravity for a long time, and if you take advantage of it it can be very powerful. Look how well your toilet drains each time you flush.
So I started with developing a toilet flush surge. But there was too much noise, and when the toilet flapper reseats it creates a slam that is disturbing.
So I started with the basic Carlson design and modified it to make it silent. And then modified it to make it as bubble free as possible.
And the Carlson worked flawlessly for many years, but it still added too many bubbles to the tank.
So now I have the motorized ball valve and I love it. No noise, no bubbles and tons of water movement.
Eric Cohen of Sea Dwelling Creatures was here a few weeks ago and he was over the top impressed with the surge .
Dave B
h.cordero
New member
o2manyfish 400g Tank, 1100g System "Built" Thread
I'm looking into surge device for my tank but all make lots of noise and bubble. But I'm optimized that there's a way to solve all those aspects that disturb me. Could you give some tips to achieve a SILENT surge device? I would appreciated!
Hernan Cordero
I'm looking into surge device for my tank but all make lots of noise and bubble. But I'm optimized that there's a way to solve all those aspects that disturb me. Could you give some tips to achieve a SILENT surge device? I would appreciated!
Hernan Cordero
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
Hernan,
For me getting totally silent was quite easy. The end of my reef tank is up against an exterior wall of the house. The surge tank itself sits outside on a 2 story balcony about 14' off the ground.
When I was running the Carlson surge device when the syphon finished there was a loud noise, like a wave crashing for the surge tank. It was noticeable only at night, as my bedroom is off the same balcony.
When I installed the motorized ball valve, I installed it on the exterior of the house as well. Unless you are standing next to the valve you can't hear it cycle. I built an adjustable time relay that allows me to set the open/close time of the ball valve to within 1/10th of a second.
I have the timer relay set so that the valve closes before the surge tank runs out of water. So there is never any noise from the surge tank.
By closing the valve before the tank runs dry, the pipe (2") always has water in it. So there is no air noise when the valve opens for each cycle.
I have a large 30" overflow in the tank which is over 25g in size, I run the water at the top of the overflow so there is no noise. And then I built my own modified durso pipes and have 2 2" pipes.
When the surge cycles there is some noise from the overflow pipes and they consume all the excess water. But the sound is pretty unobtrusive.
Dave B
h.cordero
New member
Dave absolutely brilliant idea with the motorized ball valve! Air is what it make it noisy! Can't imagine a surge from a second floor balcony must be a powerful wave! I haven't notice it in your tank from the ip camera. I'm going to experiment before I install it on my tank.
Thanks you for your advice.
Hernan Cordero
Thanks you for your advice.
Hernan Cordero
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
Hernan,
Even standing in front of the tank its not easy to see when the surge happens. You have to really be watching the coral polyps to see them get blasted.
I can empty the surge tank so that the first time it cycles there is air in the pipe and then you can see how quickly and far the bubbles are moved through the entire tank.
Let me know when you want to watch on the camera and I am happy to show it off.
Dave B
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
My previous full tank shot.
On Tuesday morning at 3am my girlfriend took the dog out and noticed the outside sump overflowing. She woke me up and I can downstairs to find the tank a cloud with only about 6" visibility. The bottom of the tank was lined with dead tangs.
I went outside and found the sumps overflowing. My topoff had stuck on and added Kalkwasser to the tank for 7 hours. I have a double float switch, one measures the sump low, and a second measures if the water level goes to high. The switches are mounted inside a Black PVC pipe so that no snails and no algae can grow on them. Both switches coincidentally failed at the same time.
I did a 350g water change at 3am. The next morning the tank had almost zero visibility and the house smelled of dead fish. There were a scattering of carcasses in the tank. I had about 120 fish when the accident hit. There were still some clowns and Bangai cardinals moving about the tank. I did a 400g water change and added 5lbs of carbon.
While changing the water I was surprised to find 5 baby Bangai surviving in my outdoor rock sump.
Then after the water change I found another younger clutch of 3 Baby Bangai in the display tank.
Some of the fish which survived have surprised me. So far the survivors are 5 clowns, 5 Bangai, Orange Spotted Blenny, Mandarin Goby, Target Mandarin, Tail Spot Blenny, Several Firefish, Red Sea Regal, Blue Hippo, Chevron Tang, Dragon faced pipefish, a couple of damsels, Red Sea Regal and Multicolor angel. There may be more but the tank visibility has only reached the point where you could see the back of the tank today.
Fish loss between the display tank and the outside tanks is about 130 fish.
All the acros in the display tank are gone (about 126 pcs). The Montis are a mix there is about 50% tissue loss on them so far.
My LPS seem to be surviving but as a precaution I moved them to a friends tank for a week or so.
Zoa and Palys are a mixed some are open and some are closed and some are wilted.
I do have an Apex, and it was busy emailing me in the middle of the night but I was asleep.
Lessons I learned. My Apex topoff was programmed for the float switches, now it is also programmed to shut off based on Salinity and pH.
Hopefully things will continue to clear up and in a couple of weeks I can start rebuilding. The girlfriend has decided that Hannukah gifts to each other this year is going to be limited to fish and corals... What a great girl!
On Tuesday morning at 3am my girlfriend took the dog out and noticed the outside sump overflowing. She woke me up and I can downstairs to find the tank a cloud with only about 6" visibility. The bottom of the tank was lined with dead tangs.
I went outside and found the sumps overflowing. My topoff had stuck on and added Kalkwasser to the tank for 7 hours. I have a double float switch, one measures the sump low, and a second measures if the water level goes to high. The switches are mounted inside a Black PVC pipe so that no snails and no algae can grow on them. Both switches coincidentally failed at the same time.
I did a 350g water change at 3am. The next morning the tank had almost zero visibility and the house smelled of dead fish. There were a scattering of carcasses in the tank. I had about 120 fish when the accident hit. There were still some clowns and Bangai cardinals moving about the tank. I did a 400g water change and added 5lbs of carbon.
While changing the water I was surprised to find 5 baby Bangai surviving in my outdoor rock sump.
Then after the water change I found another younger clutch of 3 Baby Bangai in the display tank.
Some of the fish which survived have surprised me. So far the survivors are 5 clowns, 5 Bangai, Orange Spotted Blenny, Mandarin Goby, Target Mandarin, Tail Spot Blenny, Several Firefish, Red Sea Regal, Blue Hippo, Chevron Tang, Dragon faced pipefish, a couple of damsels, Red Sea Regal and Multicolor angel. There may be more but the tank visibility has only reached the point where you could see the back of the tank today.
Fish loss between the display tank and the outside tanks is about 130 fish.
All the acros in the display tank are gone (about 126 pcs). The Montis are a mix there is about 50% tissue loss on them so far.
My LPS seem to be surviving but as a precaution I moved them to a friends tank for a week or so.
Zoa and Palys are a mixed some are open and some are closed and some are wilted.
I do have an Apex, and it was busy emailing me in the middle of the night but I was asleep.
Lessons I learned. My Apex topoff was programmed for the float switches, now it is also programmed to shut off based on Salinity and pH.
Hopefully things will continue to clear up and in a couple of weeks I can start rebuilding. The girlfriend has decided that Hannukah gifts to each other this year is going to be limited to fish and corals... What a great girl!
ingtar_shinowa
New member
Man... I feel for you.
Dave, good to see you on here!
I remember going to frag swaps at your house (~10 years ago...?).
This is my first post in RC with a new username, for some reason I can't login with my old one, I decided to login after being away for quite a few years. Reading your story and seeing the pictures have convinced me (not that I needed much convincing...) to get back into the "hobby"
I remember going to frag swaps at your house (~10 years ago...?).
This is my first post in RC with a new username, for some reason I can't login with my old one, I decided to login after being away for quite a few years. Reading your story and seeing the pictures have convinced me (not that I needed much convincing...) to get back into the "hobby"
o2manyfish
o2manyfish
Thanks for the condolences guys.
Dave.M. Timers wouldn't really work for my setup. With all my filtration outdoors I have a ton of evaporation. I also use Evaporative cooling when possible to increase my evaporation to top off with more Kalk to keep my levels high.
In the summer time the top off can't be active all the time because I have to turn the top off off when the surge tank runs. So on hot weekends, and hot summer nights the topoff has to run for hours and hours to keep up with the evaporation.
I don't know of a better way (or safer) way to monitor the sump water levels. I have already tried using Ultra Sonic tank monitors and they are just way to finicky. From a mechanical standpoint the dual float switches seems to be the best solution.
Dan, Looking forward the Latkes and Frags in a few months!
Scott821 - Welcome back! Get yourself back up and running and lets start collecting corals.
Lawrence - Thanks.
Dave.M. Timers wouldn't really work for my setup. With all my filtration outdoors I have a ton of evaporation. I also use Evaporative cooling when possible to increase my evaporation to top off with more Kalk to keep my levels high.
In the summer time the top off can't be active all the time because I have to turn the top off off when the surge tank runs. So on hot weekends, and hot summer nights the topoff has to run for hours and hours to keep up with the evaporation.
I don't know of a better way (or safer) way to monitor the sump water levels. I have already tried using Ultra Sonic tank monitors and they are just way to finicky. From a mechanical standpoint the dual float switches seems to be the best solution.
Dan, Looking forward the Latkes and Frags in a few months!
Scott821 - Welcome back! Get yourself back up and running and lets start collecting corals.
Lawrence - Thanks.
reef_of_flames
Member
Awh man, soooo sorry Dave! To put it simply, this sucks!
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