OK! Enough chat...Starting a 1000g+ Reef

[Enderrea]

So i took a trip acrossed the little pond yesterday, Johnathan lives out in the woods! HAAHAAHA
What an awsome tank, Skimmer of Death, That Ca reactor( Holy crap it is Huge!) i just didn't think it would work right, but i watched it. John fired it up when i got there yesterday. His whole set up is really cool.
I hope he found some usable pictures that we took yesterday, even with doing a white balance, could not get a true depicktion of all the colors he has.
My daughter was like, daddy all the way home, "i want a fish tank like that at our house."
from the picuters you see online of that Skimmer, you think wow that is big, in real life it is bigger then me, and i am a big guy, and the stuff that comes out of it. My wife would say that it is like the stuff i give off, but any how that is just her appinion, none the less it is the drack green black goo.
I would not want to be around when it went.
Thanks again Jonathan for having us over, we both really enjoyed it!

 

[jnarowe]

Good to have you here James! It's always nice to have someone over who actually understands captive reefs rather than the usual, "what a pretty fish" comments I get from the Borg.

I have wittled the photos down but haven't had the time to post any yet. I will try sometime today.

 

[Enderrea]

well, i under stand some, but i am by no means much help to any one starting out, I just tell them to come here and check out you guys haahaa. i am learning names of the corals, and the ins and out.
And so it begins, i asked my wife, what the price for a sheet of plexy would cost from from her work........... does she under stand what she is getting into HAAHAAHAAHAA!

 

[jnarowe]

And I appreciate you not mentioning my most recent water mishap! :lol:

 

[Hop]

Ahhh come on... You can't leave us hanging like that

 

[jnarowe]

Well, while James was here, we were screwing around in another part of the house and when we went back to the tank room, I heard that familiar water hitting the floor sound. My new reactor had busted a seam!

Why you ask? Well I had primed it with the valves closed and since I use a gate valve on the outflow, there is no way for me to visually see what position it is in. Anyway, the CO2 continued to fill the reactor and at some point built up too much pressure and busted the seam.

That's what I want to happen when I have a guest over checking out my tank! :lol: Anyway, it gives me the opportunity to put on a bleeder valve for priming as well as start on the baskets.

 

[jnarowe]

So here are a few "rescued" pics. James had just a little bit more lucj than I with the pics but again we were folied by the white balance. I think it really comes down to the quality of the lense since we both have pocket digital cameras that really extrapolate macro shots rather than have an actual macro lense and cannot give the depth of a quality detachable lense.

I don't know why but I like this shot:

Here's a low angle FTS:

And a shot of the right side:

We had adjusted the white balance to make up for the 20K lamps but I had to add blue back in to make these look more realistic.

 

[jnarowe]

Here's a shot of my favorite beyatch, giving us the "come on in and I'll kick your ***" look.

A shot of the JAT: If anyone can ID this or send it to someone who can, I would be quite grateful!

And the troubled elegance:

 

[melev]

The elegance looks good to me in that picture. Thanks for the new visuals.

 

[Bax]

Wow!

You have to post more pics!

The tank is beautifu!

And you skimmer is freakishly huge!!!!

 

[jnarowe]

Marc: It looks Ok in the picture but what you can't see is that third of it is dead. I see four mouths still on it so maybe it will make it.

Bax: It just seems big. It only holds 50g so not the biggest I have seen. Good volume for the footprint though and as you can see, not too easy to clean the 24" neck! I am waiting on a nano magnet to see if that will help.

 

[melev]

A cleaning magnet will work, or you could make a shroud with dark fabric to cover it from direct light. This would be easily removable for inspection, and prevent nuisance algae growth.

 

[jnarowe]

Hadn't even thought of a shroud...thinking...thinking...new idea approaching...a skimmer skirt! I'm rich beyatch! :lol: Drat, I just broke a gear in my head. I'll make it pink and call her Betty.

 

[Enderrea]

I thought that i would leave that to you, remember we had talked about Sharing disasters . Hey there is no better way to learn then watching some thing break. i was just impressed on how well it was working, and seemed to do what you ment it to...... i might have to steel your Idea when making one for my tank.

I don't remember seeing the slim on the J.A.T.

 

[jnarowe]

I don't mind sharing disasters. Even though it makes me look like the newbie I am, I think that it helps those who are jsut getting into the hobby to read stuff like that. Take Weast's worm incident...without reading about that I might have built a PVC rack to mount my rock.

To be honest, with only a couple of modifications and a major reduction in size, this idea could be used on reef tanks where equipment space is limited to under the stand and provide a flexible platform for a variety of mechanical and chemical filtration as well as Ca supplementation.

I would definitely go with a lower pump mount for the "average" user as well as a clamp system so that there is no need to be dealing with all the bolts. I will probably install some kind of clamps when I get the chance.

 

[melev]

It would be nice if you could install a PSI gauge on the Calcium Reactor section, to give yourself a visual indicator of what is happening inside. I don't know if that is feasible or saltwater safe, but it seems like something you'd need.

 

[jnarowe]

:lol: Yeah, I need a few of those! I am sure I could find a SW safe gauge to put on the bleed outlet but it probably would cost quite a bit. Really I should never close that valve all the way, and with my new prime mod, I shouldn't have to anyway. Maybe a ball valve would be better...

I have the bleed line below the water surface also, so I can't get a visual on that either. I could re-direct that to a spot that would be OK for an above water exit also.

 

[Hop]

Check here.


Seems like items 1 and 2 would do the trick for the guage.

 

[rdmpe]

Does that gauge adaptor isolate the brass from the tank water?

 

[melev]

I doubt it. However, if there was a decent length of tubing and it was air tight (as it should be), it would compress the air inside the tubing and the gauge would give off a reading. However, if water got up into it, it might not work.

You might check Aquaticeco.com's site for a reef-safe gauge. Odds are they'd have it.