Out of Africa (picture intensive)

[Rennsport]

Very cool build!

 

[leslie hempel]

very cool dude

 

[kinlayan]

byrdman81 , serpentman,Rennsport and leslie hempel thank you for your encouraging comments

Time to add some more pics!

The aquarium was filled for 1 month with NSW and allowed to cycle before I began putting in my fish. As you can see in the following pics, algae started exploding in certain areas as the aquarium matured and even to this day I'im still battling the bryopsis , strange, because my old aquarium never had any bryopsis - it had derbesia but never bryopsis. In the picture below you can see I added some submersible pumps to the back as the pumps and closed loops were not yet installed

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4034892171/" title="02082008204 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2619/4034892171_0c239837e9.jpg"

The first fish to go in was my favourite angel my "œregal""¦. have had for her many years and she is really a special fish. I introduced her first as the other angels are more bossy and I wanted her to claim the territory she wanted and to feel at home before the rest of the gang crashed her space. Next was the Copperband and after that I pretty much started to introduce the fish according to their personalities and types - all the tangs went in at the same time. I had to reduce my numbers as the aggression was high, so I sold some regals and yellows, which while they had cohabited for years together, had now matured and were fighting more intensely.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4034964523/" title="regal by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3490/4034964523_8619e4584f.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="regal" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4035647012/" title="02082008205 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3633/4035647012_d46a8ceee3.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="02082008205" /></a>

 

[kinlayan]

On to some of the filtration, I had a very large sander venturi skimmer from the late 80s that is still an excellent skimmer, but a friend of mine who also has an amazing aquarium told me to come and see his Bubble king 300 external and I was amazed at this skimmer and what it was pumping out, I then decided to order the same model to act as a supplement to my sander skimmer . the bubble king is truly amazing it is much smaller needle impeller type skimmer but pumps out far more skimmate than the older tech venturi skimmer but you would never say so when you see the size of the sander.
As you can imagine with building such a large system , some hiccups are going to happen and my BK300 ext arrived like this in the "œpost"

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4035066147/" title="09072008190 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2426/4035066147_f8120f6e10.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="09072008190" /></a>

Thankfully it wasn't critically damaged on the body and I was able to repair the stand and get it up and running.

Here is a comparison picture of the 2 skimmers the bk is mounted on a stand and the sander is just about 2 metres tall, the yellow container next to it is a sulphur based denitrator reactor-aquamedic brand that I use sulphur in.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4035092661/" title="DSC_2221 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2509/4035092661_bef2a28318.jpg" width="335" height="500" alt="DSC_2221" /></a>

 

[kinlayan]

The two main pumps on my system these are the hearts are an Iwaki and Pan world magnetic drive pumps, both very good and reliable had them for years , only thing is they do transfer a fair amount of heat to the water, and so I have to use a climate control which I will go into a bit later

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4035846650/" title="DSC_2219 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2605/4035846650_fed6fe51fa.jpg" width="500" height="335" alt="DSC_2219" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4035092985/" title="DSC_2223 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2736/4035092985_88a38ae262.jpg" width="500" height="335" alt="DSC_2223" /></a>

Soon I will post more pictures of the filtration , lighting and more importantly the Inhabitants!

 

[kinlayan]

Anyway in the first couple of months , I had major algae issues even with good skimmers which prompted me to add an algae scrubber over my sump area. It is largely DIY and I still am tweaking it but I was getting good enteromorpha growth on it and a lot of nuisance Algae(bryopsis and derbesia) in the main tank died down, the tank was obviously still going through a algae succession and cycling phase , also I switched from using nsw to using artificial salt (aquamedic brand) with R/o water

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42085951@N06/4040173115/" title="algae scrubber1 by Kinlayan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3502/4040173115_fa93b9feb1.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="algae scrubber1" /></a>

 

[Elliott]

thanks for answering all my questions, I'm planning a rather large tank and considering using cement with a large acrylic viewing panel, it would save considerable costs over all acrylic however I'm concerned in the event I sell the house what the removal costs would be. I guess it would have to be literally broken down in pieces. Any idea how thick the walls need to be for a particular depth?

 

[kinlayan]

Yes Elliot , it would be problem selling the house unless the buyer saw it as an asset and wanted it, they can just as easily be converted to freshwater if the buyer doesnt want the intensive maintenance of marine water.

As to your concrete thickness it largely depends on how deep you are going what is the volume and dimensions of the Aquarium you are planning?

 

[Carlos Arouche]

Very interesting Skimmers You have !!

Just one question... do you think the BK300 alone could handle your tank ?

Witch one is more eficient by now ?

Regards.

 

[Elliott]

Yes Elliot , it would be problem selling the house unless the buyer saw it as an asset and wanted it, they can just as easily be converted to freshwater if the buyer doesnt want the intensive maintenance of marine water.

As to your concrete thickness it largely depends on how deep you are going what is the volume and dimensions of the Aquarium you are planning?

large aquariums are rarely considered an asset when selling a property, so it would have to be built with the intention of removing it later, I don't knkow if that's possible with cement, I'm thinking of 5 to 6 ft in depth

 

[Zoanut]

Nice.

 

[kinlayan]

Very interesting Skimmers You have !!

Just one question... do you think the BK300 alone could handle your tank ?

Witch one is more eficient by now ?

Regards.

Hey Carlos , no i dont think it is good enough alone for my volume of water but i can say that the way they are currently running the bk 300 ext pumps out about 17-20 litres a week a of dark coffee skimmate vs 5- 8 litres for the Sander
even though the sander has much more contact time, i think it is the density of the foam and the design of the bk that makes it so much more efficient.That said a Friend of mine has the large atb cone skimmer and boy does that skim very well.

 

[kinlayan]

Nice.

Thank you

 

[kinlayan]

large aquariums are rarely considered an asset when selling a property, so it would have to be built with the intention of removing it later, I don't knkow if that's possible with cement, I'm thinking of 5 to 6 ft in depth

Elliot is does largely depend on design and dont take this as an absolute accurate measurment but going deeper than 5 ft i wouldnt go less than 20 cm thick concrete walls and would prefer 25 cm to 30 cm even this would give you a good safety factor where the concrete is concerned, im sure one could go with less though an engineer generally takes the design and plugs it into a standard formula

 

[espocrespo]

Are there any fish you can collect locally?

 

[asmodeus]

beautiful tank Sir, love the way that you built it from concrete.

 

[poiromaniax]

Well done man!!

Are there any fish you can collect locally?

There are tons of fish that can be collected off our coast (Durban coast - Cape Town has cold waters), a few are:

Gemmatum Tang (super rare in our waters)
Clown Surgeon
Bristletooth Tang
Convict Tangs
Humbugs
Wrasses
Butterfly's (aurigas, vagabond, lunulas, doublesash, Heniochu)
Tobies
Halfmoon Trigger
Black Bean Angel
Goldies
Jumping Bean Angels (rare in our waters)
Lionfish
Leaf fish

Snowflake Eel
Honeycomb Eel
Zebra Moray Eel

and alot more (I dont live at the coast , so I dont know properly)

 

[Keyvan S]

Beautiful tank....:thumbsup:

 

[sltloser]

I really like the idea of a concrete tank, very cool! how has the ATS been working for you? my tank has only an ATS and fuge for filtration, my nitrates are always 0.

 

[kinlayan]

beautiful tank Sir, love the way that you built it from concrete.

Thank you, yes i am partial to the longevity of concrete aquariums