Randy's 180G Reef-Photo Journal

[rdmpe]

I have managed to get a few things done in the last couple of days...

OK, this first picture is for you Melev Look at that beautiful clean skimmer!:thumbsup:

Next some full tank shots. Unfortunately I haven't bought any more live rock yet. So I still have a lot of PVC showing that will eventually be hidden. Also, my light is still sitting on 2x4's. Eventually I'm going to hang it, but I had to get the fans set up first so that I could close the stand doors and still have some air flow through there. The fans are all done finally.

In this next picture two of my lights have turned off. They come on and off from left to right, staggered by 1/2 hour.

In the next pictures you can see the fans I added to the stand for ventilation. These are blowing out and there are two others at the opposite end blowing into the stand. IMO the look isn't great but I can live with it and it's working great as far as air flow through the stand.

This is right after I cut the 4.5" holes.

Then this is after the fans are set up. I painted the cut edges of the wood black so you can't see it when you look at the stand. It is just generally black in there.

 

[rdmpe]

So something really cool for a n00b - - - I have coraline starting to show up in the display tank. A little on the overflow glass, and also little spots starting all over the exposed PVC. So I'm pretty happy about that! Try to contain your excitement over these pictures ... please ... don't embarass yourself by jumping up and down and cheering There really are tiny spots of coraline all over these pipes, if only you could see past the microbubble glare

And FINALLY, what in the world is this snail doing??? It looked like it died while stuck to the glass! It was stretched out like an inch and a half or so. I peeled it off the glass and sat it down in the sand (I couldn't stand to leave it handing there, it was too disgusting). Eventually it crawled off, so I guess it was OK... Has anyone ever seen a snail do this before?

 

[tgunn]

Hey Randy,

Nice updates! I think the fans look just fine on the side of the stand; they're not that noticeable.

Strange snail behaviour there! I've never seen a snail hanging out of it's shell like that. My conch and crabs have hung out quite far, but never a snail. Neat pics none the less.

wow, your Xenia is pretty big..

Nice that you're seeing coraline cropping up! I've got plenty spreading all over my rocks, but next to none on my overflow, back glass and pipes. I wish it would cover over my back glass at this point!

Tyler

 

[rdmpe]

I have tons of xenia! I have some pumping red sea type, and lots of anthelia. I just have to take some time to strip some of it off the main rocks and rubber band it to some rubble. I want to make some small xenia rocks to transfer it onto the back glass and overflow. Also maybe I could get some LFS credit with it...

 

[Cprowler]

Looks good Randy, you did a good job on the fans. They look like they belong and have always been apart of the stand.

It is nice to see some coraline starting to grow, makes you feel like things are really coming together. (I did a little dance for you)


Look'n good

Bill

 

[rdmpe]

Thanks Bill, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I have all of my fans and a heater plugged into the reefkeeper so they are controlled by the water temperature. Here is how I set them up:

Water temp. below 78.5:
Heater on, vent fans off, cooling fans off

Water temp. 78.5 to 79.0:
Heater off, vent fans off, cooling fans off

Water temp. 79.1 to 80.0:
Heater off, vent fans on, cooling fans off

Water temp. above 80.0:
Heater off, vent fans on, cooling fans on

The cooling fans are the ones pictured earlier blowing at the sump and fuge water surface. Hopefully this method will allow me to use some of the heat from the pumps and fuge light to help heat the water when it is cool, before the heaters have to come on. In terms of cooling, the fans have been working pretty well. Yesterday it was fairly warm in the house and the water temp. only got up to 82.2 which I think is OK. The MH are on for about 5 hours right now. I'm going to increase it another by another hour starting today.

I'm not really sure if the MH will continue to raise the water temp the whole time they are on, or if they reach some balance with the cooling so that the temp stabilizes. Right now it seems like the temp slowly rises the entire time that they are on.

 

[gkarshens]

It's looking really good! I had a snail do that once and it freaked me out too. He was hanging upside down from a rock. I thought he was a goner but a couple hours later he moved on.

 

[BrianPlankis]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6548375#post6548375 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rdmpe
So something really cool for a n00b - - - I have coraline starting to show up in the display tank. A little on the overflow glass, and also little spots starting all over the exposed PVC. So I'm pretty happy about that! Try to contain your excitement over these pictures ... please ... don't embarass yourself by jumping up and down and cheering

I wish I'd read this first, I was jumping up and down in excitement at the coralline in the library, tripped over a chair and hurt my arm. My lawyer will be in touch with you....

B.

 

[rdmpe]

Oh no, just what I was worried would happen...

 

[Airman]

I did not dance but I did look at the picture and said, "Wow."

 

[Chappy]

Well I just read this thread from middle to the end, then start to middle (I'm not sure how I got to the middle first), and it felt like I just TIVO'd a football game and fast forwarded from snap to snap. Like a 6 month process into a couple of hours.

Man you took on a huge project for your first saltwater tank. Great job! Most people go from fresh, to salt fish only, to buying inverts for their fish only and realizing that doesn't work, to doing a small reef and quickly running out of room and money, then finally to the big reef. You skipped a bunch of steps, lol.

I'm glad I found your thread, because I'm about to start a similar tank, and was debating how to run the plumbing. Kudos to you for keeping up the posts and documentation. I'm sure you spent way more time and even more money than you thought you would have getting everything ready. AND NOW IT BEGINS! LOL.

Where are you in Central Florida? I'm in Sebastian and there aren't many good LFS around here. My only suggestion now is if you want good live rock, don't try to save a lot of money. Get some Florida aquacultured rock. It's heavy and therefore expensive, but is awesome. There is so much life on it. My last reef tank, I used figi for base rock, then used aquaculture as decorator rock. You can spend hours just looking at the life on it, without even buying corals. My wife loved it, and that is half the battle of trying to justify the cost, lol.

When I finally got to the coraline pic, I said to myself, NICE, I remember my first coraline. Anyway keep up the good work.

 

[rdmpe]

Quick update, too late to deal with pictures tonight. Hopefully tomorrow night...

Chappy - thanks! I'm glad you found the thread interesting enough to skim over the whole thing! I'm in Oviedo, about 15 minutes NE of Orlando. There are some great LFS over in this area!

Well, today was a big day for my tank! I bought about 35 - 40 lbs of really nice LR from another reefer (thanks bakwudzjeep!) and some great base rock to mix in as well.

I got home and moved some stuff around so that I could just sit the rock in the tank - so that's where it is right now. Basically it's all just spread out all over the tank. But I figured that was probably a good idea so it'll get good flow all around it and I'll get to take some time to look at what all is on it. There is a ton of stuff on it. I think it might be having a little die off, there seems to be some blackish stuff here and there that doesn't look like sponge. But there is a lot of great life on it.

Hey Jon - that damn one-eyed Royal Gramma hitchiked in the large rock! I can't believe it but he's here! Kinda scary with that missing eye

So I may have enough rock now to actually finish my rockscaping. Then I can stop worrying about a cycle and start buying some stuff OTHER THAN CRABS AND SNAILS
:dance: :celeb1:
But I'm probably not going to get to work on the actual rockscape until next weekend. I don't mind since it will give me time to figure some things out. It might even be several weeks. Before I start setting up the rock in it's "final" places, I have to remove a lot of xenia. I really want to get it growing up the back glass of my tank somehow. So I think I'll try to get it off the rocks it's on right now w/razor blade??? and try to rubberband chunks of it to rubble pieces and sit in the sand against the back glass and wait...

Another thing I got done this weekend is modding my Maristar light fixture. I took it all apart and replaced the short T5 power cord with a reeeaally long one. I did this because I wanted to be able to plug the T5's into the same reefkeeper that the MH ballasts were plugged into. Well, the MH ballasts have long wires coming out of both ends. The T5 only had a 6' cord so I had to use an extension cord on it (which I just couldn't live with )

I also replaced those loud stock fans with some more quiet fans. Of course, they aren't as quiet as I had hoped once they are mounted in that big aluminum fixture, but they are a big improvement noise wise. It was a messy job because the stock fans are 120 VAC and the new ones are 12 VDC. So I had to figure out how to put a transformer into the fixture and then rewire it, keep the wires away from the super hot MH fixtures, etc. Got all that set up though. The last thing I did to the fixture was to cut out a 3" hole at each fan location. SLS just puts two circles of small diameter holes into the fixture at each fan location. I think this is much too restrictive for any decent airflow. So I went at it with a 3" hole saw and opened it right up! Cleaned up the edges and painted them back, put the fans and fan guards on, etc.

Last thing was I replaced the Ushio 10K with Pheonix 14K lamps. I ran them for about an hour just to try to see how they look. I'm not sure if I'll like them long term or not. They are noticebly less bright than the 10K lamps. We'll see. I have to give them some time to burn in better. So that's about it for now, I'll get some pictures up soon I hope.

 

[UnderwaterExotic]

What is this Reefkeeper that you keep refering to? Also, Awesome job!

 

[melev]

Chappy, at some point let me know when you want to read my 237+ page thread about the 280g reef.

Randy, that is quite a modification you did. I can't wait to see the pictures of it. Did you take pictures during the OLS (open light surgery) or only after completion?

Nice job on that skimmer. I bet it is almost time to do it again. :lol:

 

[rdmpe]

LOL yep, I took preop and postop photos The toughest part was cutting the 3" holes... The hole saw was cutting right at the circle of factory holes, so it really wanted to snag. So I had to go somewhat fast rpm and very light pressure. The aluminum is fairly soft, which helps ease cutting. But the side effect of that softness is that the pilot hole gets reamed out during cutting. So the hole cutter can wander a little bit. But it ended up turning out OK. Nothing a little black paint couldn't fix

And yes, the skimmer needs cleaned again!

The reefkeeper can be found here: http://www.digitalaquatics.com/reefkeeper.htm
They also have a newer model out now. I actually could use two of these things! I really like the newer model because you can set it to turn off you MH if the temp gets to a certain point, possibly saving you from boiling your tank!

 

[rdmpe]

Chappy - I was just thinking about what you said about starting with a FO tank etc. I was sort of planning to go that route as well. I thought I'd do a FOWLR tank. But the more I read around here, the more I decided that I wanted to just start of with a reef tank. I found that I would have to buy all of the right stuff anyway since I would have been working toward a reef in the long run. So began the long slow process of setting this thing up. I always figured it would take 6 months to get it set up, and that's about where I'm at, still with plenty to do just in terms of hardware. Not even counting the livestock that I eventually want.

 

[Chappy]

I hear ya! If it wasn't for this site and others like it, a beginner with a reef is a disaster. I've been at a LFS when a person has come in and wanted to set up a nano reef without knowing anything about saltwater. I sawn a young employee say sure it's easy, then was promptly scolded by the owner. I'm glad he did that, says a lot for his store and responsible reefkeeping.

Anyway, I like your set up. I wouldn't worry too much about the temp. Here in Florida, it's pretty hard to have a reef with that amount of equipment and keep the temp under 81. My reef was at about 82 constantly until I addes fans in the hood. It lowered about 2 degrees...However, my tank was near the thermastat for the AC. When the fan turned on, it blew hot air near the thermostat and the AC kept coming on. LOL. It took me a while to figure out why I kept getting cold in the house. But 82 was fine for all of my critters. Just keep it constant, a 3 degree shift every night may cause a little too much stress, maybe bump up the heater a little. I'm curious what others think about that.

 

[rdmpe]

I was wondering that too. I'm scared that if it starts warmer then it'll just end up that much warmer though! After I hang my lights, I'm going to get a little clip fan thing that will clip to the end of the tank and blow lengthwise between the lights and the water. I think that will help too, especially with added evap. Right now though I'm evaporating about 2 gallons per day I think.

 

[Chappy]

Have you looked for live rock on ebay? Check out this auction. Where are you located in FL? This is in Eustis

http://cgi.ebay.com/Live-Rock-for-S...39639545QQcategoryZ117437QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[rdmpe]

I could drive there to pick it up. But I just bought a bunch and I actually may be all set now. I will not really know until I stack it all up...