Soulpatch's build thread (ongoing)

At least you have your wife home to watch the tank. We return home tomorrow night and have been away for 12 days and I don't have an ATO. I basically did a huge water change and filled the tank with hopefully enough water so that evaporation will still be ok for the level of my HOB skimmer and power heads. Tank is still young and actually lost my fish just before we left for vacation.
 
I evap a lot and that swings my salinity too much hence the need for large ato bucket. Close to 3 gallons or so with 32 gallons in a brute can for refill if needed. Way too much invested in corals at this point to have a swing.

And my wife being home for a tank is similar to no one being here. Thankfully I will get alerts on my apex if anything go wrong and can call to walk her through things. My dad is also close by should she need his help. He has a tank as well so at least he knows what to look for.
 
good thing I left work early today to start my vacation. I noticed a frag had been knocked off a rock and that my RW4 had siezed up. I forgot to clean it the past month and it finally gunked up on me. SO disassembled that and cleaned it up as well as reglued the frag to a rock. All is back to normal.
 
So am on vacation but still found myself on here looking. Good thing as I scored a life reef skimmer for awesome price, saw the marine depot sale so decided to get a trigger sump, and also found used ato for new tank.

I haven't even ordered the tank yet. Lol
 
Very nice. Yea, there's always time on vacation to sneak away and surf RC. Glad you found some good stuff for a good price. Getting excited for the build!
 
biocube update.

My ato stayed on one day last week causing the container to empty. I had put enough in there to not overflow the tank BUT there was some kalk residue at the bottom not mixed into the water that got sucked in. Apparently it ****ed off my clams enough to kill them.

No other losses but as I am now home I will be doing a larger water change tomorrow night and potentially switching to the Kessil on the tank to get it stable again. In talking to the wife the biocube will most likely stay and we are going to use it as a QT tank. We will leave some corals in there and a clean up crew for looks I guess but it will be minimal at best once the other tank is up and running.

Big cube update: I made the trip to the store to look at the tank in person as I was up in arms if whether it will be big enough or not (lets be real it wont be in about a year) but I had my wife with me and she reminded me we are looking to move soon and I can go bigger in next house with dedicated fish room. She even mentioned turning the 93 into a display refugium after seeing dennis's build.

Either way I have the following either in hand or ordered:

Kessil A360WE (2)
Trigger Ruby ELite Sump (got it on sale and made me switch from life reef)
Life Reed Skimmer (thank you classifieds)
Tunze 3155 ATO

Have local lumber yard ready to rip me some hickory for the stand once I am ready and the tank should be in sometime this week.

Still to buy:
Heaters
DOS
Sand/Rock from TBS
Return Pump
Plumbing
Ghost Overflow

I think I will hard plumb most of the tank with soft tubbing for the connections to the pumps. A hard manifold will be used for the reactors, eventual UV, and whatever else I would need. Probably get some blue PVC from BRS to plumb with to give it some color against the ruby colored sump.
 
Sorry to hear about the losses. If something can go wrong, it'll go wrong while you're away :(

Glad most of everything else was fin though!

Also, now your parts list looks more like a reefer's. Stuff on sale, stuff from the classifieds, etc. It's just how it goes, for better or worse. Can't go wrong though. Glad you're keeping the second tank around. It's good to have a QT for corals and/or fishes, not just fishes.
 
Just started looking to source some equipment for my 60 or 90(haven't decided on size yet, but leaning toward the 60). The 90 I can fit, but where my wife wants the tank, the 90 won't fit without some modification to my house.

Had an ATO issue myself, except I turned mine off and forgot to turn it back on. Came home yesterday to sizzling in the back chamber. The water level got so low the apex probes were uncovered and it thought the tank was way colder then it really was, and the heater had been on for hours. Needless to say tunred it back on and replaced the heater. It looked fie, but better to be safe then sorry.
 
yeah next tank needs a bit more redundancy then I currently have. 2 heaters, backup pump ready, battery back up for pumps, ect. I will have to wait on the MP40s with battery backups as my budget is swelling faster then my liver at an open bar event...

I have shaved about $500+ buying on sale or second hand thus far but I am also going to spend more then intended on the stand and have not even budgeted for additional live stock outside of the TBS rock. I also need to look into water change barrel and whether I want to go that route. So many things to consider and purchase still like reactors, kalk stirrer or no, ect. Also need to decide if I will just buy another DC8 and temp probe for the cube and leave that hooked up to the apex to maintain some automation... Either that or leave it run as a stand alone tank as it will become a QT/growout tank. All new corals will go in there as well as fish for a bit.

I also need to de rock the cube when I am ready to go that route. I want a very minimalist rock scape in there with some frag racks. That way I can easily catch my fish I put in there to transfer and I can also get rid of some of the algae/snail issues I have by getting rid of some of the rock. I might leave my six line in the tank as a perm fixture just so she can pick as things as needed that come in on frags or such. She is pretty good about that and should thrive in that tank alone

For the new tank though I am going to go a bit risky I think. I want a blue spotted puffer and have read that they are hit or miss with corals. I will most likely get him early and QT him before putting into my cube to see how he acts. If he leaves my corals alone for the most part he can stay and go into the large tank when it is running.

As of right now the larger tank build should start sometime in August. I should have everything in hand to at elast get the stand built and the tank wet by the end of the August. Plumbing will take me a bit as I plan everything out with that one but I am currently hoping for TBS rock in the tank in October for the tank to begin its cycle.
 
Sounds like a good plan. It's great that you were able to save a bit here, because the list will only keep expanding as you go.

If you want to de-rock your cube, you can take your rock out and "cook" it to make it plain, or just dry it out entirely, scrub it off, and re-establish it, and/or you can always look at the marine biopure nitrogen-cycle blocks. People are substituting live rock in their system for a quantity of those blocks, to keep the display minimal and not fill the sump with extra LR. Always lots of ways to do it.
 
ReefWreak said:
Sorry to hear about the losses. If something can go wrong, it'll go wrong while you're away :(

Glad most of everything else was fin though!
Click to expand...

crap happens and is the life we live. I even lost a fish in my FW planted tank while I was gone and am pretty devasted about it honestly. Had that guy for 8 years now and he would greet me daily, eat out of my hand, and even just rest in my hand whenever I dipped it into the tank.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=830+836+2698&pcatid=2698



Also, now your parts list looks more like a reefer's. Stuff on sale, stuff from the classifieds, etc. It's just how it goes, for better or worse. Can't go wrong though. Glad you're keeping the second tank around. It's good to have a QT for corals and/or fishes, not just fishes.
Click to expand...

I ONLY made the move to get anything used since it was the exact model I was looking for and was only used a few months before upgrading. The sump purchase was due to the sale and my inability to really justify the additional money for the life reef sump/refugium to the wife anymore when a trigger elite system should work fine initially. I can upgrade it later.

I am a stickler about tanks though. The store had a floor model that was the undrilled cube when I was there yesterday. I wanted nothing to do with it since it was opened and without water in it would be hard to tell if it was scratched. So now I wait for them to get another one in for me. Might have one today.


And yeah the small tank should be nice to keep. I might move it up in the house to another room so that I can still enjoy it or it might stay right next to the cube. I am undecided. I might even put it in my man bathroom in the basement...lol Going to have to step up my water change station though to handle both tanks. I need some more storage/mixing containers and probably put one on casters so I can move the water around easier.
 
ReefWreak said:
Sounds like a good plan. It's great that you were able to save a bit here, because the list will only keep expanding as you go.

If you want to de-rock your cube, you can take your rock out and "cook" it to make it plain, or just dry it out entirely, scrub it off, and re-establish it, and/or you can always look at the marine biopure nitrogen-cycle blocks. People are substituting live rock in their system for a quantity of those blocks, to keep the display minimal and not fill the sump with extra LR. Always lots of ways to do it.
Click to expand...

I have two pieces drying right now that I removed though I am unsure if they will find their way into the next tank. We have all seen that demonic algae or other item survive being dry for a long time only to pop up again once in water. I am thinking it is better safe then sorry and simply get rid of this rock. I would consider it potentially in my fuge area of the trigger sump but I am still undecided there.
 
soulpatch said:
I have two pieces drying right now that I removed though I am unsure if they will find their way into the next tank. We have all seen that demonic algae or other item survive being dry for a long time only to pop up again once in water. I am thinking it is better safe then sorry and simply get rid of this rock. I would consider it potentially in my fuge area of the trigger sump but I am still undecided there.
Click to expand...

I mean, you can always re-use the rock if you treat it right. Most recommend if you really hated your rock or had demonic plague in it, to just give it a muriatic acid bath, then hose it off. Nothing should be able to survive through that (it'll even eat the surface of the rock a bit). Or maybe it's easier to toss it?

I've learned my lesson about things "drying out" since I have GSP and zoanthids that I didn't intend to introduce into my tank taking over, and they were dry for a month or more.
 
ReefWreak said:
I've learned my lesson about things "drying out" since I have GSP and zoanthids that I didn't intend to introduce into my tank taking over, and they were dry for a month or more.
Click to expand...

This is exactly why I think I will just go new rock and save the trouble. I dont even want any spores to enter my DT should I put into my sump area.

Sure going TBS rock I will have some algae and unwanted pests but at least they are unknowns. I KNOW I have issues with my current rock with algae so best to not bother.


On a side note I found what has to be the largest vermitid snail last night. I could easily put the tips of my foreceps into the hole it was sticking out of. I cant get to it easily though to kill it so probably just going to glue the hole closed and be done with it.
 
Exactly why my wife and I went BRS dry rock instead of live rock. my brother in law and the LFS both told me I was dumb for it because of the cycle time, but I also will not have a tank with multiple worms and who knows what else pests that he is fighting right now.
 
Justintegra said:
Exactly why my wife and I went BRS dry rock instead of live rock. my brother in law and the LFS both told me I was dumb for it because of the cycle time, but I also will not have a tank with multiple worms and who knows what else pests that he is fighting right now.
Click to expand...

It's a debate Soulpatch and I frequently have across threads (and had in person). To each their own.

I thought I started with dry rock, but still ended up with zoanthids and green star polyps growing all over my SPS tank. Also I was just reading that apparently many algae spores carry in the wind, so even if you're astoundingly isolated from the ocean, there is a chance that you will still end up with spores from some ocean algaes that can in theory grow in your tank, so there's no such thing as a perfectly clean tank. I got super lucky that I started a refugium with my tank, so any excess nutrients were immediately picked up by the skimmer and/or macro algaes and removed from the tank. At least I attribute some of my success to that.
 
That sucks about your Tridacnas, the only thing I lost after being on vacation was a hermit crab that got stuck in a hole in one of my over hanging rocks, I saw him do a push up a couple days after we got home so he was alive lol. I got him out and placed him on the sand bed, guess he was near death because my Nassarius snails ate him the next afternoon. But I did guess right on the amount of water that would evaporate in 2 weeks and what looks like Dino or Cyano has disappeared and looks like I have a small pod population now.

I can't wait to see your new build thread, I liked watching yours and Clown's thread, lots of great information and pictures.
 
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