motomatt86
Member
That's very cool, how many frag tanks total?
Stacked Frag Tank Build (picture heavy)
- Thread starter akitareefer
- Start date
akitareefer
New member
Thank you. We're up to 3 3'x6's and 1 2'x4'
akitareefer
New member
updates
akitareefer
New member
Not too much happening in the way of building. We got some Jakarta corals to fill some room in the tank. I unloaded 156lbs of boxes by myself and checked and dipped them (8 crab feast for the FOWLR tank).... that's 36lbs more than I weight lol
Levels on both tanks are perfect. Alk was a little low but has been adjusted. Phos have held at .04 with 3 sheets of eggcrate, good job reactor!. Heat is becoming a major problem. I installed 3 fans and the temp is still peaking over 81° mid day in upstate ny. We don't have central air so I've literally been waving air in through the sliding glass door. Don't worry we're fixing it. We bought a 1/10 HP chiller for the 3'x6' glass tank (120g).Then we have a whopper of a chiller for the stacked tanks. Unfortunately it requires a temperature controller.... in the snail mail it comes. We are looking at some issues that could arise such as huge amounts of condensation and the fact that our home is like a damp den. These are things we'll just have to deal with slowly. Were considering tarping off the fish room... drilling a vent hole.... dehumidifier.... air conditioner. Who knows what's next. To make things even more hilarious a tube fell out the 55 saltwater drum and water went all over the floor. Later in the day we noticed the drum water was gone and the floor was dry. Immediately went to the basement to see the damage. No sign of water.... because its an addition the water drains through the floor into no mans land. This is good because I'm the queen of dumping water and ruining stuff, who doesn't like to electrocute themselves occasionally.
New ATI and Giesemann bulbs look amazing compared to the stock bulbs. Was thankful for help in the RC lighting section, they helped me pick out the color scheme and I learned so much about the different bulbs... who would have thought a blue + would have so much par. I'm still a MH junky but I'm beginning to like T5s more and more. Got some pretty sweet shots with the T5 coloration.
Tomorrow we pick up our official frag swap tank. 36' acrylic. from some guy off eBay. We've got 3 36" t5 that were hoping will do well over it, poor fixture has been sitting in leftover gear land for a year. I'm doing a frag swap by myself this week so it will be interesting... just signed up today lol. Luckily we fragged stuff a few months ago and frags are grown out and healed. I'm personally not a fan of fresh cut or small frags. IMO there's a better chance of loss in its new tank. I think sps is a little different as far as that goes but I'm really not a stick fan nor do I have the knowledge.
I suppose that's it for today. Dreading our 9 hour round trip car ride through 3 states. I wish all 4 dogs could fit in the car
Levels on both tanks are perfect. Alk was a little low but has been adjusted. Phos have held at .04 with 3 sheets of eggcrate, good job reactor!. Heat is becoming a major problem. I installed 3 fans and the temp is still peaking over 81° mid day in upstate ny. We don't have central air so I've literally been waving air in through the sliding glass door. Don't worry we're fixing it. We bought a 1/10 HP chiller for the 3'x6' glass tank (120g).Then we have a whopper of a chiller for the stacked tanks. Unfortunately it requires a temperature controller.... in the snail mail it comes. We are looking at some issues that could arise such as huge amounts of condensation and the fact that our home is like a damp den. These are things we'll just have to deal with slowly. Were considering tarping off the fish room... drilling a vent hole.... dehumidifier.... air conditioner. Who knows what's next. To make things even more hilarious a tube fell out the 55 saltwater drum and water went all over the floor. Later in the day we noticed the drum water was gone and the floor was dry. Immediately went to the basement to see the damage. No sign of water.... because its an addition the water drains through the floor into no mans land. This is good because I'm the queen of dumping water and ruining stuff, who doesn't like to electrocute themselves occasionally.
New ATI and Giesemann bulbs look amazing compared to the stock bulbs. Was thankful for help in the RC lighting section, they helped me pick out the color scheme and I learned so much about the different bulbs... who would have thought a blue + would have so much par. I'm still a MH junky but I'm beginning to like T5s more and more. Got some pretty sweet shots with the T5 coloration.
Tomorrow we pick up our official frag swap tank. 36' acrylic. from some guy off eBay. We've got 3 36" t5 that were hoping will do well over it, poor fixture has been sitting in leftover gear land for a year. I'm doing a frag swap by myself this week so it will be interesting... just signed up today lol. Luckily we fragged stuff a few months ago and frags are grown out and healed. I'm personally not a fan of fresh cut or small frags. IMO there's a better chance of loss in its new tank. I think sps is a little different as far as that goes but I'm really not a stick fan nor do I have the knowledge.
I suppose that's it for today. Dreading our 9 hour round trip car ride through 3 states. I wish all 4 dogs could fit in the car
akitareefer
New member
EBay. We've tried 2 different vendors. No specific recommendation yet.
dahenley
New member
if you want to get fancy...... you can get custom ones from boston aqua farms.
they made me over 100 with my screen name stamped in them. they are ceramic pentagons. (just something different you know haha)
they are the same price as regular ones, but custom shape and stamp. if i buy more, i thing they give bulk discounts.
i was just curious.
do you cure them before using? i see they arnt ceramic.
they made me over 100 with my screen name stamped in them. they are ceramic pentagons. (just something different you know haha)
they are the same price as regular ones, but custom shape and stamp. if i buy more, i thing they give bulk discounts.
i was just curious.
do you cure them before using? i see they arnt ceramic.
akitareefer
New member
I like the pentagon ones and how they fit together on the eggcrate, thats pretty sweet
We've tried about 5 types of frag plugs/tiles/disks. All of the cement ones we've bought have all been "pre"cured. I personally don't trust it so I soak them in a bucket and change the water regularly.
We have access to a ceramic studio and have made a bunch of tiles. Unfortunately we looked at the numbers and for a few cents more we can order bulk, and can save our time and trouble.
I love the idea of having identifiable plugs/tiles but then again I don't really like frag plugs other than in frag tanks.
akitareefer
New member
So I haven't updated in a while. A couple weeks ago I dropped a fan into the sump...whoops. The surge of electricity must have gone straight through the main pump. The pump was not salvageable so I quickly ran to the hydro store and bought 3 large pumps. I closed down the top tank and ran return tubes to the bottom tanks...real ghetto setup. We ordered another pump but decided to go smaller. The 6000gph was overkill for the system and was adding a ton of extra heat in the tanks. We went with a 4800gph and installed it tonight. In other changes we swapped out a t5 fixture for a diy dimmable LED (RB,NW, and UV) fixture we had sitting around. I ripped off the optics and we put it on the bottom tank so the fixture would no longer heat the tank above (T5's give off more heat than you think). Speaking of heat, its been really hot and we don't have central air. We had 2 chillers lined up before the pump electrocution. When we thought about wasting power on cooling we said, why not cool ourselves too? Luckily my fathers central air was out for a week last year and he bought a bunch of ac units and one with a dehumidifier. We can now keep the tanks at proper temp and the dogs love the AC.
Other things that have happened:
installed a gfo reactor on the "quarantine tank"
Ran out of Alk reagents... ordered a ton of back up for all tests
Having trouble keeping alk high enough, dosing large amount daily testing regularly..dose mag
Replaced GFO media on stacked frag tanks (phosphates were rising)
Glad to have everything running back to normal tonight. Nothing better than feeding coral and relaxing.
cell pictures, sorry
Other things that have happened:
installed a gfo reactor on the "quarantine tank"
Ran out of Alk reagents... ordered a ton of back up for all tests
Having trouble keeping alk high enough, dosing large amount daily testing regularly..dose mag
Replaced GFO media on stacked frag tanks (phosphates were rising)
Glad to have everything running back to normal tonight. Nothing better than feeding coral and relaxing.
cell pictures, sorry
akitareefer
New member
Yes the overflows are pretty gurgly but its not really a problem since its the "fish room". Main goal was to keep it simple and effective, they can handle a lot more water than anticipated. The overflow pipe can easily be pulled out and the entire tank can empty, if needed. We can't hear it (water or pumps) from the kitchen or living room, which is all that matters.
akitareefer
New member
Everythings up and running perfectly. Impressed with the 4800gph danner pump thats been running for about a month, glad we went smaller. Still hand dosing 90ml of alkalinity daily and bi weekly water changes. Been watching magnesium levels deplete so now I regularly dose it. Now keeping a calender diary documenting everything. Spending hours daily maintaining all tanks by myself.. not sure what happened to split duties lol (men are lazy) All while fitting in a full time job and providing food, exercise and plenty attention to 4 spoiled dogs
Last week my mom snagged me a camera from work and had it sent here, joys of having a parent who works at Canon. Got the Canon T3i with stock lens. New lens I want was on backorder :/ Frustrated with the adjustment from Olympus to Canon, especially for white balance.
T3i dog photo
the pack... not just akitas
Last week my mom snagged me a camera from work and had it sent here, joys of having a parent who works at Canon. Got the Canon T3i with stock lens. New lens I want was on backorder :/ Frustrated with the adjustment from Olympus to Canon, especially for white balance.
T3i dog photo
the pack... not just akitas
akitareefer
New member
Glasscages custom 6'x3'x1'. Not the best of craftsmanship but she's been up no problems for a year
Ghetto Man
New member
Wow. I'd love to have something like this. One day...
akitareefer
New member
Outside Rochester
S14Swap240sx
New member
I don't think with those akitas your gonna be having much problems with thieves.. awesome build!
akitareefer
New member
It's not all farm but there are some pieces that we grow out. Some of the stuff we grow are named stuff like bubblegum monster chalice, Jason Fox Jack- O- Lantern Leptoseris, Jason's green lepto, Seasons Greetings Montipora, tons of red cap, high end zoa/paly, dragon soul favia, acans, blastos, lobos, varities of cyphastrea growing like weeds and a wide variety of no name beauties. Been able to double our Florida ricordeas since we started the build. My favorite coral is hands down chalices. Bubbglegum monster was our first chalice, I think I've been able to make 10 frags from it so far. Only sold to friends so far and done one frag swap. It's been really nice to have LED, MH and T5. I move things around and see where they do best. Found that our lobos like LED, favia and rics doing well under T5 and almost everything likes the MH/VHO.
Here's some frags
Here's some frags
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