Storytime again for us fish nerds... Southern Japan and Guam dive/fish trip 2012 :)

Hey guys, sorry I've been MIA from the reef fishes forum for a little while... I've had some work travel, including over a month in Hawaii... not much diving done as my wife and kids came out for a while this time... my kid's first time! It brought a tear to my eye to see my seven year old son take to snorkeling as fast as I did as a child... in the same bay... Hanauma Bay... it was all I could do to keep him near me, except when we saw a free swimming eel which had him stick to me like a duckling with mama!

I did get to fulfill another dream of mine though... I'll admit that Hawaii diving does get boring sometimes after many dives, but not these dives! I dived a rebreather for the first time in my life... with none other than the man himself... Rich Pyle! Usually I catch up with him at the Bishop Museum, but this time we had coinciding days off and so I dived the new Poseidon Cis-Lunar MK6 rebreather he helped develop...





Also taking up much of my time has been my wife and I building our dream house... which will contain my dream tank... The design of my fish room and systems has taken more of my time than the house, and while I'm nervous... I am very excited... I've been planning this tank since I was in high school 20 years ago... :) but it got bigger... dimensions are 8.5 feet x 6 feet x 42 inches high... about 1300 gallons... about 5000 liters for our international folks... with other displays around... setting things up like a public aquarium... fiberglass with two Starphire glass inserts to make it two sides viewable... 3 foot long external overflow as shown... just got this shot from the builder a few days ago... will be just about all sps like my current large display... :beer:



Copps
 
copps said:
Also taking up much of my time has been my wife and I building our dream house... which will contain my dream tank... The design of my fish room and systems has taken more of my time than the house, and while I'm nervous... I am very excited... I've been planning this tank since I was in high school 20 years ago... :) but it got bigger... dimensions are 8.5 feet x 6 feet x 42 inches high... about 1300 gallons... about 5000 liters for our international folks... with other displays around... setting things up like a public aquarium... fiberglass with two Starphire glass inserts to make it two sides viewable... 3 foot long external overflow as shown... just got this shot from the builder a few days ago... will be just about all sps like my current large display... :beer:



Copps
Click to expand...

Nice!!!
 
copps said:
Thanks Yuri... I'm a lifer like many of us... I'll take it to my grave!:fun4:
Click to expand...

Ironic you state that, since this tank is large enough to get buried in.

Nice pictures. Congratulations on your new home and huge tank. I'm sure all of us are excited about how it will look when you are done.
 
So the big tank is impressive, but what is the grand plan? How many tanks ? In how many different rooms ? Independent tanks or centralized filtration?

Dave B
 
Thanks guys...

Dave, like now I will have a dedicated fish only setup, all of my reefs on one central system, and individual QT tanks. I made a list of things I wanted in this our forever home, as I did when we had our current home built. I designed many things I liked into my current system, but with the scale I am going now, and some lessons I've learned in the past eight years, I've wanted some additional things. We have a three level home with a large finished basement. I worked with the builder and left much of the area unfinished, with a large finished rec room spanning almost the length of the house. I wanted all of my tanks on a concrete slab, not on carpet. While I don't have everything worked out yet on the smaller tanks, all of my displays will be at least 3' front to back, and built into the wall facing the finished rec room "man cave". I absolutely hate scraping coralline off of all my glass, but I hate even more seeing coralline covered glass anywhere in my tanks, so on these systems I will have the viewable glass pane from the rec room, and black Kydex wrapping the remainder of the rear of the tank. Every few weeks I will swap the Kydex sheets... I hate seeing a beautiful reef... with a coralline encrusted wall behind it... Having at least 3' front to back, and 6' on the large tank, in addition to the Kydex will make these look more like reefs... and less like reef tanks... you know what I mean? There are a myriad of other things I'm working on with this that I will eventually highlight... I had 17 dedicated 20 AMP circuits put in my the builder in specific locations... more than I'll ever need but that is a problem I want to have. The usage of DC pumps, on my returns and on my skimmer, in addition to six MP60s providing flow in the display, instead of a myriad of energy sucking closed loop pumps, will keep my electric bill relatively reasonable... I'll provide plenty of more info as time allows... :)

Copps
 
cant wait to see the new tank :) very exciting.

did you catch anything deep water when diving with re-breather ? anything cool or note worthy down there ?
 
sweet rig and love the tank...
see any interesting angels?
see any interrupta up north?

posting pics soon I hope?
thanks and great to hear from you...
 
Allmost said:
cant wait to see the new tank :) very exciting.

did you catch anything deep water when diving with re-breather ? anything cool or note worthy down there ?
Click to expand...

Thanks... no one goes deep on their first dives on a rebreather... we went to just 100 feet... but the true beauty of a rebreather is that you are SILENT, with no bubbles coming out... this will make it tough to go back to diving Scuba... the feeling of only hearing yourself breath... and the sounds of the environment, is inexplicable...

humaguy said:
sweet rig and love the tank...
see any interesting angels?
see any interrupta up north?

posting pics soon I hope?
thanks and great to hear from you...
Click to expand...

Thank you! Any interrupta up north? I dived Oahu... the nearest documented wild interrupta are at Pearl and Hermes, over a thousand miles up the chain from Oahu!:)

Copps
 
Hi John, Im excited to see the big tank come together! What's the texture like on the kydex, is it easy to scrape clean? That dive trip looks amazing man, very cool!
 
So good to hear an update! I can't wait to see your big tank unveil itself over the course of the upcoming years. I know you had a great time spending time with your family out in Hawaii and can't wait to see more pics. Take care
 
With a set of the kydex sheets you can try something that I did with my reef. I mounted flat slab rock to the back wall. So you get texture, depth and a place to mount corals. The right half of the tank sits in front of the rock wall. No maintenance at all. Just a thought.

Dave B
 
Good to see you back on the Forum!

Not sure which I envy more, that monster tank or the rebreather dive with Richard Pyle! Pretty awesome!

PS - Don't forget the diving board for that tank!
 
aquaph8 said:
Hi John, Im excited to see the big tank come together! What's the texture like on the kydex, is it easy to scrape clean? That dive trip looks amazing man, very cool!
Click to expand...

You and me both. The Kydex has a rough texture... you don't really scrape it clean... about once a month or so you remove it and clean it with acid... and you could brush it clean in place once a week like some public aquariums do... I may just have two sets.

aandfsoccr04 said:
So good to hear an update! I can't wait to see your big tank unveil itself over the course of the upcoming years. I know you had a great time spending time with your family out in Hawaii and can't wait to see more pics. Take care
Click to expand...

We had an absolute blast... before we had kids, my wife accompanied me on trips to every Hawaiian Island... even Lanai and Molokai... but it's been eight years since we had our son... and eight years since she's been with me to Hawaii... it was nice having them back... here are some shots...

Our son Nick at Hanauma Bay!


And with his little sister Bella at Kaneohe Bay... where many of our fish are collected... :)


A better shot of Bella... four years old going on 18... with my wife Virginia...


Family shot overlooking Diamond Head and Honolulu...


The highlight in Waikiki on Friday nights is at our hotel and right off our balcony... fireworks at the Hilton Hawaiian Village!


Next time I'll get Bella earplugs... :)



While I cannot show them the submarine trainer I work on in Pearl Harbor, I could get them on the Atlantis!



The kids loved it! They can't dive yet... but this was the next best thing...
 
Giant tree we found hiking near Waimea on the north shore...



I met up with Bruce Carlson, previous director of the Waikiki Aquarium... and now retired... here's a shot of the three of us in front of his famous Carlson surge device, which allowed sps to be kept in captivity long before vortechs and high powered pumps...



Some collecting shots... I dived with Matt Ross... a great collector... we did four dives over 100 feet in a day... my first was to 150 on air and I had the quite the buzz going after that one... fortunately the rest were on Nitrox... :)



Flame wrasses were the target that day...



But one of the other highlights were humpbacks... everywhere!





A stop by one of my wholesaler buddies... with a recent Christmas Island shipment...

 
Thanks Roni... nice seeing you this weekend.

o2manyfish said:
With a set of the kydex sheets you can try something that I did with my reef. I mounted flat slab rock to the back wall. So you get texture, depth and a place to mount corals. The right half of the tank sits in front of the rock wall. No maintenance at all. Just a thought.

Dave B
Click to expand...

Sounds cool Dave... send a link if you could... I plan on maybe using fibergrate for this, so it is fully removable... we'll see...

Overboard said:
Good to see you back on the Forum!

Not sure which I envy more, that monster tank or the rebreather dive with Richard Pyle! Pretty awesome!

PS - Don't forget the diving board for that tank!
Click to expand...

Thank you... a few more shots of diving with Rich!







Copps
 
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