Tank of the Month - July 2005

[Justin74]

Simply the most natural looking setting Ive seen short of National Geographic! I think I 'd be to tempted to slap on a wetsuit and mask though!
Seeing the glory of you non-biotope specific tank, I cant wait for the sequal!
Amazing system and soo well deserved for TOTM! Thank you for sharing your insperational tank and valuable tips, well done!

-Justin

 

[jnarowe]

Nice artwork...are you the lost son of Salvador?

 

[MargaritaMan]

Great tank. The one thing you have that I have never seen before is lighting that is strategically placed, that is, not equi-distant from each corner or edge. It is that aspect that I think gives it the natural look of sunlight beaming through the water. Your thinking outside the box!!! Very cool. Jeff

 

[SFlogic]

nice tank!

 

[jbaflyer]

I think he is hiding his real profession, he works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium during regular business hours. Impressive mechanical setup with proper allowance for access space. Them employment of color and texture contrast is great. For you reefers, read up on landscape plant design and or floral arrangement. The basics of spatial layout and color contrasting can be emloyeed in reef setups endlessly. I enjoyed reading the article at 12:30 in the morning.........I guess I have an addiction.

 

[jnarowe]

jbaflyer

And it's not even on your web site...kiteboarding looks awesome. How many times have you landed on, well, NOT water???

Cool cat--I just lost mine. Had her for 20 years. Now I just have a friggin' wife and kid. Time for a REEF!

 

[appellativo]

tuan, your tank is out of the ordinary and breathtaking. when I first looked at it I noticed the depth/3D effect in your aquascaping, and it looks like a natural reef the way you cant detect a specific background and also the way the 'sunlight' penetrates the water. also your setup is quite impressive (hardware/plumbing). kudos to you.

 

[chriscobb]

Totally Awesome.....Any pics of the plumbing work?

 

[davidh202]

I just registered on RC and don't even have my tank yet. Your tank was the first hit I viewed and I am blown away!! I only hope
I will be able to accomplish a fraction of what you've done.
Absolutely stunning and well executed.

 

[digital_dragon]

Tank looks awesome. Great job and congratulations on winning Tank of the Month.

Earl

 

[salineh2o]

Sa- wa- dee-cap!!!

Your tank is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have inspired me.

Thank you!!!!

 

[reefD]

huge!!

 

[blitz552]

awesome

 

[ReefWaters]

tlp,

could you shed some more light on the details of your DIY kalk reactor?

What is the bucket to the left for?
Does the par. pump pump water through the bucket continuously?
What is the pump being fed by? Your RO unit?
Are you using any kind of mixer in the bucket or are you mixing by hand?
You mention that any additional make up water is handled by the computer. Does it flow through the kalk reactor or dump straight into the sump?

Sorry for so many questions. Im just interested in maybe building one myself and would like to know if you basically copied a commercially built acrylic reactor or made up your own design. Any details on how the path the water takes from start to finish and how much you have to play with it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Moretank]

Hi Tuan,

A well deserved TOTM, beautiful tank.

A question, How often is your water change interval ?

 

[tlp]

tlp,

could you shed some more light on the details of your DIY kalk reactor?

What is the bucket to the left for?
Does the par. pump pump water through the bucket continuously?
What is the pump being fed by? Your RO unit?
Are you using any kind of mixer in the bucket or are you mixing by hand?
You mention that any additional make up water is handled by the computer. Does it flow through the kalk reactor or dump straight into the sump?

Sorry for so many questions. Im just interested in maybe building one myself and would like to know if you basically copied a commercially built acrylic reactor or made up your own design. Any details on how the path the water takes from start to finish and how much you have to play with it would be greatly appreciated.

The reactor is just one of the bucket. I have a float valve in there to control RO water addition ensuring the bucket is always full.
A maxijet powerhead is suspended from the lid with some strings, to about 3" from the bottom, with the nozzle pointing down. This pump is on a timer, ON for about 10mins every 6 hrs or so, to stir the content.

A peristaltic pump takes water from 6-10" ish from the top of the surface and drip into the sump continuously, except for when the mixing pump above is on, when it stops for about an hour to allow the solution to settle down.

Periodically I would just throw in a cup full of kalk powder to top it up. That's it essentially. If I was flash I would add a conductivity probe to ensure that the solution was saturated to allow dosing at optimum level.

A float valve in my sump calls for additional top up (via the IKS computer) when the dosing rate above doesnt' meet the evaporation demand, in which case another small powerhead (throttled back) add in additional RO (or kalkwasser depending on calcium demand of your tank).

The second bucket is just my 'spare' RO container for miscellanous use. When I was making my own phyto this bucket hold the pre-mixed solution for phyto production, with it's content being passed through a UV unit constantly to ensure sterilisation.

 

[tlp]

Hi Tuan,

A well deserved TOTM, beautiful tank.

A question, How often is your water change interval ?

Not very often. Tend to be 4-5 months depending on my work schedule. I change the water mainly because I want to remove the detritus settling at the bottom of the sump. Not noticed any other differences to be honest. It's such a huge volume of water (and salt) that it takes a good week before I can make up enough for a change.

 

[ReefWaters]

Thanks for the reply Tuan. Sounds pretty easy.

Do you have to adjust the Kalk drip rate or your Ca Reactor very often to keep your Ca and Alk levels stable or is the volume so big that it just stays stable without swings?

Also, can you provide a link for the IKS Computer your using? I can read up on it there but it sounds like it does everything and more.

Thanks again and keep up the great work...or fun should I say.

 

[tlp]

Thanks for the reply Tuan. Sounds pretty easy.

Do you have to adjust the Kalk drip rate or your Ca Reactor very often to keep your Ca and Alk levels stable or is the volume so big that it just stays stable without swings?

Also, can you provide a link for the IKS Computer your using? I can read up on it there but it sounds like it does everything and more.

Thanks again and keep up the great work...or fun should I say.

I don't adjust very often. As the whole system of 5 tanks is effectilve outside in terms of ventilation a lot of evaporation happens so a lot of kalk is added so the pH and Ca/Alk levels are generally quite high. To tune the levels I simply increase /decrease the flowrate of the calcium reactor supplementing the tank.

 

[tlp]

IKS: http://www.iks-aqua.com/html/engl/aquastar.php

It's similar to other aquaristic computers really, except that it has the ability to have whatever modules you like, so for me I actually have 4 pH probes.