Too much time - 90 gallon SPS "lab" build
- Thread starter Decadence
- Start date
avandss
I'm hooked
you know exactly what we think!
jaw dropping!
jaw dropping!
What do you guys think?
There is still a lot to do, mainly the doors.. It's all running seamlessly together though.
Decadence
New member
Thanks guys. :fun2:
I haven't posted in a couple weeks. I have mostly been just sitting back and enjoying the new system but I have also spent a fair amount of time building and adding more pieces to the puzzle as well as fine-tuning everything. Setting up the amount of new surface area that I did required me to add another heater, which I thought would happen.. but it also came with another challenge which I had not planned for. My evaporation rate increased by around 50%. This would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that all of my top-off goes through a kalk stirrer. I wound up with a spike in alkalinity by around 4dkh over the course of a few days. My ULNS did not like this. Some of the corals were a little stressed. My prized 6" Leishman's tabling acro started to RTN in one spot so I had to cut it. A few other corals had a small amount of STN at the base. The worst part was that my yellow butterfly decided that he likes to pick on stressed coral polyps and did a good amount of damage to a few colonies before I could get him out. He is currently in the 12 gallon XL tank but this can't be a permanent home for him as it's only 36" long.
My alkalinity is down to 8.7 right now. It has come down gradually enough to not appear to be causing any additional stress. All of the affected corals seam to be recovering right now. I started bringing it down by running a bypass around my kalk stirrer for my top-off water. I hooked up a jug of calcium chloride to one of my dosing pumps to replenish the calcium which was lost from the imbalance as it was right about where it needed to be. When things have stabilized, I'm going to tune my calcium reactor and run dosing pumps to fine-tune and disconnect my kalk stirrer as the evaporation is going to be too unpredictable now.
As for the new DIY projects, I made this nifty little contraption to go into the GFO reactor to stop the sponge from lifting/allowing a small channel of water to creep by quickly and grind down GFO, making the tank cloudy:
I added the trimmed egg crate to prevent this from happening:
Here is the butterfly enjoying a polyp of one of my favorite corals:
This is the frag rack:
I made a bunch of DIY filter socks for the frag tank and for under the display. The sock under the display is HUGE! My DIY socks perform just as well as anything which I could buy in a store for mere pennies on the dollar.
Finally, this is the DIY skimmer waste collector. Not only does it collect waste, it automatically turns off the pump to the skimmer when it is full and an alarm is set on my RKE. The picture was snapped before all of the wires were neatly bunched, tied and routed. You can also see the neck cleaner and how I did the electrical so that the skimmer pump and neck cleaner are easy to unplug and remove for cleaning. The neck cleaner is one of the best investments that I have ever made.
I haven't posted in a couple weeks. I have mostly been just sitting back and enjoying the new system but I have also spent a fair amount of time building and adding more pieces to the puzzle as well as fine-tuning everything. Setting up the amount of new surface area that I did required me to add another heater, which I thought would happen.. but it also came with another challenge which I had not planned for. My evaporation rate increased by around 50%. This would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that all of my top-off goes through a kalk stirrer. I wound up with a spike in alkalinity by around 4dkh over the course of a few days. My ULNS did not like this. Some of the corals were a little stressed. My prized 6" Leishman's tabling acro started to RTN in one spot so I had to cut it. A few other corals had a small amount of STN at the base. The worst part was that my yellow butterfly decided that he likes to pick on stressed coral polyps and did a good amount of damage to a few colonies before I could get him out. He is currently in the 12 gallon XL tank but this can't be a permanent home for him as it's only 36" long.
My alkalinity is down to 8.7 right now. It has come down gradually enough to not appear to be causing any additional stress. All of the affected corals seam to be recovering right now. I started bringing it down by running a bypass around my kalk stirrer for my top-off water. I hooked up a jug of calcium chloride to one of my dosing pumps to replenish the calcium which was lost from the imbalance as it was right about where it needed to be. When things have stabilized, I'm going to tune my calcium reactor and run dosing pumps to fine-tune and disconnect my kalk stirrer as the evaporation is going to be too unpredictable now.
As for the new DIY projects, I made this nifty little contraption to go into the GFO reactor to stop the sponge from lifting/allowing a small channel of water to creep by quickly and grind down GFO, making the tank cloudy:
I added the trimmed egg crate to prevent this from happening:
Here is the butterfly enjoying a polyp of one of my favorite corals:
This is the frag rack:
I made a bunch of DIY filter socks for the frag tank and for under the display. The sock under the display is HUGE! My DIY socks perform just as well as anything which I could buy in a store for mere pennies on the dollar.
Finally, this is the DIY skimmer waste collector. Not only does it collect waste, it automatically turns off the pump to the skimmer when it is full and an alarm is set on my RKE. The picture was snapped before all of the wires were neatly bunched, tied and routed. You can also see the neck cleaner and how I did the electrical so that the skimmer pump and neck cleaner are easy to unplug and remove for cleaning. The neck cleaner is one of the best investments that I have ever made.
MrSkumFrog
New member
Impressive!
Decadence
New member
Since my son has been a little more "mobile", I have not had much time to do anything with the tank. I recently started having issues with STNing and traced it to a combination of a few different problems, the an increase in nutrients from extra heavy feeding after adding a few more fish and a stuck calcium doser. The calcium reactor will finally be hooked up tomorrow and the dosers will be on light duty. Things have been taking off again after correcting the issues.
Decadence
New member
Automation is awesome. The tank survived a week-long business trip for work and I was able to keep tabs on it while I was away. The girlfriend fed frozen every night while I was gone and the auto-feeder chugged away with dry foods. Everything else worked great. Things have been growing very well lately.
Here is a FTS from a couple days ago:
Yes, that is my son's high chair right in front of the tank. That is his favorite spot.
Here is a FTS from a couple days ago:
Yes, that is my son's high chair right in front of the tank. That is his favorite spot.
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