Triple-S Fish Ranch - 1700gal 164†x 48†x 56†SPS peninsula build
- Thread starter pmrogers
- Start date
Timfish, that is an excellent idea! I think I'll give it a try. Though I wonder how much F is in the FRP. Fiberglass isn't usually tap-able, is it?
Thanks again, Epicreefer. This is very helpful. I really don't want any banding or spotlighting, so I think I'll go ahead with 11 now. Pictures of the 6k system would be wonderful; thank you so much for offering.
dotcommer, Eauturquoise, Haksar, thanks for joining!
owenspackman
New member
wow, absolutely beautiful home and the start of a truly exceptional build. I will be tagging along! Good luck!
I haven't worked with fiberglass so this is speculation, although on based on my experience with acrylic, PVC and ABS, but my guess is if panels or pieces are thick enough, = or > 1/4", and the bits are kept cool it is. Also fiberglass fibers are added to a lot of other stuff beside fiberglass resin to give added strength so my perception is FRP is more like PVC or ABS than the more brittle fiberglass panels. I would certainly recommend practicing on some scrap first but if you tap it by hand a hand sprayer should keep it cool enough and if you go slow using a drill a hand sprayer should still be serviceable but whoever is operating the hand sprayer will probably get cramped hands. It's also very important to keep the tap clean as they gum up when used with composites or plastics. On a half inch piece of acrylic I will stop and clean of the tap several times.
And thank you Etannert.
Tagging along and looking forward to learning from this amazing home reef adventure
Thanks for joining the thread, owenspackman, benjc, bilk, tbettis. Yeah, losing the fish was hard; I still get a twinge occasionally when I think about the old tank.
I believe they are. I'm assuming they are okay since they are before the membrane and DI, and also because the lead tech I worked with at Spectrapure to select the system was aware that it is for a marine reef aquarium.
Weekend progress - rock murder
Weekend progress - rock murder
The rock in my 750 was beautiful with a rich variety of sponges in yellow, green, orange, mustard, red, and gray, along with featherdusters, tunicates, and so on, but it had small amounts of valonia, hydroids, and planeria. While the flatworms haven't been bad since 2008 and the valonia and hydroids never grew to problem proportions, I don't want to take any chances with the new tank.
So this weekend I started the process of reincarnating 1200 pounds of rock.
Before pulling the rock
Rock, 15 rose BTAs and a mess of cabbage, tree, and toadstool softies. Not looking too bad for 6 months with zero maintenance other than top-off and the occasional alk supplementation.
First batch pulled out for bleaching
Ouch, this is harder to do than I thought it would be. Not the labor but the act of killing the rock. Scads of pods scurrying around looking to get back to the water, and hundreds of the little highlighter-yellow sponges (or maybe tunicates) that I find especially neat. Even the valonia look kind of cool in small quantities.
30 hours later, bleaching done
I feel both a sense of accomplishment, and slightly sick to my stomach over killing such beautiful rock. Acid bath, 2 weeks drying, and lanthanum chloride soaks still to go.
I didn't pull any of the rocks with the anemones or larger softies. Need to sort out homes for these guys so I can proceed with removing the 750 and building out the fish room quarantine systems.
Weekend progress - rock murder
The rock in my 750 was beautiful with a rich variety of sponges in yellow, green, orange, mustard, red, and gray, along with featherdusters, tunicates, and so on, but it had small amounts of valonia, hydroids, and planeria. While the flatworms haven't been bad since 2008 and the valonia and hydroids never grew to problem proportions, I don't want to take any chances with the new tank.
So this weekend I started the process of reincarnating 1200 pounds of rock.
Before pulling the rock
Rock, 15 rose BTAs and a mess of cabbage, tree, and toadstool softies. Not looking too bad for 6 months with zero maintenance other than top-off and the occasional alk supplementation.
First batch pulled out for bleaching
Ouch, this is harder to do than I thought it would be. Not the labor but the act of killing the rock. Scads of pods scurrying around looking to get back to the water, and hundreds of the little highlighter-yellow sponges (or maybe tunicates) that I find especially neat. Even the valonia look kind of cool in small quantities.
30 hours later, bleaching done
I feel both a sense of accomplishment, and slightly sick to my stomach over killing such beautiful rock. Acid bath, 2 weeks drying, and lanthanum chloride soaks still to go.
I didn't pull any of the rocks with the anemones or larger softies. Need to sort out homes for these guys so I can proceed with removing the 750 and building out the fish room quarantine systems.
But now you will know exactly what is on it and what is not.
sfsuphysics
Active member
Exactly! I have hydroid colonies that are running rampant in my tank on rocks and was trying to find ways to kill them and only them but seems like death by bleach might be the best bet.
Not sure why the acid bath is needed though. Just in case anything survived? Or to break down whatever carbonate based life/structures might still be left.
offroadodge
New member
tagging along here from right down the road in Cedar Park. I realy like my 200G until I saw that u can fit 8+ of my tank inside your new one. I will tag along on both sights to see the progress. View looks awesome atop the hill.
Good questions. Mounting corals in the lower reaches will be a pain, no doubt, and require bending in at the waist and immersing most of the upper body. Not looking forward to this part. Moving things and general maintenance I'm not too concerned about given the right tools.
I worried a lot about this exact issue when I did the 750, and had it made 32" tall rather than 36" because that was the deepest I could reach with my arms. But I realized at one point after the tank stabilized that it had been over a year since I'd needed to reach more than about 20" into the tank (as part of pulling out the Streams for cleaning).
That is the plan and the hope! When I was deciding whether or not to kill the rock, my main argument against was that it would be wasted effort in the end: that even with 2 full months of quarantine for every coral, rock, snail, etc., I would still eventually end up with all of the common pests, and that only good husbandry is going to keep them in check. But the main counterpoint and what ultimately made me comfortable with using dead rock is that in 15 years of running my 205 reef I never had even a single aiptasia or majano.
The rock reincarnation thread I linked earlier has much more detail on this, but the main reasons that resonated with me were: 1. remove the outer layer of rock that may be particularly phosphate rich, and 2. open up the pores of the rock for better bacteria hosting.
I'm also hoping the acid will remove the residual organic bits, in particular the valonia nodules that survived the bleaching intact. They are bleached white, but still have the bubble shape and moisture inside, which I am very fearful might yet contain viable spores.
The teeth or crenelations as Dave.M.likes to call them repel the oily layer your trying to get to flow cleanly over the weir, if there are no teeth the oily layer flows over as there's nothing stopping them, for sure the thinner the water flow the cleaner it will flow with maximum amount of proteins headed to the skimmer.
I hear you on your rock reincarnation, I'm about to do it for the first time and it is like a mini moral dilemma for sure.
All the best.
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