Triple-S Fish Ranch - 1700gal 164†x 48†x 56†SPS peninsula build
- Thread starter pmrogers
- Start date
... You'll go blind!
Usernam Invalid
New member
Have been following since the beginning amazing home an even more amazing tank build. Hope to see an update.
biodegraded
New member
All three S are capitalized. Slow is one of them. 
Lowefx
New member
Any updates? More added fish or Corals yet??? You should stream a live web cam 24/7 just so we can look at it whenever, and you dont have to keep updating this thread. If you did that, I think I would always have it on as the background of my TV. hahahaha....but seriously.......
Redrosetuscan
New member
Wow! What a tank, house and sump :bigeyes:
telijah
New member
I love this idea
October Update
October Update
Hi all, reporting in just because it's been a while. Nothing really worthwhile to update on as it's mostly just been maintenance mode with the quarantine tanks, plus a few minor equipment issues.
First up, thanks for all the suggestions on feeding nori. For me, the gutter guard approach was the best solution, thank you CuzzA! The Innovative Marine Gourmet Grazer is nicely done but more wasteful and more hassle for large feedings. The first time I unloaded the gourmet grazer I realized that something like 20% of the seaweed goes to waste due to the thickness of the grid. Cleaning the waste/leftover out after each feeding would add a step I don't have with the gutter guard, and also I would have to separately load 4 or 5 of the grazers to feed the equivalent amount of nori that I can load into the gutter guard in one go.
This round of QT has been rougher than the last couple with no graduations yet:
Fish QT 1: Two yellow tangs are ready to graduate to the display, but they are staying in QT until the 3 other yellows in FQT4 are ready. The one yellow currently in the display is much larger and so aggressive that it seems likely adding just 2 smaller yellows would be a death sentence. Hoping that adding 5 at once will spread the aggression enough that they can stay alive until the big guy gets used to them.
This tank also had 17 green chromis. In all my previous years in the hobby I've come to expect high attrition with new green chromis. However from the new LFS I've been using, my first two batches of a dozen chromis each had nearly 100% survival rate, so I was a bit disappointed when this latest batch dropped like flies. The school of seventeen lost one or two a day until down to just 3 survivors before stabilizing.
Fish QT 2: Blond Naso and Orange Spot Rabbit. The Blond Naso broke out with severe parasites 3 weeks in. He responded well to prazipro and paraguard but has enough scaring on his sides that he may not pass cosmetic muster for the DT. If the scarring doesn't clear up in the next month or two he will be donated to a fellow hobbyist.
Fish QT 4: Two issues with this tank. The next batch of fish, 4 yellow tangs, died within 3 hours of adding to the system. I had done a full reset on this system after the previous batch: drained tank, cleaned it and everything in with bleach, then refilled with DT water and a large ceramic media block that had been in the DT for months. I think I must have failed to rinse the tank or one of the inserts adequately and still had a fatal level of chlorine in the water. Ugh.
After resetting again, more carefully, added a Snowflake Damsel and 3 yellow tangs. The LFS got in a batch of the largest, most striking snowflake damsels I've seen, each nearly 5" long and tall. The one I brought home ate heartily from day one and was thriving for 6 weeks. 2 weeks before graduation, started a cycle of prophylactic paraguard just to be safe. The snowflake either had a severe but asymptomatic case of internal parasites, or the paraguard itself killed him. The second day after starting paraguard he stopped eating, colors bleached out, and he seemed to go blind. He also started twitching and darting. He lingered for 7 days before dying. While I won't stop the procedure of using paraguard before graduation, I have to say this does give me pause.
Coral QT: Knock wood, it may finally be stable. No further bleaching or other issues since the HVAC upgrade, adding a large fox face, feeding coral food 3x week and dosing aminos daily. The display tank is still not where I want to see it before adding corals, though. Coraline algae is growing well on the bottom of the tank and the overflow wall, but still not growing on the rocks. I take this to mean that something still isn't quite right with the water chemistry and/or tank biome.
In other news, had a few more equipment issues:
Dehumidifier: Two months after warranty expiration, the dehumidifier started tripping its circuit breaker multiple times per day. Most mornings the unit is offline and humidity in the room is up around 75%. The service company can't determine the problem as it runs perfectly for hours and nothing is obviously wrong. Fortunately, the manufacturer agreed to replace the entire unit with a new one, free of charge even though it is out of warranty. Still awaiting arrival of the replacement unit.
Washer: Next up, the Whirlpool washer started acting flaky, refusing to start a wash cycle 5 times out of 6, then when it finally will start going, it doesn't inject the detergent or bleach 50% of the time. This warranty was expired by 2 weeks, but again the manufacturer agreed to fix it in warranty.
Abyzz 420: Received the repaired Abyzz 420 rotor back from Germany and reassembled the pump. It pumped water for about 30 seconds, then got noisy and all water flow stopped. The impeller was wallowed out inside where it attaches to the rotor shaft, similar to the way the coupling on the the spectrapure RO/DI had failed. Jeff quickly shipped a new impeller. Unfortunately, during this reassembly I encountered one of the (only) engineering design flaws with the first-generation Abyzz.
When I first disassembled the pump I was surprised to see that the titanium mounting bolts which attach the volute to the pump body were screwed directly into the plastic pump body housing, and not into a captive titanium nut as I was expecting (and as other high end manufacturers like Sequence and Pentair do). My understanding is that this shortcoming has been addressed in the later generation pumps.
The plastic taps were no problem on my first A420, just needed to be careful not to over tighten. But with the second pump, I noticed that the bolts were very difficult to unscrew the first time I serviced the pump. I believe the bolts were cross threaded during initial factory assembly. Was able to get away with 2 reassemblies by being careful about tightening, but by the 3rd time, even a gentle tightening popped the last of the threading. Fortunately, Jeff came through with excellent service again and was able to retrofit helicoils into the taps and get the pump turned around in a week. So now, the skimmer is once again getting nearly its full flow rating of 75gpm rather than the ~30gpm that the temporary A200 was able to provide.
October Update
Hi all, reporting in just because it's been a while. Nothing really worthwhile to update on as it's mostly just been maintenance mode with the quarantine tanks, plus a few minor equipment issues.
First up, thanks for all the suggestions on feeding nori. For me, the gutter guard approach was the best solution, thank you CuzzA! The Innovative Marine Gourmet Grazer is nicely done but more wasteful and more hassle for large feedings. The first time I unloaded the gourmet grazer I realized that something like 20% of the seaweed goes to waste due to the thickness of the grid. Cleaning the waste/leftover out after each feeding would add a step I don't have with the gutter guard, and also I would have to separately load 4 or 5 of the grazers to feed the equivalent amount of nori that I can load into the gutter guard in one go.
This round of QT has been rougher than the last couple with no graduations yet:
- yet another bit of idiocy on my part caused total loss in QT4 3 hours after adding the next batch of fish,
- some mysterious deaths beyond the ones obviously caused by me,
- after the deaths and over a month stable, parasite outbreaks forced a reset of the QT clock
Fish QT 1: Two yellow tangs are ready to graduate to the display, but they are staying in QT until the 3 other yellows in FQT4 are ready. The one yellow currently in the display is much larger and so aggressive that it seems likely adding just 2 smaller yellows would be a death sentence. Hoping that adding 5 at once will spread the aggression enough that they can stay alive until the big guy gets used to them.
This tank also had 17 green chromis. In all my previous years in the hobby I've come to expect high attrition with new green chromis. However from the new LFS I've been using, my first two batches of a dozen chromis each had nearly 100% survival rate, so I was a bit disappointed when this latest batch dropped like flies. The school of seventeen lost one or two a day until down to just 3 survivors before stabilizing.
Fish QT 2: Blond Naso and Orange Spot Rabbit. The Blond Naso broke out with severe parasites 3 weeks in. He responded well to prazipro and paraguard but has enough scaring on his sides that he may not pass cosmetic muster for the DT. If the scarring doesn't clear up in the next month or two he will be donated to a fellow hobbyist.
Fish QT 4: Two issues with this tank. The next batch of fish, 4 yellow tangs, died within 3 hours of adding to the system. I had done a full reset on this system after the previous batch: drained tank, cleaned it and everything in with bleach, then refilled with DT water and a large ceramic media block that had been in the DT for months. I think I must have failed to rinse the tank or one of the inserts adequately and still had a fatal level of chlorine in the water. Ugh.
After resetting again, more carefully, added a Snowflake Damsel and 3 yellow tangs. The LFS got in a batch of the largest, most striking snowflake damsels I've seen, each nearly 5" long and tall. The one I brought home ate heartily from day one and was thriving for 6 weeks. 2 weeks before graduation, started a cycle of prophylactic paraguard just to be safe. The snowflake either had a severe but asymptomatic case of internal parasites, or the paraguard itself killed him. The second day after starting paraguard he stopped eating, colors bleached out, and he seemed to go blind. He also started twitching and darting. He lingered for 7 days before dying. While I won't stop the procedure of using paraguard before graduation, I have to say this does give me pause.
Coral QT: Knock wood, it may finally be stable. No further bleaching or other issues since the HVAC upgrade, adding a large fox face, feeding coral food 3x week and dosing aminos daily. The display tank is still not where I want to see it before adding corals, though. Coraline algae is growing well on the bottom of the tank and the overflow wall, but still not growing on the rocks. I take this to mean that something still isn't quite right with the water chemistry and/or tank biome.
In other news, had a few more equipment issues:
- dehumidifier started tripping its circuit breaker
- filter sock washer problems
- 2nd Abyzz 420 back online after a few more issues
Dehumidifier: Two months after warranty expiration, the dehumidifier started tripping its circuit breaker multiple times per day. Most mornings the unit is offline and humidity in the room is up around 75%. The service company can't determine the problem as it runs perfectly for hours and nothing is obviously wrong. Fortunately, the manufacturer agreed to replace the entire unit with a new one, free of charge even though it is out of warranty. Still awaiting arrival of the replacement unit.
Washer: Next up, the Whirlpool washer started acting flaky, refusing to start a wash cycle 5 times out of 6, then when it finally will start going, it doesn't inject the detergent or bleach 50% of the time. This warranty was expired by 2 weeks, but again the manufacturer agreed to fix it in warranty.
Abyzz 420: Received the repaired Abyzz 420 rotor back from Germany and reassembled the pump. It pumped water for about 30 seconds, then got noisy and all water flow stopped. The impeller was wallowed out inside where it attaches to the rotor shaft, similar to the way the coupling on the the spectrapure RO/DI had failed. Jeff quickly shipped a new impeller. Unfortunately, during this reassembly I encountered one of the (only) engineering design flaws with the first-generation Abyzz.
When I first disassembled the pump I was surprised to see that the titanium mounting bolts which attach the volute to the pump body were screwed directly into the plastic pump body housing, and not into a captive titanium nut as I was expecting (and as other high end manufacturers like Sequence and Pentair do). My understanding is that this shortcoming has been addressed in the later generation pumps.
The plastic taps were no problem on my first A420, just needed to be careful not to over tighten. But with the second pump, I noticed that the bolts were very difficult to unscrew the first time I serviced the pump. I believe the bolts were cross threaded during initial factory assembly. Was able to get away with 2 reassemblies by being careful about tightening, but by the 3rd time, even a gentle tightening popped the last of the threading. Fortunately, Jeff came through with excellent service again and was able to retrofit helicoils into the taps and get the pump turned around in a week. So now, the skimmer is once again getting nearly its full flow rating of 75gpm rather than the ~30gpm that the temporary A200 was able to provide.
Wow Paul,...think you always have the best, updates on your build/system of all the threads that I follow. Your explanations of our current happenings in your system to me,... are always crystal clear to where I don't need to look up everything your talking about or referring to. Thanks, :thumbsup: ---Rick
hobbzz
How do I change this?
Ditto. Much easier than bleach. Don't have to worry about vinegar getting into tank like with bleach. DO NOT mix vinegar and bleach. If you use bleach for other things I would do a rinse between the two to be safe.
biodegraded
New member
Vinegar is fine for cleaning dirt, mild alkaline spots and such, but it is not a disinfectant. In fact, as a hydrocarbon, it's food for bacteria and other wee beasties. That's why it used for carbon dosing by some people who practice that and is cheaper than vodka.
Hydrogen peroxide would be my recommendation, the purer the better. It's a strong oxidizer, degrades into nothing harmful and leaves no residue. Not so strong of an oxidizing agent as chlorine, but a whole lot safer.
Hydrogen peroxide would be my recommendation, the purer the better. It's a strong oxidizer, degrades into nothing harmful and leaves no residue. Not so strong of an oxidizing agent as chlorine, but a whole lot safer.
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