Ok I have to share this. This actually made me LOL:

http://www.funlol.com/15983/Build_your_own_chopper.html

Admittedly, a bit of a stretch from reef tanks to R/C helicopters, but the idea feels about right.

It's not a deal-breaker at least man. I saw the setup and you should be ready to cycle and get on with it. The wave thing would be nice but at least you can sort out that issue WHILE the tank gets it's reef on.

2x MP40's, Turbelle Stream2, Korallia Evo 1400, Barracuda return pump via 2x 1" return pipes. Guesstimating about 12,000 GPH or about 50x turnover. I change up the settings on the Vortechs fairly often: going with a wave for awhile and then to erratic movement for awhile. I don't really have many SPS in this tank so it's probably overkill, but some of my LPS have really grown into large colonies, so it's not really too much flow. I use the night setting on the Vortechs. I think the LPS appreciate some lull time.

So I guess it's not the controller. Next step is get them out of the tank take them apart and see what's going on inside.

FWIW it does have the 3rd LED for "pump on" ad yeah it's indicating on.

Is all this worth it? I kinda doubt it.

Tomorrow .. I'll poke some more at it tomorrow. Today, I'm just done. Tomorrow will be the turnaround day that makes all the crap of the last 3 weeks seem like a distant memory. Or .. not. Time will tell.

Tony, is the light on on the power supply? (I think its the 24v "fuse" that lights up or something like that.) if not its probably shot, I had one go that way and had to replace the power supply.

Also you could try reversing the master and slave to see whats up there or if you have another controller, hook that up as well as it will still run the pump without the proper controller.

So some good news and some not so good news for me. I finally got the waveboxes out and it looks like after cleaning the impellers they're both off and running again. I'm impressed by how little gunk it took to stop them dead in their tracks. I'm guessing they were probably fine when they were on and warm, but when I turned off all the pumps to add sand the other day, they cooled off and the contraction was enough to cause a problem for starting up.

So that's the happy news, they're still out of the tank on account I need two people to do the job of putting them back in and I'm never home when Linda is home and she's never home when I'm home because of the whole one parent is home with the kids all the time kind of thing wheeeeee! So yeah that's not done yet but whatev'.

The sucky news is that although I took some time and resoldered the power plug on the 6100's driver (I took pics as I went, it's a real MacGyver job - I cut up and used pieces of a paper clip to jury rig replacement pins for the plug and then soldered those in - I'll post them later) .. it turns out the broken plug was the least of the problems. Roger Vitko had suggested (about a month ago) that it might be worthwhile to replace the impeller but alas it's not the driver, it's not the impeller but it does seem to be the motor block. I've tried every other combination of motor blocks, impellers and drivers and everything works except when this one motor block is involved. Que'lle dommage. The silver lining, if it is one, seems to be that J&L has replacement motor blocks in stock (according to the website anyhow, in the meantime I've fired off an email and will see what they say back). The not-so-silver lining is that depending on which model I need (I'm a little unclear on this) it's either $255 or $270. Ouch. $325ish to buy the newer model 6105, it's almost a no-brainer not to even bother replacing the motor block.

So yeah it's not real clear to me at this point what's the better thing to do. Any advice?

I would find another wavebox used. I've seen them pop up every once in a while. That's what I would do. Sucky luck man.

Yeah, thanks, that's sort of what it's going to come down to at this point although at least it's not a wavebox that's the problem, just a stream on its own. Coleus on here had a 6100 for sale for the longest time, it's too bad mine decided to crap out a month after that one finally sold.

After poking around some more on the net this morning I've figured out the difference between the $255 replacement motor block and the $270 replacement motor block ... and of course it's the $270 one that I would need since it's the older style stream that I have. Funny that the older one is the more expensive but I think that's the explanation - it turns out you can't even get these from tunze.com anymore - totally discontinued. So the options are buy used, there do seem to be a few for sale over at RC at the moment, buy something else (Time to get a Vortech???) or buy the replacement motor block. But that last option seems like a non-starter. Check it out:

$270: http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/tz...+6101.015.html

$332.35: http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/tz...mp+-+6105.html


Unfortunate timing with the holidays around the corner and a recent streak of rather expensive unfortunate luck. I'm really feeling squeezed at the moment... for now I might just have to make do with whatever I can muster out of the junk drawer. Don't be too surprised if the next FTS there are about a hundred itty bitty powerheads all over the place in the tank .. I knew I was hanging onto all those things for a reason even if said reason wasn't entirely clear at the time..

Let me know if you don't have enough ittt bitty powerheads. I have a box of 2xtunze 6055s (with controller), and some koralias and I think there might be a noisy 6105 in there too. Noisy as in it rattles a bit. They are just collecting dust at the moment.

If I was you, I'd just make due for the next little while, and then replace it with a new one. Like you said everything for it is discontinued, and what happens if you pay the $270 and something else goes a few months later?

So what if you have some extra powerheads in the tank for a while, really what does it impact aside from the aesthetics of it all?

Yeah unfortunately the sad part of that is that the powerheads are in the spare drawer for a reason - most of them are either tiny (the Hagen 201's and 301's don't even put out enough flow for the 40g carpet tank but I use them there on a wavewaker just to shake things up a little in there - but in a 280g they may as well be eye droppers) and then there's a fairly large collection of Maxijet 12's which would be not so bad except that they almost all need new impellers. The impellers only last so long but the motor drives on THOSE appear to last forever and ever (Tunze maybe needs to take lessons from Maxijet?!)

With the sump return, waveboxes and one 6100 there's probably enough flow to get the tank through the cycle and just be a FOWLR for a little while. I can accept not having corals at this point it's not any different than what I have going on right now anyhow. Or maybe I sell one of the waveboxes after all and put that towards the purchase of something else.

Kien - thanks for the offer, I'll msg you offline and we can talk some more :)

I'm really anxious to hear some good news for a change man this sucks. It doesn't seem worth it to replace that motor block and I hear ya on feeling squeezed. Best to just make do. Even a couple Koralias new would be good for a while but sounds like Kien has you covered. There's always that evil other option and that's to shift towards Vortechs...

Yes, good news would be awesome!

Also you need to December FTS! How far away are you from cycling and adding livestock?

I assume there's a cycling starting now but I haven't measured anything. My plan was to start taking more proactive steps once the sand was all in. I've got about half the sand in there now and it's still cloudy but part of the problem is the sand is all sucked into the back half of the tank because the pumps aren't all there to balance it all out.

Anyhow once the sand is all in and I have the ATO going (so that salinity is stable) then it's just waiting out the cycle. I have some time off after next week and I was hoping to have the livestock transfer happen when I'm off but we'll see how that goes I guess.

Oh .. speaking of ATO. I have this vague recollection of turning on my RO/DI last night to top off the tank and I have no recollection of ever turning it off before I went to bed. I, uh ... crap, nobody's home right now. I, uh .. yeah shoot I'm going home for a quick errand !! :eek:

I hate it when that happens! I was out once with the family...we were at one of the LFS and suddenly my phone alarm goes off. Wife asks what that was for and I reply we gotta get home FAST! Got in the door as my topoff tank was just starting to show meniscus!

Yeah that was a bit of an "oops". There was indeed water on the floor. Turns out last night I must have bumped the RO/DI line because it was just dripping onto the floor and the sump water level was still way down. :lol: DUH! Oh well, with the tapwater being so cold right now the RO/DI's production is WAY down and there was surprisingly not as much of a puddle as one might have thought there would be for 12 hours of RO/DI dripping onto the floor.

So naturally instead of turning it off, I just put the tube back into the sump and left for work again (after I wetvac'd the floor some). In the meantime I have a really nice clean spot on the floor in the closet next to the tank room. The one silver lining is that now I know where I need to shore up the silicone along the floor to help contain floods. The front edge of the tank is completely dry so the silicone there either did the trick (or the water didn't run that way).

Tony,

I am just in the process of cleaning up my 2 6215 waveboxes to get ready to sell them. Would you be interested in those?

Mitch

Well .. things progressed a little since last update. Every step has a minor stumbling block though. Some days all you can do is laugh.

We'll start off with a Boxing Day FTS:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1671-0.jpg

Tank is in super need of some colour. Dry rock and new sand just looks so sterile.

The lighting is in 3 phases:
1) Initial dusk/dawn is provided by the 2x24w t5's left of centre. They run 10:30 to 22:30.
2) Next up is the centre 400w and the 4x54w t5's. They run from 11:15 to 21:45.
3) Highest intensity with the left and right 400w's from 12:00 to 20:00.

All 3 halides are Radiums. The middle is a standard pulse-start (ANSI M137 or whatever it is for 400w pulse-start). The outside two are SonAgro ("HQI"). You can tell the middle light has a slightly blue hue to it, the outside two are a super crisp white.

The 54w T5's are 2 SuperActinic and 2 454's. The 454's are neat choice. Almost like a brighter-than-usual actinic, a little more blue than purple like a standard actinic would be.

The outside two halides aren't on right now because I ran out of timers. You wouldn't believe the number of timers that I've bought that are faulty out of the box. I'm up to around 3 now that I've had to return to Rona. And one more now. Crazy, they must have had one super bad shipment. Anyhow so I have to go get another freakin' timer before those lights can be on automatic. Grumble.

Some shots of the light stand with the t5's installed:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1677-0.jpg


http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1678-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1679-0.jpg


You can sort of see the difference between the SuperActinic and the 454 here. See how there is a purplish tint to the second lamp, that's the actinic, the other is the 454.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1680-0.jpg

Also got the ATO installed. On the advice of Chin, the ATO empties into the skimmer intake to keep it clear. This meant for the first tank in 12 years I'd use a pump based top up instead of the usual $10 Home Depot humidifier float valve (which I'll say has NEVER failed me in 12 years. I would have done the same for this tank but I like the idea of an automatic rinsing of the skimmer air intake - I find I need to clean the air intakes of my other tank skimmers about every 2 weeks, there's enough gunk buildup in those to justify doing so.)

Sensors on the left side of the sump:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1672-0.jpg
(Ignore the messiness, I want to clean the glass when I do a water change but since the tank hasn't finished cycling, I haven't yet done so. No water changes until I get a zero nitrite reading! Last night it was still at 0.2 so it has a while to go yet.)

Controller sits on the right side of the stand:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/..._img_16730.jpg

And the mini reservoir sits under the sink. I had to use a bucket with a float valve so that the RO/DI reservoir (which is currently too far away) can drain into the bucket but not spill over, and then the pump can sit in this bucket and go feed the skimmer air intake line when it switches on.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/..._img_16750.jpg

Installing a top off on your tank isn't supposed to cause this:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1676-0.jpg
This happened when I was stringing the wire and tube from the top off pump over the sump area and I was cutting electrical tape to hold it all together so it wouldn't be such a gong show of a rats nest of wires and tubes. Actually you can see the scar on my pointer finger as well. That's the gash I gave myself trying to install the Zeovit reactor about 2 weeks ago. No word of a lie, I cut my finger doing that too. Well, it wasn't so much the reactor itself to blame but rather the plumbing needed modding, and the previous plumbing was glued to the pump, so I was trying to break things apart without breaking the pump itself. I succeeded in that goal if nothing else.

Guess that's about it. Well I guess I did modify my zeovit reactor so I will take some pictures of that later. I'm trying the zeovit 14-day cycle thing but I have to say so far it's not looking like it will be ready for fish in 14 days. Part of the problem though is self inflicted, between holidays and sick kids and a pet needing surgery this last week, it took me longer than I wanted to get the lights on timers and I don't think the cycle can really begin in earnest until there is light. Now that at least phases 1 and 2 happen on the light cycle, I have noticed the nitrite reading start to spike. So while this means the wait has to continue, at least there is a sign of stuff actually happening.

Unfortunately in my other tanks things continue to remind me that we need to shut down. On Christmas Day yesterday I lost another clam in my serial clam death event. This is what I hate about clams: if you lose one, unless you get it out quick enough, whatever kills it spreads to the others. I've lost about 6 in the last two months. I am hoping this is the last one. This one in particular surprised me for lasting as long as it had: over the summer it sustained a mantle injury. It had been showing signs of recovery lately but then bam, just like that, it too checked out, all of a sudden yesterday. Ugh. I'm depressed about it but I guess these things happen. I feel like I'm paying the karmic price of not having a single clam death in 5 years prior to this fall. Maybe old age is a factor? I somehow doubt it but if I pretend it is then I sort of feel a little less bad about it.

Oh and you can see the Tunzes on the Wavysea's have been taken out. I had been leaning toward removing them for a while on account of a few reasons:

1) They sat way too far into the tank because of the Eurobracing. Apart from the obvious visual nuisance of two outboard motors hanging into the tank almost 8" off the back wall, it was ruining the scale of the tank as well. It made the tank feel really small and well .. while it's far from a big tank by many standards, it is the biggest tank I will ever attempt so long as I live in this house. (Well, ok, never say never, I suppose ... but realistically the odds of that ever happening are very slim.) I totally resented that they made the tank seem small.

2) Sand. I have sand after all. In the beginning I totally intended on going BB with this tank. But after putting the rock in, the very rough silicone edges on th bottom panel were visually disjarring so I elected to go with sand. And "lots of flow" and "lots of sand" never seem to work well together. With both wavysea combos on the back, the front half of the tank would lose all sand. So I tried moving one to the front to offset the one on the back, and this posed a few challenges, notably, it interfered with the t5's on that side of the light rack, and it had to work around the Calfo manifold. In the end I bolted the wavysea to the wall and then this transferred pump noise into the wall. The wall resonated with the humming of a running Tunze. Not offensively so, but it did take away from the goal of not wanting to hear the tank noise at all on the display side. And then after all that was all said and done, it didn't fix the shifting sand issue. Instead it created a trench in the front of sand-free area, and a second one in the back of the tank.

The final straw was this - found this on Christmas Eve:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1682-0.jpg

After moving the one Tunze to the front, apparently the wire had a constant wiggle in one spot and the insulation eventually gave way. I was watching the Tunze sweep back and forth and noticed that at the right setpoint, it would turn off and on. So yeah, awesome, I killed another Tunze. Starting to wonder if Tunze is a 4 letter word in German..

So my plan right now is to switch two of the outlets on the Calfo manifold over to Wavysea's. Figure I have them and might as well still use them.

I think we can all now say that your build has moved on from glacial to a brisk walk/slow jog! Its really coming together now.

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

Ironically to me the pace has never really slowed or sped up. Every night I do something to the wee hours of the morning. I haven't had a sleep longer than 5 hours in well over a year now except when I've been out of town because I'm up to 2am or 3am every night doing something. It's just that (and you of all folks I'm sure will agree), when you're building a whole basement around the tank there's a CRAP load of other things you need to take care of at the same time. Not all of it may be tank related. :)

And of course when you end up redoing something because it doesn't work or doesn't meet your expectations, that I guess will slow things down some, but that's a combination of chance, luck, and not able to accurately forecast all potential side effects of a particular idea. And I'd like to think that could happen to anyone once in a while although I'm fairly certain I've had more than my mathematical/statistical fair share than most might, but that's not worth dwelling on.

Sorry I missed this question before. The timers that were faulty had a very European sounding name, "Uberhaus" or something like that. They were round and kind of ugly but what I liked about them was that the plugs were oriented such that the ground plug was up against the wall so you can put a 3-way splitter on it and run a couple things off the timer.

Rona has a bunch of brands that sound European, they have two others that seem to be the same but branded differently, "Nordik" and I forget the other. I have two Nordik's now and the one Uberhaus that didn't need returning. The Nordiks have two plugs on them already which is nice except that they are one on each side so no matter what you do you end up taking up a lot of space over the wall plugs and end up covering a neighbouring plug. Can't win! :lol:

those stiches look ready to come out.

get it going Tony.

Heh. Stitches are out, and the first few fish are in. About 14 astrea snails in there so far as well as two moon snails. I've also been stealing Stomatella snails out of the other tanks at night and dropping them into the tank.

MASSIVE diatom bloom happening. Tank looks horrendous.

Still trying to dial in flow. Having a venturi issue with one Wavysea, I tried to DIY a 3/4" inlet barb for it (came second hand and only came with a 1" input which doesn't work for me) - hoping to hear I can get a replacement part but we'll see. Haven't fully committed to keeping the Wavysea's at this point.

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. :lol: That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all. :(

Tony, wait until you get stuff in the tank before you sell them. I think you'll be surprised when the tank has corals etc in it. You may not ever get "the wave" but they'll add some nice movement to the tank and you've already invested your dough in them so there is no point in taking a loss right now, just hold off for a bit.

Do you see the wave at the surface? I do with mine but the back and forth action you normally see lower in the tank is different. Not really an obvious thing but if you watch particulates in the water you can tell they're moving more erratically. I think you should keep them too. Should at least see a wave on the surface though I'd imagine? In my tank I get a weird flexing of the water. Opposite corners of the tank peak at the same time.

If I double the periodicity (is that a word?) then I get the "twisty wave" going with the opposite corners. Guess I can try that and see what happens.

Right now it's really obvious as there is a fair bit of particulate in the water column from the diatom bloom. There is ZERO effect from the waveboxes if the sump return is on, regardless of whether the other Tunzes are on or not. There is a "not bad" wave effect if the rest of the powerheads are off AND the sump return is off. But even then it becomes a "marginal" if the Tunzes are allowed on. There must be too much interference.

I dunno I guess I'll give it a while yet before pulling the plug on them but I still think their days might be numbered. :lol: It is a very large area that they take up that maybe a MP40 could sit in instead.

Tony those wave boxes don't under estimate them they do work, however the tuning is the key sometimes it takes like a 1/16th of a turn to get them where you need them.

hold up little grasshopper.

As soon as you described the timers I knew exactly what you were talking about. We also had an issue with a couple timers we bought, not for tank purposes, that were faulty.

Now that the tank is essentially set up, how did your electrical set-up work? Did you end up having enough plugs? I'm always so worried about once a set-up is done what happens if you need to expand.

Ahhhhhso grasshoppa! :lol:

I'm pretty sure the boxes are tuned correctly is the thing. I did it with the rest of the current turned off and I dialed it back and forth around the spot where the waves were the biggest and yeah the slightest little bump on the dial would cause the waves to lessen.

The problem resides with how the water level sits against the boxes when the sump return is on. The waveboxes are as high as they possibly can go, jammed up against the Eurobracing. But the water level is right up to the top of the box so the water in fact spills into the boxes from the top. What ends up happening is that the boxes do not empty and refill like they should when the pumps do their thing. They are just powerheads turning off and on. Without the displacement there is no real wave. There is a slight level deviation at the ends, you can see the water level lap up around the bottom of the Eurobracing.

The problem isn't with the waveboxes but in the way the tank was built - the overflow is too high.

I'll take some pictures and/or video tonight and show you guys what I mean. Maybe it will make more sense when you see what's happening.



For the most part it was enough. I have the load split for the 3 tanks now in the basement among 4 circuits and when the other two are offline I may be able to shift things around a bit to load balance even further.

I ended up adding two powerbars in the end: one for the Tunze 6080's (AC, non controllable) although now there is only one of them so I probably don't need that powerbar any more, and then another for the skimmer (two pumps to run the skimmer, it's nice to have a shutoff if need be in case I need to open it up for any reason) and then I tagged the Osmolator, the carbon reactor powerhead, and the zeovit reactor pump off that powerbar since otherwise I'd have needed 3 extension cords to make them reach to the plugs.

I wish I could do without the powerbars since there isn't a powerbar in the world that doesn't seem to say right on it "DO NOT USE FOR AQUARIUMS! YOU IDIOT!" (well maybe I'm paraphrasing a little, but you get the gyst). But I really wanted an easy way to turn the skimmer off and on without pulling plugs out of the wall.

The electrical hookups are a huge messy disaster with plugs and wires everywhere. I wish I could think of a way to tidy it up a bit.

Instead of a power bar, grab a DJ box. The ones they use for their lights etc. They normally have about 5 switches/plugs. Each plug has its own switch.

I've tried to find one of those but the ones I saw had a price tag that only a Rock Star could afford. Where do you get them?

Not too much to report but some pictures what the hey. Wish I could add my name to the hat of 8' tanks that seem to be all the rage but that's um not going to happen anytime soon.

I technically had fish in the tank in 2010! New Year's Eve I got a zero nitrite reading after what felt like weeks hovering at 0.1 so I promptly went and picked up a few small chromis. A couple days later I moved over the one big chromis from the cube, they found each other and school pretty good. It's hilarious the size difference, the four new are about 1" max and the old guy is almost 2.5" so it's like seeing the mother ship or something.

Diatom bloom is abating, not all gone as yet but going away. Water remains cloudy though and has been for the better part of at least a week. Previously it would sort of come and go. I'm not sure what's up with that. I don't have an ammonia test kit but I have been testing nitrite and it's consistently reading zero. So hopefully it will clear up.

Filter socks - have to clean them out everyday. Hope that's a function of the diatoms and will settle down to something less frequent.

January 8 FTS -
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1710-0.jpg

You can see the flow pattern of the hidden 6080 on the back glass, the big brown patch. I'm thinking the 6080 is going to come out, I have some major tweaking to do with the flow still before I'm happy with what I see.

End shot:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1715-0.jpg

Other than that I've moved over some gorgonians, a baby RBTA, and added a pile of cleanup crew.

I took a picture of these guys in the bucket because I figure that's the last I'll ever see of them..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1704-0.jpg

Going..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1707-0.jpg

Going ... gone ...
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1708-0.jpg

Fighter meets Strawberry..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1713-0.jpg

Some spaghetti worms from the small cube..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1716-0.jpg

And this little guy makes 6 fish so far. Need a better photo but this was the best of the bunch.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1721-0.jpg

He had actually been chased into the sump a few times in the cube that he ended up living there for a few months. So for now I'm not going to move any fish over to let him establish here and hopefully not be bullied. The ones I'm a little worried about are the trigger, the canary wrasse and the dottyback. I think the chasing should be not a problem once he's established and these guys become the newcomers.

In the meantime I'm dripping some more corals and some clams for introduction tomorrow. I'd do more but the cloudy water really has me a little worried. As we all know the only thing that happens quickly is disaster so I'm not allowing myself to be rushed here. The next few steps are going to be interesting: tomorrow, if all goes well, I plan to move the two clams out of the big cube into the tank. But the 2 clams in the little tank are going to go into the cube for now instead of the big tank, and then maybe they'll have their turn after another week or so. The reason for this is that they are firmly attached to their rocks - and I'm not going to remove them - but the rocks are covered in aiptasia and caulerpa. So the tangs, rabbits and butterflies are going to have a heyday cleaning the rocks off.

Caulerpa, valonia and anything else that's green for that matter, shouldn't be an issue in the big tank much the same as it isn't an issue in the big cube, since the 3 tangs and the rabbit devour the stuff if given any. Aiptasia on the other hand is something I hope not to introduce if I can avoid it since the butterflies aren't going to go into the big tank.

And on that last note I am going to be starting up a new thread for my pending FOWLR. :lol: Won't be anything too spectacular though. The cube is going to come down and be sold, the two butterflies and the golden dwarf eel will be moved into their own home. Could just keep them in the cube indefinitely but the cube has to be moved anyhow, won't really fit in the tank room in the corner thanks to the TWO corner overflows (who builds a 30" cube with dual overflows .. seriously. Anyhow, water under the bridge now) and just to hopefully keep costs "somewhat" under control it will be a bit of a downgrade. Oh well. So much for the plan to move to one tank to simplify things.

Really liking the FTS man. Looks a bazilion times better (and roomier) without the old-school tunze on the wavysea brackets. Strange about the cloudy water perhaps it gets cloudy for some reason each time your sock gets full and it's not pulling stuff out anymore?

What are those pancake mofos you added from the bucket? Funny I've never seen them before in a thread.

rofl....pancake mofos..i just loled and startled the kid. theyre sand dollars :lol:

Tony do those flat thingy's work and what do they do do they go through the sand bed cleaning

+1 :lol:

The FTS looks great so glad to see fish in there :mrgreen: I think you're right the small wrasse should be fine if he has a few days to settle in first.

FTS looks great Tony! And as for those filter socks: I warned you to go bigger. I wish I had. I'm going to rig up for a larger sock. Cleaning every two to three days is a real PITA. Anyhow, things are looking good.

PS. Brett, only a flatlander wouldn't know what a sand dollar is. :mrgreen: Used to use those things as skipping stones on the beach when I was a kid.

I am realy surprised you got the sand dollars Tony, they have a very pour survival rate in tanks and will compete with the fighting conch for food.

looking good though.

Steve

Just always wanted to try some sand dollars but never had enough open sandbed to try them so was never really an option. We'll see how it goes.

Yeah Lance I know you told me but you didn't tell me anything I wasn't already thinking. It was a matter of cost and what could be built: the glass sock holders were available for $20 each for 4" but a lot more for the 6" and would have to be fabricated. Plus all my 6" socks have broken rims so I needed to get all new anyhow and a few people convinced me to at least try the 4's. I've been using 6" for a long time now and I get a week before they need to be cleaned.

Worst case scenario I'll just stop using socks, but I'll use them for now as they help clear the diatoms. But I'll switch to a larger micron size first as that would be an easy enough thing to try.