Holy bajesus Brett that thing is GORGEOUS! Nice handy work there buddy, cant wait to see it full of livestock.

That looks awesome! What a monster! Are you going to drain the ocean? If so take the fish along with it, save you the trouble of deciding what to stock if you get a random surprise of whatever comes with the ocean!

Lol thanks guys.

Tonight I went and picked up two 55g barrels for ro/di storage. I couldn't justify dropping $400+ on a larger vertical cylinder and figured 100 gallons was enough to handle my water changes and topoff. These barrels were used to store crushed tomatoes and apparently the mix itself was in giant bags within the barrels. Essentially these barrels are brand new =)

$45 ea. I'm going to pickup a third to use as a mixing tank after seeing them rather than buying a 55g glass tank.

http://www.thebarrelman.ca/our-products/

They are the blue open head barrels. I am not planning to drill these either. I want to minimize the chance for leaks down there. One barrel will simply have my osmolator in it. One will be ro/di storage which will feed into the third when it's time to mix. The feed barrel will be elevated and I am going to have hard pvc plumbed over the top with a full siphon and valve. So long as I leave a bit in the barrel it will maintain siphon and save me buying more pumps.

This will mean making some of the area under the stairs part of the fishroom rather than just having pipes from the barrels come thru the planned fishroom wall. I'll have to think more on this because the wall is load-bearing and it will mean tossing a header in there. The current 2x4s are all warped and sad looking so I imagine the effort will actually strengthen the wall!

</essay>

So Brett, one question...I notice on the site that only the grey barrels are listed as Food Safe...are you sure the blue open lid ones are safe?

Yes they are. They have a whole bunch of different ones in their garage (in Edgemont) and the white ones have threaded outlets but had a funky smell. She told me the blue ones are food safe and perfect for this application. She's sold them to other fish folk in the past as well. In the case of these particular ones the food product never even touched the plastic. They also send each barrel thru a washing process with high heat.

Brett - put some RO/DI water in there after you clean it and let it sit there for a couple weeks. then test it for phosphates/ammonia/tds just to be sure.

Oh for sure I still intended to test what I can after I bleach'em. Can't be any worse than my current topoff tank. It's open top and i find bugs fall in all the time...they actually start molding on the bottom of the tank lol.

haha. Thanks for that mental picture!

Brett well done man, I bet that you miss your BK 250 now dont ya

Rub it in Mike I love it! Lol.

I'm really stoked to try the Skimz actually =)