I do have one http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=64747 , just in dragging on mode :) Pic's of the lights may be added soon just for you Brett :lol:

Oh for God's sake Tony! I think you've had enough bad luck. Just stop it right now!

I may be able to help
 

If you still need the piece of glass I think I have some 10 mm laying around I could cut to fit for you:wink: it's yours if you want

Aw nuts, thanks for the offer, but yeah I already got a piece cut. Thanks anyhow!!

How'd the repair go tonight man?

My new sump!

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1575-0.jpg

Wow I really like your low profile approach. Are you thinking about dropping your tank? You know, so you can sit down cross legged in a meditative pose and see the fish at eye level! :)

:lol: I guess it's still something of a work in progress.

It, .. um .. didn't quite go as optimally as it could have tonight. Remember how I said I had spilled PVC primer and was worried what the styrofoam looked like? It turns out it was pretty nasty. So it had to be replaced. Ran over to HD, picked up a piece of new foam and so we rotated it 90 degrees to get the old one off. When rocking it back onto the new foam, the skimmer feed pipe valve handle thing hit the ground and poof, the front panel was done for.

So .. yeah Brett you totally called it, the bulkheads were gonna be the end of the sump as it was.

Jay's going to cut a new piece, I think we'll step it up to 10mm since the front still needs to be drilled for the sump return pump ... I might as well leave the skimmer feed hole undrilled and figure out a different way - yet again - of feeding the skimmer. I'm sort of back to going to an overflow fed system but maybe T'd off somehow so it is only a partial diversion into the skimmer.

So, given that this "good deal" of a sump I originally bought is turning somewhat into the six-million-dollar man .. er, I mean sump ... ,,,, at least it should emerge from all of this as better, stronger, faster. :lol:

I'm totally naming my sump Steve from now on.

I am so sorry for that again Tony, I will see you and Steve on Thursday.

Doh! I wish I'd been wrong about that. I'm saying a few reefPrayers for you man. You're pretty damn close now. Is the tank salty? I can't recall now.

No salt. I can't even really get at the tank at all at the moment since there's a pile of glass in the way. I figure it will be at least a week after the silicone is applied before I even attempt to continue filling or start mixing or aquascaping.

I might focus on getting the 40g built up and the carpet tank inhabitants moved over to their temp home and start cleaning up the semi-cube and plumbing that in. (Once the sump is reassembled and slid back under the stand, that is.)

Dude!......maybe all this lighting fast progress lately is a bad thing:razz:.....kidding aside Tony, sorry for your run o bad luck:neutral:

Thanks dood! It's ok. I was pretty bummed about things but .. meh, what can you do. If there is a silver lining, if things were gonna fail like this it's better that they do so now and not once the tank is running. So ... maybe it's not so "bad luck"-ish if one looks at it that way.

if it makes you feel better i broke my overflow twice in one month even better in less than 3 weeks once was the back anel of the overflow lifting it thesecond the bottom panel. i think when it comes to builds you have to take the mentality of "thank god it wasnt the main display glass" cause things could be worse.
even with all your mishaps you still have one rocking tank that in the end will be the envy of the neighbourhood. well im envious anyways :)

Wow, don't come on for a few days or so and **** hits the fan!!!! Tony, sorry to hear of all the problems. Hey, since I am only 5 minutes away, if you need any help cleaning up, or holding glass, just give me a shout.

Thanks Rick, I appreciate that. There's lots left to do so I'll probably call out at some point!

...

Ladies and Gentlemen ... and Canreefers .... I present to you ... STEVE:

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1576-0.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA

Thank you Jay for being the "virtual Oscar" and rebuilding Steve... :mrgreen:

ooo! That is one sexy sump!

He's so BIG and STRONG...

*sigh*

Rock on man. We're BACK on track. Easy when you move that please.

ooolala :cheer2:

Good to see your back on track Tony.

You know your sump is more baffled than I am.

Kevin

Your welcome Tony. If you NEED a hand moving it back into place, you know where to find me. This is going to be one sweet tank. I want to see that skimmer working, that thing is a beast.

I'll let Jay help with the moving. When I picked up my sump and tank from Jay I chipped the sump moving it and cracked the corner of the tank out. I've got a way with glass.

When I saw the new picture of the sump I said, out loud, "Steve is seeeexxxay"....and my guy heard me. It made for an interesting conversation.

BUT! Glad to see you back on track....I'll be back in cowtown mid novemer till probably end of January....must do pho and beverages....but if when I'm in town you need a hand with anything let me know.

Nice job Tony. Sump looks great.

Looks great Tony, good to see you got this done in good time. I see Steve is well hung - his sock holder that is - never mind :rolleyes: So just how much is new glass is there now ?

I can't really claim any credit. "I watched it getting built ... all by myself!" Well Ok I guess I did clean the glass and stuff the night before. You can totally tell the order the glass panels got cleaned. The bottom is all sparkly and the right hand side is. Then the left hand side is a little less sparkly, and then the baffles are less and less clean. The last one is just a razor blade width of clean-ness around the edges and all coralined up in the middle still. :lol:

I would have tried to offer a hand but I couldn't quite arrange for the whole family to get out of the house while reefcanada came over. I had on Tuesday, Nathan my 5 year old has swimming lessons and Linda took him to that and took Sean along (2.5 year old). Unfortunately that was a card that could only be played once. Thursday night was swimming lessons night again but this time Sean had to stay home. I can't imagine why - how odd.

@Randi - :lol: Sorry. That's great, now some guy who runs a tattoo shop ("shoppe"? "shop"?) in Jersey thinks I'm loopy. My master plan is well underway <twiddle> <twiddle>

Pho sounds awesome!

:lol: Who could have foreseen talk of a sump named Steve could lead to this direction?! I think I blame Doug. And Laurie. Anyone but myself at any rate. :lol:

So, original pieces are the bottom and left and right panels. The short baffles are old but the tall ones are new. Instead of propping them up on something and waiting for the silicone to set, they are grooved out at the bottom so that there is still corner attachments at the bottom. So it's easily almost 50% new glass now. Plus the front is 10mm so hopefully there will be some enhanced structural integrity around the bulkheads compared to before.

Before it had two sets of baffles, now it's just the one. The larger chamber will lend itself better to water changes, I think. I'm trying to scheme up a method where I can use the skimmer feed hole for draining and maybe marking up the sides with gallonage ticks.

Tony don't press too hard with that sharpie. To quote Randi: "just sayin'" :mrgreen:

:lol:

I like how "just sayin" is my theme...people here even make fun of me for it...didn't think I said it THAT much...but maybe I do. Herm.

Well there's always bazinga...just sayin'.

bazinga, just sayin, bangerang...those seem to be my three favorite thingermajigs....oh, that's one too....

I'll be honest and say I was saving them up in a text file and I was gonna unload all of them in some random post down the road and see if you noticed. I just got lazy.

This tank is gonna be bangerangin'. I do that right?

not bangerangin'...that's just silly.

This tank is going to be bangerang

That sump looks amazing Tony, Jay did an absolutely bang on job (But then again I don't think Jay knows how to do bad glass work:lol:). Can't wait to see this beast full of water!

Think you will be running Biopellets with the new one? Apparently there has been some big argument over at reefcentral about them bleaching coral. I just upgraded the pump on mine and added a new bag, no ill effects yet.

I don't know. I might on a supplemental basis because I think the mulm is good coral food (well, if the overabundance of feather dusters at my reactors output is any indication). As far as the bleaching goes though .. I can throw my name into the hat that it has happened to me too. On the big cube, the fish load is enormous and the pellets seem to keep the nutrients at bay. On the small semi-cube though, the nutrient load was always light on account of an overabundance of caulerpa that aggressively strips the water of NO3 and probably PO4. I had hoped that the pellets would starve it out because I've been fighting the caulerpa for months and it's a total losing proposition. The pellets starved out my chaeto on the big tank but the caulerpa's mojo is stronger apparently. Anyhow long story short I got bleaching in that tank. All my Acan's, my two carpets (my purple carpet is now a white carpet - pure white :( ), and a green bubble all showed signs of bleaching and have there's been no recovery of colour in the 3 or so months since it started. I should take the pellets offline on that tank to see if it changes anything but I'm a little afraid to just take them off cold turkey. At this point I'm hoping that I can just move everyone into the big tank soon and it will be a turning point.

I suspect the problem is running pellets on a system where the nutrient load is already somewhat low. In my big tank it's pretty high so it's got something to do, in the small tank I guess the pellets get bored and start looking for trouble or something. Just my uneducated theory. Stupid caulerpa. I have to prune it every 2-3 days. I'd move rock into the big tank and let the tangs and rabbit go at it but the butterflies might pick at the other things I don't want to lose.

I did keep all the equipment from Zeo when I ran it before. I'm contemplating doing so again with this tank, especially after seeing John and Dez's tanks on it.

Haven't really though much more of it for now. Any thoughts on this yourself? Would love to hear. Unfortunately I have not a lot of time these days so I only go onto RC every so often to check up on some of my favourite threads there, and as such I miss a lot of good info.

I was running Zeo for a couple of years with moderate success and then I decided to try the pellets. After just under 2 months I had a large Digi and a couple Acro's bleach out and have a few others thats are showing signs of trouble. Like you I don't want to just disconnect it all of sudden. I also cannot say or prove it is the reason for the bleaching, but up to that point I've had no issues. Be interesting to here results from a newly started tank, but to be discussed in another thread. Have you read up on the Zeo 14 day start up cycle ?

I think so but it was a couple years ago so I don't remember much of it, I should look for it again (got a link handy? I'll look for it too though). I remember Albert was a fairly strong proponent of Zeo and I remember him saying you could add livestock to a tank at 2 weeks on a zeo system. I'd be a little concerned that the bacterial cultures would be all in the zeolites and not the rock especially when starting from dry rock (or at least a 50/50 mixture of dry rock) although I imagine over time a bacterial film should develop over the substrate anyhow..

ZEOVIT SUCKS.

Just fishing for dao. Any minute now...

Hmmm didn't work.

HALO REACH > STARCRAFT