400 gallon project

[untamed]

Originally Posted by Chin_Lee

your design and planning is amazing. Nice work. how much rock are you putting in there? aquascaping that monster is going to be fun

I'm not sure how much rock there will be. At least a few hundred pounds, but I'm prepared to leave a lot of room for coral to grow. So I expect that the tank might not look very "full" by most standards.

I'll bring in the rock very slowly. The LR is probably going to be the most expensive living thing in the tank, so I don't intend to use it to cycle my tank with!

Typical of me, I have a plan for the aquascaping that was created as soon as I had the tank dimensions. There's thought put into sightlines and all the bottom bulkheads were actually positioned specifically to the plan. The 4' depth needs to be considered as does the 6' depth (when viewed from the side)

I'm not going to show the plan yet, because I need something to talk about later....

[justinl]

Oooohhhhh he's keeping us in suspense. I love seeing the evolution of this bad boy as it goes.

Why can't you switch salts now? You have nothing but water in the tank right? I mean, i think it would be better to switch to something more reliable now than to kick yourself later when you actually have living things in the tank.

[GrimReefer]

wow, man....WOW. what an amazing design. now hurry up and finish so we can see.

[michika]

Are you going to post the results of your tests on the salt? Can I ask why you chose that particular brand?

[Jason McK]

Originally Posted by untamed

The tank is almost full of RO/DI water and I've added the salt. This is the salt that I am using. So far, I'm not happy with this salt.

Before I added the salt, the tank was full of crystal clear RO/DI water. After adding the salt, the tank is murky. The water is just not clear anymore. The salt has been mixing on the closed loops for 2 days now and seems fully dissolved. Jason, are you still using this salt?

In addition, look at this pile of sand and un-disolved bits (plastic maybe?) that have settled out. That all came from the salt because it wasn't there

Yes I'm still Very happy with the Ocean pure Salt. I continue to recommend it to all. I did switch back to Kent for a short while but found the dirt 100X worse than you have shown pictured above. With Kent I needed to scrub my water change bucket after every water change. I have gone through 3 buckets of OP and my mixing tank is still clean enough. Yes there is some sediment but nothing like Kent. Plus I have found that with OP I'm getting consistently good reading for everything. 470CA 8ALK 1400MG and with Kent I would lucky to get 320CA 4ALK 1150MG

these are just my experiences.


BTW your entire set up looks Fantastic.

J

[untamed]

Originally Posted by justinl

Why can't you switch salts now? You have nothing but water in the tank right? I mean, i think it would be better to switch to something more reliable now than to kick yourself later when you actually have living things in the tank.

I could, but I have made a sizeable investment into this salt...both in time and money. It's water clarity that I'm immediately concerned about. If filtration clears that up, then I'll be happy.

Originally Posted by michika

Are you going to post the results of your tests on the salt? Can I ask why you chose that particular brand?

I will post my test results, as Jason has just done. I picked it based on good feedback from other users.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Your tank looks absolutely beautiful so far! It's obvious that you've put lots of thought into it.

I used to use Kent salt and now I use OP, and I much prefer the OP! I think your problems will be solved with filtration...at least I hope so!

[untamed]

As of tonight, she's full of SW and running. Heaters are bringing things up to temp.

Since I had SW for the first time, I decided to fire up that G6 skimmer and see how it works. OK, this is going to need a little work. My gate valve mod leaks unacceptably and there are a lot of microbubbles getting into the sump. I'm not immediately sure how to correct this. Possibly a collection of rock rubble between the skimmer outlet and the return pump feed might do the trick.

Should give me something to work on while I start cycling the tank.

[vanreefer]

I put about a roll of teflon tape on before I slipped the gate valve on then I have the outlet plumber with 1 1/2" to my filter bag... no bubbles here....

HTH
Dan

[untamed]

Originally Posted by vanreefer

I put about a roll of teflon tape on before I slipped the gate valve on then I have the outlet plumber with 1 1/2" to my filter bag... no bubbles here....
HTH
Dan

I like the filter bag suggestion. I tried it but it didn't seem to work....then I had a "eureka moment".

The G6 has three pumps. I found that I couldn't run all three because the water just goes right out the top of the skimmer. (I need to shorten the high of my gate valve mod) So I was running the skimmer on only 2 pumps.

The bubbles were exiting the skimmer through the pump that wasn't turned on! DOH!!! OK, so maybe it was more of a Homer Simpson moment.