kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[burtonboy]

WOW!!! Looks really good kien!! Cant wait to see this tank full of fish, Do u know what kind of fish your going to put in there yet?

I like how the water change sump/container turned out! Ill be putting mine together this week i hope it works out, seeing how u had to put in a third hole in the water change container do think putting 1 or 2 2" holes would work? How many gallons/hour is going through your tank?

Thanks!

Daniel

[Coleus]

Hopefully, I will get a chance to see this setup in person. Really like the black looks of the tank

[kien]

Originally Posted by superduperwesman

Why not just have the tanks separate? You have 2 return pumps anyway. Isn't the fowlr just going to increase your nutrients and make it harder to maintain you the levels in your mixed reef? I'm assuming it's mainly to ease you water changes b/c your tank is in the middle of your main floor but why not just implement your sump with water change section on both tanks? I guess you'd also need another skimmer but don't or didn't you already have one?

Don't get me wrong. Love the tank! And you're far better reefer than I'll ever be but just a few things that came to mind

My goal is to reduce duplication of maintenance and equipment. One skimmer to clean, one tank to dose and test, one tank to heat, one controller to monitor the temp, pH, salinity, etc.. I wouldn't say that it will be harder to maintain levels in the mixed reef and I wouldn't say nutrient levels are necessarily going to go up. What I have effectively done is increase my entire water volume by 150g taking my total water volume to the 300+ mark. Plus I have a new skimmer coming that's rated for 400ish gallons and will be dumping in another liter of NP BioPellets :-D In the end I think of this as one 300g system rather than two systems. Just like with everything else in this hobby there are pros and cons and there typically isn't a right or wrong answer, just different answers. So by no means would I consider my setup the RIGHT way of doing things.. just the way that I'd like to do it

Originally Posted by burtonboy

WOW!!! Looks really good kien!! Cant wait to see this tank full of fish, Do u know what kind of fish your going to put in there yet?

I like how the water change sump/container turned out! Ill be putting mine together this week i hope it works out, seeing how u had to put in a third hole in the water change container do think putting 1 or 2 2" holes would work? How many gallons/hour is going through your tank?

Thanks!

Daniel

Thanks! I'm not much of a plumber but it depends on the size of the pipe that you're feeding the water change tank with. In my example I have one 1" drain pipe feeding this tank from the 131g tank and discovered that two 1" outlets from the water change tank could just barely keep up with that! (like both 1" outlets were totally submerged). That kind of had me scratching my head but whatever.. I just drilled a third 1" drain and that solved that. I'd imagine a 2" hole would flow more than enough. The reason I went with 1" outlets is because I wanted to maximize the water in the water change tank as much as possible. 1" holes allows those holes to be higher up on that tank, and when the feed water is cut off I only loose an inch or so of water when it drains to the bottom of those bulkheads. A 2" hole will be much bigger, so you'll lose a bit more volume in the water change tank.

As for stocking, I'm thinking this will be an "Angels & Demons" sort of tank. Angelfish and Triggers

[kien]

Originally Posted by lorenz0

So hold the phone.... you got a power module for a fowler????

love the set up man, its going to look killer once everything is done

The phone is off the hook! I know that I am going to throw some corals in this tank, probably SPS :-) (hence the "reef" in FOWLR reef ).

Originally Posted by freezetyle

Kien... we need to talk.... You gotta stop setting up reef tanks so the rest of us can have a chance for TOTM. Seriously, Its getting out of hand...


Love the scape, gonna be a beauty for sure

word ! I seriously need to stop setting up tanks.. no seriously ! Although I am in the process of installing a separate power circuit on the main floor with its own dual 20amp breaker so I think I might be good for at least another couple of tanks? Really what I should have done is just enclosed my entire dining room with 1" acrylic and turned that whole space into a tank.

[lastlight]

Love how you document all the little details Kien. Looks like a really nice tank you had made there I'm looking forward to seeing more. My only concern is those 3 pipes tying those tanks together. You added one more pipe to keep up with the flow...so you have enough plus a tiny bit? I'm sure you'll make sure they never get plugged...but there isn't a great margin of safety there from what I understand...

[kien]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Love how you document all the little details Kien. Looks like a really nice tank you had made there I'm looking forward to seeing more. My only concern is those 3 pipes tying those tanks together. You added one more pipe to keep up with the flow...so you have enough plus a tiny bit? I'm sure you'll make sure they never get plugged...but there isn't a great margin of safety there from what I understand...

Thanks :-) Ya, those three pipes going out of the water change tank flow more than enough now. Two of those pipes was actually enough to just barely keep up with the overflow of the 131g's 1" drainpipe WIDE OPEN. I just didn't like how close I was cutting it with just the two pipes as they were totally submerged when running in that mode (but still keeping up). Adding the third is what's giving me that margin for error, plus the herbie is not typically run with the main drain pipe wide open so there's a margin for error there as well. On top of that, if the main herbie drain plugs up the WIDE OPEN emergency bypasses the water change tank entirely and goes straight to the secondary tank which is a total non issue. Trust me, I fear floods like I fear root canals

[lastlight]

Got it just wanted to make sure =) I know you're no noob AND you're on hardwood lol. What controller are you using to manage water changes? I missed that detail.

[kien]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Got it just wanted to make sure =) I know you're no noob AND you're on hardwood lol. What controller are you using to manage water changes? I missed that detail.

no worries, thanks for keeping me on my toes! it is appreciated

I run a profilux controller, but I'm pretty sure all the controllers out there have level sensor inputs? I don't know for sure as I've never seen any other one in person, but I would assume that they do?

My profilux actually has 3 level inputs. I use one for a fresh water auto-top-off, and the other two are being used for the automatic water change tank.

[andestang]

Wow lots to catch up here ! Looking great by the way. I'm waiting for my Profilux III update kit. How is your main display? I've read about some complaints that display is really dim or parts of it. Also did you get warranty with yours, with all the self installs and problems with the way people are doing them I've been told that self install are not warrantied. I've wrote to them with this concern and all they did was respond back with the "how to install update manual" .

[kien]

Originally Posted by andestang

Wow lots to catch up here ! Looking great by the way. I'm waiting for my Profilux III update kit. How is your main display? I've read about some complaints that display is really dim or parts of it. Also did you get warranty with yours, with all the self installs and problems with the way people are doing them I've been told that self install are not warrantied. I've wrote to them with this concern and all they did was respond back with the "how to install update manual" .

I do find the main display dimmer than the previous one, but I rarely use the main display. Instead I have the ProfiluxView II that I use for all displays. Very hand because the controller is tucked under the stand.

I did not get warranty with mine, I doubt that that's even possible? To be honest, if I was them i would not warranty self installs either as A LOT can go wrong, horribly wrong. I think people should only attempt self installs at their own risk. Aqua-Digital (Canadian supplier) actually provides an upgrade install service if you ship him your unit he'll install it for you and that *may* be warranty, I don't know. Again, I certainly would not recommend to anyone to do the install by themselves if they are at all hesitant. The instructions are pretty good but there are little gotchas like 1. they don't actually spell out how to remove the top cover. 2. There are screws that need to be removed from the PCB but they are not standard screws so you need to run out and buy a screwdriver for it but they don't tell you what types of screws they are! (I was lucky and just happened to have that screwdriver around from when I took apart my cell phone ). There were other little things that weren't documented that I stumbled on and had scour the internet to find answers too