180G Office Reef Tank

JDigital · #1 09-15-2012, 05:57 PM

Photo-dump!

Eggcrate gone.. Sand in..

After adding the sand in the light from the tank no longer lights up the sump area. Not impressed with that (although knowing it was inevitable), I decided to shed some light on the situation.

In a giant box of misc aquarium stuff that came with the tank, I found myself 3 Marineland LED lights. While not powerful enough to use over the tank, I decided that one of them should work nicely in the sump area. Tossed some screws into the stand, a few zip-ties later and voila!

The Skimmer slowly seems to be breaking in. I was having a **ck of time with it yesterday, overflowed a couple times, I was getting an incredible amount of microbubbles back into my sump/DT.. I turned it off last night when I left the office, however I've had it running the whole time I've been here this morning and so far is seems a better. I don't have the light overs the tank on, so its difficult to tell if I have any microbubbles making their way to the DT.

I'm really not sure if I should even run the skimmer for now as there is nothing alive in the tank yet, I only start adding Zeobak yesterday. Will pick up a few prawns or shrimp today to kick start the cycle. Only reason the skimmer is really running it to break it in, and in combination with a 300 micron sock, try and polish the water after adding the sand.

JDigital · #2 09-17-2012, 04:38 PM

Well this weekend was a bit of a pain in the arse..

I wasn't sure what my evaporation was going to be like on this tank. This weekend opened my eyes.

I topped it off Friday night before going home, with plans of coming in Saturday anyways to rearrange my office so I actually have a view of the tank.

Came in Saturday about 10am. And checked the tank, only to realize my sump had dropped by about 1.5" in water level just overnight, and that happened without any lights on. So its obviously dry in the office, needless to say I had to get a ATO sooner than later as I can't be coming into the office 7 days a week.

Although I never budgeted for a $175 Tunze ATO I figured it was time to DIY this part of the build.

Put in an order on Aquahub.com this morning..

Hopefully it gets here before next weekend, but I'm not holding my breath.

Lampshade · #3 09-17-2012, 10:12 PM

I love the build, looks great so far. Dave has a very good idea with the baffles in the sump, one of the biggest cause for bubbles in my tank was the waterfall off my last baffle, this idea fixes that. One thing you could do to "failsafe" your ATO is to have your water enter the sump through a float valve AFTER your ATO setup. Since you won't be around for weekends, it could be very bad to have a switch stick on. Here's what i use for mine http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/ro...O+Filters.html Up to you really, most people run just the ATO without problems.

JDigital · #4 09-19-2012, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lampshade

I love the build, looks great so far. Dave has a very good idea with the baffles in the sump, one of the biggest cause for bubbles in my tank was the waterfall off my last baffle, this idea fixes that. One thing you could do to "failsafe" your ATO is to have your water enter the sump through a float valve AFTER your ATO setup. Since you won't be around for weekends, it could be very bad to have a switch stick on. Here's what i use for mine http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/ro...O+Filters.html Up to you really, most people run just the ATO without problems.

If I only had one float switch on the ATO system I would probably consider the float valve, but this ATO system comes with 2 float switches, the 2nd acts as a failsafe to shut the pump off in case the first one gets stuck in the "on" position. If they both get stuck on, well I'm SOL sorta, but at the same time, my reservoir will be not larger than 5-7G. That is only 2-3% of my total system volume which should never bring my tank out of the 1.022-1.026 range 'safe range'.

JDigital · #5 09-30-2012, 03:07 PM

I received the ATO kit from aquahub.com last week, finally got around to setting it up yesterday. Pretty simple system to setup.

Looks like I still have a few zipties/wires to clean up, but the system is working flawlessly.

JDigital · #6 10-19-2012, 01:39 AM

Slowly making progress with the initial cycle. Currently dosing 2mL of Zeostart3 daily and 8 drops of Zeobak 2x/week (originally started with 3x the dosage, have been easing off as the cycle climbs).

As of tonight, nitrates are getting up there,