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[kari]

Originally Posted by EmilyB

You probably don't have to park vehicles in garages in your neck of the woods

What, people park their cars in garages? I thought that was only if you had two or more garages.

You may have already planned for this but I think(guessing) the building code requires the opening in the garage/house wall needs to be somewhat sealed to prevent gases entering living space. Since framing a tight fit against the tank is not a good idea you will need some kind of flexible filler for the gap.

[Dale]

Yes, there is a 1/4" or so gap caused by the top and bottom black plastic molding on the tank. I first filled the gap with weatherstripping and then silicone after that.

Here's the display tank. A 135G. I bought used for $50. It needed a good cleaning and resiliconing. Dig that 'ol school' corner overflow box!



Here's the sump. It's a 50G. breeder that was cracked on one end. I picked it, and two other tanks, up for power raking a freinds lawn.



and here's a link to a thread that describes how I resiliconed it: http://www.aquahobby.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=35335

and here's the happy couple.



Here's one of two corner overflows



and a top view

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Psst. Dale, you'll have to flip your display tank. Holds water better that way

But seriously, it sounds like you've already put in a lot of time & planning into this (ie. temp. measurements for a year) so that bodes well for the success of this project.

Like the others, I will be following this thread with great interest.

When do you want to go specimen collecting (ie. beachcombing)? That's one thing Irene & I love to do.

Anthony

[Dale]

Hey, I'm ready!

Actually, that is one of the motivators for the system. My wife, the kids and I also love poking around in tidal pools and I figure this is one way to create the whole "learning" experience with them.
That, and the fact I can stock my tank for free

oh, and thanks for the tip. You should have heard me swearing when I discovered that someone had drilled holes in the bottom of the tank. What were they thinking??? Now I'm gonna have to plug them up with big rubber bathtub plugs

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

Psst. Dale, you'll have to flip your display tank. Holds water better that way

Does he really have to flip it? Wouldn't it be easier to remove the top panel and attach a panel onto the bottom? (Teeheehee.)

Anyhow, nifty project. Can't wait to see more!

[Dale]

I like the way you think Tony

After having fixed a few grow ops in my time, I knew I wanted to vent my fishroom. A $20 bathroom fan and some 3" PVC did the trick. I've wired the fan to a plug (not hard wired) so that I could use a timer and because it was easier overall.



Yes, the wiring is exposed! Like a lot of this project I am roughing things in and then going back to finish and refine. I want to get it up and running so I can start cycling the tank. I plan to build a housing around the fan to cover the wiring and to add some rigid cable guard to cover the wiring to the outlet. The fan is controlled by a $5 timer I bought at IKEA and it is set to turn on for 5 minutes every hour. Here's a blurry pic



Most of the flora and fauna I'm interested in keeping is non photosynthetic (not light dependant) so lighting is not as important as in a tropical reef. The main purpose of lighting in a coldwater tank is for viewing and effect.
With this in mind I went all out and installed a cheap IKEA pendant and a Coralife 50/50 screw in CF. (the PVC is a temporary return line for a pump I'm switching out).



One plant that is photosynthetic is eel grass, which I plan to incorporate into the system. For this I will use better lighting but I haven't decided whether I'm planting it in the main display or a plumbed in auxiliary tank so I've left more lighting out for now.
I know that someone, somewhere is probably laughing right now but the measuring stick I am using for this project is not the cost, but the effect. Here's a video of the lighting (the video is pretty rough and doesn't totally capture the shimmer effect. I'll try to take a better one later).

http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m...t=100_2625.flv

[Manny]

cool project. keep up the good work.

[Dale]

I wanted to give the tank a west coast look so using the usual coral based substrate was out. Here's what I did.

Experiment #1:
I thought I'd try washed and screened playsand from H.D. (ha ha). I rinsed and rinsed for an hour and figured that had to be good enough so into the tank it went... oops!
The water turned into a solid chocolate cloud. I mixed in some salt with hopes that the skimmer would take out the silt and I hoped it would settle. Three days later it was a little less cloudy but my wife pointed out that as soon as a future fish stirred the bottom it would cloud up again. Dang.
I wound up siphoning the tank and removing all the playsand. Experiment #1 = disaster.
I then thought "the hell with it" and decided to go with plain old white silica sand. Lordco was out so they offered to ship some in from another store. When I returned they had shipped the wrong stuff. It turned out to be a Target product called Blue diamond 20-50 grit and I took it anyways.

Experiment #2:
Washed the 20-50 grit and only a little dust came out. In the tank it went. No cloudiness and the bottom closely resembles the ocean floor off our coast. Yahoo.

Experiment #3:
I must have been working a little too much with the PVC cement because I decided that I needed to run some carbon on my new set up. That wasn't so bad but I decided to utilize the flow from my display drainline. I loaded a sock with carbon and secured it to the drainpipe... oops!
The flow pulverized the carbon and my tank was back to a smoky cloud again.
This time the fix was less drastic than draining the tank. I ran an AC500 with some filter floss for a couple of days and the water cleared up.

No more experiments for me.