400 gallon project

[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.

[untamed]

2 x 250W heaters running all night didn't even warm the tank up from 67 F. I cranked the heaters to maximum, added another 150W of heaters, and turned the MHs on all day...

After 10 hours, I'm up to 76 F.

I may need bigger heaters, but once the lights are hitting rock things might behave differently.

[untamed]

Today, I built a black box. (Yes, I know what you are thinking...this just gets more exciting everyday!)

Soon, this black box will actually be interesting because it will house the tank's Aquatronica brain....and I have some pretty cool plans for this...trust me.



I think I may just be building stuff for no reason just to avoid taking the possibly heartbreaking step of actually putting life into the tank!

[michika]

Is it an acrylic box?

[untamed]

Yes, smoky black acrylic. I'm no acrylic expert, that's for sure...but it will do the job I need it to do.

[Ruth]

Well that's a darn nice black box Now get on with the process of getting some life in that tank! Why should you be spared the heartache that the rest of us have to suffer through with this dang hobby
Seriously this is a great thread and your tank is going to be amazing with life in it.

[untamed]

Here's the results of the salt measurements:

Mg: 1350ppm
Ca: 440ppm
Alk: 3.0 meq/L or 8.3dKH

Those are certainly better numbers that I ever got from Kent.

The water is clearing up. Tonight, I added 4 large, very dead, tiger prawns. There is a bucket of bio-balls under one of the overflows. I'm going to cycle the tank using these bio-balls, so that when the LR comes in, there will be some bacterial support for the new rock.

Once the tank is stable following the LR addition, I'll remove the bio-balls.

Meanwhile, I've solved most of my skimmer problems. Capping my gate valve mod made it a lot quieter, and had the side effect of lowering the foam level to the point where the gate valve could now control it. I've never seen it recommended that you cap off the top of the gate valve mod, but it is working perfectly in this case. I'm going to have to glue the cone to the skimmer body because that seal just leaks too much for my taste.

Since I'll have some time to wait, I can start working on that black box...