Dez' Tank Journal

Dez · #1 07-09-2009, 06:04 AM

Well, a little bit more progress today. I went to a friend's place and picked up some sand that was in his tank for over 10 years. He had about a 5" sand bed and he was redoing his tank because all of his sps corals had grown to the surface so he had to harvest out the skeleton base of the rock and lower all the sps to halfway down his tank again. He decided to cut the sand bed in half to about 2-3" because deep sand beds are sort of a thing of the past. So I got all his old sand. It's been sitting spread out a bit in his back yard for a couple of weeks already. I took it home and my whole family helped me wash it out. I quad rinsed it a bit at a time with the water that was in my tank. I am done my water testing so I watered my lawn/garden/filled my rainbarrel, watered house plants and rinsed the sand with my leak/system tank water (I drained it because I am using RO/DI water).

Here are a couple of pics of the washing. You can see in the pictures how dirty the water is.

While we were doing this, my son out of the blue says "Man, this is dirty business". We thought it was hilarious.

I also got the hardware and mounted my other 2 lights.

View from cabinet side:

View from picture frame side:

With only the middle 150watt on (I still have to wire the 250 watt pendants to the ballast):

And finally a view from OUTSIDE my house. I have a 5' x 6' window at my front porch of my house. So it'll be quite a view from the street.

Thanks for looking.

Skimmerking · #2 07-09-2009, 02:57 PM

Looks great Dez I'm going to have to come visit you. When I pop up there

mseepman · #3 07-09-2009, 03:55 PM

Looking good...did you have all three lights on in the picture from outside?

Dez · #4 07-09-2009, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mseepman

Looking good...did you have all three lights on in the picture from outside?

No, I only have the 150Watt on. I still have to wire the 250's to the ballasts sometime. Pretty bright hey? I'm quite excited as I live on a corner lot so I'll be able to see the tank everyday as I drive in from the street.

Leah · #5 07-09-2009, 04:18 PM

"Dirty business" that is truly the best way to describe salt tanks.........kids really figure it
out before we do, hehe! My daughter prefers to leave when I tear tanks apart, huh !!!!
Your kids are adorable. Can't wait for water though

Dez · #6 07-09-2009, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leah

"Dirty business" that is truly the best way to describe salt tanks.........kids really figure it
out before we do, hehe! My daughter prefers to leave when I tear tanks apart, huh !!!!
Your kids are adorable. Can't wait for water though

Thanks Leah,

Water is filling as we speak. It'll probably take 4 - 5 days (using RO/DI) to fill. Then I have to salt it and heat it. It's coming along quicker than I expected though. I might wire the other 2 lights to the ballast today and maybe put the pond liner under the tank....ahhhhhhh, so much to do.

Dez · #7 07-10-2009, 05:29 AM

Today I got some more done on the tank. I lined the bottom of the tank with pond liner. This way I'll be able to hold about 16 gallons of water under my stand in case of spills. I went to a local pond place and asked for a 7' x 3' chunk of pond liner and he just gave me a scrap piece he had. I though nothing was free anymore.

Here is the chunk before I cut it up

Here is the final product

I also put my washed sand in the tank

I plugged the holes of my closed loop so that I don't get sand in the OM 4 way. Right before I turn it on then I'll remove the plugs.

I also wired my other lights tonight and boy is it bright with all 3 lights on. I picked up another PFO pendant with ice cap ballast from Saltynuts tonight which worked out perfect because I only had one ice cap ballast. So now I have a matching pair. I'm debating whether to switch the middle pendant to 250w. I'll wait and see for now. I mounted the ballast up in case of spills.

Right side

Left side with the 150 watt ballast as well.

I actually didn't have quite enough sand, so when Saltynuts came, he brought me some sand. I used a quarter pail more to top it off to the level I was satisfied with. Funny thing is the sand that Ed brought over was from my 180 gallon tank that I had running 5-6 years ago. I had sold the setup to a fellow canreefer, and it then went to someone in Spruce Grove, and then went to someone else and Saltynuts ended up with the sand from it recently, and now I have it again. I guess the saying "What goes around comes around" is really true.

I also started filling my sump this morning at 7am. Now it's 11:30 pm and the tank is only 1/4 full - this is only the sump. It's going to be a long wait to fill the tank. Thanks for following.