Dez' Tank Journal

[Dez]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

there is no standare for RO water as thee is no buffer in it to maintain PH. usaly it is a little acitic. to calabrate you have to use a solution that is buffered to a specific PH RO water will just screw ya up.

Steve

Thanks Steve. I just calibrated the ph controller, and the RO wasn't constant. That makes sense now. It's been reading about 6. I guess I'll wait to heat and salt the water then worry about the ph. Thanks for the help.

[Dez]

Well, I've been checking the ph of my closed loop intake "fake" rock. It's ready to go into the tank. I cut up some eggcrate and pressure fitted it into the abs fitting. Here are some pictures.





My tank is now 90% full, but I can't run it with the sump until I get probably about 50 more gallons of water out of my RO unit. I put the rock in the tank and this is how it looks.



And just for fun I started up the wavemaker to get the water moving and here are some pictures for an idea of how high the wave is. Just look at the angle of the water.





As soon as I started up the wavemaker, particulate matter from the sand became suspended. So I guess it's working.

I also added a heater in the main display with the water motion so that at least the tank is not ice cold when I start salting the tank.

I turned on the OM 4way with the dart on full blast for a while and put my hand near the intake of my fake rock and I can barely feel any suction at all. I think I did pretty well in trying to spread the intake flow out over a larger area, this was my goal in the first place in making my fake rock.

[Lance]

Awesome job on the intake! It'll take a sharp eye to find it. Nice work.

[Dez]

Originally Posted by Lance

Awesome job on the intake! It'll take a sharp eye to find it. Nice work.

Thanks so much. Hopefully I'll be able to conceal it a bit more once I start aquascaping and "covering" the holes from the viewable sides.

[Dez]

Lots to update on. First of all last night I plumbed in my frag tank. My tank is 80% full of RODI water now. Man, a few days to fill a tank. Gotta have a lot of patience. Here are pictures of the plumbing

This is the spray nozzle that I always had on my frag tank



Here is the drain line T'd into my emergency overflow


That was last night. Tonight was much more exciting. This morning I saw there was enough water so I turned the system on and let her run. I've been heating the water for some time now. So tonight after the kidlets went to bed I salted the tank.

I dug up a BRAND NEW bucket of salt from 6 YEARS AGO. I opened up the invoice stuck to the side of the pail and it was dated 8/5/2003. I ordered it from J&L for 54.95. My system ended up using the ENTIRE pail of salt. I even ended up with a free Mini Jet pump in the salt. My salinity ended up being 1.023.... I'll probably slowly bring it up to 1.024 later when I get another pail of salt. Notice that this pail does not have the twist off lid?



Anyway, I added my live rock that I've been storing in heated, salted, flowing water for the last 4 years. I know that I don't have any bad critters at least. This is what 4 year old cooked rock looks like with a few chunks of aragocrete:

Water is still a bit cloudy from fooling around in there and I gotta change that yellow light bulb. It's an xm 10K and I don't like it at all - got it from Saltynuts a few nights ago.









Pretty boring, but thanks for following this slow build. I managed to hide all the nozzles of the closed loop fairly well and also the intake of the pump while still allowing full flow with no blockage or things in the way.

[Skimmerking]

Dez that looking really great. well done you must be stoked by now.

[Leah]

It looks great, nice aquascaping!!! What are you planning for fish?

[Dez]

Originally Posted by Leah

It looks great, nice aquascaping!!! What are you planning for fish?

We aren't quite sure what for fish yet, Here is what the kids/wife came up with though

Yellow Tang
Kole Tang
Mandarin Goby (probably a couple of years down the road when it's established)
If we can find an angel of some sort that won't touch sps (I know, good luck on that)
A pair of clowns (probably just oscellaris)
A trigger (maybe Niger or Bluethroat)
Regal Tang

That's about it so far. We are going to try to find most of our stuff "used" from people who are shutting down systems etc....the livestock seem to be much healthier that way. But our impatience might impede us on this idea.

[Doug]

Yea, looking good Dez. Rockwork is great. Good work on the closed loops.

[saltynuts]

10k does look bad. sorry man didn,t look to bad on my nano(20gal)
i have xm 10k bulbs on the big tank and they must go.
looking very good