280g Inwall

[Delphinus]

Well .. things progressed a little since last update. Every step has a minor stumbling block though. Some days all you can do is laugh.

We'll start off with a Boxing Day FTS:


Tank is in super need of some colour. Dry rock and new sand just looks so sterile.

The lighting is in 3 phases:
1) Initial dusk/dawn is provided by the 2x24w t5's left of centre. They run 10:30 to 22:30.
2) Next up is the centre 400w and the 4x54w t5's. They run from 11:15 to 21:45.
3) Highest intensity with the left and right 400w's from 12:00 to 20:00.

All 3 halides are Radiums. The middle is a standard pulse-start (ANSI M137 or whatever it is for 400w pulse-start). The outside two are SonAgro ("HQI"). You can tell the middle light has a slightly blue hue to it, the outside two are a super crisp white.

The 54w T5's are 2 SuperActinic and 2 454's. The 454's are neat choice. Almost like a brighter-than-usual actinic, a little more blue than purple like a standard actinic would be.

The outside two halides aren't on right now because I ran out of timers. You wouldn't believe the number of timers that I've bought that are faulty out of the box. I'm up to around 3 now that I've had to return to Rona. And one more now. Crazy, they must have had one super bad shipment. Anyhow so I have to go get another freakin' timer before those lights can be on automatic. Grumble.

Some shots of the light stand with the t5's installed:








You can sort of see the difference between the SuperActinic and the 454 here. See how there is a purplish tint to the second lamp, that's the actinic, the other is the 454.


Also got the ATO installed. On the advice of Chin, the ATO empties into the skimmer intake to keep it clear. This meant for the first tank in 12 years I'd use a pump based top up instead of the usual $10 Home Depot humidifier float valve (which I'll say has NEVER failed me in 12 years. I would have done the same for this tank but I like the idea of an automatic rinsing of the skimmer air intake - I find I need to clean the air intakes of my other tank skimmers about every 2 weeks, there's enough gunk buildup in those to justify doing so.)

Sensors on the left side of the sump:

(Ignore the messiness, I want to clean the glass when I do a water change but since the tank hasn't finished cycling, I haven't yet done so. No water changes until I get a zero nitrite reading! Last night it was still at 0.2 so it has a while to go yet.)

Controller sits on the right side of the stand:


And the mini reservoir sits under the sink. I had to use a bucket with a float valve so that the RO/DI reservoir (which is currently too far away) can drain into the bucket but not spill over, and then the pump can sit in this bucket and go feed the skimmer air intake line when it switches on.


Installing a top off on your tank isn't supposed to cause this:

This happened when I was stringing the wire and tube from the top off pump over the sump area and I was cutting electrical tape to hold it all together so it wouldn't be such a gong show of a rats nest of wires and tubes. Actually you can see the scar on my pointer finger as well. That's the gash I gave myself trying to install the Zeovit reactor about 2 weeks ago. No word of a lie, I cut my finger doing that too. Well, it wasn't so much the reactor itself to blame but rather the plumbing needed modding, and the previous plumbing was glued to the pump, so I was trying to break things apart without breaking the pump itself. I succeeded in that goal if nothing else.

Guess that's about it. Well I guess I did modify my zeovit reactor so I will take some pictures of that later. I'm trying the zeovit 14-day cycle thing but I have to say so far it's not looking like it will be ready for fish in 14 days. Part of the problem though is self inflicted, between holidays and sick kids and a pet needing surgery this last week, it took me longer than I wanted to get the lights on timers and I don't think the cycle can really begin in earnest until there is light. Now that at least phases 1 and 2 happen on the light cycle, I have noticed the nitrite reading start to spike. So while this means the wait has to continue, at least there is a sign of stuff actually happening.

Unfortunately in my other tanks things continue to remind me that we need to shut down. On Christmas Day yesterday I lost another clam in my serial clam death event. This is what I hate about clams: if you lose one, unless you get it out quick enough, whatever kills it spreads to the others. I've lost about 6 in the last two months. I am hoping this is the last one. This one in particular surprised me for lasting as long as it had: over the summer it sustained a mantle injury. It had been showing signs of recovery lately but then bam, just like that, it too checked out, all of a sudden yesterday. Ugh. I'm depressed about it but I guess these things happen. I feel like I'm paying the karmic price of not having a single clam death in 5 years prior to this fall. Maybe old age is a factor? I somehow doubt it but if I pretend it is then I sort of feel a little less bad about it.

[Delphinus]

Oh and you can see the Tunzes on the Wavysea's have been taken out. I had been leaning toward removing them for a while on account of a few reasons:

1) They sat way too far into the tank because of the Eurobracing. Apart from the obvious visual nuisance of two outboard motors hanging into the tank almost 8" off the back wall, it was ruining the scale of the tank as well. It made the tank feel really small and well .. while it's far from a big tank by many standards, it is the biggest tank I will ever attempt so long as I live in this house. (Well, ok, never say never, I suppose ... but realistically the odds of that ever happening are very slim.) I totally resented that they made the tank seem small.

2) Sand. I have sand after all. In the beginning I totally intended on going BB with this tank. But after putting the rock in, the very rough silicone edges on th bottom panel were visually disjarring so I elected to go with sand. And "lots of flow" and "lots of sand" never seem to work well together. With both wavysea combos on the back, the front half of the tank would lose all sand. So I tried moving one to the front to offset the one on the back, and this posed a few challenges, notably, it interfered with the t5's on that side of the light rack, and it had to work around the Calfo manifold. In the end I bolted the wavysea to the wall and then this transferred pump noise into the wall. The wall resonated with the humming of a running Tunze. Not offensively so, but it did take away from the goal of not wanting to hear the tank noise at all on the display side. And then after all that was all said and done, it didn't fix the shifting sand issue. Instead it created a trench in the front of sand-free area, and a second one in the back of the tank.

The final straw was this - found this on Christmas Eve:


After moving the one Tunze to the front, apparently the wire had a constant wiggle in one spot and the insulation eventually gave way. I was watching the Tunze sweep back and forth and noticed that at the right setpoint, it would turn off and on. So yeah, awesome, I killed another Tunze. Starting to wonder if Tunze is a 4 letter word in German..

So my plan right now is to switch two of the outlets on the Calfo manifold over to Wavysea's. Figure I have them and might as well still use them.

[michika]

I think we can all now say that your build has moved on from glacial to a brisk walk/slow jog! Its really coming together now.

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

[Delphinus]

Ironically to me the pace has never really slowed or sped up. Every night I do something to the wee hours of the morning. I haven't had a sleep longer than 5 hours in well over a year now except when I've been out of town because I'm up to 2am or 3am every night doing something. It's just that (and you of all folks I'm sure will agree), when you're building a whole basement around the tank there's a CRAP load of other things you need to take care of at the same time. Not all of it may be tank related.

And of course when you end up redoing something because it doesn't work or doesn't meet your expectations, that I guess will slow things down some, but that's a combination of chance, luck, and not able to accurately forecast all potential side effects of a particular idea. And I'd like to think that could happen to anyone once in a while although I'm fairly certain I've had more than my mathematical/statistical fair share than most might, but that's not worth dwelling on.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by michika

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

Sorry I missed this question before. The timers that were faulty had a very European sounding name, "Uberhaus" or something like that. They were round and kind of ugly but what I liked about them was that the plugs were oriented such that the ground plug was up against the wall so you can put a 3-way splitter on it and run a couple things off the timer.

Rona has a bunch of brands that sound European, they have two others that seem to be the same but branded differently, "Nordik" and I forget the other. I have two Nordik's now and the one Uberhaus that didn't need returning. The Nordiks have two plugs on them already which is nice except that they are one on each side so no matter what you do you end up taking up a lot of space over the wall plugs and end up covering a neighbouring plug. Can't win!

[lobsterboy]

those stiches look ready to come out.

get it going Tony.

[Delphinus]

Heh. Stitches are out, and the first few fish are in. About 14 astrea snails in there so far as well as two moon snails. I've also been stealing Stomatella snails out of the other tanks at night and dropping them into the tank.

MASSIVE diatom bloom happening. Tank looks horrendous.

Still trying to dial in flow. Having a venturi issue with one Wavysea, I tried to DIY a 3/4" inlet barb for it (came second hand and only came with a 1" input which doesn't work for me) - hoping to hear I can get a replacement part but we'll see. Haven't fully committed to keeping the Wavysea's at this point.

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all.

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all.

Tony, wait until you get stuff in the tank before you sell them. I think you'll be surprised when the tank has corals etc in it. You may not ever get "the wave" but they'll add some nice movement to the tank and you've already invested your dough in them so there is no point in taking a loss right now, just hold off for a bit.