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#1
02-11-2011, 04:41 AM
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For layout, the dosing pump would have to go on top of the fridge. I had originally been thinking of having the dosing pump in the fridge, but I want the extra space and flexability afforded by having the dosing pump outside.
Plus for this type of fridge, its the freezer that actually cools down the rest of the fridge. So if the dosing pump was very high up it might frees the liquids inside of the actual pumps... Time to measure twice and cut once! I got out the square and made my marks on the top of the fridge where the line would be going through for the dosing pumps. This too a few min and bit of sketching things out on paper as I wanted the dosing pump the be dead square about the fridge and I wanted the lines to be able to into the fridge perfectly straight. To make sure the holes were perfectly lines up I punched the holes... yes with a scribe.... but still. First the holes were drilled at 1/8" Then the were drilled out larger And a pic from inside the fridge If you are going to try this yourself I think it is worth mentioning that the holes for the lines that we drilled were just slightly smaller that the diameter of the tube. Not by enough to pinch the line, but by just enough that Trina had to work at it for a while and twist the lines as they went in to get them to fit. A decent interference fit should mean that you have zero air movement between the fridge and the lines. You will always have some temp lost due to the lines coming out of the fridge being cold and transmitting the cold to the outside, but it will be minimal. Here are the lines installed through the top of the fridge. And now finally with the fridge done we can install it under the tank and start to transfer the livestock over and fill the new tank! 
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#4
02-11-2011, 03:15 PM
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I think if you check the links I posted, you will see that the first picture posted on this thread is of a cardiff and not a solana...
semantics though and I suppose irrelevant in the light of a great build.
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#5
02-11-2011, 03:44 PM
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LOL, sorry.
Yes I meant the cardiff. And thank you once again The cardiff is actually still setup and sitting in my living room room as we speak. I wanted to take my time with the setup and equipment detail so instead of rushing things I actually just shifted cardiff over and setup this tank in its place. The number of times I have had to move our sectional counch though so that I can work on the tank... Lets just says its been a few  Details to follow this weekend: MP10 Install Individually switched powerbar and livestock transfer! I think I will be doing some mods to the fridge door too to make it easier to open, but not sure if I will have a chance to get the acrylic today.
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#6
02-11-2011, 03:55 PM
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Quote:
I can imagine how relieved you will be to have a build in place you are personally satisfied with that will not require moving anymore furniture and enables you to keep your food mashing to a minimum. I don't know that Ive seen any other non photosythetic tanks on here before...I must admit, I like the concept, especially for an upstairs tank in my 40 year old house that pretty much necessitates a reverse light cycle which being a 6 am to 2pm and in bed by 8 kind of guy, leaves me little time to actually enjoy the upstairs display. I'm looking forward to some close up full tank shots, I would love to see some of the original cardiff if you have any...
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#7
02-11-2011, 04:36 PM
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I will see if I can find some decent macro shots of the cardiff for you.
The cardiff is an amazing show piece from a few feet away but up close the distortion from the glass makes it almost impossible to get a decent pic. The camera has to be dead level to the ground and taking a pic at 90 degrees to the glass. Any angle at all and the pic comes out fuzzy every time. As for the light, the cardiff had a single 24" Reefbrite and the new tank will have 2-3 Reefbrites LED fixtures. These do not contribute any heat whatsoever. With 3 ReefBrites on the tank you can easily keep some photosynthetic corals in the tank as well and you dont have any heat trasfer to the tank.
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#8
02-12-2011, 04:10 PM
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Quote:
I had a pair of pom pom anemone crabs in the tank for a long time but could not find them on the transfer... Hope they made it.... These guys are craz cool to watch but as anybody knows that has one, they are quite reclusive. They can disappera for weeks on end then one day you see them walking arounf like this. The second pic is of the Blue Spotted Jawfish. The sandbed in this tank was not deep enough for him, plus with the minimal points of contact on the sandbed he eally could not build a proper burrow. So he never really settled in and kept jumping. On the Cardiff we first tried the glass lid that came with the tank to keep him in. I have never had a glass lid on a tank before so although I have read about the negative side effect I never really personally experienced them until this tank. We noticed that the redox was steadily decreasing so we stared doing more water changes, changing the food mash dailey and put on a bigger ozone generator. After a few weeks though, even with a 350mg ozone generator on a 24g tank we could only maintain the redox around 250. Then the glass lid issue occured to me, we removed the glass top and over the next few days the redox went back up the 375. So then we made a window screening top for the tank to stop him from jumping. But once a week he would end up in the back section of the tank and eventually one of the pumps got him... We were able to keep him for about a year, but I wouldnt try again withough first building an area for him to build his burrow.
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#9
03-01-2011, 02:06 AM
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Sorry, things have been a bit busy recently.
Just as un update, the tank has been running smoothly for a bit now. We have added some of the corals from the 24g back in as well as a few new pieces. I will see if we can snap a few pics and update the thread.
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