180G Office Reef Tank

JDigital · #1 09-13-2012, 04:02 PM

Well the tank and sump is finally wet and circulating (during office hours until I get my check valve from The Reef Shoppe). The sand will be getting added as soon as I get the skimmer online in combination with a filter sock to polish the water after.

Picked up an Ocean Runner 2500 return pump yesterday to use a my feed for the Skimz 202. Unfortunately the seller broke the thread connector on it so I've got to fix that today before I can use it. (At least I got the pump for free because of it)

sphelps · #2 09-13-2012, 04:43 PM

I've put reef lobsters in reef tanks before without any issue. Seem to be pretty secretive hiding 99% of the time, so don't expect too much from them. Hit or miss with other inverts like shrimp, personally if you're planning on keeping things like shrimp and decorative crabs scratch the lobster as the risk involved hardly seems worth something you'll never see.

michika · #3 09-13-2012, 04:47 PM

I like, I like.

Are you going to get a pH probe for the RKE you just bought?

JDigital · #4 09-13-2012, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sphelps

I've put reef lobsters in reef tanks before without any issue. Seem to be pretty secretive hiding 99% of the time, so don't expect too much from them. Hit or miss with other inverts like shrimp, personally if you're planning on keeping things like shrimp and decorative crabs scratch the lobster as the risk involved hardly seems worth something you'll never see.

That might just be my reasoning to persuade him to pick something else..

I'd rather have some cleaner shrimp which will probably be more beneficial to the tank anyways. Especially if we're not gonna see the lobster much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by michika

I like, I like.

Are you going to get a pH probe for the RKE you just bought?

I'm actually buying that for myself..

Although until I can find a place to rent/own that will allow me to start my 62G I may run it on this tank... but to answer your question, Yes I will be adding the pH probe..

JDigital · #5 09-13-2012, 08:38 PM

Well it seems like if something can go wrong with my builds it does.. No super serious, but looks like I will have to take my brand new Water Blaster HY7000 pump into to Concepts to get checked out... I fired it up this morning and it was fairly silent, after a few hours I could hear it from my office. Loud humming noise that started to get a bit of a clicking noise that you could hear in the rotation.. unplugged it at that point.

Hopefully it is a simple fix.

JDigital · #6 09-14-2012, 02:15 AM

Well Dave made my life easy today..

Took the WB7000 back to him.. and downgraded for the 5000. I really think the 7K was too much for this system... I know fishytime is running the 7K on his 260G (+100G sump).. My overflows were getting a ton of bubbles from the flow crashing over...

So I took the WB5000 and a Sedra something-er-rather that I need to feed my skimmer and called it a day.

The 5000 works MUCH better IMO, it's quiet, and the overflows aren't filled with as many bubbles.

The Sedra on the other hand seems to be too much pump for this Skimz 202... It calls for a 500gph feed pump, which the sedra maxes out at, but I am getting MASSIVE amounts of micro-bubbles throughout the sump and returning up to the Display.. So I picked up some plumbing supplies tonight including a ball valve so I can control the flow and dial in the skimmer.

I can't wait to get this thing running smoothly so I can finally work an 8am-430pm shift, instead of the current 8am-8pm..

JDigital · #7 09-15-2012, 05:57 PM

Photo-dump!

Eggcrate gone.. Sand in..

After adding the sand in the light from the tank no longer lights up the sump area. Not impressed with that (although knowing it was inevitable), I decided to shed some light on the situation.

In a giant box of misc aquarium stuff that came with the tank, I found myself 3 Marineland LED lights. While not powerful enough to use over the tank, I decided that one of them should work nicely in the sump area. Tossed some screws into the stand, a few zip-ties later and voila!

The Skimmer slowly seems to be breaking in. I was having a **ck of time with it yesterday, overflowed a couple times, I was getting an incredible amount of microbubbles back into my sump/DT.. I turned it off last night when I left the office, however I've had it running the whole time I've been here this morning and so far is seems a better. I don't have the light overs the tank on, so its difficult to tell if I have any microbubbles making their way to the DT.

I'm really not sure if I should even run the skimmer for now as there is nothing alive in the tank yet, I only start adding Zeobak yesterday. Will pick up a few prawns or shrimp today to kick start the cycle. Only reason the skimmer is really running it to break it in, and in combination with a 300 micron sock, try and polish the water after adding the sand.