2024 Ohio Reef Frag Swap

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Author Topic: Miles' 150gal build  (Read 36814 times)

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Offline thepipbull

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #125 on: March 21, 2017, 22:47:16 »
Im just adding to many SPS and they are starting to take off so gotta up the dosing

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #126 on: March 22, 2017, 08:02:20 »
Logged into my apex this morning to re-enable dosing and discovered that my Alk pump was dosing all night long...  :th_madboom: :banghead

So that was like 600mL of Alk dosed over about 9 hours....
On the bright side, it doesn't really seem like it has affected my pH. Looks like I have a water change in my near future....

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #127 on: March 22, 2017, 13:45:31 »
This is what a mistake looks like......
My pH was on the rise, I turned off my lights remotely and have kept it from getting too far out of control.






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Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #128 on: March 22, 2017, 17:08:42 »
Damage Report:

Alk: 10.81dKH
Ca: 463 ppm

I did about a 45 gallon water change, going to do a water test later this evening and see if the Alk has dropped any, if not I'll do another 45 gallons.

I don't think anything really got damaged, bu tI do have a Bangaai that is acting weird... I think it' son its way out, can't tell if it is related to all of this though.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #129 on: March 29, 2017, 09:48:05 »
Update time:

That water change in the last post did not significantly change Alki levels at all. I decided to just turn off the dosing pumps and wait for it to go down naturally.
Over the weekend I had a weird situation. When down to the basement and noticed that there was water dripping off my tank rack, but I couldn't find it's source. After about 20 minutes of head scratching  :hmmmm:, I discovered that one of my 10 gallon tanks had developed a small leak in one of the bottom seams. I think this may actually be my fault, I think I may have sliced through some of the silicon with a razor blade while cleaning the glass.  :-Opps

I then discovered that when I designed my tank rack, I left no way to take a tank out of the system and leave the rest of them running.  :banghead
So, that tank is currently drained and the livestock moved (It was housing two bangaai that looked like they were about to start breeding, but one of them developed a weird swim bladder issue last week and died).

I have known since the first day that I set up the tank rack that the plumbing design was a disaster, because it is possible to overflow the tanks from too much flow, so I've decided that this is a good time just to tear the whole system down and redrill all of the tanks and replace the 1/2" bulkheads with 1" bulkheads and then replace the main drain line with something much bigger. So I am now in the process of gathering materials for that project.

In other news, I had a bangaai in the 10g tank with my Lightning Maroon, and it disappeared. There is literally no trace of it...maybe it jumped and the cat got it?


The Purple Tang is still healthy, he is ready to leave QT but I'm planning on doing some tank modifications to a tank that  I bought from Patrick (guynamedfleck), more on that to come.

Offline guynamedfleck

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #130 on: March 29, 2017, 10:19:26 »
Awesome, I look forward to seeing how you plumb out the new tank rack and what you do with the custom tank! I've been knocking around the idea of doing a tank rack myself; slowly collecting plumbing bits here and there.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #131 on: March 29, 2017, 11:19:31 »
Awesome, I look forward to seeing how you plumb out the new tank rack and what you do with the custom tank! I've been knocking around the idea of doing a tank rack myself; slowly collecting plumbing bits here and there.

The plan for the tank I bought from you is to CNC my own acrylic tower overflow in the middle with bulkheads through the bottom (two 1" drain lines and a 3/4" return). I've got the bulk heads and the bits for the CNC, I still need to get some acrylic.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #132 on: April 22, 2017, 17:09:18 »
Today was an adventure in DIY fishkeeping. My tank rack in the basement has needed replumbed from day one. I didn't take into account the flow from the pump when I plumbed everything together and quickly realized that it was possible to overflow the tanks because the drain lines were too small. Originally the drain lines were 1/2" and after doing some math I figured out that if I made them all 1" and had them feed into a 3" pipe it couldn't overflow unless a pipe got clogged. So the plan was to redrill all the tanks, add new bulkheads, replace the PVC drain lines with flexible tubing, put strainers on the drain lines, and make a 3" return line....   

So I drained all the tanks....


Moved all the livestock to buckets....



Then the part where everything went off the rails..... I successfully drilled one of the tanks... and the rest ended up cracking either when i tried to pull the bulkhead off or while drilling. No big deal right... Petco is doing their $1 per gallon sale right now, I'll just go pick some up....WRONG! The Petco in Beavercreek has disappeared, but their facebook page is still active  >:(. So I went to Petsmart and they matched the Petco price, but only had three 10 gal tanks. I then went to Pet Valu, they had four 10 gal tanks, but they gave me some grief when attempting to match the price, they wanted a printed ad which I didn't have. I showed them the online ad for the Dayton stores and then the manager finally decided that they would have an employee call Petco and find out if they were actually running that kind of deal. When they went to ring up 4 tanks they realized that they were missing out on $20, and that I was getting the tanks at cost. They weren't very happy, but they let me buy them anyway.


Moving on... I successfully drilled 5 of the 7 tanks I bought. Ended up cracking one of them, and decided to hold off on the last one till I actually need it.


I got everything assembled and glued...


Here is the setup for each tank...


The drain lines....


And the finished product.


This project only took about 7 hours... 2 trips to Lowes, and a trip to 2 different pet stores.


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« Last Edit: April 23, 2017, 10:30:07 by Miles »

Offline thepipbull

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #133 on: April 24, 2017, 08:33:25 »
Looking good you've been busy

Are these gong to be breeder tanks and if so what the next project?   

Offline guynamedfleck

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #134 on: April 24, 2017, 09:25:12 »
Awesome as always!

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #135 on: April 24, 2017, 10:17:36 »
Looking good you've been busy

Are these gong to be breeder tanks and if so what the next project?   

They currently house 3 pairs of clowns (top row) and a couple single maroons (bottom row.... one of the maroons has a bangaai roomate). The plan is for clownfish breeding, but I need to work on feeding them more high quality foods more often. I've got some Sustainable Aquatics hatchery diet, I just need to figure out the best way to ensure they get fed on a regular schedule multiple times throughout the day.

 

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #136 on: June 04, 2017, 22:36:45 »
Finally decided to just add the purple tang to the main tank. With the arrival of our first child back in December, I don't have a lot of time to work on projects, so who knows when I'm going to get around to making the overflow for the tank I got from Patrick. So today I made a quick fish acclimator/introducer out of some PVC and netting I had laying around. The plan is to let him sit here for a few days and let the other fish get used to him, then add the yellow tank that is living on the frag tank to see how they get along. Then finally introduce them both at the same time and hope that the sailfin tang and foxface welcome them with open fins.






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Offline joelbegt

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #137 on: June 05, 2017, 14:19:56 »
Jeez, how bigs that montipora?

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #138 on: June 05, 2017, 14:24:57 »
Jeez, how bigs that montipora?

Approximately 18" x 24"

It's been having some issues lately... it keeps slightly bleaching and then coming back. I need to tweak my dosing a little.

Offline joelbegt

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #139 on: June 05, 2017, 14:28:10 »
My old orange one was my canary for magnesium.  It would always pale out if it was getting low

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #140 on: June 05, 2017, 14:29:58 »
My old orange one was my canary for magnesium.  It would always pale out if it was getting low

That actually makes a lot of sense... I have problems keeping my Mg levels up. I'll have to see if that fixes it.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #141 on: June 07, 2017, 17:16:44 »
Added the yellow tang yesterday, initially the purple tang attacked it, but after about 30 minutes they began to tolerate each other. They tend to keep to opposite sides of "the cage". My chromosome seem interested in them, but pretty much everything else is ignoring them.




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Offline Humphrey

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #142 on: June 09, 2017, 07:30:21 »
Is that the $99 petco purple tang that came with the Ich included for free?  Working out so far! 

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #143 on: June 09, 2017, 09:37:21 »
Is that the $99 petco purple tang that came with the Ich included for free?  Working out so far! 

Yup... that's him. He is doing pretty well. Has some Hole-in-the-Head scarring which I read can be caused in Tangs by copper treatment.   

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #144 on: June 10, 2017, 16:26:29 »
Released both the yellow and the purple into the tank today. They were immediately harassed by my kohl tang. At one point the sailfin joined in and the purple tang was trapped in a corner. He made friends with the foxface very quickly and was able to use the foxface's spines as a defense. The yellow was mostly ignored until it ventured too close to the sailfin's territory. The sail fin trapped it in a corner and wouldn't let it leave.

After a few hours, everyone calmed down and everyone seems to be friends now.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #145 on: June 15, 2017, 15:23:52 »
Started having some weird electrical problems. We've. Even getting brown outs lately when storms have been passing through. We've never had this problem before, but in the past 2 months, we've probably had 5 or 6 instances where the power has flickered or dimmed.

This morning I woke up to an Apex power outage alert. Strange since my alarm clock was still showing the correct time. I went down to the basement to find that the surge protector that one of my power bars was connected to had tripped. I reset the switch and everything seemed ok. The main return pump kicked on, but by time I made it to the top of the stairs, it had kicked off again and my UPS was beeping. I replaced he surge protector and everything was good for about 15 seconds, then the return kicked off for about a second and then back in again. 15 seconds later the same thing happened. I didn't have a lot of time to mess with it, so I ran an extension cord from across my basement from and outlet on a different circuit to the return pump. When I left for work everything was up and running. In the last hour I have received 2 alerts that that EB8 has lost power... I just checked the current draw on that EB8, something fishy is definitely going on. Check out the entry at 5:30am.




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Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #146 on: June 15, 2017, 18:47:25 »
Came home to the surge protector tripped.... so now I am unplugging items one at a time and waiting to see if it trips again... so far it is pretty predictable and will trip after being on for about 3 minutes.  I think I have it isolated to just one of my EB8s, but at this point, I think it is something plugged into it (heater or pump) that is causing the issues.

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #147 on: June 16, 2017, 10:08:02 »
So apparently... I had my UPS plugged into a surge protector... pulled the UPS off the surge protector and haven't had any problems since... I would have thought that I would have had this problem a year or so ago if that was truly the problem but, Hey my house hasn't burned down yet.

Offline thepipbull

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #148 on: June 20, 2017, 08:34:50 »
Glad you got it figured out. and that monti cap is crazy big.....
Did you get the peppermint going or holding off on that for a while 

Offline Miles

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Re: mil3sdavis' 150gal build
« Reply #149 on: June 20, 2017, 08:37:36 »
I ended up going out of town several weeks ago and separated out the shrimp into tanks on the rack to make it easier for my tank sitter. I was only able to find three of them when I moved them so I probably need to get some more before I retry.


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