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UWWMatt's 25G Journal


uwwmatt

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Sat April 11th 2009

 

ftsapril.jpg

FTS taken April 10th

 

 

My clown got sick a few weeks back so I moved him back into the hospital tank and began treating him, but unfortunately after about a week of treatment he died. Also I have not seen the green clown goby since adding him to the tank. I think I am just going to give up on adding fish to my system.

 

Two days ago I finally tore down my pico and moved the remaining Sexy Shrimp into my main display. I was worried that the transition would kill the shrimp, but I acclimated him for 2 hours and he has been doing great. He rotates between my frogspawn, candy cane, and button coral.

 

IMG_5870.jpg

 

I have been really lucky with my invertebrates. The bumblebee and sexy shrimp spend most of the time in the front of the tank. The Porcelain crab spends the days hanging around my ricordia, and the nights he moves to the top of the tank and feeds off of the water column. My Cleaner is still a little shy unfortunately, but maybe as it grows it will be come more adventuresome. My emerald crab is getting pretty large and it has me a bit worried. As of yet it has behaved but I have been debating removing him. My pom pom crab is incredible shy, but I expected as much.

 

My electric blue hermit is now in the habit of crawling up the stalk of my toadstool and then hanging on the edge of it. Its pretty funny to watch, but I hope it is not going to bother the coral to much.

 

IMG_5841.jpg

 

 

If you noticed in the new FTS I have moved some things around a bit, but not to much. Things are starting to fall into place as they begin to grow out. It is amazing to think that 4 months ago today this tank was just an idea. I think at least for the next couple months I am just going to let the tank grow out. I am not going to buy any more fish for this tank. Somewhere down the line I may add more inverts and perhaps a few more zoa frags but the major changes are done. Now I can just sit back and enjoy.

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I have had incredible growth in the past year.

If you have been following this thread then you know that most of my corals came from my 14G biocube which I upgraded to my 25 tank.

 

Here is a shot of the 14G, this photo is about a year old.

biocube14.jpg

 

And since the transfer.

2-8.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

May 5th 2009

 

I came home from work at 2am this morning to find my water level about 3 inches lower then it should be. One of my power heads was only partially submerged creating millions of micro bubbles. I could hear the pumps in my sump buzzing so I opened the cabinet door and found my sump almost completely empty, my ATO bucket was empty as well.

 

My tank temperature dropped to 72 degrees and the SG was 1.019.

 

I immediately unplugged everything and moved all the equipment away from the wet carpet. I used what little water I had to mix up some extra salty water to add to the tank and added another heater to the display. I also added an air stone and turned on one of the Koralia 1s.

 

I have been running around for the past 2 hours drying the carpet and trying to balance out the tank parameters. Right now the tank is back to 76 degrees and a SG of 1.023, I am afraid to raise either to quickly. I don't want to damage things anymore then they already are.

 

I am incredibly tired and cannot figure out what the problem could possible be. It had to happen sometime between 10:30pm when my fiancé went to bed and 2:00am when I got home. My only thought is that my sump developed a crack emptying out, causing the water level to drop and forcing my ATO to kick on and empty. Once the ATO water was gone the pumps (return, skimmer, reactor) just continued to run dry for however long before I found it. The only problem with this scenario is that after inspecting the sump I am unable to locate a crack/leak. The only way I can test this theory is if I fill the sump up with water and see if it drains out all over my floor. (The sump cannot be removed from the stand without first removing the display tank.)

 

My corals seem OK. The frogspawn and hammer are retracted, but not much more then is usual at night. Some of my candy canes seem to be irritated as well, but most everything else looks normal. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all my ornamental invertebrates don't die from the fast parameter changes.

 

I think I am going to try and get some sleep now, but will have to wake up in a few hours and figure out what the heck I am going to do. I will probably have to drain most of my display tank and try to find some people to help me move it so I can get to the sump and move the stand to get to the carpet underneath. I also need to track down more fans, and pray like hell that this doesn't ruin the carpet in my apartment [-o<

 

IMG_5954.jpg

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here fishy fishy

OMG, so sorry about all this. I hope everything survives for you. Your tank is beautiful, btw.

 

I've had to empty my tank before (39 gal) and used 5 gallon buckets and rubbermaid containers.

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Matt - PM me if you need some help. I have about 10g of SW made up and a rubbermaid container you could use. I am not far from the university...

 

Also, my tank runs consistently at 73 degrees with no problems whatsoever for the corals and I used to always run my old tank at 1.020 - 1.019 SG with no problems either. I would guess your tank will be OK, assuming you find the source of the leak & get the sump all set up again.

 

Sucks...hope you get it figured out quickly & easily.

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Man, sorry about your disaster. I hope you figure out whats going on.

 

I have the same 25 setup with a 10 gallon sump crammed into the stand, hoping nothing goes wrong with it ever!

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I just want to thank everyone for the encouragement. This really is a great community.

 

As for my tank, the corals still seem to be alright. I left my light off, do you guys think I should turn it back on?

 

I am really not looking forward to draining my display tank to get to the sump, but I see no other path. Someone over at my local reef club forum suggested that the cause may have been the Plexiglas baffles in my sump expanding and causing the seams to separate on the sump (10G AGA). Does anyone know if this is a plausible explanation? I have never heard of this happening, and why would it take 5 months to happen?

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I just want to thank everyone for the encouragement. This really is a great community.

 

As for my tank, the corals still seem to be alright. I left my light off, do you guys think I should turn it back on?

 

I am really not looking forward to draining my display tank to get to the sump, but I see no other path. Someone over at my local reef club forum suggested that the cause may have been the Plexiglas baffles in my sump expanding and causing the seams to separate on the sump (10G AGA). Does anyone know if this is a plausible explanation? I have never heard of this happening, and why would it take 5 months to happen?

 

I've heard of this. There's two types of plexiglass/acrylic. One is porous and absorbs water very slowly and can expand. What width plexi did you use for the baffles?

 

Mine is 3/16" and in some places, it has bowed slightly from the weight of the water, but I'd rather it do this than expand and separate the seams. I have been running this same sump since October 2008.

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May 5th 2009 continued

 

Of course I can't find my tape measure (I am bad about putting things back when I finish using them) but I think mine is only 1/8inch thick. I can bend/flex it pretty easily with my hands.

 

Here the sump is when I was building it.

IMG_4726.jpg

 

The reason I went with Plexiglas in the first place was because at the hardware store they only had 1/8 plate glass for windows, and the guy behind the counter thought that wouldn't be wise to use. Would that have been OK?

 

 

edit:

Here is the sump looking down into the cabinet (this is during the build).

IMG_4731.jpg

|-----intake----------|---------fuge/skimmer---------|--trap--|------return-------|

 

There was still some water in the return chamber, the weird thing was the bubble trap was completely full of water. The fuge and intake where both empty except for a few centimeters of water on the bottom.

 

There was also a carbon reactor hanging on the back of the sump, the intake pump for it and the skimmer where in the intake portion of the sump and emptied into the fuge section of the sump.

 

I emptied out 2/3 of the water in the tank and placed most of the corals into two five gallon buckets.

IMG_5961.jpg

 

I had my cousin come over and help me move the tank

IMG_5957.jpg

 

I had an old aquaclear laying around so I hooked it up, as well as my carbon reactor.

IMG_5963.jpg

 

Most things are closed up and there is a lot of mucus floating around, but I think that is to be expected. I also added 5 gallons of new salt water.

IMG_5965.jpg

 

 

I removed the sump and cleaned it out. It turns out I was correct, my sump was leaking from the bottom seam. So in the next few days I will have to track down a new 10G and add new baffles (I will go with glass this time).

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Anyone know how long a pump can run dry before it is ruined? My return, skimmer, ATO, and reactor pumps where all running dry for an undetermined period of time. :tears:

 

If I hadn't already invested so much money in this hobby I think I might have left today.

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Anyone know how long a pump can run dry before it is ruined? My return, skimmer, ATO, and reactor pumps where all running dry for an undetermined period of time. :tears:

 

If I hadn't already invested so much money in this hobby I think I might have left today.

Really hard to say. A quick test run in the tub should tell you if they are still ok. Depending on the pump it may be able to be rebuilt.

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Really hard to say. A quick test run in the tub should tell you if they are still ok. Depending on the pump it may be able to be rebuilt.

 

Is there any danger of using a pump that has run dry for a while? If they work when I test them, and I use them again do I run the risk of electrocuting everything in my tank, or burning my apartment down?

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Oddly enough my micro brittle stars are spawning right now. So if everything else dies at least I will have starfish.

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MitchReef
Is there any danger of using a pump that has run dry for a while? If they work when I test them, and I use them again do I run the risk of electrocuting everything in my tank, or burning my apartment down?

 

If they are submersible pumps they should all be good, may require some new impellers, but that should be all...

 

They should be okay though...I've run them out of water for quite some time before....

 

As for your corals...I've received coral shipments before that were colder than that and ended up okay....let's just all say an extra prayer for the critters tonight....

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