Jigsaw Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 Holy awesome, batman , I'm super impressed! I wish I had those fine craftsmanship skills, wow! Have you tested it out yet? From the looks of it, I'm guessing no, but who knows what could have happened since you took those pics Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 5, 2011 Author Share Posted July 5, 2011 Holy awesome, batman , I'm super impressed! I wish I had those fine craftsmanship skills, wow! Have you tested it out yet? From the looks of it, I'm guessing no, but who knows what could have happened since you took those pics Thanks for the compliments. BTW- for those who may not have noticed- the acrylic I used doesn't like typical drill bits. The plan was to make two pilot holes then cut a thin slit with a jigsaw for the "waterfall" part... But at a certain point while drilling, the bit heated enough to fall right through the acrylic- then it cooled and got stuck in there. Before I do any more drilling with acrylic, I really need to do some research. Anyway- I ran my garden hose on full blast through this thing to test for leaks.... Dumped it over to pour it out (to test flexibility/fragility) and fixed the leaky baffle. Beyond that, there's been no testing. What I anticipate from running water through this is there will be bubbles in the display because of the return, and a fair amount of salt creep in that area- possibly on my LED fixture. We'll see how things go when I hook it up to the tank. I'm using an Ehiem 1262 for my return pump which has seemed to be serious overkill- so I'm going to T off of that and control the output to the fuge with a ball valve... I expect that I should end up with just enough flow through both my regular return and the HOB fuge. Quote Link to comment
Soopa1 Posted July 6, 2011 Share Posted July 6, 2011 (edited) In 10-15 yrs kgoldy will have cured AIDS & cancer, solved world hunger,and fixed the hole in the ozone layer. After that he will ascend into the ether..WATCH! Edited July 6, 2011 by Soopa1 Quote Link to comment
herranton Posted July 6, 2011 Share Posted July 6, 2011 (edited) That will be cool when inTank makes a "media basket" for it..... Nah, I just kidding.That thing is awesome. Edited July 6, 2011 by herranton Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 6, 2011 Author Share Posted July 6, 2011 In 10-15 yrs kgoldy will have cured AIDS & cancer, solved world hunger,and fixed the hole in the ozone layer. After that he will ascend into the ether..WATCH! Finding a cure for water changes is all I want to accomplish in life. Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 6, 2011 Author Share Posted July 6, 2011 Wait... what's this?? Frag city?! Carbon in first chamber. Bye bye, brand new BRS Delux Reactor I didn't even unwrap yet... So I ordered a bunch of reef stuff from three different places, and it's coming in the opposite order I intended... 1- Dr Foster and Smith (substrate for the fuge)..... lost my entire order. 2- Reef Cleaners (Macros for fuge).... had to ship a day late because I'm a pain in the ass and order oddball stuff 3- Mr Coral (bagillion frags for display).... I was expecting them tomorrow, the whole Monday off thing messed me up. So, I'm making the best of it and using the fuge as a frag tank to let the corals acclimate to the water and mild lighting before moving them into my display. Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 8, 2011 Author Share Posted July 8, 2011 Exciting day for the HOB fuge. It moved on from being a frag tank to becoming a mangrove/oargrass/scroll algae mud pit. I unfortunately found out the hard way that Walt Smith's Figi Mud is no joke- and should be added BEFORE your aragonite. The stuff is silt- real, genuine mud. In time, theoretically larger particles will rise as sand stirring inverts move around... But if that happens, it's going to take a really, really long time. I did everything I could for about a half hour to try to mix it in with the oolite to make up the DSB- but most of it just settled on top as a sort of under-water quicksand. The porcelain crabs seem to love it though- I got 5 with my order today, and made this their home. Yeah, they're counter productive because they'll eat the same stuff that this fuge should be feeding my corals... But I like them, so I got em and put em somewhere that they can't hide from me. My porcelain and pom-poms are spotted once every 2 months at best in my display tank. So, pic time. F&S order that was supposedly lost in the mail showed up today, boxes beat to hell... Everything inside survived, although one bag of oolite was leaking. Ordered both of these so I could find out the difference, compare, and review... Scroll Algae Porcelain crabbies Mangrove propagules (sp?) Rinsed oolite went in first... Big mistake. Creates roughly a 4-5 inch sandbed. Then goes the Miracle Mud... Then I open this to find a bag of silt... and realize I effed up. One mild flood (didn't take X gallons of water out to compensate for X gallons of sand and mud), about an hour of panicking to try to dry my floors and find the outlet that got wet and tripped my GFCI... And all is done. Water should clear in about 5 years. Quote Link to comment
DirtyC Posted July 8, 2011 Share Posted July 8, 2011 Is that stunner strip gonna be strong enough for the macros?? Couldn't you have unplugged the hob to allow settling so it wouldn't have clouded you dt? Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 8, 2011 Author Share Posted July 8, 2011 Is that stunner strip gonna be strong enough for the macros??Couldn't you have unplugged the hob to allow settling so it wouldn't have clouded you dt? The stunner strip may be strong enough, but honestly, I don't know. At 4 inches from the sandbed, I'm hoping it's strong enough. The clouding came from overflow, pumps were off. Quote Link to comment
PRReef Posted July 8, 2011 Share Posted July 8, 2011 AWESOME BUILD MAN!!! I LIKE IT A LOT!!! Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share Posted July 11, 2011 Hmmm... So I'm no longer building anything with this project... Should I have it moved it to the macro forum, or start a new one? While I decide- update time. The LED strip seems to be bright enough to support macros. I'm leaving it on 24/7 because it doubles as a moon light. Sure, stuff doesn't glow, but it really looks like the moon over a reef in the main tank now. My camera skill still suck, so I have trouble capturing what it actually looks like in person. I think the last pic is a pretty accurate representation.^ It's dark enough that all the corals "go to sleep". One crabby likes the intake by the carbon. Temporarily put a piece of acrylic to stop the water from stirring up the mud... I replaced this with chaeto after I remembered the 10 lbs of extra I had. Haha Chaeto is also at the exit before the baffle Looks pretty sweet now that the water cleared. I'm just hoping there's enough current to support the potato algae in there. Grass is looking kind of pathetic... Hopefully the mud and slow current allows it to grow stronger and spread throughout the fuge. Macro video sucks at night. Still learning... Quote Link to comment
fote03 Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 Cool build. The fuge under the tank looks good. Got any more pics of it? Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share Posted July 11, 2011 Cool build. The fuge under the tank looks good. Got any more pics of it? Yup, check the macro link in my sig. Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted August 23, 2011 Author Share Posted August 23, 2011 Top layer is livesand I got from generous local reefers. Layer below is silt that formed from the Walt Smith's Figi mud. Zigzag periwinkles from ReefCleaners. Got one 36" and one 48" 12k White Stunner Strip on there now, just added the reflectors too. It's pretty obvious just from looking that the PAR (or at least light intensity) is doubled with the reflectors. Hopefully the reflectors help dissipate some of the heat from these things... The mangroves are growing into them and getting a little toasted. Also- I took up the habit of spraying the mangroves down with fresh water once in a while... Within a week I noticed a significant increase in their rate of growth. Quote Link to comment
Phatboy Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 That is basically the poo! Well done sir, well done! Quote Link to comment
28g nano noob Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 pretty sweet i noe id never even attempt building 1 Quote Link to comment
xxbrianxx Posted August 28, 2011 Share Posted August 28, 2011 just read through the whole thread....this thing is awesome man, nice job! Quote Link to comment
MGDMIRAGE Posted August 28, 2011 Share Posted August 28, 2011 Love it! Nice work. Quote Link to comment
kgoldy Posted September 3, 2011 Author Share Posted September 3, 2011 Pic dump. Check out them leaves! Turns out if you follow the instructions provided by ReefCleaners, your mangroves will actually grow! Haha. The first batch were nearly murdered by salt for 6 months... A little spray down with RO water once every few days makes a HUGE difference. Quote Link to comment
crazycichlids Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 This is the best hob I have ever seen. Way cool looking with mangroves and grass! Quote Link to comment
Polscot Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I'll be honest I hate the dimensions of the standard 90, BUT this tank is amazing bro the creativity is awesome and having 2 viewable planted areas, masterpiece. One of the most inventiv I've seen Quote Link to comment
ajmckay Posted October 19, 2011 Share Posted October 19, 2011 KG, nice additional fuge man! Probably the thing that impresses me most about this whole build is that each section is different. The main tank is a classic reef tank, the sump has filtration chambers as well as a display fuge with a rock wall, and then you add this semi-HOB fuge with a DSB and mangroves... The next most impressive part is probably your ambition in all the macro algae... It's everywhere, diverse, and from the pics looks healthy! Good job keep updating every once in a while, hopefully everything goes well. Quote Link to comment
creefer Posted October 19, 2011 Share Posted October 19, 2011 KG, nice additional fuge man! Probably the thing that impresses me most about this whole build is that each section is different. The main tank is a classic reef tank, the sump has filtration chambers as well as a display fuge with a rock wall, and then you add this semi-HOB fuge with a DSB and mangroves... The next most impressive part is probably your ambition in all the macro algae... It's everywhere, diverse, and from the pics looks healthy! Good job keep updating every once in a while, hopefully everything goes well. +1 Quote Link to comment
Dakarta Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 Wow this is amazing. This has inspired me with my 55 gal. build. I just hope I can pull it off. Quote Link to comment
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