magikarp Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 After keeping a very basic Aquanano40 for the past 2 years in an apartment, I have been fortunate enough to move into a home I had built and upgrade the tank to a 4x2x2 Tank is a CADE 1200 freshwater that has been drilled sitting on a CADE 1200 marine stand with standard CADE sump. Current equipment Lighting: 2 Radion G3 pros Powerheads: 2 MP40s Return pump: Ehiem 1260 Heaters: 2 Jaeger 200W Skimmer: Deltec 1455 Just finished setting up all the dry stuff, starting up my RO/DI unit to make some water tonight Link to comment
hey Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 perfect dimensions... my next tank upgrade dimensions for sure. Link to comment
magikarp Posted January 11, 2015 Author Share Posted January 11, 2015 been battling against my plumbing for a while now. haha seems now matter what I do at least 1 join will slowly drip. Just got it all fixed yesterday and a join that never dripped before started Here's a progress shot, got all my rock in. About 15kg live and 10kg old dead rock from a previous tank Link to comment
magikarp Posted January 29, 2015 Author Share Posted January 29, 2015 After about 3 weeks of adding the rocks and sand my tank had a plague of pods. This pic shows their density along the front glass. Didn't last long. I added a Pajama Cardinal a couple days ago, who has been eating them around the clock. Never seen a Cardinal active before... guess all they need is food to move them Couple more pics from the CUC Link to comment
4x5 Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 Conches really are the best. Link to comment
magikarp Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 probably the favorite thing in my tank haha. Strombus snails are pretty much why I wanted to go for an open sand bed rock scape. New fish scared me when I was acclimating, just lied on its side completely lifeless. Then in the tank curled itself up in a ball and lied there. Never saw a fish in a more awkward position Next day was extremely active and in the open, picked itself out a pretty awesome dart hole. Has claimed the smaller island as its own. Link to comment
magikarp Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 New fish, sorry about the crappy camera phone pic Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 1, 2015 Author Share Posted March 1, 2015 Bit better shot of the Tiger Blenny Cleaner shrimp is extremely enthusiastic to clean. Clown Goby. Hard to photo with my point and shoot camera in a reasonably big tank Link to comment
NanoFever Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 Great scape and love the fish choices so far. Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 Thanks man. Although it's a bigger tank, I still prefer nano fish. I will probably have it a bit understocked. Total of 8 fish is planned at this point. Most of them small. Link to comment
Benny314 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Looking good. How goes your plumbing woes? Did you get all the drips in the end, it's so annoying. My return was a pain for a while but I think I've got it now. Just a thought, is the plumbing supported? Also those long horizontal lengths on the drains are going to give you problems. They'll slow the water down so you will have trouble if you put a bigger return pump on there in the future and the secondary drain looks like it goes up hill (maybe camera angle)? There will be quite alot of weight in those pipes if they're not supported they will be loading you bulkheads and could cause the tank to crack, also they'll be at risk of furing up with crap and blocking if the water isn't moving through them quickly enough. You'd be better off with your plumbing slopping towards your sump, or fitting hose tails under the tank and running flexy pipe as the drains so you can get a more down hill slope from them. Got a new full tank shot? Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 I got it to stop leaking, but it was all patch jobs. It annoyed me enough to replace it all with vinyl tubing, and I am glad I did. All sealed without any patching, also added a flow limiting valve to the return pump. I have found it much easier to tune a Herbie overflow using the return pump side than the drain side. This shot is from a bit more than a month ago. Hair algae was loving the tank heh About a week ago. Slowly looking better Link to comment
Benny314 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Hair algae is one of those things that has to run it's course until things have leveled off. Glad to see it's a winning battle. If your drains can't handle full bore of the pump you'll never be able to set a herby up with adjusting only the drain side. Hopefully the with the new drain lines will allow more flow through your sump. However I am only running maybe 1500lph through my sump. It doesn't have to be a raging torrent through your sump. Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 I probably have 3-4 times my tank volume going through the sump. It's enough. My problem wasn't that the drain couldn't handle the return water flow. Just tuning it for the herbie method was a real pain. I cant explain why, but the valve on my return pump lets me make much more fine adjustments. Link to comment
Benny314 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 As long as it's running we won't ask questions lol. Now the fun part of stocking it up and sitting back and enjoying it. Have to say I'm loving the scape, you have some nice rock pieces in there. Link to comment
Dramad1 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Maybe think of a DC return pump that's controllable, this way you can adjust the flow with out having to put a ball or gate valve on the return pump. Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 3, 2015 Author Share Posted March 3, 2015 As long as it's running we won't ask questions lol. Now the fun part of stocking it up and sitting back and enjoying it. Have to say I'm loving the scape, you have some nice rock pieces in there. Thanks man. You can see the best pieces are white/deadrock. All come from my old tank. I lucked out getting them. They had crazy amounts of hitchhikers on them too, more than I could ever effectively ID. All the new rock are small pieces that have been epoxied/superglued together. I am happy with how it turned out. Wish the fish liked it as much, they all love the same corner of the tank. (next to the smaller island) and mostly ignore the rest Maybe think of a DC return pump that's controllable, this way you can adjust the flow with out having to put a ball or gate valve on the return pump. Don't plan to swap out any hardware at this point. My Ehiem 1260 with a ball valve is working well. It's no difference from pumping a larger head, so I can set and forget now I have a balanced siphon dialed in. Link to comment
Benny314 Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 They'll settle in. When I first added my tomato clown she just stayed in one corner for 2 days same as my cleaner shrimp who still isn't that adventurous 2 weeks on, then she slowly became more confident and explored more of the tank. How high are the vortech's set? They might all be sheltering in a lower flow area to rest. Most fish do well in all flow types. But again some of my fish, particularly my sailfin tang did find themselves blind sided by pulses from my RW-4's every so often till they worked out what to expect when swimming by them. I have just moved my RW's and set them next to each other high up to create a gyre type effect (one on constant pulse and the other on else mode creates a lovely gyre with shifting pulses in it) and the cleaner shrimp is now spending all its time under an over hang below the wave makers. Not sure how thrilled it is with the new flow pattern lol. Everything else is loving it. Link to comment
AllOutAfrican Posted March 10, 2015 Share Posted March 10, 2015 this is a very nice tank magikarp I love the dimensions of this tank.really like your scaping with the two islands . lots of space for rock and corals and the best of all so much sand for the snails and hermits will be following your progress... nano fish are the way to go easy to manage bio load and so many nice species to choose from Link to comment
magikarp Posted March 13, 2015 Author Share Posted March 13, 2015 Thanks for the kind words. You hit on lots of the priorities i had while putting this together. Link to comment
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