artarmon42 Posted June 19, 2005 Author Share Posted June 19, 2005 No major updates, as I'm still waiting for the skimmer's bubbling to equalize. Here's modified shot showing how the return chases are configured... The bottom return, with it's 7 holes, is fed by the VA1300 sitting in chamber 1 (with the overflow and skimmer). The most powerful pump in the system (on all the time), its purpose is to lift the bottom crap into the water column (so that it can be exported by the skimmer). The top and side returns are connected to separate VA480s in the chamber 3 (with the filter-chamber and iceprobe). These two pumps use the A/B wave setting on the Reefkeeper. They alternate every 5 minutes (which doubles to every 10 minutes during in Night Mode) to create wave effects. You might notice that the IceProbe is on. And I've got my pink stylo in there, checking out the conditions of the new tank Link to comment
calvin Posted June 19, 2005 Share Posted June 19, 2005 very nice! Anyone else wanting a tank like this on the cheap should look here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=2377935793 and here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...950050&tc=photo I hope to get one of these one day! Link to comment
DarkMazda Posted June 19, 2005 Share Posted June 19, 2005 Hows the VA1300 and the other VA pumps holding up for you? Have you detected any problems like noise? Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted June 19, 2005 Author Share Posted June 19, 2005 To be honest, I was afraid about the VAs. In fact, I bought new pumps to replace them I was particularly keeping an eye out on their noise, heat and water turnover. But so far, nothing to complain about... certainly nothing to justify replacing them. Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted June 20, 2005 Author Share Posted June 20, 2005 Seeing a few people asked how the rear chambers work, I thought I'd explain in this thread (rather than individually). Here is a shot of the rear chambers (looking from the front) Water comes in from the overflow on the right side. That chamber has a heater, protien skimmer, and a pump to returns to the bottom chase. Water overflows from that chamber into the fuge area. The fuge area in turn, overflows into the filter-media chamber. From top-to-bottom, the filter-media chamber consists of: Polyfilter, Seachem Renew, Seachem Phosguard, Seachem Purigen. Heh, never realized I'm a Seachem fan until now Anyway, through gravity, and how the return pumps are positioned, water is pretty well pulled through the filter-media chamber. When it exits, it is cooled by the IceProbe (if necessary) and then returned to the display via the side and top return chases. In a test I ran this afternoon, it takes about 10 minutes for the IceProbe to cool the water from 80.5 to 80.0 (the way it is set with Reefkeeper) even when the MH is on. The IceProbe probably won't be used often, as the full 10-hour photo period with all lights on, only raises the tank temperature from 79.5 to 79.9. Link to comment
diggitydj Posted June 20, 2005 Share Posted June 20, 2005 nice looking tank, almost just like a uniaquaruim, is it? Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted June 20, 2005 Author Share Posted June 20, 2005 Originally posted by diggitydj nice looking tank, almost just like a uniaquaruim, is it? If you mean everything is contained in one box, yes it is. I don't like to worry about leaky plumbing and whether things will stop flowing when the power goes out X) Link to comment
Web Guy Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 WOW, You have gone to the dark side!..Looks Sweet. Link to comment
crrichey Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Wow, do you think maybe, just maybe, you spent a LITTLE too much??? Good luck! Link to comment
The_Barbe-Hatten_Project Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 seems like you're running that skimmer a little wet... there should be more sludge than water in the collection cup... there are a lot of things you can do to manage the "wetness" of your skimmate... raise the skimmer out of the water so that the acctuall water line in the skimmer is at the bottom of the cone, adjust your salinity, or by adjusting your water temp... Nice tank BTW... i'm about to put a halide on my all-in-one tank... check it out, link is in my sig.. Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted June 22, 2005 Author Share Posted June 22, 2005 Originally posted by The_Barbe-Hatten_Project seems like you're running that skimmer a little wet... there should be more sludge than water in the collection cup... Yup, the skimmate is a little wet right now. Seeing it's a new skimmer, tank and water, it's in the break in period. Have to wait for the oxygen to equalize and surface tension to increase. Oh, and my venturi pump may be a little too powerful I'll give a few days, see how the skimmer "ages" and then try to figure something out : Link to comment
rbaby Posted June 22, 2005 Share Posted June 22, 2005 Art, that's awesome! Great job on it--do you know if it's gonna be a combo of SPS/LPS or more specific to one? That's going to be one kick ass tank, keep us updated. Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted June 23, 2005 Author Share Posted June 23, 2005 Thank rbaby! It'll house my Onyx pair but primarily SPS... I'm looking to build my "limited editions" set Link to comment
Sinistard Posted June 23, 2005 Share Posted June 23, 2005 Very nice looking tank and set up, I can't wait to see it stocked. Keep up the great work. Link to comment
SeanCallan Posted July 30, 2005 Share Posted July 30, 2005 Hey Bud, First off, nice tank, I like it a lot. Second, if you're doing SPS you may want to run the skimmer wet. You'll have to replace more water, but you'll end up keeping your system at a lower nutrient level which will really bring out the color in your SPS. I'd recommend running the skimmer wet. In all my SPS tanks I always have and have had good results from it. You'll find a lot of the big time SPS people run wet as well. If SPS is really your thing PM me and we can talk about some other things that may be advantages to you. Looking good man, keep it up and show us some pictures when it gets stocked! Link to comment
shao-lin nano Posted August 9, 2005 Share Posted August 9, 2005 Anything new art? It's been a while since your last update...are you waiting till your tank is super kick ass before you show us what you have in it? Link to comment
shao-lin nano Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 I thought this tank was his baby? Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 Wow, it's been awhile since I posted some updates. About 3 months, judging by how old my daughter is now : After the last series of pictures, I transplanted everything from my Nano Cube to this new tank. In hindsight, the move was probably too rushed because quite a few of my frags RTN'd in the first few days. That was sad, but it was just not going to viable to have 2 tanks in my house that close to the wife giving birth (hormones ). I did snap a few shots of the new setup, but sadly never got around to doing a full tank shot with the MH. The best I've got showing the lighting is: You'll notice the areas of really super-bright light and many shaded areas. Looking back, the MH was too close to the water (or the tank was too shallow) resulting in a tight spotlight effect. Oh, and the (150W) MH heated up the water like crazy. Even with the fans going, I was getting daily temperature fluctuations of 80-82 (maybe 83 on a hot day). Remember that my house A/C kept my 70W MH Nano Cube at 80, and this thing has a chiller built in! And yeah, the evaporation was going through one quart (1L) of top-off water per day. Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 As I stated at the start of this thread, I had designed the tank to be 24" wide so that I could use either MH or T5s. So just under 3 months old, I decided to replace the MH + 65W PC actinic with T5s. I put in some high output T5s with parabolic reflectors: * 2x ATI 24W T5HO, Aqua 11k * 2x ATI 24W T5HO, Blue plus (true actinics) Full tank shot: Tied into my ReefKeeper, I get a nice dawn-to-dusk effect: Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 While I had the hood off, I took a shot of the skimmate my skimmer is collecting: That thing is surprising effective! As I've said many times, once you see the crap a skimmer pulls out, it's hard to live without it in all your tanks. The photo shows what is collected in about 3-5 days. Link to comment
adinsxq Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 the fish look out of proportion to me. get about 15 neon gobies please Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 The observant reader will notice I have a new fish in the tank. I picked up a small Lineatus Wrass. It'll need a bigger tank one day, but he's a beautiful fish and adds alot of activity. My Onyx pair is doing fine. They've moved away from my Fugia plate, and now host in my GSP. The larger (still adolescent and not quite a female yet) is started to fill in the color between the second and third bar. You'll also notice the frag of Tub's Birdsnest in the background. It is starting to finally turn green/yellow. The color change (from brown with brown polyp) happened about 2 days after I put in the T5s. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence, but I'm looking for changes with my other SPS as well. My other frags (that survived the transplant) are growing. Here are before and after shots of my GARF Bonsai (thank goodness that survived the transplant ). As for my other corals... * Tigah's Rainbow Acan now has grown to about 5-6 mouths. * Many of my Rainbow Monti frags RTN'd. I have a small colony that survived (stopped the RTN by itself) and has started growing back. * The Superman Danae had no problem, but hasn't grown in the 3 months I've had it. * The hot-pink Stylo had turned washed-out pink (arguably more white than pink) in the MH. I'm hoping it'll recover under the T5. * The Al G Blenny's Lucky Jade Acro turned brown, but in the 2-3 days after the T5s, have started to turn green again. * The Leng Sye Monti started to RTN, so I fragged a piece of. The frag survived but hasn't grown much in the 3 months. * My neon-green monti has grown about 25% in the 3 months. * The RTN victims were my bright-yellow tort, red-red monti-cap, green-polyp monti-digitata, Acropora Jacquelineae and Tyree Limited Edition Steve Elias Stag. :*( But I still have the curse of the Coralline Plague. As you can see in the earlier full tank shot, the Coralline is starting to go out of control in this 3 month old tank Link to comment
artarmon42 Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 Oh I forgot to mention. Since putting in the T5s, the tank temperature fluctates from 79.5 (when the heater kicks in) to 80.5 (when the chiller kicks in). This thing runs incredibly cool, and evaporation is about a quarter of what it used to be. Link to comment
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