Welcome to all the fun: setting up a 12 foot reef tank

[ScottB]

Pictures incoming!

Lets start with the sexy stuff first. A couple hundred gallons of 1.026 mixed on site. RODI also produced on site. A glimpse also of the aquascape there.

More to follow, gotta make dinner.

 

[ScottB]

Oh good, the Shop-Vac is in the picture. Don't tell anyone but about 5 gallons of (thankfully fresh) water hit the floor while we were multitasking and moving water.

 

[ScottB]

The client wanted the black sand (Carib Sea). Not my favorite look, but it does have its positives. You can't see diatoms or cyano so much. It is also heavy and does not blow around. On the downside, the magnetic glass scrapers tend to pick up this stuff a lot. And it is an acrylic tank...

Here is the sand and the live rock largely in place.

 

[ScottB]

The rock is LifeRock. It is manmade, cured, and colonized. It comes wet but not submerged and with varying but limited amounts of attached life. We store it in the various store sumps and fish tanks. Randy runs no copper in the store so no worries there. Most of this is from a January vintage while some is much older.

Randy does most of the aquascaping. I think he has a pretty good eye for it. I was working in the canopy installing all the mounts for lights and power bricks. I typically hate canopies, but the carpenter did a nice job with the hinged doors and it was fairly easy to work in there.

 

[ScottB]

Everybody's favorite part: Getting Wet.

 

[ScottB]

Last tank pictures for now. Will take a couple days to top off the tank and the sumps. Ideally Wednesday we would get everything fully up and running, but sadly, I have a golf outing that day. Aiming to drop in some fish on Friday if everything checks out OK.

 

[ScottB]

The cabinet furniture is still unfinished. As it is a fairly public area, there will be some small locks on all the doors.

We did start up just two of the MP60s. Any concerns I had about enough flow from them don't seem warranted. At 40% with just two running, the flow was pretty decent. Once we fire the other two MPs, and the two SDC Sicce 9 returns we should be good.

We have two return nozzles on each end with the Random Flow Generators. Anybody have an opinion on what difference they actually make? Just curious.

 

[ScottR]

Everybody's favorite part: Getting Wet.

Finally!!! Water!

 

[ScottB]

Finally!!! Water!

Finally indeed. It is full as of this morning. Neither of us had much time today but the summary:
a) 3 small leaks. Two at the bulkheads connecting the sumps and one return bulkhead. Easy peasy.
b) One balky pump for the monster skimmer. Eventually started on its own. Technology.
c) RFG return nozzles sucking air and blowing bubbles. Adding some lockline to lower them.
d) Canopy door overhang not low enough. Water line is visible. TBD.
e) All MP60s running and some sand blowing. Some adjustment forthcoming.

In the end... it went too smoothly. So Murphy suggests we are totally screwed.

Heaters are running with controllers. Start is a surprisingly warm 72 but will be 78 tonight. Try to drop by tomorrow to dump in bacteria. (Totally unnecessary IMO due to ALL live rock).

Friday I should be there to get all the APEX basics running. Nothing crazy. Just the probes, the leak detect, the temp control and alarms, refugium. Add the first two fish. They have outgrown my frag systems. Meet George and Washington. Inseparable destroyers of ANY algae. I am so happy for their upgrade, Very deserving.

 

[count krunk]

I can only hope my retirement looks similar!

 

[ScottR]

Canopy door overhang not low enough. Water line is visible. TBD.

Duct tape. Done. Joking aside, this will be hard to fix without adjusting the height of the weir and/or flow unless cosmetically done on the outside.

 

[ScottB]

Duct tape. Done. Joking aside, this will be hard to fix without adjusting the height of the weir and/or flow unless cosmetically done on the outside.

It is pretty clear the cabinet guy stopped working from Randy's drawings at some point. Should have been a 2" overlap on the canopy doors versus the 1" installed. Randy will run it by the bank operations VP and see if she wants to hammer the contractor. She is a pretty tough lady. And she LOVES this aquarium. Constructing and installing 24 feet of doors -- eeeewwww. I would hate to eat that cost.

Likely fab up an acrylic insert to be placed inside the weir although I don't like those kind of fundamental adjustments. Something, eventually, goes wrong. I tried upping the flow to about 75% but it was too much flow for the sump sock compartment.

 

[ScottB]

I can only hope my retirement looks similar!

A lot of lucky breaks went my way, that is for certain. In the late 80s, I went to work for a small financial technology company in NYC. Early on, the two owners started giving a bunch of us young punks some "shares" in the little company. I worked with/for some incredibly talented people. It worked out pretty well over the ensuing 25 years.

 

[ScottR]

It is pretty clear the cabinet guy stopped working from Randy's drawings at some point. Should have been a 2" overlap on the canopy doors versus the 1" installed. Randy will run it by the bank operations VP and see if she wants to hammer the contractor. She is a pretty tough lady. And she LOVES this aquarium. Constructing and installing 24 feet of doors -- eeeewwww. I would hate to eat that cost.

Likely fab up an acrylic insert to be placed inside the weir although I don't like those kind of fundamental adjustments. Something, eventually, goes wrong. I tried upping the flow to about 75% but it was too much flow for the sump sock compartment.

Acrylic over the weirs may work but it’s a sad compromise. The risk of overflowing, the potential sucking/gurgling noise, algae growth or any build up will further make this more risky. The little things that go wrong on big builds….

 

[ScottB]

"Houston, we have a problem."

Not quite that dramatic, but surprising nonetheless. We have (we think) a 9 degree Fahrenheit differential between ambient air temp (72.5) and water temp (81.5).

This is WITHOUT the T5s running and WITHOUT the 114watt UV turned on. That is probably worth another 4 degrees!

The tank has large lid panels so we are opening those up. I was going tomorrow for the APEX install. That will give us another temperature gauge. Probably take a few mercury thermometers too.

What are the odds that the Ink Bird / BRS controllers are off by that much?

I guess I will also go and hand feel all the pumps to see if one is overheating. We have four pumps going plus four MP60 at 40%. Crazy. We were supposed to be putting my big fish in there tomorrow, but that is off until we get the temp situation sorted.

Never dull on the reef.

 

[count krunk]

That seems nuts it's running that warm. I'm not sure how it could be.

 

[ScottB]

That seems nuts it's running that warm. I'm not sure how it could be.

I suppose if we were running 4 big Danner Mags and 4 big Jaebos AND the controller probes were off by a couple... maybe it could make some sense. We have a couple of (well used) 1HP chillers laying around and some cabinet space but can only vent them back into workspace. Have to wait until the code inspectors are gone.

But the crowd is getting restless. The loan officers are walking around with pitchforks. They want fish and they want them NOW. Our version of reality TV.

 

[ScottB]

Well yesterday did not go so well. Wasted 3 hours trying to link the APEX brain through the bank's guest WiFi.

I should have just brought it home, linked it, then changed the SSID, and brought it back. But no. I had to be a bonehead.

We also have not sorted out the overheating problem just yet, but have a better understanding of WHY it is running so hot. The tank sits on the top floor, off the elevator lobby, that has an opening to a three story atrium. Heat rises. The HVAC guys SHOULD have put some huge returns there. Instead, that 80+ degree air wraps around the tank on that front side.

I don't see how we get by without a chiller and cabinet exhaust fan. Code would require the exhaust to go through the roof. That is a pretty chunky change order this late in the build, so...

 

[ScottB]

Given the temperature issue and 3 day weekend, we opted against moving the fish in yesterday. So Tuesday will be busy. Will work on a stocking list over the weekend for your review.

 

[count krunk]

If you installed some hefty fans in the sump, could those exhaust out of the stand?