What a long strage trip is been (Fishroom Evalution)

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What a ride it has been. I haven't done the best in keeping my build threads current, but here is a photo timeline of the strange trip it has been.

Here is what my first tank looked like. I was 15/16 years old. What drew me into the hobby was the colorful fish. I would weekly have a half hour of time to kill near a local fish store. Their saltwater fish were everything my freshwater cardinals and plattys aspired to be, bold! Bright! Attention grabbing!
I picked up (ok, my father bought me) a old tank from a Ronald McDonald house. It had seen its better days, there was marks on the glass and a name scribbled into the side, but I didn't care. I had an 8ft tank!
I thought that shells would be the best decor as that is what I think of when someone says beach, so I put a sand bottom on one part and medium crushed corals in the middle with larger grain sub-straight on the far right. Looking back I am not sure why I did this. I wonder if the idea of siphoning the gravel in my fresh tank made me put gravel like stuff in there, but wanting sand too I compromised? I am not sure. It sure looks silly. The lighting was some t12 bulbs. Nothing fancy, but just enough to light the tank.
I bought a couple of damsels and I was off. My filter was a canister filter (no sump at the time)



With Damsels:



I discovered Live Aquaria. I am not sure how, but I was hooked. I made sure to look at each new magazine. This was back when in their catalogue they had corals and fish, with prices too.
Not knowing what I was doing I bought some corals. And some more expensive fish. I had a small 2ft pc fixture that I was using to light the 1/4th of the tank that had corals.


Kept buying more corals, as the corals would expectantly die.


The tank sure looked funny.

At a Dr Fosters Smith open house I met some other reefers from my neck of the state (mpls) They told me about "The Reef Tank." That was the name of our local forum. I met up and started learning new things left and right. I upgraded everything....twice, maybe even 3x.
I got some t5's installed, built a canopy and stand, even drilled the tank and had a sump.

 

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As time would pass I was getting more and more addicted to the hobby. I got married, bought a house and finally had a chance to make my dream fishroom.
There were several lessons that I had harshly learned while at my parents house about keeping happy housemates and a saltwater fish tank. It was incredible to see how much patience my parents had for me. I flooded the basement regularly. I would forget while making Ro water or I would have power outages and flood the basement carpet that way. There were so many smells too with the skimmer. I had a skimmer that was the largest I could afford and would make quite the smells, but would also just randomly freak out and foam gallons with out notice. I eventually made a larger reservoir for the skimmate but even then would still flood nasty water on the carpet. Looking behind the tank you could regularly see mold growing.
Here is a video about that nasty skimmate:Drinking Skimmer Juice for $20 - YouTube

 

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The goal would be "sights, smells and sounds."
Removing all 3 of those invasive senses from the house would earn me big points and help keep this hobby going.

This is what I started with:


I removed everything from the walls, finished off the ceiling after putting batts of insulation in the rafters. I finished off under the stairs (with more insulation) The large laundry room got divided. More insulation in the walls. There was a floor drain which would help with all floods. I painted and primed and painted again. Walls, ceiling, floor. I put caulking around everything.

Added plumbing, added my own utility sink. Put up lighting, added 4x 20amp circuits.


Started putting things in. I got the door for free, I probably wouldn't have considered glass, but I really like it.


Added some lighting on the ceiling, oh and a vent too.
Busting out 1 of the 6 glass blocks was an exciting adventure.

 

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Not needing this yet, but thinking I may at some point, I chose this kind of door handle.


"Ocean Mist" was the floor paint. It was a fun touch to the room. Added a lot of color and light from the dark plain cement.

Inside looking out:
I took fsb (or whatever that commercial grade plastic sheets is called) and lined the bottom 4 feet over any sheetrock, adding another level of water protection.
The vent there is removable from the other side quickly and I left room in the stud walls to slip in a couple peices of carbon air filters I found online. There should always be a draft in since the ceiling vent is always blowing air out of the room and that is the only intake to the room, but just in case the fan is off I wanted the carbon filter to absorb smells.

 

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What is the first thing you do when the power goes out? Frantically try to find a flashlight to go check the sump and make sure nothing is going to overflow. I added an emergency light that automatically turns on when the power is tripped or actually goes out. It is LED and rather bright. It only runs for 90 min, but that is enough time for me to check drain levels and make sure my sump isnt going to overflow.


Water changes are a pain, and things that are a pain we don't do as often as we should. So in spirit of that, I had two 65 gallon barrels that I was going to use to make water changes easy. In the old tank I would always have to suck on some hose to get it going and worry about turning off pumps before they start spitting air. Or even running back to the laundry room to pull the Mag9 cord out of the wall. It was just a mess. So I made up some manifolds and with some valves would be able to fill the top tank with RODI and then drop it down into the mix tank and then drop it once more into the sump for the system.


Getting salt into the mix tank was not an easy task and I spilled lots. I eventually drilled the barrel and added some pvc pipe filler hole. (Not seen)

Here is the tank and sump. As you can see the sump is drilled. It is a 125, which for most people is a large sump. I like the water volume, but it was mainly decided on because of the barrels. I would plan to change out 50 gallons at a time. (1 bag of the reef crystals) I would run the normal level at 50 gallons above where water would drain to with the sump valve being open. I would make sure to keep the return pumps below that, and the heaters too. This way I would be able to change out 50 gallons with out having to turn off any equipment or turn off pumps. Simple!


On the top of the table is a custom 4ft frag tank I built.

 

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Another sump shot.


I had to get risers for the table because of the skimmer height and the other height of the drain from the barrels. And wanting to be able to have a decent work height with getting things in and out of the sump.
Though another reason is that the legs of the table are slopped and to get the sump to fit I had to raise the table.




Drain level when sump valve is open.

Its a mess, but the return line from the sump would pump up to a tall 2x2x2 tank which would be my fuge, and then drain into the frag tank and then from there down into the sump. This was a challenge to keep quiet. If something clogs the line from fuge to frag then things go haywire!
(Now you can see my salt filling tube into the lower barrel.)



I sold off the 8ft tank. I liked the size, but I didn't care for the acrylic tank and it was rather scratched up. I did aquire a nice old 75. The glass is so thick there is no center brace which is really nice.
I was going to have a frag tank and the 75 running off the same sump. I like having 1 controller (reefkeeper at the time) and 1 skimmer, it is just easier to have 1 large system than 2.

 

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I got rid of the fuge and capped the frag tank and drilled it again in a different spot.

 

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I wanted to add another frag tank and have more room in my fish room so those barrels had to go!

 

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You can also see that the green table is gone and I built a custom table that runs the length of the room (10ft)
The sump is also on a new platform and the 75 is still chugging away.


I no longer have the RO, but I just have the mix tank. I never needed to have so much RODI water just sitting around. Plus I needed the room for that skimmer!

 

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75g. It was basically another frag tank with that racking in there to make it shallow.

 

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Got some t5 going on my softie frag tank. On the table I had a 4ft sps frag tank (not the 75) and a 4ft softie/zoa frag system while I was running the 75.
I had a lot of evap. 4x2 zoa, 4x2 frag, 4x18" 75, 6'x18" sump ~31 sq ft of water.....6 gallons a day!



Moving things around again:

 

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The fishroom Nov 11, 2011

 

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Mix barrel gone, replaced my 60 cube. Added a closet thing outside the room to store bulk chemicals and testing supplies and whatever else I need near by.



I added a fuge and DSB. The 60g is up on the table too. I really like gravity water changes. I don't have to worry about remembering anything and its just a simple valve to turn and ta-da! Right now in this pic it is all t5 lighting.
Oh and getting the new fuge/DSB tank and stand in place....HA! Not easy. The 75 stand was glued to the floor and I didn't want to drain that and move it. So I built the stand for the fuge/dsb, lifted that in and over the 75 and had to turn it twice. What a mess. If I take that out of there (Which I may do this winter-spoiler alert) I will take the 75 out, no matter how much of a pain it is to move the 75. It can not be worse than putting that in!

 

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The water change tank still has some issues, there is about 2 inches between tank and the ceiling. Which is ok, I can slide a bag of salt in there and cut it open and slide the bag back out. But that forces me to buy that type of salt. I bought some other salts on sale and to try out and trying to pour salt into the 60 was not something I was going to put up with for long.

 

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New lighting!


Tried some MH over the 75. There are so many awesome tanks on RC with MH I thought to have good sps colors it is a must.
I also have some mangroves going on in the back as you can see.
I had those for 8 months or so and then ditched them as they weren't doing anything but slowly dying. Also a pain to clean up the leaves in the tank all the time.

 

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Built a canopy, went back to t5. Didn't care for the heat of the MH and was not impressed with the colors. There are more color combinations that t5 gets you as you can have full control over all 6 bulbs and tweak them as you see fit. Trying out MH bulbs gets pricy.

 

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Moved the 60 cube to under the table. Got a sweet deal on this light. I know it is a mh, but the price was too good to pass.


Took down the zoa frag tank. (Could not make enough $ to justify it)

 

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Built a new frag tank. With the new MH lighting over the frag system and even with the light on the ceiling, I was going to be burning out the corals quickly, so I needed more water depth to take some of the punch out of the 2x 250DE bulbs.



(1 month old son)

 

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Switched lighting again on the 75 from a DIY fixture with retro reflectors to ATI fixture. Huge improvement. Ditched the canopy.
Added a ATO down below. This is the apex..I did the elos for a week but it would keep erroring out on me. I guess there is a safety switch in the software that tells the pump not to do anything if it runs x times in x minutes. It assumes there is a leak somewhere as "normal" tanks would not be evaporating this much water this quickly. My 6 gallons a day was over that limit. I understand that the Tunze ATO has the same concept of a safe guard, but it must be higher than 6 gallons.



Upgraded the circ pumps in the 75 too. I like tunze pumps and have had really good luck with them. I think the Mp's are loud, but It is hard not to like the extra room in the tank of not having those two large 6105's in there.