3 Foot Office Nano

[eschulist]

The decision has been made. The tank is staying in the house! Corals are being transferred home and something more simple will be at work.

Dave hooked me up with a sweet Quad Nanobox fixture. I'm waiting on walnut lids to match the stand but until then I wanted to get the light hung and get things going with the Apex.
Dave does 2 hoops on the lights for wire suspension hanging.

In the end I decided to do 1 point suspension and buy my own wire hanging kit. This meant cutting Daves wiring and doing my own mount. When I get the Walnut lids they will be blank so I wont have the 2 empty holes.

The new gripper is attached to the center of the light so the fixture stays level. A nut at the bottom keeps it secure but is an issue with attaching it to the light fixture.

I need a small gap between the lid and the fixture itself to make room for that nut. Next came drilling into the beautiful light. I was a little nervous as the wiring is right below the spot I need to drill.

A little more ragged than I would have liked but I didn't hit the wires and the rough edge will be covered by the lid.

Carefully measure out the location on the ceiling and Success!

True FTS before the corals go in this weekend or next (Its our anniversary this weekend so doing a lot of fishy things may be best held off for another week)

 

[Clayton Jessup]

That looks beautiful very stunning

 

[Mebeknob]

Look at that symmetry! Well done

 

[pboutin]

Your attention to detail is par none sir!

 

[eschulist]

That looks beautiful very stunning

Your attention to detail is par none sir!

Look at that symmetry! Well done

Thanks guys. One of the top goals of the tank has been great aesthetics with simple clean lines while maintaining my same setup.

 

[eschulist]

Took the doors off and took some shots as well. Here is the final placement and layout of the Apex, EnergyBar, DOS, and misc "stuff" located below the stand. Dang there is a lot of excess power bricks, wires, and controllers. Not shown is the ball of wires located behind the dosing containers located underneath that little board I made.

 

[Clayton Jessup]

That looks amazing it's unreal

 

[jsker]

Your builds are so unique in so different that they are awesome. So what are you going to scape it and put fish in?

 

[eschulist]

Your builds are so unique in so different that they are awesome. So what are you going to scape it and put fish in?

My office tank's corals and fish are going to be transferred in the upcoming days.

 

[jsker]

Keep use posted

 

[eschulist]

Some misc build photos. The Sump's depth and ATO container are actually sized smaller than the stand. This is for a good reason. They are the exact maximum size to still allow my hand to get in an release the doors.

The width of the sump and dosing containers where actually sized to perfectly fit the width of the stand, a happy accident that they were 1/8" too small allows 2 cords to fit in between them.

The dosing containers were purposely designed to be smaller than the space allowed to hide excess cords. And allow a space for the ATK magnetic mount.

Excess power bricks, FMM module, and Jebao controller are tucked underneath the stand.

When the doors close on the stand the shelves were perfectly positioned as high as they could and just barely cleared the ball and check valves.

 

[Clayton Jessup]

Like many others have said so attention to detail on this build it's unreal sometimes..

 

[eschulist]

Like many others have said so attention to detail on this build it's unreal sometimes..

Ya I may suffer from a bit of OCD

 

[samparker]

This is hectic. Envy is real after reading this journal

 

[eschulist]

ITS HAPPENING!!

 

[eschulist]

Definitely nerve wrecking and exciting as the same time.

This all happened Friday night starting around 9pm. I got everything in the cooler in about 10 minutes and spent another hour and a half or so cleaning up the old tank so it wasn't left to foul in the office. Drained all the water, scrubbed all the equipment and then semi set it back up. Didn't refill with new saltwater. In time it will probably be refilled and be an easier to handle tank with little to no corals. All that stuff will be at the house.

When transferring the fish/corals/rocks everything went super fast except I couldn't find my Midas Blenny. I just assumed he hid in the largest of the rocks. So when I pulled that rock I hoped he took the ride. While cleaning all of the equipment the fish had a bubbler going. I slowly packed up some necessary dry goods and loaded the cooler last into the car. Locked up the office building for the night and get a phone call from my wife at 11pm. It turned out a protest was happening on the interstate between Minneapolis/St Paul and I had to find another way home. I really had to thank her for this because If I got on I-94 I might not have been able to easily get back off or take a detour and would have been stuck in traffic for possibly hours.

I took a somewhat long detour but avoided all the issues and made it home around 11:30. Transferred all the coolers and goodies inside and started the acclimation. Within a few minutes I noticed the fish were laying on their sides and didn't seem to be doing well. Rather than drag out the process I sped up up the transfer and got them in the tank fairly quickly. All of the parameters for the new tank were solid so the corals were transferred. The cooler was empty and the Midas Blenny was still MIA. I tiddy things up and head to bed.

The next morning still no Blenny and I fear that he jumped out of the tank or cooler when I was at work and didn't notice him. The first couple confirmed losses were in the morning though. My red dragon was completely white and dead and my Royal Gramma was lifeless wedged inside a rock. He must have gotten startled and darted inside only to be unable to back himself back out. The lights don't officially come on until noon so I just let everything else be.

Around 1 oclock after lunch I head down to feed the fish now that the light is glowing. To my amazement the Midas Blenny is poking his head out of the right rock and checking things out. He was in there the whole time and was really far inside and had me worried. The rest of the day progresses as normal.

Sunday (Fathers Day's / Today) comes and I go down to check the fish and I suddenly realize I forgot to put the top back on last night. I'm in such a habit of doing it at work that i can't believe I forgot at home. On the floor was a dried clownfish. My daughter was curious and followed me downstairs and saw me pick him up. So we had to have a brief "He died" conversation and say goodbye to him. This afternoon my daughter and I had to make a special trip to the LFS because she needed a new Nemo in the house.

Still working on the photo / color balance of the new space, and all the corals look pretty ticked and browned out at the moment.

 

[pboutin]

WOW what an update! Sorry for your loss. I'm sure things will pop back. There's always some fallout when doing big changes.

 

[Clayton Jessup]

That looks beautiful [emoji4]

 

[eschulist]

Well the transfer didn't go too well. Total losses so far.

Royal Gramma - Died from wedging himsself in a rock right after being put in the new tank.
Clownfish - Jumped out the 2nd night as I forgot the screen cover
Red Dragon - RTNed after 2 nights
Oregon Tort - RNTed after 3 nights
Green Monti Cap - MediumTN? It had an almost leopard pattern necrosis where all the bumps tissue peeled off but the valleys stayed green for a few more days.
Turquoise Tort or Acro of somesort - RTNed after 5 nights.
2-3 Birdnest frags - STN, they've been on a slow decline before in transfer. The move has left them barely hanging on with just some healthy tips remaining.

Alk is at 8.8
Cal is 490
I don't have tests for Nitrate or Phos those are either very elevated, which I doubt, or they are very close to zero. My previous tank was more nutrient rich so its possible they were shocked being in too clean of water.
LED Light change. Intensity or spectrum is too different

 

[eschulist]

The clown was replaced with a new "Nemo" picked out by my daughter. She was really excited about that.

I wanted to get a new gramma or peppermint so with LiveAquarias 20% deal and free shipping it was good to pass up. They'll be here tomorrow.

Once the tank hopefully restabilizes corals will be the next things to reacquire.