A Low Country Reef Tank....one more final upgrade

SPotter · Aug 29, 2014

jduck said:
Any idea on watts for the dolphin?

According to their charts they consume more than the what's listed for the hammerhead. However, based on what reeflo lists for watts I should only be drawing about 2.6 amps to run that pump and according to my apex it's pulling about 3.3 amps to run it. I'll know tomorrow when I hook up the dolphin and see what the amp draw is.

SPotter · Aug 30, 2014

I got a lot done yesterday....hooked up the ato and plumbed one of the 165g water storage tanks, finished installing the new skimmer and turned that on and dropped a pound of shrimp in the tank. We woke up to a pretty nasty odor this morning which led a very angry wife...never a good way to start a saturday morning. I went out to the garage and the skimmer had a nice head of foam cooking and it stunk!!!! Im wondering if I will get much of a cycle since I have 350lbs of live rock that has been running in the fish room for the last month. I will run some water tests later tonight or tomorrow to see if anything has started to register.

SPotter · Aug 30, 2014

Ok so the odor is almost all gone, the dolphin pump is in place and running. Definitely takes a little more juice to run but I am getting more flow and have to dial the return outlets back a little. I took a quick video of the surface agitation and the flow at the bottom of the tank as well. Im really loving the power of the dolphin pumps and the flow wolfs on the closed loop. Im having a hard time embedding the videos. They don't show up when I post the link.

Surface agitation - YouTube

SPotter · Sep 5, 2014

So shrimp has been in for over a week now and getting mushy. I have not detected any ammonia or nitrites yet but do have 2-5ppm nitrates. Is it possible that with 350 lbs of live rock and 250 lbs of dry rock that I won't see a cycle?

I spent the day today cleaning things up and trying to organize my supplies. I have a lot of leftover fittings that need to go back...should see a nice refund from lowes! I still need to clean up a lot of the wires in the fish room but heres a picture of it all set up......

zibba · Sep 5, 2014

Looking good with the plumbing! You're lucky to have so much room.

Yes, very likely that with your water volume and with that much LR, you won't see a cycle. You'll likely still go through the diatom phase and some algae phases but a few shrimp (or even a bag) in that much water isn't going to do much.

SPotter · Sep 5, 2014

zibba said:
Looking good with the plumbing! You're lucky to have so much room.

Yes, very likely that with your water volume and with that much LR, you won't see a cycle. You'll likely still go through the diatom phase and some algae phases but a few shrimp (or even a bag) in that much water isn't going to do much.

Thanks!!! Never seems like a fish room is big enough!! I'm already wishing I had built it bigger. I need to change my water storage tanks so I can have room for a couple of qt tanks.

I'm already seeing some algae on the dry rock I out in and a greater amount on the live rock that I had. I put a few pieces that had a lot of coralline on them in the dt.

SPotter · Oct 6, 2014

Updates....

So its been a few weeks since my last update and things have progressed nicely. Had a huge GHA breakout but as fast as it came it went with a little help from a great clean up crew. I was looking on craigs list one night to see if anyone was selling corals locally and found the local reef club. A couple of the members have vendor accounts so they hold a monthly flash sale where they sell $10 frags. I took the opportunity to pick some up so I could test my waters and see how the frags did. Im happy to say that everything is doing great and showing signs of growth already.

these pieces werent part of the flash sale but got great deals on them as well...

BrotherReef · Oct 8, 2014

Looking really good Steve.

SPotter · Oct 8, 2014

BrotherReef said:
Looking really good Steve.

Thanks Wayne!

SPotter · Oct 23, 2014

I have been struggling with my ca reactor for a while now dating back to my last system. It is or was (will explain shortly) a double chamber reactor and from time to time the water level in the main chamber would drop about 8" and sometimes it would just drain all together....fortunately this never had any kind of negative impact on my levels which have been rock solid. I have cleaned the lines, inspected for leaks and cleaned the pump and could never find an issue. It had been running fine for a couple of weeks but monday when I got home from work the level was down 8" again. I took everything a part, cleaned and filled back up again. Tuesday morning I checked it and it was bone dry!!!! Here's where it gets interesting....I have been dealing with a lot of issues with a contractor/landscaper we hired to do some outdoor projects and things just arent going smoothly. I had just gotten a call from him prior to me inspecting the reactor and that call didnt go well. When I saw the reactor empty I got so angry that I kicked it and that was all she wrote....the main chamber cracked in a few spots :headwalls: Fortunately I had been thinking about swapping out the reactor for a couple of months now and already new what I would buy to replace it. I decided to go with an MRC CR-6 reactor and was able to place the order with Aquarium Specialty on Tuesday afternoon. Since I live in the same state as them the new reactor was on my door step by 11 am yesterday and by 1pm the new reactor was in place. It was just as easy to dial in as the MTC was. So far its a little early to provide any feed back on it but initially I'm pleased with how easy it was to set up and dial in.
I have added an interesting group of fish and some more corals. I will post more about those later.

MJC · Oct 24, 2014

Hi good to hear your Ca is back on track.
I was wondering how you were making out with your derkroon flowwolf flow diverter.
I am having a issue with mine and I am in contact with Lucas to try and fix it.
Have you had any issues with the motor? Mine just stopped working after three days.
Hopefully it will get repaired or warrantied soon and this is just a freak thing that happened to me.

SPotter · Nov 11, 2014

Not too much to add...letting the tank do its thing. I have been picking up corals here and there but nothing too exciting. However, I am excited about the tank finally getting a face to the stand, canopy and sides. After what seemed like an endless search for a cabinet maker that I felt confident in achieving what it was I wanted, I found a guy that is orginally from NJ and has been living down here for about a year now. He totally
got what I wanted to do and started working on it last week. Here is what he has completed so far....