Byron & Reneé's 465g reef - 700g+ total

[byron]

Such an amazing setup. I agree that the simpler the tasks are the more likely they are to be completed. You can truly see your engineer side coming out in this and I am sure you will have a truly amazing tank inside as well as out.

Loved reading through this whole thread throughout the day today. This last quote in particular really resonated with me for any big future builds I do.

I've just read your story so far, and I'm stunned. Your patience is amazing, nearly as amazing as your plumbing and the controls. I've never seen behind the scenes of one of the smaller professional display tanks, but I've a feeling that this leaves many way behind.
I'll be following you avidly.

Amazing build thread!! Good luck with the tank!!!!

thanks for taking the time to follow... and for the encouragement. This has become a larger task that I originally scoped -- but its been fun (most of the time)...

 

[byron]

The largest thing I overlooked in the planning stages was understanding the effect on HVAC of 750gal of salt water in an eclosed space -- the fish room is only 10x15. I am working with the contractor who installed our geothermal system to develop a solution. Of the things we have talked through so far, I sounds like a 90 pint/day dehumidifier installed in the fish room may be the best solution. It would be plumbed into the drain and exhausted outside. We are currently evaporating in the neighborhood of 5g/day I think. The large fans blowing into the fuge and sump are likely contributing to that, but without another system to manage air, the water temp rises.

 

[byron]

Radion XR30W: I have 6 sets of the the new TIR lenses on order which will be in Monday. The intent of the new lens is to drive the light deeper into the tank. Since I have a 31"+ tank, the extra push should help. The TIR lenses will boost PAR an avg of 23% and will boost peak to 45%. I watched the modification video from EcoTech last nigh and there are more steps involved in the upgrade than I expected. I will have to take down the entire 6 Radion array to make the mods and then put it back up. That sucks, but at least its a one time thing.

 

[byron]

well, I decided to try a consumer DIY dehumidifier -- so I picked up one at Lowe's - 70 pints/day:

it definitely pulls a lot of water out the air!!! BUT... you have to empty it 4-5 times a day or it will quick running when the waste bucket fills... bummer.

Good News: it rapidly fills -- its a very efficient unit.
Bad News: it adds heat into the fish room which is already a huge problem.

HVAC guy quoted $2,400 for the installed Lenox solution, this thing was $250... but, heat is a giant problem so I'm still probably going to have to go with the more expensive solution. It vents to the outside and sends all of the collected water directly into the drain. Is that worth $2,400 to me. At this point, I'm thinking "yes".

 

[byron]

OK, I now have the left side (viewed from the back) of the DT redone to a correct Bean implementation... yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. If I had paid attention, I would have gotten it correct the first time.

Since the new Bean implementation seems to handle the necessary drain flow, I will likely leave the right side as it is for now and just have it drain to the fuge -- maybe change it at a future date, maybe just go "screw it", it's working as is.

btw, the prototype sched 40 pipe into the sump in image 3 has been changed to a sched 80 -- not going to all of this effort and then mix in a "white" pipe

 

[byron]

PAR meter arrived yesterday, Apogee MQ-200 quantum meter with separate sensor.

The TIR lenses for the Radions should arrive from Ecotech Marine on Monday. After I get the lens upgrade installed on the Radion array, we will map out the PAR levels through out the tank so that we can begin to decide what type of coral would be appropriate for the various levels of the rock structures. Maybe in 3-4 weeks we will feel ready to place the first coral in the tank -- it may push out however, because I'm not sure I want to begin putting any coral into the DT until the HVAC problem has been solved.

 

[uall8up]

Love all of the details and pics. I am so happy that you have shared all of this with us. I am speechless!! Great job!!

 

[Jlobes]

wow, one heck of a build!! that is quite an impressive tank. everything looks like its working out and the plumbing looks good. how did the new overflow set up work out??
Man i would love to have a "fish room" in the house. ill be following.

 

[bige]

Will you be testing lights with reflectors and without? Your build is coming along nicely.

 

[byron]

Love all of the details and pics. I am so happy that you have shared all of this with us. I am speechless!!Great job!!

thank you

wow, one heck of a build!! that is quite an impressive tank. everything looks like its working out and the plumbing looks good. how did the new overflow set up work out??
Man i would love to have a "fish room" in the house. ill be following.

thanks. the new plumbing on the left side is working great... its a correct Bean implementation now.

Will you be testing lights with reflectors and without? Your build is coming along nicely.

probably wont bother on the "without" because there is nothing in there really yet anyway and I intend to go with the TIR regardless.

 

[byron]

hey, the 9 BGC got a reprieve from quarantine... I brought the salinity back up to 1.026 from 1.009 and then moved them over to the DT. This image is a poor iPhone pic, sorry. I'll bring a real camera home on of these days to take better images. If you look close you will see a couple skunk cleaners on the rock in the middle.

After I moved them over, I emptied the quarantine tank and tore it down for cleaning. The I pulled out the bench & sink, built 2 lower shelves for it and laminated white Formica tops to them. Just finished putting it all back in. Still have to connect the faucets, but other than that...

 

[byron]

I had to quickly get the bench redone because I just ordered 5 Yellow Tang and a PB Tang... and they will be here Tuesday. So I have to get the quarantine tank back up quickly. After that, we are still considering a Yellow Eye and a small herd of Lyretail Anthias. That may do it for fish in the near term.

Reneé is out of town until next week, she will probably start to pick out a few coral when back to slowly put a few in... we will probably start low in the tank with coral on the lower left shelf (looking from the front) and work our way up, but who knows, she may decide to start higher.

 

[byron]

On the salinity issue of every device reading differently, the update:
- after a back and forth with Neptune for a week, I decide to send in both PM2 boxes and the conductivity probes to get checked at the factory. The 2 probes were reading 1.5-2 ppt different even when setting next to each other
- starting to trust the MA887 digital refractometer less, its accuracy is only +/- 2 ppt -- a lot of digits after a decimal point doesn't make something more accurate, just makes it look like it is
- starting to also check salinity with the Vee Gee mechanical refractometer. It's accuracy when correctly calibrated is +/- 1%, not bad for non Lab grade equipment

bottom line at this point: I believe one of the Apex probes is correct and the other needs adjustment. The Vee Gee agreed with one of the Apex probes. I thought both probes were reading low, now I believe the MA887 to be reading high -- but since its tolerance is 2 ppt, its within its tolerance range. 2 ppt off is not likely a big deal, but I'm looking to be more accurate than that -- and I want to be able to test the probes against something so that I several devices spewing the same answer...

 

[Breakbeats2334]

Good detail build Bryon. Its impressed me to the point I made a reef2reefs account just to follow and ask questions. Are you planning to Qt the 5 Yellow tangs and the Powder blue in the same qt tank?

 

[bige]

Sounds good. Your getting closer!

 

[byron]

Sounds good. Your getting closer!

thanks for watching.

Good detail build Bryon. Its impressed me to the point I made a reef2reefs account just to follow and ask questions. Are you planning to Qt the 5 Yellow tangs and the Powder blue in the same qt tank?

thanks and great to see you over on this forum.

Yes, I do have the 6 in the same 39g QT. That's not the best plan, but I'm doing it this way for several reasons: 1) I got the smallest specimens available,and 2) I wanted them to "grow-up" used to each other so that hopefully they will peacefully co-exist. I am watching them closely and so far they are living well together. I had always read that it was best to have an odd number of yellows. Because the DT is 465g (8' x 3'), they should have adequate lateral room to run... the QT is only 3' long, but, again, they are very small at the moment... And, yes, I do realize that 6 tangs, even small, are not going to feel comfortable in a 3' tank -- but I'm hoping that since its only for 5 weeks they will do OK

they have been in the QT for almost a week and are still slightly stressed I think. They are eating dried green algae well from the veggie clips (won't touch the red), but will only eat the Thera+mini pellets after they sink to the floor. They will not come up to the surface -- or even beyond mid-tank height. I will probably start hypo tomorrow because I want to get them into the DT as soon as I can to let them stretch out and run. They arrived last week totally stressed because they were in shipping bags for 2 days. The "overnight" delivery turned into "over several nights" due to an apparent FedEx equipment malfunction in Memphis . I didn't think one of the yellow would make it, but I went trough a 2 hr drip acclimation with him and had him coming back around before I put him last into the QT -- he just laid on the the bottom of the acclimation container in the beginning. But they are all doing fine at the moment. BTW, they came in bagged at 1.018, don't know if that is standard or not. I brought them all up to exactly 1.026 before I transfered them to the QT. I left them each floating in their unopened bag until it was their turn to acclimate -- it was a loooong process that day.

I have the QT on the Apex as well so that I can just press "FeedB" to shutdown the QT filter, powerhead, and heater for a 15 min feed cycle. I typically do a FeedB for the QT followed by a FeedA for the DT.

 

[Breakbeats2334]

I dont know about most places but i know live aquaria ship their fish in roughly 1.025 salinity and from my experience its ok for fish to go from a higher salinity into a lower salinity tank with out stress how ever going from a low salinity to a high one is very stressful. My guess would be because they were in bags for 2 days that might of affected the salinity? Im not sure how evaporation works in shipping bags. If you got the yt's small like 1-2 inches im sure its fine since as you stated the period of them in the limited space is short.

 

[byron]

I don't know about most places but i know live aquaria ship their fish in roughly 1.025 salinity and from my experience its ok for fish to go from a higher salinity into a lower salinity tank with out stress how ever going from a low salinity to a high one is very stressful. My guess would be because they were in bags for 2 days that might of affected the salinity? Im not sure how evaporation works in shipping bags. If you got the yt's small like 1-2 inches im sure its fine since as you stated the period of them in the limited space is short.

LA is where the shipment originated... doubt if evaporation is possible because the bags are sealed (I was just passing on the observation, I have no reason to suspect that the 1.018 was an issue).

 

[Chris L]

Beautiful Home and Great set-up! Keep us updated!:clap2:

 

[stunreefer]

Great build and documentation Byron, thanks for sharing!

Regarding salinity readings, I was very excited to see the recent drop in price of the Milwaukee unit you use along with a similar unit manufactured by Hanna. Unfortunately both have the +/- 2 ppt accuracy, which frankly is too vague for what we want. Good friends of mine that run a retail coral outlet purchased the Hanna unit and have been very unhappy with it, and now use it as a dust collector. I'm not familiar with the brand of mechanical refractometer you're using, but some units available have a better "readability" for the range we want like this unit: Marine Depot Aquarium Pro Refractometer I use that exact refractometer and have been very pleased, just make sure to calibrate it with salinity solution, not RO/DI water.

Live Aquaria and other outlets will ship fish at a salinity of 1.018. This is to save money on salt, it does nothing to lower ability of parasites/bacteria harming fish. Live Aquaria is not to be confused with Live Aquaria Divers Den. Divers Den facility is in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where they ship out all animals at 1.025. Live Aquaria ships out of LA, California, and generally deal with more "bread and butter" livestock. You are correct in that no water will evaporate out of a sealed bag

Look forward to future updates!