230 gallon in-wall, room divider, reef build

[MarsRover]

Working on doing weekly water changes of about 30 Gallons. I'll do that for the next 5 weeks and then triton again.

I've also refreshed carbon, & added phosguard to get rid of silicates.

 

[MarsRover]

Figured I should post an update since it’s been a while!

Tangs and rabbit fish are almost done with QT. 8 days left and then they will be transferred over to the DT. Started with 5: fox face, gold spot rabbit, purple tang, mimic lemon peal tang, and a baby baby half black mimic tang. Lost the fox about 2 weeks ago and the baby half mimic last week. Kinda bummed. But on the plus side, the remaining three are eating well, algae and mysis, and are active with no spots. CP and metro are in the QT.

I did a ton of work on the upper cabinetry this past weekend with my 4 day weekend. It’s been really difficult because my house is old, and the two sides of the tank (where the cabinets are hung) are not dimensionally symmetric at all but somehow I’ve managed. Almost completely done light sealing it up. Then need to sand and paint (white) inside and out, and then tack up the Mylar inside the upper cabinets.....then on to the bottom cabinets and finishing the columns on either side of the tank.

Photo of progress of cabinets as of Saturday. I’ll post photos of what they look like after I sand and paint tonight (hopefully).

Noticed something interesting the other evening, my urchin (hatched from live rock in the previous tank to this tank, and he was transferred over). Video attached <need to attach>

He was ejecting white stuff from about five pores at the top of its body! Pretty crazy to see.

My snowflake is eating like a champ.

My corals seem to be making a recovery from the heavy metal madness (cause still unknown but I have been doing water changes ever since I sealed the gyre’s oxidizing magnets. (See thread discussion here: Ice cap 3k Gyre Poisoning my tank). I have been running a single (small) pad of the poly-filter, and it hasn't turned any of the characteristic colors...it just has turned green like algae (probably from it catching algae particles. it is being run just prior to my filter socks).

My montiporas which I feared were lost are actually starting to extend their polyps again and color up. Really strange is that some other SPS’s never seemed to be affected by whatever happened in my tank.....

My bubble algae problem is slowly abating. Additionally, I have trained my tangs and or rabbit fish to eat bubbles while in QT successfully by taking bubbles out of my DT, soaking them in food and garlic attractant, and plopping them into the QT. Pretty happy about this.

I think thats it for now. I'm hopefully going to get back to electronics soon. Maybe once the upper cabinets are polished off.

 

[scott11106]

i just went through your entire build thread...awesome !!
i also like the cad work, what did you use for the 3d piping? i was trying to get a block library to use on mine but ran out of time so i did it in 2d, yours looks better.

i wish i would have found your thread a while ago

 

[MarsRover]

i just went through your entire build thread...awesome !!
i also like the cad work, what did you use for the 3d piping? i was trying to get a block library to use on mine but ran out of time so i did it in 2d, yours looks better.

i wish i would have found your thread a while ago

Thanks @scott11106 !

Yeah, my thread doesn't get as much attention... but it has been a fun place to document my progress and discuss with some fun folks who have come around!

I appreciate your words! for the 3D piping i just made it from scratch. I work with CAD a lot for work and so i just made all of my models from scratch. I've always found that easier than trying to find something online that sorta-works.

I'm hoping to get back to being more proactive in posting. I've been a bad build-thread contributor these last few months. Now that the cabinets are coming together, i'll hopefully get back to the computer side of things! So stay tuned!

 

[MarsRover]

Wow, I gotta say, despite the aiptasia and the bubble algae (finally dying back! Just in time for the tangs to exit QT Wednesday ) the concrete rock I made has really naturalized well the last few months! Very pleased with the outcome

Still haven’t gotten to sanding and painting the cabinets. That’s the plan for tomorrow. Was too busy today building a fire pit and firing some tiles I made

Here’s some photos of my LEAST favorite side of the overflow. It was hard making the covering for the overflow and took a few levels upward before I got the hang of it with the plastic wrap and zip ties and concrete mix! I learned that it is better to keep it a crazy dry mix....always the rule with concrete, but I thought it would fall off when it dried. Learned towards the top of the overflow that that wasn’t the case!

 

[mattgsa]

Just finished reading all 17 pages. You have an great looking tank.

 

[MarsRover]

Just finished reading all 17 pages. You have an great looking tank.

Thanks so much!

I put a lot of time and thought into it all, still a work in progress, but I’m glad people are reading it and following along! Welcome!

 

[MarsRover]

feeding time this evening. Took this video for another thread and figured i'd update here. My eel is a nutjob when she's hungry...



@revhtree I just noticed that that alert you sent out asking folks to update their members threads only goes to the "members tanks" section....and completely leaves out those members tanks in the 180+ section!!!

 

[MarsRover]

Well, here’s an update.

Appears my euphyllia have spawned. Not mojanos seems to be the consensus in the hitchhiker forum! (Thread here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/mojano-or-baby-euphyllia.380293/#post-4640817)

I have found six babies around the tank so far. Here’s a couple of them:

 

[MarsRover]

Spent about a couple hours today with tongs very carefully liberating the tiny piece of crushed coral that each of 4 little babies were on in the sand bed. Glued them down to a bigger rock so they don’t get lost. A 5th gravel-baby eluded me. Another day. There are at least three on my main rockwork that I’m going to have to leave well enough alone and wait for them to grow out. Pretty exciting. Here’s a photo of the 4 gravel babies I captured and glued

 

[mrpizzaface]

I like this build thread. What is the age of the floorboards. I like the dowels.

 

[MarsRover]

I like this build thread. What is the age of the floorboards. I like the dowels.

Thanks!

Not sure what you’re talking about with “dowels”?

The floor is just engineered hardwood floors over a concrete slab. Age unknown.

 

[mrpizzaface]

Thanks!

Not sure what you’re talking about with “dowels”?

The floor is just engineered hardwood floors over a concrete slab. Age unknown.

From the photos it looked like the boards were face nailed and filled or through doweled at the end of each board where they butt together.

 

[Skep18]

Nice build.

With some time in now, what has been your experience with the RO Elite 220 INT on your size tank?

 

[MarsRover]

Nice build.

With some time in now, what has been your experience with the RO Elite 220 INT on your size tank?

Love it!

Hate the AGE tank. Will get back to this thread once my fiasco with them is finished. All I can say is, never buy A.G.E. (Acrylic and glass exhibits)

 

[Skep18]

Love it!

Hate the AGE tank. Will get back to this thread once my fiasco with them is finished. All I can say is, never buy A.G.E. (Acrylic and glass exhibits)

Good to hear about the skimmer.

Sorry to hear about AGE. Never a good time having issues with a large custom purchase such as a tank. Best of luck! Look forward to hearing an update.

 

[jsker]

It has been some time since I have seen your build. It turned out great!!

 

[Blue Tang Clan]

Hate the AGE tank. Will get back to this thread once my fiasco with them is finished. All I can say is, never buy A.G.E. (Acrylic and glass exhibits)

Can you elaborate a bit more? I was considering buying a large AGE tank in a few months...

 

[MarsRover]

Can you elaborate a bit more? I was considering buying a large AGE tank in a few months...

I highly recommend against it fellow Marylander. (Where I used to live).

The stand they built for me is grossly underdesigned. Noticed the top beam and the legs were bending. Decided to put my education to work and ran a mechanical analysis on it. In a perfect world, perfect metal, no welds, no holes no nothing other than a perfect stand built with the dimensions they built = failure in compression just tank filled with water. That’s with no rocks no person hanging in it to reach the bottom to clean it. nothing.

People didn’t want to believe my math (or just didn’t want to read it) so I ran a computer simulation. Perfect stand shoes failure in compression and max top beam of the stand deflection down by about 3.25mm. In real life I’m seeing 4mm gapping between the top deck of my stand and the bottom of my tank.

Simulation: load applied is ONLY tank and salt water to fill it. No rocks no equipment.

The deflection shown is exaggerated by 10x so you can see the failure modes but the deflection value is exact.

Will post more later at happy hour drinking beer

 

[Skep18]

I highly recommend against it fellow Marylander. (Where I used to live).

The stand they built for me is grossly underdesigned. Noticed the top beam and the legs were bending. Decided to put my education to work and ran a mechanical analysis on it. In a perfect world, perfect metal, no welds, no holes no nothing other than a perfect stand built with the dimensions they built = failure in compression just tank filled with water. That’s with no rocks no person hanging in it to reach the bottom to clean it. nothing.

People didn’t want to believe my math (or just didn’t want to read it) so I ran a computer simulation. Perfect stand shoes failure in compression and max top beam of the stand deflection down by about 3.25mm. In real life I’m seeing 4mm gapping between the top deck of my stand and the bottom of my tank.

Simulation: load applied is ONLY tank and salt water to fill it. No rocks no equipment.

The deflection shown is exaggerated by 10x so you can see the failure modes but the deflection value is exact.

Will post more later at happy hour drinking beer

Holy cow! As a mechanical engineer, I can definitely appreciate this analysis. I do have a couple questions/thoughts though. However, I definitely don doubt you if you say you're seeing a 4mm deflection in the horizontal bars.

1. I see in previous photos it looks like there's 3/4" plywood as a top to the stand. Are those not secured to the stand top? That would certainly add some strength and would probably effect the analysis and add some strength.
2. What is the tube wall thickness of the steel used?
3. I assumed you used some basic weld steel for the analysis, something like 1018?
4. If they use hot rolled steel (common and cheaper than cold rolled) it can/will certainly have some deformation in the length of the tube (personal experience). I'd say its highly unlikely both the front and back tubes were oriented such that they just happen to deflect in the same downward direction by the same 4mm. But are you seeing deflection in both front and back equally?
5. I'm guessing they're not providing any "solutions" but have you thought about how you're gonna fix it? If the deflection is truly due to an overload condition and the metal is undergoing elastic deformation, I'd personally want to add a center brace to reinforce the horizontal tubing. Obviously having the tank full really adds to the complexity of the issue but hydraulic relief jacks to restore straightness surrounding an inserted steel tube to be welded in place comes to mind. If you don't have the local ability to weld, even just a precisely measured tube added to the area while hydraulically jacked for space could work. Then come back and use a bracket and fasteners to secure it.

My goodness. What a mess!