First Build: IM EXT 112 "Noob Lagoon"

[StickyThwomp]

So... Glueing takes much longer than I thought. I spent maybe 6 hrs on Sunday, 3hrs Monday 2hrs Tuesday... And I'm still not done. I'm ready to epoxy and try to cover it up though!

My plan changed a bit, I made the rockwork a bit "busier", which might be too dense when coals fill in, but the pieces are all still pretty independent, so removal and rearrangement is possible.

All in all, it's fun to smash rocks apart and glue them back together .

On a sadder note. Poor Sam has some white blotches on his face that need resolving. 4 days of ruby reef rally pro so far and it's hard to tell if there's any improvement. I've got another thread in that less fun topic . Sick fish are no fun, but I'm glad I decided to start with quarantine from the get-go!

 

[Üter]

So... Glueing takes much longer than I thought. I spent maybe 6 hrs on Sunday, 3hrs Monday 2hrs Tuesday... And I'm still not done. I'm ready to epoxy and try to cover it up though!

My plan changed a bit, I made the rockwork a bit "busier", which might be too dense when coals fill in, but the pieces are all still pretty independent, so removal and rearrangement is possible.

All in all, it's fun to smash rocks apart and fire them back together .

On a sadder note. Poor Sam has some white blotches on his face that need resolving. 4 days of ruby reef rally pro so far and it's hard to tell if there's any improvement. I've got another thread in that less fun topic . Sick fish are no fun, but I'm glad I decided to start with quarantine from the get-go!

WOW, that tank is now old school. the new version is the IM113! :zany-face:

 

[Gumbies R Us]

So... Glueing takes much longer than I thought. I spent maybe 6 hrs on Sunday, 3hrs Monday 2hrs Tuesday... And I'm still not done. I'm ready to epoxy and try to cover it up though!

My plan changed a bit, I made the rockwork a bit "busier", which might be too dense when coals fill in, but the pieces are all still pretty independent, so removal and rearrangement is possible.

All in all, it's fun to smash rocks apart and fire them back together .

On a sadder note. Poor Sam has some white blotches on his face that need resolving. 4 days of ruby reef rally pro so far and it's hard to tell if there's any improvement. I've got another thread in that less fun topic . Sick fish are no fun, but I'm glad I decided to start with quarantine from the get-go!

Nice looking aquascape! And sorry about your one fish not doing too well! Hopefully that ruby reef will help it out!

 

[StickyThwomp]

All done with rocks! I think I lost a couple brain cells from all that glue...

I think I used...

• 1/3 to 1/2 the rocks I purchased
• 1.5 bottles of the quick cure spray
• 1 bottle of thick glue (which has a decent amount left, but has undergone some significant abuse)
• 1/4 bottle of thin glue
• 1.5 tubes of grey epoxy

The rocks were acquired in Nov 2022 . My partner is very happy they're no longer stacked in a pile in the laundry room and are now in a more reasonable location.

Assembling the rockwork was oddly fun, I would not hesitate to do it again for another tank!

 

[ScottD]

Looking good, I like the arches and swim through areas. Just try and make sure you have areas for the fish to hide in and little nooks for them to sleep in.

 

[StickyThwomp]

More progress!

My mixing station is complete-ish. I picked out a circulating pump with enough power to lift up the stairs through 100ft of tubing, and made a little PVC mixer/diffuser to direct flow both into the back corners of the rectangular mixing tank, and straight down where the salt gets dumped (since I noticed if I pour it in too fast it just collects in a pile there). The remaining actions there are to figure out an alternate port with a funnel so I can keep the plumbing permanently connected and also pour in my salt, and add the connections for the AWC tubing. Right now I unscrew a few unions to get it out of the way, and I haven't fiddled with AWC past validating the diy cabling worked.

Since I got the mixing station that far along, I could finally get my tank running...

Its alive!!!

(Lighting just for the pictures sake, I'm not gonna run lights for a while).

A silly thing I overlooked as a n00b was that the tank advertising is _not_ the internal volume. My ext 112 and sump combined are only ~100 gal of my math is in the ballpark. If I added advertised volumes I'd be off by quite a bit!

One of my two return pumps is sadly quite a bit louder than the other, that's an oddity I'm still trying to solve. I can silence it by applying some pressure to the front intake adjustment, so maybe I'll pull it apart and see if there's something strange/loose fitting in it.

She's cycling now, and I'm playing with the apex programming in the meantime. My evaporation is roughly a gallon per day, so I need to sort out my auto top off sooner than I thought!

So much stuff to do! And now that it's operational I feel obligated to do it faster! Time for some _real_ progress!!! :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Arkayology]

I'm you finally got the tank filled up and the cycle started! How did you start the cycle?

 

[StickyThwomp]

Microbacter Start XLM and QuikCycle, same stuff I bought for the QT tank. After the first bad batch, it worked :upside-down-face:. I'm also considering getting some live rock, haven't if I'll throw that into the mix yet...

 

[ScottD]

Glad to see you get some water in there. Looking forward to seeing this come to life now after things cycle. I’ve been running mine now for 6 months now without lights and between that and the tbs sand I put in, I feel that has kept a lot of the uglies at bay for now. I’m preparing though that once I turn on lights the algae is going to take off.

One thing that helped me with my evaporation is I added some of the corrugated plastic to the top of mine to cover it. It came as 2-24”x36” pieces that I just cut one down and used the clear shipping tape to join them and makes for a nice little hinge. I also cut a piece about 3” wide by 36” and hot glued that vertically on the bigger piece to give it a little more rigidity. I’m going through about 5 gallons every 2 weeks now that winter is over and we’re not using our wood stove to supplement heat anymore. This was just a cheap temporary lid for me until I build a canopy. It works nicely for a $10 fix. Also keeps my fish from jumping out of the tank too. I think I might have a picture of it in my build thread.

 

[Üter]

OMG,,,congrats.

 

[StickyThwomp]

The tank has been running empty for almost a month now, and I've got to do something about that return pump. It's still pretty darn noisy. Disassembling and reassembling it gave me about a minute or so of silence, but it went right back to being it's loud old self. The other pump of the same model lives up to the silent name, so I'm wondering if this one just has some slight defect. I'm debating ordering another, so I'll have a backup, or switching to two dc pumps, so I can run them off battery backup without an inverter.

On that note, I'm setting up battery backup! Found a deal on a 100Ah 12v lifepo4 battery, so I'm working on making that the heart of my backup solution. Still searching out of there's something like a DUPS20 that can handle main supply when on AC and battery management at the same time, except for this battery type. Until I find it, I'll just go lowish tech: Small battery charger on a smart switch, turn it on every few months to top off the battery. I plan to back up both of my power heads, and either:

• A decent sized air bubbler that I can drop in for longer vacations.
• If I swap out turn pumps for dc ones, one or both of those. Im slightly leaning towards this, since it would be nice to keep the sump in the loop and have the same oxygenation during an outage that I normally would, and I gotta do something about that return pump noise regardless.

Livestock(ish)-wise:

• I caved and bought a small pack from TBS. It's insanely expensive, but social media marketing got me. I want to get some more diversity than whatever my bottled bac offered. That'll be in mid month so i plan on dropping it in my invert QT, scanning it for any bad hitchhikers which will be a fun science project because I don't know a good one from a bad one, then plopping it in the DT. It's coming with some hermits, so I'll have something living in the DT finally, and it can run fishless for the period of my fish quarantine, which hopefully negates the chance of fish disease being introduced!
• Speaking of fish quarantine, I'm trying again! I got two new clowns from a different LFS, and already they're looking better than the prior clowns. Significantly more energetic than I remember the others being, All fins intact, breathing normally, ate food voraciously instantly upon being transfered to qt etc... I'm crossing my fingers that this batch works out better. I measured the LFS water for copper (.60 ppm) out of curiosity, which I didn't think to do with the prior batch, and I'm planning on following the full QT sticky.

Disappointed by the death of my prior clowns, These guys do not get names yet, I am not attached to them... I'm not attached to them... BUT they're so so cute

 

[Bohemian Waxwing]

dawww I love baby clowns

 

[StickyThwomp]

My TBS rock arrived, and it's certainly got stuff on it! Not sure what's alive or what's dead, but its something!

There are a few things that look like aptasia, plus some greenish brown fuzzy alge, fleshy stalks of God knows what, and a mystery mass that is baffling me. I thought the thing was just a piece of rock until it exhaled. Crazy !:thinking-face:.

plan is to murderize the aptasia, keep watch for a little while for any more weirdness, and assuming no baddies, pop it in my DT so there's finally something living it it other than bottled bac!

 

[Reefer Brent]

What in the world was that?!?!?

 

[StickyThwomp]

What in the world was that?!?!?

I have no clue! My google-fu hasn't been strong enough to figure it out yet. I'm not disturbing it in the hopes that it doesn't decide to climb out the tank and smother me in the middle of the night
:oops:

 

[StickyThwomp]

I went to the LFS yesterday to grab some more critters, got two peppermint shrimp, three turbo snails, and a handful of hermits. Figured I'd need something to eat the crud that came in the live rock, and so far the peppermint shrimp are doing work. It's fun to watch them dig into the crevasses, scratch around, and kick up all the detritus off the rocks.

These guys are my new favorite tank inhabitants just cause they're so active and fun to watch.


A few more hitchhikers emerged as well, I've got this little crab that I haven't yet IDd:

...A little worm that has completely disappeared, so I hope he's a good guy, or got eaten

...And what I believe to be a shell-less hermit who decided to make his home in a hole in a rock (unpictured since it's way too hard to capture clearly).

"The blob" has also yielded a few more identifying characteristics. It reacts to touch, and has at least two fleshy red holes! I'm hoping as the critters pick at it more it'll be a bit more identifiable.
These holes close when it

deflates, and apparently when the shrimp get too handsy.

 

[StickyThwomp]

Crabs crabs crabs so many crabs!!! Every day I'm finding more crabs in these rocks!

The coolest looking crab, who is also the biggest ******:

Another crab which perches ontop of rocks perfectly still and I think has a little sibling:


And these guys, which were hiding in the rocks and not really doing anything to anyone other than flinching when anything got near:


I'm glad I decided to QT these rocks, since the only crab I noticed right away was the green one. These other fellas would have been impossible to capture out of the big tank!

 

[FMF0331]

 

[StickyThwomp]

Finally, Corals!!!


I feel like I may have gotten too many at once, but hey, free shipping!

In unfortunate news. My DT shrimp are now my sump shrimp... They couldn't behave and decided to eat 50% of the blue stylophora. Luckily they still fell for the food in a bottle trap after they gorged on this feast.


Next Up:
- My clowns have been in quarantine for so long that I forgot they aren't supposed to be there forever. I kept them in copper longer than needed, woops! They'll be moved up to the DT soon though! (I see the hypocrisy is worrying so much about the fish while the coral plopped straight in, but I ran out of quarantine tanks, and got too impatient w/ ordering coral)
- ATO is a work in progress. Going to DIY that, so naturally it'll be far more complicated than it needs to be. I'm playing with firmware at the moment, so that'll last quite some time.
- I also want to diy a kalk reactor so I'm ready when these guys start growing.

Feels a bit monumental to finally have coral in the tank after all this time. Last milestone is going to be the fish, then I'll feel like ive officially "started my tank"

 

[StickyThwomp]

I've got a case of the uglies!


This is actually better than it was... First it was only rocks on 6/6, then maybe a few days later the sand was completely covered except for a few hermet trails. The rocks were practically air stones with how much bubbling they were doing. The glass had a nice thin layer of brown uniformly covering everything. The turbo snails seem to love it, it's funny watching how effectively they clean their surroundings. The outbreak subsided quite a bit now, so I think the silicates are getting all gobbled up and I might be nearly done with this phase. We'll see what nastyness comes next!

Over this time also my skimmer finally started behaving as expected. Nice brown sludge after running perfectly clear and way too high. I couldn't stop it from bubbling over even on the driest setting until one day it suddenly started churning up gross and working at a reasonable rate.


Nitrates have dropped quickly, 30..10 over the course of a few days, so I'm running my skimmer only at night now, hoping that'll slow the descent. Phosphates have been stubborn. Every time I measure they're down to .03-.05, so I dose up to .15 or so using a TSP solution trying to make sure they don't bottom out. I'm reading that the dry rock will leach it up for a while until it'll stabilize, so I'm just trying to get near that point.

One of my sump shrimp managed to find his way _inside_ the skimmer. He got trapped past the pump but somehow didn't get shredded. I had to dismantle it to let him free

Next up is finishing my ATO. I'm an embedded firmware engineer that's only designed and created one PCB in my entire life, and that was in college many years ago... so I'm using this as an excuse to re-learn those skills and build something that can connect to the apex, be configurable over Wi-Fi, and hopefully not be a fire hazard!