HybridAZN's 180 gallon build

hybridazn · Jun 20, 2015

Picked up a new return pump. The jebao DCT-12000. My mag 24 took a dump so I decided to try something new. I tested it in the turtle tank and it def moves some water. It'll be installed later this evening.

Fishphi784 · Jun 20, 2015

Nice tank! In regards to your skimmer as the source of the bleaching, isn't GFO (granulated ferric oxide) simply rust or very closely related? If this was the case I wouldn't think it would be your screws. I only say this in the hope that you can find that actual cause. Hope all the rest of your corals far well. Also, I have the same return; it is very powerful and more than adequate for my 235 gallon (180+frag+sump) total volume system including a manifold for 3 reactors and external skimmer.

adam87 · Jun 20, 2015

hybridazn said:
Update!

So I returned home from my vacation to find my UC Strawberry shortcake colony completely bleached along with a few others. All my monti's are toast except my beach bum but it looks like crap. Almost all my sps either have severely burnt tips or are STN'ing like crazy. I went from doing a 50 gallon water change to testing everything and all is well as far as that goes. So tonight I said to myself I'm draining my sump and cleaning it out completely thinking that maybe my daughter threw something in there that I couldn't see. I completely scrubbed it out and found nothing out of the ordinary. I removed the skimmer and pumps and gave them all a good scrubbing. The return pump and auxiliary pumps all clean and check out fine. I clean out the skimmer and I go to check the pump and what do I find, the screws and metal rings in the pump housing have completely rusted! I am almost positive this is the source of the problem. The skimmer is a coralvue 1000sss. I am still in disbelief that this skimmer would have this problem. Hopefully coralvue can chime in about this. But here are some pics.

@Jeremy@CoralVue

Thats the Gen1 pump you have in your pic, they replace them with Gen2's.

hybridazn · Jun 20, 2015

Fishphi784 said:
Nice tank! In regards to your skimmer as the source of the bleaching, isn't GFO (granulated ferric oxide) simply rust or very closely related? If this was the case I wouldn't think it would be your screws. I only say this in the hope that you can find that actual cause. Hope all the rest of your corals far well. Also, I have the same return; it is very powerful and more than adequate for my 235 gallon (180+frag+sump) total volume system including a manifold for 3 reactors and external skimmer.

Thanks for the post. Gfo is a source of rust/iron that is used as an absorbent and doesn't leach anything else into the tank. I am assuming that the stainless steel used by thevcompany leached other elements that are also in stainless steel that shouldnt be present into the system causing the crash.

hybridazn · Jun 20, 2015

adam87 said:
Thats the Gen1 pump you have in your pic, they replace them with Gen2's.

Thanks! I posted the pics on the other forum as well hoping to get a response from coralvue. So we shall see what happens.

spspirate · Jun 20, 2015

Sorry to hear about the mishap. I hope you bounce back here fast! Your coral pics look amazing!

hybridazn · Jun 21, 2015

spspirate said:
Sorry to hear about the mishap. I hope you bounce back here fast! Your coral pics look amazing!

Thanks for the kind words! The tank will be back for sure. My wife was pretty upset to the point that she said we should tear down the tank. I decided we shouldn't and not let this get us down. I told her this time next year it'll look like nothing happened.

hybridazn · Jun 21, 2015

So I got the new DCT-12000 installed and cleaned up the plumbing. I went to install the manifold off the return and I realized I didn't have enough T's and will have to do this later. Possibly monday. But the longer piece going off to the side that is capped will be where the manifold will go.

So this pump has been running for about an hour and all I can say is wow! This thing is really quiet, I didn't even know it was on until I st

uck my head under the stand and could only hear a very, very slight hum. Initial impressions are great. Ill check in after 6 months of use on this thing and let you guys know how I feel then.

Fishphi784 · Jun 22, 2015

hybridazn said:
Thanks for the post. Gfo is a source of rust/iron that is used as an absorbent and doesn't leach anything else into the tank. I am assuming that the stainless steel used by thevcompany leached other elements that are also in stainless steel that shouldnt be present into the system causing the crash.

That makes sense. Coral Vue has been great with my product issues so far. Good luck with it and the recovery of your system.

787will · Jun 22, 2015

adam87 said:
Thats the Gen1 pump you have in your pic, they replace them with Gen2's.

The DCT models are 2015 models so your good

hybridazn · Jun 29, 2015

So the wife informs me that since we have been back from our little vacation that she hasn't looked at the tank because of all the losses of coral. So this weekend I cut some of the dead corals out and trimmed a couple that had severely burnt tips. Still have a long way to go in removing stuff.

FTS 6-29-15

I took some time this weekend to really clean up some plumbing. I finally added my manifold and removed a couple old maxi jets I was using to run my reactor and UV.

After whole reef octopus skimmer fiasco I went back to my old faithful, my Euro Reef RS 250. I also added my Geo's Reef bio pellet reactor and added 100ml of vertex bio pellets to start.

The tank is slowly showing me that I am going in the right direction in correcting what was wrong. This hobby just takes time and a whole lot of patience.

hybridazn · Jun 29, 2015

I did some work to the frag system this weekend as well. I was running a DE 250w metal halide with a kessil a350 for supplementation. I took those down because a friend of mine wanted my DE reflector in trade for his ice cap mogul reflector. Needless to say the new reflector is huge and was in no way going to do over the 40b. So I was like uhhhh, now what? Then I remembered I had a workhorse 7 ballast laying around with everything else I needed to do a 4 bulb t5. So thats what I did, its very rough and I will be building a canopy very soon. I also plan to add some royal blue leds I have to supplement as well. But the bulb combo is

Front to back:
blue+
Blue+
Purple+
Blue+

I will add the leds first to the front then add more to the back at a later date.

hybridazn · Jun 29, 2015

I didnt like how I had the bio pellet reactor return tube just hanging in front of the skimmer inlet so I decided to make an adapter for it.

Pretty simple but it'll work. And here is a pic of it in action

It doesn't restrict flow going into the skimmer so it didn't skip a beat as I put it on.

hybridazn · Jun 30, 2015

Here is a little video of the action going on in the bio pellet reactor. Only 100ml of pellets so far.

hybridazn · Jul 2, 2015

While my sps having taken a dive in the display, everything else is doing pretty good. Here is one example I snapped a quick pic of with my galaxy s3 no editing. Under reefbrite xho blues.

Sexy Corals Rimless Rainbow

hybridazn · Jul 3, 2015

Originally with the bio pellet I thought there was too much flow going thru it so I turned it down. It started to clump up pretty good so I did a little more reading and from what I read you want the pellets to really be flying, just as long as they aren't being pushed up to the very top of the reactor. So I turned the flow back up to match the video and all is well again. Today I added 50ml more of pellets to the reactor.

Tek · Jul 4, 2015

Glad to hear you didn't give up. I had to start over last fall and ended up rebuilding better. 8 months now and most people would not think the tank was less than a year old.

hybridazn · Jul 4, 2015

Thanks bud, believe me I did think about it. Im hoping in a few months it'll be rockin and rollin

hybridazn · Jul 8, 2015

digging around the computer and i came across some pics i never posted. sadly they are all pieces that I have recently lost due to this crap I've been dealing with.