Ken's 290 Peninsula

ScottW

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Great job with the build, this looks like it is going to be awesome! Love the attention to detail and running the best equipment available.
 
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Fiziksgeek

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Making last minute preparations...Added the two MP-40s to the main display and another MP-40 to the frag tank. Adjusting parameters, haven't tested everything yet. Temp is holing at 77, might bump it to 78. Salinity is closing in on 35ppt or 1.026 however you like to see it. PH is on the low side at 7.8, dKH seems ok at 8.5.Might look to raise both just a bit. But seems like good enough for some live rock already!

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Fiziksgeek

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All this activity has me thinking of a stock list....Back in the day I didn't think much about compatibility or order of stocking. I did some research, asked the LFS for advice, but sorta winged it most of the time.

My thoughts for stock:

2-3 gobies, sand sifting like a orange spot or dracula, maybe a yellow watchman.

Green Chromis - cheap and easy, maybe 10 for a small school...if they will school?

Royal Gramma Basslet

Blue Mandarin - had good success with these in the past, cool little fish.

Six line wrasse

Anthias - lyretail maybe, never had luck with these in the past.

Butterfly - pearlscale, latticed, copper banded? learning toward pearlscale.

Tang Gang - CLown, blue hippo, Naso, and yellow? Add all at once if possible?

Some sort of clown maybe, not planning on having any anemones.


Where to start...?

Need to put together a somewhat coherent plan with corals as well....not in a particular rush, but would like to have a few things int eh tank by Christmas....maybe....
 

Sean Clark

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Clown tangs grow up to be jerks. I would not put one it the system.
 
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Fiziksgeek

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I'm excited to see your order from TBS today!

Sorry, have an update on that as well. I mixed up the days initially. The first delivery will be here late tonight for pick in the morning. Second delivery has been delayed from next Tuesday until Thursday as well. All pending the impacts from the storm that is coming ashore!
 

bhargs99

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Sorry, have an update on that as well. I mixed up the days initially. The first delivery will be here late tonight for pick in the morning. Second delivery has been delayed from next Tuesday until Thursday as well. All pending the impacts from the storm that is coming ashore!
Ah okay, guess we will see tomorrow then! Really interested to hear your experience and see how you handle all the rock when it arrives. I am hoping to have the same order as you, just on a smaller scale in a few months (190g peninsula)! So I will be closing following all of your updates :)
 
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Fiziksgeek

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So the sand/rock pick up left a little to be desired. The air cargo location opened at 7, I arrived about 7:30. Despite the fact that the flight came in around 11 the night before, the boxes hadn't made its way to the warehouse yet. It appeared there was only 1 person working the air cargo desk. So I had to wait outside while he went to to some other location to try and retrieve the boxes. Came back after about 20 minutes and said they couldn't find the boxes, but they are looking... While we were chatting, I someone called and said they found the boxes, all 5 of them. I mentioned there were supposed to be 9 boxes! Sooo...back he went. They eventually found all the boxes, stored next to the Ark of the Covenant, and I was there for almost 3 hours.

A couple of the boxes were visible split open and several were wet. I had email TBS to confirm the number of boxes while the were searching, and replied before I drove away that there were some issues with the boxes.

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Fiziksgeek

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I should mentioned, if I didn't previously, I orders 150lbs live sand, 150s base rock, 150lbs premium rock, and a clean up crew. . Because of Tropical Storm Nicole, TBS wasn't able to get one of their dives in, so was only able to ship me all the sand and 100lbs of the base rock in the first shipment. The remaining base rock, premium rock, and clean up crew are supposed to come in late this Thursday! TBS has been great with the communications every step of the way.

Anyway, I prioritized the split/wet boxes. Only 1 of the boxes had actually lost its water, and I assume it happened at BDL, or on the last leg of the journey based on how wet they were, but who knows. Everything was triple bagged. Most were just fine, a couple had the inner most bag punctured by sharp features on the rocks, and only 1 had leaked. Though a couple boxes were visibly damaged, the Styrofoam cooler inside every box was cracked or broken in some way.

Moving on, the rock overall looks good. Not nearly as light and porous as I remember back in the day from ordering boxes of rock from Fiji, but pretty good none the less. I had several "C" shaped rocks, which actually work well, as I can use them to circle around the close loop inputs. There were some more interesting pieces with holes through them. reasonable coralline coverage, and a few sprigs of various macro algae. A couple little hitch hikers. Pretty sure there is still a gorilla crab in there, a couple hermits, some small snails. The rock placement is probably not final, but wanted to get everything in the tank ASAP. After I placed the rock, I put in 2 bags of Aragonite special grade dry sand that I already had and then the 150lbs of live sand. The live sand is full of shells and has wider range of grain sizes, which helps things look smore natural in my mind.
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bhargs99

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Bummer that your boxes were damaged, doesn't look like Delta handled them carefully at all. The rock looks nice and I like the grain size of the sand! Are the last two pictures the full 100lbs worth of rock?
 
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Fiziksgeek

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Didnt get a lot of time to work over the weekend. It took overnight for the water to clear. and I did put a little effort into working on the closed loops. I figured the initial concept would need to be tweaked after I actually got the rock/sand.

I decided to go away from the VCAs. If I was bare bottom, I would have absolutely kept them in. The exit flow is too wide. No matter how high up I angled them, the flow would still hit the sand too much. I would of hand to extend them so far up it wouldn't have been easy to high the piping They also don't seem to fit very tight, the more I angle them, the more risk that they pop off.

So, back to loc line. I want to make things as compact as possible, and give me flow in all different directions, so each input will go to a T or a side outlet elbow as they call it. I kept the piping 1" until the split and then used a 1" slip --> 3/4 female thread bushing. To make things even smaller, I cut down the PVC. This reduced the gluing surface, but since we are talking low pressures, I am not worried a bit.

Wiped down my new assemblies with acetone and hit them with some flat black rustoleum. Havent had a chance to install them yet.

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Original on the left, new "compact" version on the right
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Fiziksgeek

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Bummer that your boxes were damaged, doesn't look like Delta handled them carefully at all. The rock looks nice and I like the grain size of the sand! Are the last two pictures the full 100lbs worth of rock?

At the end of the day, I think all it meant is that 3 of the rocks from that one box had more die off then the rest, I don't think it was a big deal. Had the contents of the box been something other than rock, it likely would haven't meant dead fish or coral...

Yes, that is all the rock. The whole shipment was 9 boxes, 402 lbs. shipped weight. 4 of the boxes were sand, 5 were rock. The tank is 6ft long, 3ft wide, and I put the rocks in first, then the sand around, so they are burried a couple inches deep. I did this to minimize the chances of my rock stack falling later.
 

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