My 200g (ish) Build

[srobertb]

Lol. I’m not sure anyone is reading this but this should be fun (or cringey) to look back on.

The past 3 of 4 nights my ambient fish room temp has hit 85 which causes about a 1-2 degree temp rise in my sump/refugium system from 77.5-78 (normal) to 80. This means when it gets hotter here (and it will) I’m going to have problems since I’m adding 2 large submersed pumps and an extra 1000w+ of LED’s into the equation. Although my house temp is always right around 68-70….I stills foresee issues. Luckily I am confident that I can drop those 1-2 degrees with large fans vs a chiller.

If that doesn’t work, plan B is hanging plastic sheeting to create walls to the fish room and get a small AC unit. ($400 cost vs $1500 for a chiller. No extra pumps).

I have a fan on the refugium but can’t get one on the sump because it’s currently covered. It’s covered to block light (there’s a 400w refugium light hanging off and above it). I don’t want algae in my sump. One of my big “wish light” items for this tank was to keep a very clean sump to avoid maintenance issues on flow sensors and pumps and keeping the sump dark is important.

The other issue is that my Tunze ATO will not work when uncovered. It simply won’t trigger. Took me way too long to figure out the issue was the light.

So, I’m going to try tipping the refugium light so it’s angled away from the sump. I may also try creating a shield out of plastic cardboard to block it entirely but this feels unfinished and a nuisance to move it/put it back.

Ultimately on top of all of this the answer may be to go back to using my Apex Optic sensors as the ATO trigger with an LLS backup and ditch the Tunze but I spent so much on it and it was supposed to be a luxury purchase that I’ll kick myself I I have to drop it. Honestly I feel like I have a lack of control with the Tunze as I can’t see or log the hi/low sensors like I can with the Apex. I also won’t get any remote errors. Which is important as the sump is so remote and removed. Hopefully the ATO line flow sensor will give me a bit more real-time data and make me feel better about it.

I wish I had known/thought of:

1. A lid on the sump was going to cause heating issues (and create an inability to use a fan)

2. Tunze ATO’s are snowflakes and light spillover breaks them.

3. That I took my APEX (DIY) ATO for granted.

 

[srobertb]

Used a horse stall fan and that kept temps down last night. I also have to wonder if there was extra heat generated by the Jebao being throttled.

switched to a larger size carbon as the small lab grade extruded stuff was clogging quickly. The tank and refugium are super clean, it was just clumping together.

Still working on the ATO solution.

Since I needed a place to plug in my new pump vs a 1link, I went ahead and picked up another EB4. All 3 return/accessory pumps will plug into this which will be run into a UPS battery to keep them running until the generator kicks in (about 1 minute).

 

[srobertb]

Tank was installed last week after I lit a fire under my LFS and Glasscages. Disappointing in a lot of ways. Vinyl work is shoddy. It appears they forgot the overflow lid and made it at the last minute- rough cut edges and it wasn’t even glued together. I’m going to glue it back together and try my hand at sanding ragged acrylic.

The tank showed up with silicon all over the glass. What’s more upsetting is that it had enough dirt and dust in it (and they left the completion date sticker in it) to make me believe it was sitting for awhile. What’s even worse is that the overflow was cracked by someone getting overzealous with a strap. If the exterior quality is any indication of the construction, I’m going to have a waterfall for a staircase in a year. Fingers crossed I’m wrong.

My LFS said Glasscages offered me a whopping $100 for all that was wrong (we settled on $200 but I’ve not heard anything from anyone). I overheard my LFS speaking with someone at Glasscages and it didn’t sound like Glasscages was too apologetic. “Just use some 800 grit sand paper” I think was the suggestion….on a $5,000 custom tank I waited way over the delivery window for. Oof.

My fish are happy and it hasn’t started leaking so I’m joyful for that.

It will be some time before the bad taste is out of my mouth and we can move on from an unpleasant experience; especially one that’s supposed to be pure joy.

I’m currently still dialing in programming and the overflow. I ditched the Gyre’s for a couple MP60’s and I’m happy with the noise level and water flow. Going to add fish and corals rapidly since everything has had a good long cycle (and I’m using 5 year old rock).

 

[srobertb]

Tank was installed last week after I lit a fire under my LFS and Glasscages. Disappointing in a lot of ways. Vinyl work is shoddy. It appears they forgot the overflow lid and made it at the last minute- rough cut edges and it wasn’t even glued together. I’m going to glue it back together and try my hand at sanding ragged acrylic.

The tank showed up with silicon all over the glass. What’s more upsetting is that it had enough dirt and dust in it (and they left the completion date sticker in it) to make me believe it was sitting for awhile. What’s even worse is that the overflow was cracked by someone getting overzealous with a strap. If the exterior quality is any indication of the construction, I’m going to have a waterfall for a staircase in a year. Fingers crossed I’m wrong.

My LFS said Glasscages offered me a whopping $100 for all that was wrong (we settled on $200 but I’ve not heard anything from anyone). I overheard my LFS speaking with someone at Glasscages and it didn’t sound like Glasscages was too apologetic. “Just use some 800 grit sand paper” I think was the suggestion….on a $5,000 custom tank I waited way over the delivery window for. Oof.

My fish are happy and it hasn’t started leaking so I’m joyful for that.

It will be some time before the bad taste is out of my mouth and we can move on from an unpleasant experience; especially one that’s supposed to be pure joy.

I’m currently still dialing in programming and the overflow. I ditched the Gyre’s for a couple MP60’s and I’m happy with the noise level and water flow. Going to add fish and corals rapidly since everything has had a good long cycle (and I’m using 5 year old rock).

 

[Reef-N-Stein]

any updates? How’s things going?

 

[srobertb]

any updates? How’s things going?

Thanks for asking.

the tank purchase sort of left a bad taste in my mouth so I took a break from the social component of reefing.

Right now the big mystery is my return pumps. I have 2 (a main and a backup). Both very large Jebao pumps (same make/model). The setup involves two commercial check valves that are clear (so no issues I can see). When I turn it on I get about 830gph but it degrades over 2-3 days to 790. Then I turn it off and the other one on and it shoots back up to 830. I know the flow is degrading because when I switch over, my return pump chamber water level drops. So every 5 days (or so) I have to switch over pumps. It works but it’s annoying. I can’t figure out why this is happening. I was going to ask around and do some research but I’ve just been too busy.

Unfortunately I’ve had a little more “new tank” syndrome than I had hoped for using my very old and well established live rock. Things are coming together and stabilizing but it will be another 3-6 months I think before my tank is “mature” (which I guess is more of a feeling than anything scientific).

I’ve been working on balancing the chaeto light cycle to mitigate algae (mostly on the glass). I exhausted it running 24/7 which did ****** the film on the display tank glass but killed about 30% of the chaeto so I’ve dialed it back to 14 hours.


I’ve added a clean up crew, then more clean up crew. I added some fish but admittedly I haven’t seen them since I added them- I’m hopeful that they’re simply hiding in the back. All my old fish that made the move are alive and well and happy. I’m afraid my clown, who never properly paired with the female, was eaten by my angler fish.

Corals have been hit or miss. I thought the depth of the tank would allow me to run the 3 Kessils as well as the Radions but this led to some bleaching of some newer acropora so I’ve shut them down (for now). My “old” corals that moved are all doing well aside from one acro colony that got blasted.


The 2 MP60’s are simply not enough flow. I’ll need to add an MP40 (I think) down in a corner to blow across the back. My rock work is super open but it’s just not hitting the back properly as-is. I’d rather die than add more Gyre’s lol….of which I have 2-3 sitting around.


Usual equipment stuff- had a PMUP die on me so I had to buy another backup. I run 2 ATO’s so it really wasn’t a big deal.