o2manyfish - 750g Display Tank, 1500g System with Outdoor Frag Tanks

[Scarybo]

Hi Everyone,

Anyone who sees my outdoor tanks always asks about what happens when it rains.


Well the winter of 2016/2017 brought more rain then the last 15 years and ended a 7 year drought.

And after all that rain came down, here is what the outdoor frag tank looks like.




Dave B


PS -- Inside display tank is doing well. Will try to make a video in the next week or so to update its status.

Such an amazing frag tank!! Cant wait to see the inside display tank.

 

[kingdog22]

How do you deal with salinity issues when it rains for days?

 

[revhtree]

Hi Everyone,

Anyone who sees my outdoor tanks always asks about what happens when it rains.


Well the winter of 2016/2017 brought more rain then the last 15 years and ended a 7 year drought.

And after all that rain came down, here is what the outdoor frag tank looks like.




Dave B


PS -- Inside display tank is doing well. Will try to make a video in the next week or so to update its status.

Man that's great! How good is the growth?

 

[Maritimer]

Looks pretty good!

I'm surprised your salinity isn't bouncing like a kangaroo.

~Bruce

 

[pdt7361]

I just read through all of this and wow...I can't imagine going through all that you have and still having such dedication to the hobby. Your tank is beautiful and everything that I hope my 90g will be when it grows up.

 

[chicago]

wow that is unreal.. love all those goldflakes.. how many did i see in the outside tank?

 

[Dream54ing]

Ahh, missed those frag meet days at Dave's! outdoor frag tank grown much larger since!

 

[Bob Escher]

Hello, my name is Dave, and this is my post-build thread for my 400g display tank. The good news is that this tank went up in 2006. So you won't be waiting months or years to see
how this project turns out. In fact you can jump to the finish right now and go to my live webcam and see the tank at 74.62.193.110. Lights turn on at 5pm Pacific time and shut down at
1:30am.


For those interested in the longer story, here it goes. I was born with a fish tank in my bedroom. My dad had a tank with Oscars in my bedroom as an infant. When I was 5-6 years old
my family had a couple of fresh water tanks, and my dad bought a 40g saltwater system. Undergravel filter, Silent Giant air pump pumping bubbles into the corner of the tank. Foil on the back
of the tank. Dead coral skeletons in the tank. A single 40w flourescent tube. The tank stayed tropical for about 4 years. At which point
my parents moved the family to a house on the water in Southern California. We had a dock in the back yard, and all kinds of life swimming 50' behind the house.


My father had watched an Achilles tang at a LFS for over a month. He stopped by the LFS every evening on the way home and fed the fish. After a month he brought the Achilles home.
It didn't last a week. Several days after the Achilles died, we caught a small 12" leopard shark off the dock. So that went into the tank. The leopard shark did okay for
about six months and then tore up its nose in the tank. We caught the shark and applied Methylene blue to stave off infection but after a few weeks of a torn nose the shark passed.


So my dad fed up, drained the tank, moved it outside on the patio, and we got to fill it with anything we caught off the dock. Now this goes back over 30 years ago. So salt water
was a specialty hobby, with not a lot of information, and the consensus was a 40g tank could sustain anything. We kept a smooth hound shark we caught off the dock alive for several years
in that 40g tank. In addition we had smelt, damsels, pipefish, crabs and octopus from off the dock.


When I was 10-11 I inherited my grandparents 20g show tank and started with my own tank of Livebearers. For my 13th Birthday (31 years ago) my parents gave me a 60g tall tank. The first
powerheads were just appearing in the states and the green Sicce pump was perfect for that tank.That 60g tank is in my dads office now with aquatic turtles. 30 year old tank and it's in
great shape only needing us to silicone the plastic trim back on after it was moved.
In high school I worked at the local fish store and collected freshwater angels and fancy discus.


I moved to Santa Barbara for college and immediately set up a 40g salt tank. My second year in college I started working at the local fish store and upgraded the 40g to a 100g tank.
Reef keeping was just becoming a part of the marine hobby. So I setup an aspiring reef tank of 2 tanks that were 48x12x12 that gravity fed from one to another to a 10g sump underneath.


Live rock from Florida was popular at the time. Colored mushrooms were special. Anemones and clowns and featherdusters filled the tanks.


By my 4th year of college I had upgraded the reef to a 75g show tank, with a wet dry with bio-balls, and a state of the art 5000k Halide bulb with standard flourescent and actinic bulbs.
This tank was at the foot of my bed and was one of my favorite tanks. Watching the tank while falling asleep and seeing it every morning gave me tons of enjoyment.


When I moved from college I swapped that 75g for a 125high. That was in 1992.


So now I can finally get to some photos. Here is a photo of my 125 high back in 1996.

Here was the filtration in the stand.

This tank had bio-balls, an Oceanic Skimmer, a closed loop and a motorized ball valve that switched the flow from the left to right side of the tank every hour. The screen in the
back of a stand was a sprinkler timer that I wired to turn the lights on/off in sequence.




In 2002 I had a 300g FO in my living room, and the 125 reef in what I call the fish room. The tank had been successful for many years and I reached the point where I was bored with the tank.
I went searching on the internet and came across Reef Central. I saw some crazy Japanese tanks, and started looking into keeping Acros. I started by finding frags from local reefers.
Fortunately in Southern California there are lots of great hobbyists that are willing to share their knowledge and success. I zealously had a local reefer
build me a Calcium reactor (Larry HawK)


Here was the Hawk Calcium Reactor.

Here was the tank in 2003

So I setup my calcium reactor next to my fish tank, and was discouraged by how noisy it was. I spent a portion of my college years selling audiophile equipment, and am
very sensitive to noises. My 125 ran silently. So sitting a room away watching my surround system, everytime the co2 bubble went into the reactor and hit the pump I heard the
noise and it drove me crazy. At this point I was realizing that if I was successful with SPS I wanted to put in a large reef tank.


So I figured I would start the upgrade with the equipment. And since I was so upset with the Calcium reactor I decided to put everything outside on my patio. Being a bachelor and
owning my home, if I get a bug to bust a hole in a wall, nobody questions me.


So off to find a new sump.

So I started with a used 100g acrylic tank. I have been a DIY guy with all my hobbies. My back yard is my work shop. So with some acrylic and acrylic weld I was off.

In the last photo you can see on the right side coming out of the top of the sump was a fluidized sand filter. I had been running a sand filter on my reef tank since 1994. I also had
one for my fish only tank since it's inception. I like to have lots of fish and with a sand filter the biological filtration capactity is great increased and allows for 'overcrowding' without
any filtration issues.

I had a sand filter on my fresh water tank

 

[o2manyfish]

Hey Guys,

I picked up one of the new Neptune 'utility' pumps a few weeks ago to use for a filtration project. I originally thought it was going to be a good little pump for small water needs.

Well yesterday I come out and find it's not working.

I took it apart of find the center of the pump melted to the point it broke the impeller blades off and then seized.

I understand that all products have failures. But the impeller blades are very brittle. I'm concerned that anything could possible snap the blades.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

I guess I missed the notice that there were posts to the thread. I apologize for not answering some of the questions sooner.

Scarybo, Inside display tank is doing great. I will try to shoot a video of it soon for an update. But you can check it out anyday of the week from 5pm, till 1am PST on the webcam. The webcam on the tank will let you look at almost any coral in the tank and zoom in to the polyp level -- o2manyfish.com/webcam

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

Kingdog22 ,

When it rains for Days for Days in Cali happened for a couple of times this past winter, and now probably won't happen till the Red Sea Parts or Moses comes down with 37 New Commandments for most of us, and 237 Commandments for Trump.

Even on the days it rains all day there was still a need for the top off system.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

Revhtree,

The growth in the outside tank is always about 3x faster than corals inside the tank. This is for softies and sps. LPS don't do as well with the sunlight. At the moment I am holding a giant chalice for a friend and it is loving the sunlight.

Right now at the height of spring the growth rate in the outside tank is about 5x faster than the inside tank.

An example of the growth rates. a nickel size monti cap frag will grow to the size of a 50 cent piece in 3-4 weeks.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

Maritimer / Bruce,

With 1100 gallons and a constantly available on demand topoff the salinity is stable.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

Chicago,

There are currently 2 Goldflakes in the outdoor frag tank. There were four outside from Sept till Jan. I finally moved the bigger 2 inside. My wife wanted me to keep the 4 outside and get 2 more for the display tank. But I thought 4 goldflakes was enough (for now).

Dave B

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hey Guys,

I picked up one of the new Neptune 'utility' pumps a few weeks ago to use for a filtration project. I originally thought it was going to be a good little pump for small water needs.

Well yesterday I come out and find it's not working.

I took it apart of find the center of the pump melted to the point it broke the impeller blades off and then seized.

I understand that all products have failures. But the impeller blades are very brittle. I'm concerned that anything could possible snap the blades.

Dave B

Wow. That's not cool. Have you reached out to Neptune about it?

 

[Bob Escher]

wow that is unreal.. love all those goldflakes.. how many did i see in the outside tank?

Where are you at in Chicago? What LFS's do you go to?

 

[Nomadic1]

Can you show us photos of the geothermal cooling system?

 

[o2manyfish]

I live in Los Angeles and after the 94 Northridge Earthquake I bought an emergency generator.

In the past 23 years I had to use the generator 2x. In the past 6 months I have had to use it 8x.

The last 2 weeks of June, when the weather was over 100 degrees the power went out twice.

The first time I was home.

On June 26th, i was on vacation.....



We live and learn. New 22kw Generac autostart generator with 200amp auto transfer switch has been delivered. Now hopefully I can get it hooked up before LADWP fails again.

Dave B

 

[revhtree]

Thanks for the update Dave! Any new photos?

 

[o2manyfish]

Thanks for the update Dave! Any new photos?

Hi Rev,

Not sure why the Youtube link got dropped from the last post.








We have video of the tank from last week. But the tank is pretty bare after losing 175 fish. The corals are doing well. Restocking the fish started last week so if you log onto the webcam there is some color swimming back and forth.


Dave B