OINK! I'm a Pig. 200g Reef Savvy, Bashsea, Royal Exclusiv -Direct sunlight- In wall w/ IKEA fishroom basement sump build

[drtechno]

Another mini-update

in order to cover the hole in the wall that was cut by the plumbers to bring out the water supply line, I initially thought I would buy a white board and use the router to carve out the slot for the water pipe. But I realized that would still look bad. So my wife suggested we just use 2” standoffs and Velcro the whiteboard to those, and it will cover everything. That ended up working pretty well.

So hole covered

 

[drtechno]

One other project I decided to do was to solve the airflow problem. The issue with my fish room is that it is essentially a walled off part of the unfinished basement. There is zero airflow or circulation into the basement, and even less into this closed off room. This ends up obviously trapping humidity and probably tons of co2.
There were few options to get air circulation into that room, and I didn’t really want to dump fishy air and humidity into my finished basement. A Panasonic vent fan would just create negative pressure in that area without solving the issue of fresh air supply. In the end, I just decided on an HRV (heat recovery ventilator I believe). It cost less than a Radion XR30. I bought the smallest one that was still good quality and self balancing, and am installing that right now for the room. Hopefully it will dump some humidity and provide plenty of fresh air.

 

[drtechno]

HRV is installed and done. Very very simple install if you are comfortable taking a hole-saw to the side of your house (this was my first time but it was surprisingly easy).
Within 5 mins the humidity had dropped 5% already and the stale odor was gone. I’m really happy so far with how well this is working out. I’ll give any long term reviews as the build progresses

 

[Mjl714]

Funny, here in the Midwest, never comfortable drilling a rather large, or any hole for that matter in the side of the house. Glad it worked out well.

 

[drtechno]

Funny, here in the Midwest, never comfortable drilling a rather large, or any hole for that matter in the side of the house. Glad it worked out well.

Ya I’m in the northeast so had all sorts of concerns with winter and insulation etc. And to be honest, I was really sort of freaking out about it. But I had to drill a vent hole in the house for another (unrelated) project that I didn’t want to hire a contractor for, and once I did that, I saw how much I was unnerved by something so simple.
But I’m so impressed by how well the HRV is working out.

 

[inetjnky]

As far as plumbing mistakes.. LOL..
You see anything wrong with this picture?

... Yes, I forgot to put the screw on couplings that attach both sides of the T to the Cepex valves.. Unbelievable!! I was being so careful too. So I ordered the new slip couplings, and made sure I plumbed them correctly when they arrived, then I proceeded to plumb the rest of the mixing station. I was, of course very careful not to repeat the same mistake again.
BUT--

You have GOT to be kidding me.. Yes.. I did it AGAIN. Immediately after fixing the exact same mistake below! I cannot even begin to comprehend how I repeated the mistake. And to make matters worse, there was a second place above this where I had likewise messed up. I ended up just cutting these pieces and making the stub shorter, scavenging couplings from a couple new Cepex valves I had, and fixing the mistakes.

What epic fails.

Haha I made this mistake a few times as well! Glad I had ordered extra valves that I could steal parts from!

 

[Bepis]

You gonna add some Neptune Sky’s to your mix of lighting now? They look like a dream come true

 

[inetjnky]

Are those 750w finnex heaters or 800w and are theyon their own two different circuits from the rest of your equipment in your fish room? I went back and forth on calculating electrical requirements for my two dedicated 20a circuits that had to run everything in my fish room. I bought two 800w myself and ended up moving down to the 500w heaters to save myself some electricity cost but also to give more wiggle room on my dedicated circuits. 800w finnex will run at 9 amp. The 500w only run at 4.5 amp. A dedicated 16 amp circuit shouldn’t have an extended load of more then 16 amps at a time for safety and fire hazard reasons. Even after stepping down to the 500w heaters, I’m pushing each of my outlets to 14 amps with everything I’m running. Might want to see if you could get away with the 500w since I know the 500w will heat the similiar sized tank we both ordered. My tank is only 24” tall where yours is 27”… I just got my tank last week and finally got it in place. I almost changed my order to go to 27” for more room for the Vortech mo60 placement but didn’t want to delay any further. You’re going to love the build quality! Check out my thread when you get a few minutes.

 

[drtechno]

Are those 750w finnex heaters or 800w and are theyon their own two different circuits from the rest of your equipment in your fish room? I went back and forth on calculating electrical requirements for my two dedicated 20a circuits that had to run everything in my fish room. I bought two 800w myself and ended up moving down to the 500w heaters to save myself some electricity cost but also to give more wiggle room on my dedicated circuits. 800w finnex will run at 9 amp. The 500w only run at 4.5 amp. A dedicated 16 amp circuit shouldn’t have an extended load of more then 16 amps at a time for safety and fire hazard reasons. Even after stepping down to the 500w heaters, I’m pushing each of my outlets to 14 amps with everything I’m running. Might want to see if you could get away with the 500w since I know the 500w will heat the similiar sized tank we both ordered. My tank is only 24” tall where yours is 27”… I just got my tank last week and finally got it in place. I almost changed my order to go to 27” for more room for the Vortech mo60 placement but didn’t want to delay any further. You’re going to love the build quality! Check out my thread when you get a few minutes.

Awesome advice. I did the calculations a while back and thought I was clear. Will check again tho. But they are both running on separate 20amp circuits. Tank lighting and the vortechs have a separate (third) circuit as they are upstairs. I didn’t realize the 500w heaters are HALF the amperage. That’s really good to know. I may step down too or mix them and put a 500w on the higher load circuit.
Will definitely check out your build thread!

 

[drtechno]

You gonna add some Neptune Sky’s to your mix of lighting now? They look like a dream come true

I think it’s too late for me. I’ve already bought into the Radions and have 3 that I’m about to mount on the canopy, with two Kessil 500’s on order for the shimmer effect and add some punch through to get some light at 27”. I’ll keep my eye on the neptunes tho

 

[inetjnky]

Awesome advice. I did the calculations a while back and thought I was clear. Will check again tho. But they are both running on separate 20amp circuits. Tank lighting and the vortechs have a separate (third) circuit as they are upstairs. I didn’t realize the 500w heaters are HALF the amperage. That’s really good to know. I may step down too or mix them and put a 500w on the higher load circuit.
Will definitely check out your build thread!

I put my main tank upstairs on its own 20a circuit as well for lighting and flow. So we are lock step with the majority of the design. I just used a single UV instead of two. Definitely check your amps on each of the 20a circuits where you have the 800w heaters connected. I laid everything that was plugged in down on paper and listed their MAX amps… then started with the heaters and split everything and recorded their amps and then started adding everything u as I went. Anything over 16amps was a no go.

 

[Medic58]

Next up, what delayed starting my "real" build until now?

Two factors: A generator and a fish room.

Yes, I ran a 60 gallon eye-sore in that hole for a long time, with a sump below it... just a disaster and it looked like garbage since it filled only 1/3 of the space in the wall.

Generator
Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in New England, where we can get heavy wet snow falls. We also happen to live in a town that is obsessed with keeping trees, and has many old, old trees.. The result is that we can lose power in the winter at the drop of a hat, we can lose power any time the wind blows during the summer. I remember floating boiling bags of water to heat my 60 gallon during one 3 day winter power outage. That was horrendous. Waking up at ungodly hours of the night to swap out hot water bags. No more. Generator is a must. And since I travel, I can't be screwing around with a portable thing that I have to start up. So it wasn't until this year that we got our act together and got a "part home" generator. I say that because it would have been needlessly expensive to power the entire house, when all I really need during a power outage is the fish room running, hot water, living room lights, fridge, a couple kitchen outlets and the furnaces running. The rest I can live without (AC for example).

Enter the main actor for this act:

How is that generator I’m looks at making a choice on one soon

 

[drtechno]

How is that generator I’m looks at making a choice on one soon

Absolutely love it. It's ridiculously quiet as I installed it 20 ft from the house (I thought I would be able to hear it). As it stands right now, the only reminder I have that it even exists is it's weekly email to tell me it successfully completed the 10 minute "exercise" period on Saturdays. The one time we have used it in a power outage, it worked flawlessly and quietly. It seems servicing it is extremely straight forward too (oil, filter and spark plug) if you want to do that yourself. My only complaint is why on earth do they make these things WHITE?! Literally no clue. I would have paid a little extra to make it black and have it disappear into the background.

 

[inetjnky]

I love my Generac as well. The key is to ensure you have a good and reputable service technician company that will be proactive with you if there’s ever a problem: I have mine hooked up to wifi at my home and it talks back to my service technician so they can push firmware updates, see the status of my generator 24/7 and come out to the house if there’s a problem to fix it. They dont even need to get into the house to do any service on the unit or the auto trasfer switch. I would t run a large tank and expensive setup without it.

 

[drtechno]

So the update on the tank is looking like the end of the summer. Wow. ah well. In the meantime, rock is still cycling. Also I fully finished my lighting rack and mounted the radions, so here are some pictures of that. Also have a picture of the light rack swung up out of the way.

 

[Mjl714]

Light rack turned out great, nice work.

 

[inetjnky]

What’s your plan for corals? Mixed or? Any stocking ideas on fish? I’m having a tough time trying to figure out what I want for fish to be honest. On top of it finding the fish is another issue. Any chance on getting your frag system started and up and running soon?

 

[drtechno]

What’s your plan for corals? Mixed or? Any stocking ideas on fish? I’m having a tough time trying to figure out what I want for fish to be honest. On top of it finding the fish is another issue. Any chance on getting your frag system started and up and running soon?

Good questions.. I am planning on a mixed SPS dominant tank. I have always loved SPS but had limited success with them. I always blamed it on my small tank size, but in reality it was likely due to my poor maintenance and not getting the right gear. I don't have my fish room set up enough to run a frag tank separate from the main display. I am going to be relying on the main display AWC "waste" water to fill the frag tank drain the overflow into the sink; so it should be getting a continuous supply of display tank water to run off of.

Fish I do have planned tho.. I didn't realize I hadn't posted this yet.

Working list:

3 pyramid angels
1 flame wrasse (yes, I was able to find one and they are theoretically holding it for me)

coris wrasse
leopard wrasse
melanarus wrasse
7 chromis
blue throat trigger -- I wanted a crosshatch but hear these are now not available from hawaii
gem tang
purple tang
kole tang (if they lift the ban on these)
white tail bristletooth tang
sailfin tang vs desjardin tang
2 black storm clownfish
flame hawkfish
bicolor blenny or purple filefish
royal gramma basslet
ruby head fairy wrasse
scotts australian velvet fairy wrasse

mandarin goby (eventually)

3 ventralis anthias (wait list)

To be honest, these are mostly the same fish you see in a lot of typical reef tanks except for some 'upgraded' options like the gem tang. Not sure there is anything much to be creative about. I hear the chromis will kill each other off eventually, but I am hoping to avoid that.

Yea, finding the fish is also the issue if you have particular things you want :/ I ended up going the route of the quarantined fish that other people find for you like TSM aquatics and Marine Collectors.

I am REALLY hoping this thing gets off the ground soon Too much waiting around and looking at full tank shots of others !

 

[inetjnky]

That’s a lot of tangs for that size tank. I’m actually backing down off how many I was originally going to go with. I may go with 4 max but really am thinking 3 is the max. My yellow plus two

 

[lclfox]

So the update on the tank is looking like the end of the summer. Wow. ah well. In the meantime, rock is still cycling. Also I fully finished my lighting rack and mounted the radions, so here are some pictures of that. Also have a picture of the light rack swung up out of the way.

How did you make these? Sorry if it’s buried if it’s buried in the build. Looking to make something similar.