preview of 800 g tank in 3 rooms

[Daveobrien]

Well... near major mishap and rookie mistake. I left the skimmer cup drain open and had a skimmer overflow into a 5 gallon bucket. This bucked should have had either a level sensor shut off, or overflow pipe back into the sump. Overnight... I dumped about 160 gallons of water into the fish room. The salinity dropped from 1.026 to 1.022 overnight. Of course... it's the day that I have five fish coming from Marine Collectors.

The good news is that I had enough water to get up and running again this a.m. by taking one of the frag tanks offline and panic making 60 gallons of salt water from my RO reservoir, (while I simultaneously attended a zoom meeting for work...) and all the livestock seems to be ok. Also... the dialyseas system will take care of the rest while I'm at work, slowly raising the salinity over the next few days and automatically making the new water. Also, the floor drain that I went to great lengths to get installed saved the basement from any damage.

PHEW!

Google what happened to Steve Weast's 850 gallon Oregon Reef Tank. Amazing Tank, Similar incident, with less happy results. The lessons I've always remembered from this are; 1. Skimmer Drains need to be setup thinking They Will Overflow. 2. Resist acting Rashly in case of emergency. 3. Have Extra Salt water on hand, or a plan where how to consolidate overall system capacity in case of emergency. (eg, like your taking frag tanks offline)

• http://www.oregonreef.com
• http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1080179&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[FishTruck]

Google what happened to Steve Weast's 850 gallon Oregon Reef Tank. Amazing Tank, Similar incident, with less happy results. The lessons I've always remembered from this are; 1. Skimmer Drains need to be setup thinking They Will Overflow. 2. Resist acting Rashly in case of emergency. 3. Have Extra Salt water on hand, or a plan where how to consolidate overall system capacity in case of emergency. (eg, like your taking frag tanks offline)

• http://www.oregonreef.com
• http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1080179&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

I KNOW - I KNOW LOL!!! I have that whole Steve Weast thing memorized - and I STILL procrastinated putting in the skimmer overflow safety. When I get around to it... I will have the overflow dump back into the sump. That's the safest!

At least I knew not to try and solve the situation with tap water and dechlorinator - thanks to Mr. Weasts open posting about his tank's demise. The other thing I know not to do is to try and bring the salinity up in any hurry!

 

[CommanderInReef]

Here is the house I am building for my new reef tank. The tank will be 140 inches long by 48 inches wide and 30 inches tall. About 870 gallons I guess. View-able from the living room, breakfast nook, and a "library" with a hidden door - to confound those who notice a room when they look through the tank.

What LEDs are you guys using for your monster tanks? I have just FOUR radions Gen 2 over my current 300, which I like. I would probably need 8 of them for this tank, plus another 2 to 4 in the grow-out tank going in the basement.

this is amazing. Dedicating house construction to tank requirements is a luxury I pray to have one day. Right on soldier!

 

[emvanburen]

I’m also scared of overflowing skimmers. So I did this:

 

[maroun.c]

Glad damages were limited. guess we always need to optimize the design/prepareness after each incident that happens. this only makes the system more robust with time.

 

[David29price]

The final light fixtures and bulbs are installed and running at target intensity... still no algae in the display!! Five orpheks... I have room for four more if needed. They are flanked and boosted by four ATI blue plus T5s. There are a couple of kessils to light up the background rocks in the dark part of the tank where all the returns and overflows are hidden.

Some PAR readings are shown.

I had a battle with cyanobacteria in the frag tanks (I think), which I cleared out with a 5 day blackout and some chemi-clean. I have not dosed vibrant in a few weeks. Right now, the system is free of any "ugly" phase organisms.

Coralline is just starting to appear in the main tank and the amount has doubled in the frag tanks.

The only bad news is that some of my corals got pretty beat up by the cyano that was in the frag tank... and some of them don't look so hot after being moved around and cleaned. The birds nest frags seem to catch every floating piece of algae or slime and I don't think they are going to make it. I'd really like to see the corals start to thrive again before I buy any new stuff.

I don't have anything planned for July - just observation and QT for a few new fish.

Hey man great build! I am currently building a 400 gallon tank viewable from two rooms. I have the exact same Orphek lights you have! I'm trying to figure out how to suspend them from the ceiling and how to raise/lower them for maintenance. How did you mount yours and any suggestions?

 

[mattgsa]

Well... near major mishap and rookie mistake. I left the skimmer cup drain open and had a skimmer overflow into a 5 gallon bucket. This bucked should have had either a level sensor shut off, or overflow pipe back into the sump. Overnight... I dumped about 160 gallons of water into the fish room. The salinity dropped from 1.026 to 1.022 overnight. Of course... it's the day that I have five fish coming from Marine Collectors.

The good news is that I had enough water to get up and running again this a.m. by taking one of the frag tanks offline and panic making 60 gallons of salt water from my RO reservoir, (while I simultaneously attended a zoom meeting for work...) and all the livestock seems to be ok. Also... the dialyseas system will take care of the rest while I'm at work, slowly raising the salinity over the next few days and automatically making the new water. Also, the floor drain that I went to great lengths to get installed saved the basement from any damage.

PHEW!

Quick thinking on your part. Congratats on saving all the live stock, and getting the system back online so quickly, i'm curious if you remember anything about the meeting? If it was me, I don't think I would have remember the meeting in the first place. LOL

 

[FishTruck]

Well... everything survived! I celebrated by adding two sea sweeps with tunze 6155s. The video shows them at less than half power and all the stuff in the water was detritus blasted out off it's hiding places. They are humming and a little noisy at the moment - but in my experience the pumps break in and quiet down after a week or two.

One near mishap - I dropped one of the tunze controllers into the tank (it only went in about an inch for about a second).. I disassembled it and blasted the circuit board dry with canned air. I let it dry for an hour - and it fired up fine. Phew!

So much for hiding all the power heads.... I now have three visible - but I do kind of like watching the sea sweeps.

 

[emvanburen]

Have been thinking about adding a sweep. Have you used them before? I’m looking for ways to discreetly get flow behind my aquascape without cords all over the place.

 

[JumboShrimp]

I especially liked your #4 and #6 ideas:

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4. Adjustable aquascaping. I am going to build a network of rock "islands". Each one can be pulled out of the tank if it gets overgrown with mushrooms, mojanos, montipora, whatever. By perhaps changing one or two islands per year, I can keep the aquascaping fresh and fun - and trial and error until I get it right. Also, no rocks more than 12 inches tall. Got to be disciplined and leave room for the corals to grow.

6. Hidden returns. The tank is 140 inches long. I will frame 128 inches for viewing, giving me 12 inches of "out of view" area for the returns and gyres.

 

[FishTruck]

Have been thinking about adding a sweep. Have you used them before? I’m looking for ways to discreetly get flow behind my aquascape without cords all over the place.

These are the first time. The sea swirls with eductors off the main return would have more discreet. I do feel like the motion really allows more detitus agitation per nozzle/ pump versus stationary Nozzles / powerheads.

 

[FishTruck]

I am procrastinating a plumbing project for the shower and decided to make a video of my new crosshatch trigger, some other fish, and a few coral colonies in my tank.

 

[748S911]

Amazing buid, any updated video?

 

[FishTruck]

Well, there is the really lame one from a few days ago - LOL. I'll do a better one soon. There has been some impressive (to me) coral growth for some of the frags now colonies - it's just hard to tell because the tank is so stinking big. For less than a year old - I'm really happy. Currently, I am suddenly struggling to keep up with ALK demand, which is alarming since I only have about 15% of the coral mass I want.

 

[748S911]

Are you dosing kalk? that always raises my alk

 

[FishTruck]

Are you dosing kalk? that always raises my alk

Yes... running a Kalk drip 24 hours per day (Kalk Stirrer). I am currently running about 26 litres (7 gallons) of Kalk per day.

I have read that tanks can evaporate 1 to 4% of their volume per day, which would be 1480 x .04 = 14.8 to 59.2 gallons of evaporation per day. I guess I have some room to put in more kalk!

Say... that reminds me... I should check the potency of my Kalk!

 

[FishTruck]

About now is the one year anniversary since I put water in this tank. Hopefully, by year 3 it won't look quite so empty. My small colonies and frags are growing nicely. I would say doubling in size every six months. You can see the coralline is slowly covering the bare bottom.

Here is a really poor full tank shot.

Here you can see the boss anthia from my old tank. This female transformed to replace the original male, and now rules over the squareback harem and the bimaculatus harem both. The colonies here I grew from little frags, except for the acroberry which I bought as a mini-colony six months ago.

The replica ancient pots make good places for the tangs to hide, and moving them around helps keep them interested in the tank and less interested in bullying each other.

This view is from the kitchen. We are looking at 12 feet of water. The clarity is not bad... but.. not crystal clear due to the barebottom and stuff being constantly stirred up.

 

[FishTruck]

You can see that I am leaving the transplanted corals on the big rectangle plates. They eventually get covered over. In the early phases, it seems to keep algae and pests away from the coral base and allows me to move the coral out for fragging or relocation very easily. A few of the colonies have completely covered the bases so they aren't noticeable. Also, if they get knocked over, they land right side up on the bottom. One of these tangs, I have had for about 10 years.

 

[FishTruck]

I have been doing only dialysis and no water changes for a year now. I process about 400 gallons of water per month. The little white bucket adds brine to keep the salinity up. My ICP tests never looked better (in terms of trace elements). My nitrates are around 20 ppm, phosphates I try to keep .1 ppm or lower. I have used GFO three times this year. The system uses more RO water that I predicted, so I have had to augment the system some.

I have learned the hard way that I need to keep my new water at 0 ppm. If it is at 1 ppm, then within a few weeks the acros start to brown out and die. Whatever is getting through is anionic. So... the big can to the right is nuclear grade anionic media from BRS, which should last for a couple of months beyond the first warning that the first DI stages are used up.

I have plans to build my own dialysis system and make some improvements on this one. I'd elaborate more, but, I am sure nobody cares.

 

[FishTruck]

Newly installed Deltec Calcium Reactor. It took me a couple weeks to figure it out - but now that I understand it - I love it. I am also running KALK 24 hours a day to keep my tank pH 8.1 - 8.2 and Alk at about 8.