Raketemensch's Budget 55g First Build

raketemensch · Jan 12, 2020

An astute r2r member noticed that my RO unit was just an RO unit -- no DI. On Thursday my BRS 6-stage RODI unit arrived, and was installed and plumbed into my RODI barrel within an hour and churning out fresh water.

I then pulled 40 gallons out of the tank and replaced it a few hours later, which was the biggest water change I've done so far. It was also the first time I'd mixed saltwater in a brute can, I'd always done it in 5-gallon buckets. It took a lot longer to heat up than I had planned, but eventually I got it all done, and all of the water pumped back into the tank... to discover that I was short ~5 gallons. So at the last minute as we were getting ready to leave for the night I managed to get 5 gallons mixed up and ready to go, and I got everything fired up again.

While doing all of this I also had the powerheads aimed downward a bit to stir up detritus from the sand. I got the mj1200 aimed perfectly to keep pulling stuff up from the bottom and keep it suspended in the water until it got sucked into the overflow -- that was way more fun than I expected it to be. I also sifted 7 or 8 more dead snails out of the sand, I'm just in awe that I'm still finding them.

I also had put a small piece of the rock that came with this purchase into the QT when I set it up to see if it would speed things along -- it's been at zero ammonia and fully-cycled for a month now, so I finally got smart and pulled that rock back out of the QT and moved it to the refugium in the sump on the DT.

I think part of my problem cycling is that I just don't have enough rock in there for the volume of water. I've got another 10 lbs of dry rock on the way now. I never weighed all of this rock, bu tI don't think it's anywhere near 50 lbs.

As of this morning the Seachem ammonia badge is showing just a tiny bit of non-yellow, so I'm really close! Finally. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days, and am considering another large water change next weekend. I guess I'll play it by ear as to how much to change.

I also picked up a 14g Biocube today, full of live rock and coraline, it's almost a 5 year old ecosystem now.

raketemensch · Jan 20, 2020

The biocube has been taking up a lot of my attention, but this tank still got another 12 lbs of South Seas Base Rock today.

I got a lot of work done on the reef-pi, though. It now has 3 temp probes, an ATO, and an 8-channel relay to control the ATO pump. I need to get to HomeDepot or Lowes to pick up the rest of the outlets and a good project box to house it all, but it's in decent shape and working already:

I only have one outlet in the house, but that's enough to run the ATO pump. I didn't hook it all up yet because I want a full day when I'm at home to keep an eye on it, and the current simple float switch/relay ATO has been working very well.

I think that once I get this hooked up I will move that simpler ATO to the Biocube.

There's a fire goby in the QT waiting to go in this tank, so I'll be getting its alk/ph finally blanced properly over the next few days.

So this means that I've finally got my first livestock ever! My tuxedo urchin has completely disappeared after a few days, although there's nothing in the tank that would eat it. Hopefully it's just cleaning the underside of the rocks... The RFA is expanding nicely in full "daylight" and seems to have found a spot it's happy in, and the bumble bee snails are happily cruising around cleaning.

One of the best things, though, was finding an ancient touchscreen chromebook in the basement, which I can mount next to the tank to control the reef-pi. It'll be cool to see graphs and things, but the best part will be the ability to hit a button on the screen to toggle the RODI pump rather than having to lean through everything and lift the float switch...

raketemensch · Feb 2, 2020

Things are coming along nicely, for the most part.

The fire goby will be in QT a little longer than usual, despite being in great heath so far, because we're going snorkeling in Mexico for 5 days in a couple of weeks, and I don't want to "test" the main tank while I'm gone, it seems like a bad idea.

...especially because I dropped a poly bio filter in it yesterday after another 10-gallon WC, and it turned blue within the hour -- so I've still got some copper.

The only think I can think of is that it was in the rock I got when I bought the used tank -- maybe the previous owner was over-using it and it adsorbed onto the rock? At the moment my cuprisorb is rechargning, but I've also had filtered carbon in the sump for at least a month now...

I also created a nice lid out of this stuff because fire gobies are leapers:

Palram Sunlite 24 in. x 48 in. x 5/16 in. Polycarbonate Clear Twinwall Sheet 174040 - The Home Depot

Sunlite is a multi-wall polycarbonate panel that is lightweight, yet impact resistant, and offers high light transmission. Its multi-wall structure adds strength and rigidity as well as insulation value.

www.homedepot.com

...and then I hung the Mars Aquas over the tank, although one of them really wants to twist, so I'll have to mess around with the cables some more, or possibly even build a canopy.

There's an eheim autofeeder on the way as well, to keep Goby happy while I'm gone.

raketemensch · Feb 8, 2020

I know, I know, this saga is never ending — I started this tank up 4-5 months ago, and still am not comfortable putting anything alive in it because of the copper. How the hell could there be SO much copper in it?

Well, the previous owner had copper pipe in the return line. I have No idea for how long, and I didn’t know going into this how bad that would be. I’ve re-charged my cuprisorb and dropped it back into the sump, and I have 2 poly-bio pads in there also, which have turned a dark blue.

There’s a local guy who sells live rock very cheaply, so I’m considering just buying 50 pounds of it and starting this whole thing over, getting rid of this rock and sand entirely, as his whole experience tells me that they’ve absorbed/adsorbed too much copper.

Meanwhile, I’ve since gotten a 14g biocube that is happily housing an RFA and a tuxedo urchin that is growing by leaps and bounds, plus my QT has had a fire goby in it for 4 weeks now.

raketemensch · Feb 19, 2020

So, it's time to put a fork in this one.

After 2 full rounds of cuprisorb, plus the polybio filter pads, I am still seeing copper in the water, and the pads just keep getting bluer, so I know it's not just a low-accuracy copper test kit.

I have ordered some Detox Blox ceramic media, and I will be pulling all of the rock and sand out of this tank and starting fresh with those blocks, some bio-spira and some calibrated ammonia powder.

I feel bad for the poor goby that's had to live in the QT for this long and will have to continue for a bit, but it's better than moving him into a contaminated tank.

Lots of lessons in this hobby :]

raketemensch · Feb 23, 2020

Woo, what a weekend!

I started the teardown on Friday, drained everything out and removed the rock/ceramics, separating it into 3 barrels, each with either a pump or a bubbler and fresh RODI water:

The newish rock
The rock that came with the tank
The ceramic media that was in the sump

The sand got tossed entirely.

I recharged my 2 bags of cuprisorb, and there's one in with each barrel of rock to see where the copper is coming from. Hopefully the newish rock isn't compromised. Honestly, I'm hoping it was coming from the sand, but we'll see. I'm fully prepared to toss it all, if need be, but I don't want to be wasteful.

The tank and the sump got dragged into the backyard and completely cleaned out, thank god it got above freezing this weekend. The overflow, all plumbing, the skimmer, the pumps, the heaters, etc. also all got a good vinegar scrub and rinse.

I made up about 70 gallons of fresh salt water in big-butt tubs, which goes a lot faster when I can throw all of the heaters and good pumps from the tank, but it still takes a while, especially when the RODI is having trouble keeping up.

I moved the overflow box down to the end of the 55-long, kind of peninsula style, which is cool because it gives you an uninterrupted view from both sides. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. I'm thinking I'll have one MJ-1200 mounted low below it blowing across the bottom of the tank, then one mounted mid/high on the opposite side to blow any detritus up into the overflow.

Rinsing out new sand -- what a PITA! I picked up 40 pounds of Caribsea Coraline, which is a heavier texture than the sand I pulled out, and I really like it. I probably spent an hour rinsing all of the crap out of it before adding it to the tank, which is now full, and it's going to get 6-8 hours of running through the filter to clean up the mess from the fresh sand before I add the biospira and some ammonia to kick off the cycle.

I'm also going to pull a coraline-covered rock from my 4 year-old Biocube system upstairs and drop it in the sump to get some more diverse bacteria going after ~24 hours with the biospira. I'll have to do a full check for vermetids before doing so.

I was hoping to get the reef-pi all set up during this rebuild, but it's been SO much work just to get this far that I'm out of energy. Maybe tonight, or after work tomorrow. In the meantime I'm still using my rigged-up relay/float switch for an ATO -- or at least I will be, once the RODI barrel is half-full again.

In the middle of all this I also changed out 10 gallons of water from the QT, in which the poor fire goby is still living all alone. I was hoping to have him in the main tank long before now, but I'd rather he had a safe home to move into. The autofeeder dumped WAY too much food into his tank, so in a few hours when the RODI barrel is good again I'm going to make up 15 gallons of fresh water and do a 75% WC in his tank, with a good siphon-cleaning of the bottom.

There's a huge FragFest going on nearby in 2 weeks -- I don't think this tank will be ready, but I'm hoping to pick up 3 sexy shrimp and a bunch of RFAs for the Biocube. It'd be awesome if this tank was good, though, because I could finally restart the QT and give Goby a good, new home.

raketemensch · Feb 24, 2020

So, the "new" rock, which was added a month ago, has measurable copper in it. It's sitting alone in a bucket with RODI water and a pump -- I dropped in a small piece of poly-bio-filter, and within an hour it had already started to turn blue, the same as the bucket with the "old" rock. Amazing to see it adsorb that quickly!

The bio rings, however, didn't seem to pick up any copper, which is an interesting fact in itself, as it was in the tank for FAR longer.

The re-built tank, fortunately, shows 0.

raketemensch · Mar 7, 2020

So, all these months later, I now have a 55-gallon tank with a 25-gallon sump up and happily humming along, with ATO and temp monitoring through reef-pi and feeding prometheus and grafana for alerts and charts, and...

Well, it has two tiny zoa frags in it now.

Doesn't look ridiculous at all...

raketemensch · Apr 2, 2020

Things continue to go well with this one. The zoas are quite happy and vibrant, and the nasty black hairy algae bloom I had completely went away when I added the chaeto. It was so cool to see that work! I didn't even notice it at first, because I was so focused on the corals. Last weekend I had scrubbed some of it off the plugs with a toothbrush, and this morning when I went down there I was noticing it had lessened on the plugs -- it took me like 10 minutes to realize it was almost entirely gone from the tank!

I love building a healthy ecosystem.

The snails are working their way through the diatoms too, which is nice to see. I'm just going to ride them out, it's a new tank (and a new tank keeper), and they'll die off or get eaten, I think.

Meanwhile the newer rock that I picked up has been cycled with freshly recharged cuprisorb multiple times now, and seems to be just about clean. I dropped in a small piece of poly-bio filter this morning and I'll check it in a few days to see if it's turned blue or not. At this point I trust it more than my test kit.