Reboot Standard 125. Nothing special here.

[P-Dub]

How much water will the fuge put in to sump on a pump fail?
Neat fix by the way, you obviously planned it that way!

Should the pump fail there will be next to nothing going back into the sump. Likely, no more than a half a liter, give or take...
It was planned that way, but only because when I had the tank running years ago I had my valve stuck and could not close it. Light bulb moment and a trip to the hardware store and that moment of fret was licked.

 

[P-Dub]

Well before I go into my DIY calcium reactor I thought I'd move on back to the sump. I was curious to see how much light spill would be contained by the blue side and shroud.
I'll call it a success.

 

[najer]

Well before I go into my DIY calcium reactor I thought I'd move on back to the sump. I was curious to see how much light spill would be contained by the blue side and shroud.
I'll call it a success.

How about putting tape around the top edge of the refugium, say an inch to start with?
Check out the light spill directly from the front, my guess is that the top inch or so is just wasted light!?

 

[P-Dub]

How about putting tape around the top edge of the refugium, say an inch to start with?
Check out the light spill directly from the front, my guess is that the top inch or so is just wasted light!?

I might do that but I might go with Zaneter's recommendation to use Mylar sheeting and do all sides as well except for the front and the blue painted side, because that's blue and well...

 

[najer]

I might do that but I might go with Zaneter's recommendation to use Mylar sheeting and do all sides as well except for the front and the blue painted side, because that's blue and well...

That sounded like a great idea to me.

 

[P-Dub]

Turning lemons into lemonade. As I have stated before, I think, we live in concrete bunkers here. As such, I was dreading the thought of having to tap into the exterior outlet circuit to feed power to my tank. The exterior outlets are the least used so that was the best option. Coring through 8 inches of concrete was what would be needed. NOT FUN! So I go about the process of setting things up before I rent a coring bit and drill. Safety first dictates that I shut off the breaker to the exterior outlets. So I shut the one labeled "exterior outlets". I have my powerheads that are in the vat I'm curing my live rock in running on the exterior outlet I will be feeding power to the tank from and well, they are still running. Now I'd like to say this is unusual but here the standards leave a lot to be desired so I'm not surprised. I check the closest other exterior outlet and it is off. Now I'm curious, do I have a separate unlabeled breaker for this and maybe another exterior outlet? No, it turns out, I do not. I get my handy circuit tracer and start the process of tracing the outlet I'm going to be using. I keep getting a reading that it is part of the living room circuit. I shut that breaker off and, yup, it is part of the living room circuit. This is not what I wanted. I already have the 72" monster TV and all associated electronics as well as a printer, router, surround sound system, various floor lamps, weather station, electric recliner, cell phone chargers, laptops, etc. all on that one 20 amp circuit. Now I'm in a quandary. I am busy rethinking where to put the tank. Upstairs? No way to easily get RO/DI water. No room anywhere else so it somehow has to be my original spot. Visions of hundreds of feet of conduit on the interior and exterior walls made me ill. Then I have a lightbulb moment. I had to run the coax for the TVs upstairs. There were, for reasons I still cannot fathom, an additional un-used conduit running within the same TV cable box. What if I run power from the upstairs bedroom outlet circuit that has next to nothing on it and what is, is used very seldom, through this conduit? Essentially, I will have a 20 amp circuit dedicated to my tank, more or less. Well, that is what I did. It's not as clean on the interior as I would like but it will be behind the tank so I'm not going to sweat it. A small victory in the face of adversity. Lemonade...

 

[P-Dub]

As promised, to whom I'm making these promises is unclear, my DIY Calcium reactor. The reactor used to have two identical chambers on it before. I never once re-filled the second chamber. With that thought, I ditched the second chamber and thought I'd run a single chamber. Well, when I got my tank I was kicking myself for throwing out the second chamber. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't in my right mind when I made that decision. Suffice to say I was way overworked, super tired, and more than a bit stressed getting the last of our house in San Diego packed up and items in storage shipped 8K miles across an ocean along with getting the house ready to put up for sale. Well BRS came to the rescue since they sell spare second chambers for calcium reactors. DIY done again. This reactor will be fed off the return manifold and I'm in the process of plumbing the effluent to the refugium. Yet another refugium modification.

 

[P-Dub]

Almost forgot. Got the in-stand lighting installed. It is simple and does the job. I do not have it hooked up to the Apex when I open a door. I just switch it on. That might be a project later down the line.

 

[P-Dub]

Progress. Finally was able to mount the RO/DI unit that I got from BRS on the outside. We get a lot of rain so I needed to make certain that it was protected from the elements. This was my solution. I think it will work fine. I wish the tote was a bit more shallow but I am limited to what I can source locally. I just have to drill the holes to run the RO/DI line to the inside of the house through the concrete and into the ATO tank I also got from BRS.

 

[P-Dub]

So, I have moved the tank and stand from the garage to the interior. I am ready for the next step. Filling the tank with water, put the hood on and get her running. All this will have to wait until after the 11th of next month. It's killing me. The rock has been cycled for some time so I'm just letting it sit in the vats till I'm ready. I am about ready to do another water change on the rocks and I thought that this will be the best time to do some testing of the new water before I make the change. I need a baseline for what I am putting in there. I am using NSW to start out with. If all tests well then It will be the primary source for water changes. I had received all the test kits from BRS and this included the Red Sea Foundations Pro and Red Sea Colors Pro test kits. I opened the Foundations test kit and was impressed with the kit. It is nice to have all the tools and reagents and chemicals in a tidy little box. I opened the Colors test kit and , Houston, we have a problem. The foundations kit was packaged nicely in the box but the Colors kit looked like a 6-year-old crammed everything in there in a rush to make it to the sandbox and I also noticed the test kit box was put in the packaging upside down. To boot, there were chemicals, of which I'm not certain, that apparently has leaked out and the clear test bottles appeared cloudy and had a damaged label, there was a melted rubber band on one of the bottles and crystals in the box, and the tools were discolored and the instructions stained, and the cards all messed up, and... It looks like it was used but somehow made it back into inventory, possibly, or someone at the factory was having a really bad day. I have sent an email to BRS and I am sure that they will make it right though. I've had nothing but stellar service from these folks.
Note to everyone, open everything as soon as you get it! If you don't think that it is important to open every item you get as soon as you get it, because who opens a test kit to see if it is used or damaged?, you might get a nasty surprise like I did. I open the box and inventory everything when it first arrives but I certainly don't check the contents of packaged items, particularly if I don't need it right away and on a build, I didn't need it for quite some time. Folks doing a tank build... check everything, I will from now on. I have been ordering so much and been letting them sit in Rubbermaid boxes till I need them. Now I have to go through all the remainder of the items and open the packaging to see if there are any other problems. Here is the content condition.

 

[P-Dub]

She's ALIVE!
After a thoroughly exhausting long 4 day weekend, I have finally got the old girl up and running. It really only took one day to get the rock and water in the box and about 1 hour to realize that I have a bulkhead leak in the overflow. That was no small feat to repair. As installed, it is VERY difficult to get to the bulkhead. Fortunately, thinking out o the box got me out of that jam. The bulkhead nut is in the overflow box not on the underside of the tank. It is actually easier to deal with potential leaks this way. Getting to the nut and holding the bulkhead alone is easier this way. I just had to make a "wrench" out of a 2x6 to get it done. Naturally, I had no silicone to place on the bulkhead seals so I had to wait until the next day to get that fixed. Naturally, as the tank was sitting overnight a leak formed on the return bulkhead out of the sump. A little mesy but not hectic and contained, for the most part, within the cabinet. Darn, I really thought I cranked on both those bulkheads. Fortunately, I was able to get both leaks fixed and the tank back up.

The return pump, skimmer, and the Icecap gyre's were hooked up to the wall outlets and not the Neptune Apex for the initial water integrity testing. All fittings and bulkheads thereafter were found to be sound for a period of 24hours. While the water integrity test was going on I decided to do some more serious aquascaping, and after relatively minor adjustments to 2 or 3 different iterations, I have come to be fond of the final design. The CFO approves as well though she approved the previous iterations as well. I'm sure this will not be the end of it. It never is.

The remainder of the "weekend" was dedicated to getting the Neptune Apex up and running all the components. With hours upon hours of time spent on the web with YouTube and the forums, reading the comprehensive manual, and writing notes and programming she is all hooked up.

I was FRETTING seriously my Apex hack on the SBreef lights and after hooking them up, next to the last step in the process, I was mortified to find only the far left light's white channel in operation. Good grief, I was worried about that thinking that I might have hacked it wrong and having soldered all the connections I got sick to my stomach. SOOOO close.... I looked at everything from the programming to the connection and was stumped. Time to break out the screwdriver and start the dismantling process and getting into the wiring with a meter. Hopped up on the lader and what did I find? All but that one channel on that one light had the master on/off switches in the off position. Standard on/off user error. Flipped the remaining 5 master switches and they all lit up. Tested the programming of the cycle and it was operational. WHEW! That was a huge relief. The final task was to program the Jebao to Apex module, then DONE! Well, almost. I still have the install the refugium. That will be accomplished today as I have no appointments. I water tested that for 24 hours outside.

I have found out that there are some serious shortcomings with the Neptune Apex email alert notifications while setting things up. You do not get a detailed notification of what Exactly happened only that something has happened. This is a SERIOUS disappointment! I have now set it to notify me only when I have a catastrophic leak. Super crappy! You would think that with this level of sophistication it could at the very least tell you what occurred not just that 'something' occurred! We have power outages often here and I would sure like to know when that happens.

At any rate, the following (read soon to post) are a few photos to let you marvel at the humble aquarium that sat dormant in a storage locker for more than 12 years.

 

[P-Dub]

So this is when the first bit of water went into the tank just prior to the leak being detected as the water had not reached the overflow.

And then full with the first iteration of the aquascape.

 

[P-Dub]

Final aquascape and most of the sump sans the refugium...

 

[P-Dub]

And with the Blue lights going at start-up at 10%. White lights to follow as soon as they turn on...

I made adjustments to the camera color recording so you all don't get that washed out blue haze we always see. You're welcome. And I do mean you.

 

[P-Dub]

And the white lights are on! 10% Blue and 10% white at start-up. When the whites first come on an hour after the blues, the blues have ramped up to about 18%. The max the whites will be on is 20% and the blues will be 40%. I have been cycling the rock in bins outside for over three months now so the tank is cycled but newly set up. I have a baby conch and a few misc. snails and a cowry in there. They were placed in the rock bins after 8 weeks of cycling.
Today I shall dive for some inhabitants.
Again, I have color balanced to tone down the blues in the photos. There is a lot of detritus moving about clouding the water a bit as the Jebao's have just come on with the white light.

 

[Susan Edwards]

Nice!

 

[NY_Caveman]

This is looking great! Nice job!

 

[P-Dub]

Nice!

Thank you, Susan.

 

[P-Dub]

This is looking great! Nice job!

Thank you, NY_Caveman!

 

[najer]

Love the scape.