I finally took a couple photos of the new return plumbing that is over the back glass. Back in post 31 I showed a couple of close ups of the design out of the water. Now you can see them at work. They move a bit of water away from the back glass and they create some movement on the water surface which is the best thing you can do for gas exchange between the water and the air. The water gives off CO2 to the air and the air puts oxygen into the water. I believe (and have read) that this is even better than the gass exchange a skimmer does. But there rea; purpose is to be anti-siphon holes. The instant I turn my return pump off these 'holes' start to suck in air and the siphon of water out of the DT to the sump stops almost instantly. The water level in the DT may go down about 1/8th of an inch. I did the math, that's about 0.3 tenths of a gallon. And if you look at the overflow box in the middle, there is a hole with a pipe you can see just inside the hole. That is what used to be the return and had one of these loc-line nozzles threaded through the hole. Now that pipe is an, I hope never to be used, emergency drain! Now I want to make a prettier box to fit on the top of the overflow. You can see the top of the current overflow only goes down about 3 inches into the water. So I can just lift the old top off and set a new one with better screening to stop anything (like snails or RBTA's) from getting into the overflow box and eventually in the drain and clogging it up.
Over the last few days I've taken lots of my spare rocks and drilled holes in them so frag plugs will fit in clean and easy. I've done this before and I've found that it doesn't take too long (a couple of months) and the unused holes just look like normal holes in the rock. I think I'll have to do a few more given I have no spare holes in the rockscape that is already in the tank and I have over 40 frags waiting in the refugium! It's a nice situation to have when you downsize and you can keep a frag of every coral you want to have in your new smaller tank from your old bigger tank. Of course that assumes your old bigger tank had a lot of coral! I'll get a couple of photos when I start the actual rockscape.
I've also started on the egg crate platform. I went thru a couple of design changes as I was building it. My first idea was to just do a slope from high on the back glass down to the sand about 1/4th or 1/3rd of the way off the front glass. That would leave room for the rock flower anemones. The platform will go all the way from side to side with just a 1/2" gap to the glass. I have no intention of cleaning the glass below the rocks as the will be close to, touching, or even leaning on the side glass. While the side glass below the rocks stays clear, we can see what is going on in the 'cave'. But I know that the glass below the rocks will eventually get covered with coraline algae, calcium deposits or whatever and we won't be able to see under the rocks.
My wife suggested that this was too flat and needed some shape or undulations, maybe even do a couple of more horizontal steps. She wasn't wrong, even I saw that the platform was very flat, but I figured that the rocks would provide the texture and shape sitting on top of the platform. Then we came up with the idea of being able to see under the rocks, or at least, inside the 'cave' from the front of the tank. So I shortened the ramp and added a flat shelf sticking out the front. The front edge would be 1 to 3 inches off the sand so we could see inside. I wasn't completely happy with that. so I opted for a cave entrance in the center and the front edge of the shelf will have some rubble or rock wall that goes from the sand up to the platform and hiding the egg crate. Then I cut a path for a short tunnel into the cave. A big rock will stretch from one side to the other and that way the opening of the cave will be rock instead of egg crate. This is the current version of the platform build.
Today I'll get some black spray paint like Krylon Plasti-kote and paint the entire structure black and bake it in the Florida sun for a day or two to harden and allow all the chemicals that want to 'evaporate' out of the paint and into the air. I've painted egg crate and used in in other aquariums, it's perfectly OK. Besides, it's Wednesday already and I have a weekend full of auto-cross to get ready for on Friday. So the soonest I'll get started with pulling corals and rocks out of the tank is Monday or more likely, Tuesday.
Here are a couple of close ups of how the pvc pipe legs are attached as well as the shelf. The pvc pipes have small holes I drilled and I used small cable ties to hold them in place.
Over the last few days I've taken lots of my spare rocks and drilled holes in them so frag plugs will fit in clean and easy. I've done this before and I've found that it doesn't take too long (a couple of months) and the unused holes just look like normal holes in the rock. I think I'll have to do a few more given I have no spare holes in the rockscape that is already in the tank and I have over 40 frags waiting in the refugium! It's a nice situation to have when you downsize and you can keep a frag of every coral you want to have in your new smaller tank from your old bigger tank. Of course that assumes your old bigger tank had a lot of coral! I'll get a couple of photos when I start the actual rockscape.
I've also started on the egg crate platform. I went thru a couple of design changes as I was building it. My first idea was to just do a slope from high on the back glass down to the sand about 1/4th or 1/3rd of the way off the front glass. That would leave room for the rock flower anemones. The platform will go all the way from side to side with just a 1/2" gap to the glass. I have no intention of cleaning the glass below the rocks as the will be close to, touching, or even leaning on the side glass. While the side glass below the rocks stays clear, we can see what is going on in the 'cave'. But I know that the glass below the rocks will eventually get covered with coraline algae, calcium deposits or whatever and we won't be able to see under the rocks.
My wife suggested that this was too flat and needed some shape or undulations, maybe even do a couple of more horizontal steps. She wasn't wrong, even I saw that the platform was very flat, but I figured that the rocks would provide the texture and shape sitting on top of the platform. Then we came up with the idea of being able to see under the rocks, or at least, inside the 'cave' from the front of the tank. So I shortened the ramp and added a flat shelf sticking out the front. The front edge would be 1 to 3 inches off the sand so we could see inside. I wasn't completely happy with that. so I opted for a cave entrance in the center and the front edge of the shelf will have some rubble or rock wall that goes from the sand up to the platform and hiding the egg crate. Then I cut a path for a short tunnel into the cave. A big rock will stretch from one side to the other and that way the opening of the cave will be rock instead of egg crate. This is the current version of the platform build.
Today I'll get some black spray paint like Krylon Plasti-kote and paint the entire structure black and bake it in the Florida sun for a day or two to harden and allow all the chemicals that want to 'evaporate' out of the paint and into the air. I've painted egg crate and used in in other aquariums, it's perfectly OK. Besides, it's Wednesday already and I have a weekend full of auto-cross to get ready for on Friday. So the soonest I'll get started with pulling corals and rocks out of the tank is Monday or more likely, Tuesday.
Here are a couple of close ups of how the pvc pipe legs are attached as well as the shelf. The pvc pipes have small holes I drilled and I used small cable ties to hold them in place.