SCA 100g Long - New Build

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Got the T5 fixture mounted and the two gyres in today. Tank is now completely put together with the exception of the second kessil. Can start moving the corals and fish out of the 170 tomorrow and finally get down to one tank again.

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Tank is fully up and running and I can now shut down the 170 and get back to a single tank which is a huge relief. For the most part, everything seems to be acclimating well but two nights in a row I have lost a fish for no apparent reason.

First the flame angel on Saturday night after lights out. Woke up, he was missing, not in the overflow, not on the floor, just vanished. Sunday night, one of the little black lightning clowns gone in the morning too. Again no where to be found. All the other fish are healthy, no one fights, really has me stumped. Even moved rocks both times to look for a dead fish somewhere but the scape is pretty open and found neither of them. Cannot explain it.

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Upon closer inspection, both of the missing fish were in the overflow hiding behind the pipes. Flooded the tank and chased them up to the top and out after a couple hours of standing on a step stool over the tank. Need to find some way to block the top, maybe with a piece of acrylic.
 
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Been a little while since last update...

Have been dealing with the uglies for the last six weeks, dino's and a flood of green cyano that covered absolutely every inch of the tank and was choking out and covering almost every single coral. After repeatedly turkey bastering and vacuuming the sand I finally gave in and dosed it with chemiclean. Turned off the carbon reactor, put the skimmer pump on high and let it run overflowing for two days. Seems to have killed off every last bit of the cyano but now it seems like the tank is too clean.

Doubled my cleanup crew while it was going on and i don't think there is enough algae left in the tank to feed them all right now. All that's left are the dino's so I'm going to be on dead snail watch for a while.
 

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Tank doesn’t come with an overflow cover?just pulled the trigger on one of these tanks anxiously waiting for it’s arrival. Freight company has shipping weight to be 280 lbs does it really weight that much?
 
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With the two pallets it comes on, maybe. The tank alone isn't quite that heavy. Me and one other person carried it up the steps.

No overflow cover, I ended up ordering a piece of lexan online and just cutting a square of it to sit on top.
 
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Morning coffee with my son's lemonpeel that he named Apple. ******* ate an entire head of my branching hammer the first day I stuck him in the old tank so he now lives in the sump with Steve the cowrie. Apple sucks but Steve keeps the sump spotless.

(My son and my two nieces get to name everything in the tank)

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Morning coffee with my son's lemonpeel that he named Apple. ******* ate an entire head of my branching hammer the first day I stuck him in the old tank so he now lives in the sump with Steve the cowrie. Apple sucks but Steve keeps the sump spotless.

(My son and my two nieces get to name everything in the tank)

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Love your build! Very clean and you seem to have done everything right from the beginning! Please keep us posted on this thread
 
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Thanks cowboy, I used the reefer 170 as an introduction back into the hobby. Growing up my father had a 90 gallon long acrylic that we all loved but it bankrupted him and after a power outage wiped out tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and corals he gave up. I wanted my son to have the same experience I did so this build was a way for all 3 generations to get back into reefing while learning from past mistakes.

Next month I will be grabbing 8 385w solar panels we pulled off a job and have sitting around the warehouse at work. I'm going to mount them on the side of the deck on an awning, run them to a charge controller and set up a bank of marine batteries in the basement that will provide enough power to run the entire tank setup for a week or more if needed. That will be the last part of this build.
 
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Tank doesn’t come with an overflow cover?just pulled the trigger on one of these tanks anxiously waiting for it’s arrival. Freight company has shipping weight to be 280 lbs does it really weight that much?

Thanks for the info, they are sending one out to me.
 
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So you guys know how I just ordered that overflow cover that got here two days ago and was promptly installed on the tank?

Well last night I was feeding everyone and i realized that my crescent tail wrasse was not in the mix grabbing flakes like normal. Looked around and could not find him anywhere. Where was he you ask? In the dang overflow box looking like death and could not be coaxed up to the top with any amount of poking, air stones or other means. Both of my drains are just loosely fit into the bulk heads but I had a small leak on the return under pressure so I ended up gluing that one in and I quickly realized that there was no way I was getting him out of there as is. I thought i had plumbed everything under the tank with enough threaded connections that I could take things apart if need be but I realized that unscrewing the fittings above the valves was not possible because the valves next to them prevented them from rotating fully.

I ended up having to siphon out all the water in the overflow leaving about an inch for the wrasse, cut out my emergency drain pipe below the bulkhead, removed the entire thing and then drained the rest of it into the sump. I then took a bucket of water and poured it in to the overflow box to flush him down the open hole like a toilet and into the sump. This was all done at around 1 in the morning and I was so tired that I didn't realize the consequences of no longer having a bulk head to replace the one I cut out since it was a slip fitting underneath. Thankfully I remembered I had added a double threaded one inch I put in the 170 was able to piece together enough left over 1" pipe to get a new drain in at 4am and get the return pump running again.

The 10 hour work day I had today was so much fun after being up for two days straight. When I get some motivation back some plumbing changes will be made even though there overflow cover should prevent that in the future. I do not want to run into a clogged pipe or something and go through that again. That wrasse is lucky hes absolutely gorgeous or he would have stayed in there until I ordered new plumbing. Was not willing to lose that fish and now since I'm too exhausted he gets to feast on pods in the sump until I feel like taking out all the sea lettuce and netting that little jerk to boot.
 
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Got the mindstream setup tonight. Easiest setup out of any wifi piece of aquarium equipment I've owned to date. Took about 15 minutes to get it on the wifi and in the tank. Testing values were a bit high when held up against the Hannah checkers initially but as it got a few cycles into testing they settled down and were all within 2-3% of the other tests. Seems like it should help to dial in the dosing.
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 64 36.8%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 59 33.9%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 14.4%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 26 14.9%
  • Other.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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