Solar dos Frades Reef v2 - 265g from Portugal!

[luis carreiro]

Beautiful looking tank.
Boa dia

 

[Chrisfish]

What an awesome thread, what a journey you've been through. Your pictures are beautiful of your fish and tank, looking forward to the transfer of tanks and wish you lots of luck with this one will continue to follow.

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Beautiful looking tank.
Boa dia

Obrigado (Thank you) luis. Almost got it: it's "bom dia" ...

What an awesome thread, what a journey you've been through. Your pictures are beautiful of your fish and tank, looking forward to the transfer of tanks and wish you lots of luck with this one will continue to follow.

Thank you Chrisfish. I hope everything goes out smoothly. I am tired of things going the bad way. Keeping my hopes really high.

Now looking at the last photo with the tank resting on top of the coushins if my wife sees it .... :mad::mad::mad: I think I am going to get in trouble!

 

[luis carreiro]

My Portuguese is not very good. Left the Azores- village of Feiteras, when I was 6.
Good to hear from another Portuguese.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Beautiful pics! Can't wait to see that new tank full!!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

My Portuguese is not very good. Left the Azores- village of Feiteras, when I was 6.
Good to hear from another Portuguese.

Good to be were!

Beautiful pics! Can't wait to see that new tank full!!

Thank you mdbannister
Me too.
Todays work was all about emptying the tank! I am documenting everything so I will update once this endeavour ends !!!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Hello everyone

So finally let update this thread!

The work started at 11 am last Friday Feb 3rd

When the tank was delivered the guy told me ... why the hell are you going to hide 30cm of aquarium behind the wall? you should open the wall to be able to see the full 2.2m ...

That statement made me wonder for a very short amount of time and soon I began to remove the frame since I would have to do it anyway ...

At this stage I only had removed the bar in the middle so that I could remove the old and put back the new in!

Frame partially ripped off

The good this is that as soon as I removed the frame I could reach 10cm further my face and my line of sight to the corals changed completely to a point I was seeing stuff I never saw before. The next quick decision was to put the aquarium to wall face!

While I was waiting for help to move the tank and open the wall I started to align the PVC to make sure I wasn't missing anything (it ended up missing some pieces but was fine and easy to solve)

And so the work began Friday. At this stage I was still doing things alone!

Some photos I took from the layout so that I could redo it after! Really love this layout!

And moving stuff

First island out

looking at the vat I could really appreciate the colours of the corals ... amazing!

Mid island out!

and everything in the vats.

Almost empty. Few fish to catch and the sand to remove!

With the sand out I had to put a small pump and filterbag to try and clear/clean the dirt as much as I could.

And finally empty

This was late by now and without being able to make some noise I started to build the plumbing.

meanwhile the sand looked more clear ...

One very big important thing ... everyone thought I was completely crazy to change aquarium specially when he was getting really good.

To a point that I myself started to doubt me and thinking I was letting my OCD getting over me!

But when I pushed the aquarium away from the wall I could verify what I have long suspected!

See the white lines of the silicone???

Continues ...

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Well back to plumbing I had to throw away my old manifold as it wouldn't fit in the new sump design and I had to find a design that allows me to change/add/remove exits without ever throwing PVC away.

Equal sections that will allow me to add, remove, replace pieces of the manifold!

Ended 5am in the morning.

Saturday morning Paulo Oliveira arrived to help with the wall and the change.

We had to create a new frame to close the drywall

making sure everything was aligned

Frame ready it was time to clean and plan how to change the glass

And since we had to wait for the others we started to align the old one to get out.

Cut of the roofmate to support the new beast!

And by this time my GoPro decided to shut down hence only pictures of the new tank in place.
I think I found the problem that is related with the SD card quality. But the fact is that GoPro films for anywhere between 5 and 20s and then stops recording!

Align to wall face

Inside cleaning ... Guess who?

At this stage another friend (Marco Madeira) had already moved the sand back into the tank!

Meanwhile we put the cover of an IKEA box inside the aquarium to support a pump and not to displace so much the sand that someone forgot to remove before we passed all the rock back in

All the rock in the new tank!

And finish filling

Some people had to leave but these two guys stayed strong until the end (3am)
Paulo Oliveira and Miguel Malheiro

And the final result ...

Water was completely milky as the Tuxedo urchins (I have 6) decided to have an orgy inside the aquarium!!! :mad::mad::mad::mad:

And here with the temporary sump connected and a little more clarity!

leveled up!

Next day was time to turn myself to the return lines, discharge and SUMP as that has not been finished yet!

And finally with fuge also connected. It will be change as I did my math wrong and the fuge has 1mm more that what I need to completely align to the SUMP!

return plumbing done!

And the final result!

3am this day and still pumps to adjust, wires to manage, clean the mess we did and a NSW WC in the middle

Let see how it goes from here! My biggest concern now is KH as I am not at home to be able to check!

I cannot close this post without a BIG THANK YOU to My Friends that helped me with this endeavour. Without them it would not be possible!

And they are: Paulo Oliveira, Miguel Malheiro, Marco Madeira, João Tomás, João Ramos e Rui Vieira. You guys ROCK!!!!

All the best,
Rui

 

[VJV]

Man, you are going through a truly epic journey here!!! And what is more amazing is that instead of complaining about all the bad luck you have you make it sound fun!!! Like every massive change you need to do is not a chore but an opportunity to do something different and fun!

Congrats [emoji847]

 

[VJV]

Also, you might want to teach these guys a thing or two about NSW... [emoji1][emoji1][emoji1]

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Man, you are going through a truly epic journey here!!! And what is more amazing is that instead of complaining about all the bad luck you have you make it sound fun!!! Like every massive change you need to do is not a chore but an opportunity to do something different and fun!

Congrats [emoji847]

Thank you! Why complain? it brings no value in the recovery. You just need to roll sleeves and do what must be done!

Well I don't teach anything to anyone ... they have their reasons and their arguments. I use NSW for more than 12 years without issues. And if before I used NSW WC to dilute ... now I just use it to feed the system!

All the best,
Rui

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Meanwhile 3 days after the move and being away from the tank here is the status:

1 - Corals seem fine. No loss of colour and with the same polip extension!
2 - All fishes very active.
3 - KH dropped from 6.4 to 5.1 (I was not expecting this) I already reconnected the Kore Doser and reduced the triton amount by 25%
4 - The red dragon the got a little white because she fell in the sand didn't progressed and shows signs of being healthy!
5 - My solitariensis got buried in the sand and 75% of it is white! Should recover well
6 - I really need to read

All the best,
Rui

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Returned home after 1 week of country working ... everything is really fine.

I wasn't expecting to see corals growing and colouring after one week of the change ...

And since I bought a BAO Top Down Picture Tube ...

All the best,
Rui

 

[VJV]

Great pics! Good to see everything back on track post move. I'm curious though: if your KH is falling why have you reduced Triton dosing?

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Great pics! Good to see everything back on track post move. I'm curious though: if your KH is falling why have you reduced Triton dosing?

Hello VJV. Thanks ...
Well the corals stopped consuming for 3 days and then started consuming again. They don't consume the same as they are still adapting. That's why I reduced the dose!

Meanwhile a few more for reference as I am trying to maintain a close control every time I get to be at home

All the best,
Rui

 

[revhtree]

Nice job Rui!

 

[Preme]

Very nice looking!

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Nice job Rui!

Thanks Rev ... and thanks for following!

Very nice looking!

Thanks Rex ... and thanks for following!

Here is an small update.

The more I am away from the tank the better he looks ... Glad I will be out another three weeks ...

Hope you like it.

All the best,
Rui

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

Hello everyone,

Long time no update ... I was completely overwhelmed by work with no capability to progress.

A couple of things have changed nevertheless:

Finally
I received the rest of the Osmosis system

that got immediately installed!

It's a Bulk Reef Supply 6 stage 75GDP!

The good thing is that even with a pressure pump I got very good pressure values out of the line

In my trips I also bought a case for the aquarium test mimicing what Terence Fugazzi did! Thank you for the idea Terence. Hope you don't mind I stole it. All the tests are now inside and this was a wonderful idea! Kudos to you Terence!

Meanwhile since I was long time out of the country my head started to really work. That is what it takes to have a lot of time far from the aquarium. You can actually start to think and plan ... LOL

My refugium was old and kind of broken and didn't fit the place I wanted by 1mm and all the holes were in a bad position. On top of that I had to cut several frags of corals that were touching or about to touch each other and I really hate to have frags and frag plugs inside the display.

With the plans in my hand I quickly ordered the glass and a good friend @Paulo Cunha did the favour of building and painting the structure.

in the car on it's way home!

installed and filling!

and of course following the T5 tradition of the main tank I purchased 2nd hand an 8x T5 24W fixture

also started to work on the aquarium wall. Still pretty incomplete but getting along just nicely.

And with all this travels (around 6 weeks) the aquarium and the corals felt ... a little ... LOL!

as you can see ...

 

[rui.manuel.gaspar]

And is it just me or this undata is trying to tell me something? LOL

All the best,
Rui