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KimP's in-wall room divider build


KimP

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Hi Kim,

Your tank looks awesome! Something for me to strive for with my new 120. :-)

One question, I picked up 1/2" sched 80 PVC for my towers of live rock. It seems very rigid so I'm thinking it will work and will require a smaller hole. I plan to glue it into the base rocks for each tower. My new tank is 31" tall so the rocks will be pretty tall. I also figured on using fiberglass rod for the cross pieces if I have any. What do you think?

John

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Kim, every time you post a FTS, I love your tank a little more! That gorgonian in the middle really gives the tank texture and makes it look like a natural reef.

Did the sand get stirred up at all around the time toe acans started looking il? Any possible sudden increase in bacterial populations? Cleaned out a biopellet reactor or any sponge filters? I feel like most LPS and anemones that get randomly sick are suffering from infections, but that's just my hypothesis.

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Hi Kim,

Your tank looks awesome! Something for me to strive for with my new 120. :-)

One question, I picked up 1/2" sched 80 PVC for my towers of live rock. It seems very rigid so I'm thinking it will work and will require a smaller hole. I plan to glue it into the base rocks for each tower. My new tank is 31" tall so the rocks will be pretty tall. I also figured on using fiberglass rod for the cross pieces if I have any. What do you think?

John

Hey John, thanks for the compliment! I think the 1/2" will work just fine. Use some 2 part epoxy if you want, to hold it in the base like you mentioned. The only thing I can think of is you won't be able to tap it and screw in "branches" to your towers. I don't have any experience using acrylic rods but Timfish has mentioned that they can bend with weight on them over time. Good luck! I'm excited to see what you do with it!

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Kim, every time you post a FTS, I love your tank a little more! That gorgonian in the middle really gives the tank texture and makes it look like a natural reef.

Did the sand get stirred up at all around the time toe acans started looking il? Any possible sudden increase in bacterial populations? Cleaned out a biopellet reactor or any sponge filters? I feel like most LPS and anemones that get randomly sick are suffering from infections, but that's just my hypothesis.

Thanks!! I hadn't done anything in particular at all to the tank prior to the acans going downhill, but I was out of town for two weeks and came home to them looking like that. My husband was home feeding the tank and we did have someone staying over with him. I keep meaning to look back at the logs and see if anything was out of the ordinary during my trip. I agree it seemed/seems to be some sort of infection since the iodine made such a quick difference. I still have a couple looking rough but all of them have at least some puffiness to them now vs being totally drawn into the skeleton. It's so strange that nothing else was affected. I still have my eye on the filefish but haven't caught him picking at the acans.

Agreed on the gorgonian! Is that a Purple Tree? What are you feeding it?

Thanks guys! The gorgonian is one I picked up that size from a fellow reefer, Big Clay. I love it too! I broadcast feed a lot of different foods, so nothing particular right on it.
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Hi Kim,

Your tank looks awesome! Something for me to strive for with my new 120. :-)

One question, I picked up 1/2" sched 80 PVC for my towers of live rock. It seems very rigid so I'm thinking it will work and will require a smaller hole. I plan to glue it into the base rocks for each tower. My new tank is 31" tall so the rocks will be pretty tall. I also figured on using fiberglass rod for the cross pieces if I have any. What do you think?

John

Hey John, thanks for the compliment! I think the 1/2" will work just fine. Use some 2 part epoxy if you want, to hold it in the base like you mentioned. The only thing I can think of is you won't be able to tap it and screw in "branches" to your towers. I don't have any experience using acrylic rods but Timfish has mentioned that they can bend with weight on them over time. Good luck! I'm excited to see what you do with it!

Thanks Kim! On the rod I was thinking of using fiberglass rod (or acrylic rod) and only tapping them in (drilling in a few inches and glue the rod in, then leave a few inches exposed) on each end of a branch and then gluing each end (with the rod stick out) into a drilled hole on either side to place a connecting piece between the 2 towers (a center branching piece between them). The branch rock would have to be able to support its own weight over time so I would use a sturdy piece. The rod is only used to lock the pieces together, not support the entire weight. The short pieces of rod (4 to 6") are very rigid. Does my explanation make sense? smile.png I'll start putting pics out here once I get the tank. It is being built now and I'm picking it up from Tennessee on Saturday. grin.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's the FTS from this week

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I don't like the way some corals are looking and I have algae and cyano on the sandbed again. I'm ready to do a water change and thinking of pulling the Chemipure Blue and replacing with regular carbon and gfo reactors. This is the second time I've swapped one of the bags and had an algae and cyano outbreak. Could be a coincidence of course.

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Several hours ago I started smelling that awful burnt electronics smell. Took me a minute then I realized my tank might be close to catching on fire in the stand or something! Kicked the boys outside to play and pulled all the doors off the stand and unplugged everything. The smell was very strong in the stand. Totally overwhelming, yuck sick.png . Again I found myself so thankful for the back up air pumps! I searched what I could and nothing was hot and there's no obvious melted plastic or anything. I'm not completely positive it is the tank. The smell was kind of everywhere. I left the house to run an errand because I got nauseous and a headache, and now that I've returned the smell has cleared out. This further suggests it's something from the tank since it's the only thing I cut the power to. (My husband was home keeping an eye on things while I was out) As soon as I can get the kids up to bed I'll be hunting down the cause. This is not what I had planned for my evening! I just hope nothing gets in the water and harms the livestock. As of right now I don't see any problems. The feather dusters are all out in the sump and before the corals closed up from the darkness, they looked the same as they have been. Fish are acting normal.

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Thanks everyone. I finally got back down to mess with it. I've plugged in everything except the lights, assuming the problem is in the stand. I think it's the skimmer. Everything stinks the same. The smell is just everywhere as far as I can tell. The skimmer's the only thing that didn't sound quite right when I plugged it in. Is it possible for the pump to go bad and not pollute the water? Am I looking for something that won't turn on at all?

If it is the skimmer, I'm thinking I might have some sabotage on my hands from the anti-skimmer crowd.... poke.gif ...Timfish... tongue.png

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This week I had another BML strip go out and it was a weird smell.

That sucks, is the power supply going out on them, or the light strip itself? I still use my little 1' BML from years ago.

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Pulled out the skimmer and it smells just fine. Looks fine. I'm going to take apart the pump and clean it at least.

Cleaned it, inspected it, and ran it. No problems and no smell. (I take it back Timfish whistle.gif )

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I'm kind of embarrassed to report that it was the heater! I thought of it at first but dismissed it to check last, if at all, because everything in the tank and sump looked fine, and when I glanced at it it wasn't obviously broken or puffed up or anything. It sits kind of dirty at the bottom of my sump. So I was checking all the fans, pumps, etc thinking maybe it was the DC pump that runs my closed loop. Whenever I'd plug it in I'd smell that fried electronics smell just a little bit stronger, but it ran completely fine! So Timfish happened to be in the area, walked into my house, right away pulled out the heater and found this:

post-1781-0-64152200-1470577876_thumb.jp

doh.gif So I think what threw me off is the skimmer aerating the smell from the water, so I kept thinking something in that section had to be what was wrong. The DC pump would've done the same thing to a lesser degree. I'm so thankful for ARC friends! I guess on the plus side, my skimmer pump got clean for the first time in 3.5 years.

I now have polyfilter running and all is well. What a stressful event!! I'm so thankful nothing died from the ordeal (yet?) except a little RTN at the base of some SPS this morning. I don't plan on putting another heater on the tank. I'll see how the temp holds up this winter.

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At least the mystery is solved now. I'm amazed it did not cause more harm!

I know, isn't that crazy!? I reeeeally lucked out. Especially since I left it in the tank cracked like that for about 24hrs! Off at least, but still.
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. . . So Timfish happened to be in the area, walked into my house, right away pulled out the heater and found this . . .

I'm happy to take all the credit for finding it but truth is I knew it couldn't be the skimmer 'cause the way I rigged it to fail wouldn't have caused any electrical smell and you had already ruled out just about everything else so the heater was the obvious next thing to check. smile.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

FTS

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Things are going alright in spite of a really big alk spike. I accidently hooked up the wrong jug when I thought I was setting up the doser for Ca. It was actually the alk supplement. Big oops! I have it back down as of today but my Ca is testing at 290 tonight. I ran the test a few times, all with the same result and a nearly brand new kit. I'm dosing Ca (for sure now blush.png ) so I'm not sure what's up. I'll try to track down the problem in the next day or two. I've been dosing Mg for a while now and it's slowly coming up. Everything looks good though, I don't see any visible signs of a problem....yet. Here's what I got tonight:

Ca 290

Alk 150

Mg 1270

PO4 0.18

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