olaggie01

IT HAS ARRIVED:

Got the lights unwrapped and the bulbs installed. The fixture is so sweet and comes apart pretty easy for bulb replacement. I will have to take it down though each time I want to change the bulbs though, since it is pretty heavy and I wouldn't want the fixture to sway or move. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to get a picture of the light over the tank. I ended up opening up my lumatek ballasts and adding some extra cable to the ballast and terminated it into an outlet that I will mount under the tank. This will allow me to put plugs on the fixture and disconnect the fixture from the ballasts later down the road. The lumatek ballasts are very nice on the inside. They are coated with a water proof resin and it is a mess to try and remove.

Been a busy week. I started to repaint the stand with rustoleum because the red was coming off in spots and I don't want rust stains on my tile. I found a rug that I will put under the stand as well. I got a great suggestion from Rich (entropy) about how to hang the light. I went to HD and picked up a pair of ceiling fan hangers. These should hold the light perfectly as the ceiling joists run parallel to the tank instead of perpendicular like I originally wanted. I have an electrician coming out today to install another 15 amp circuit for the tank. With the new light fixture, I was a little afraid of putting everything on one circuit, so I'll run the lights off this single 15 amp circuit and the rest of the tank off the other circuit in the room. I have my rock bleached and now soaking in RO water. My plan is to flush it with LaCl a couple of times to get all the remaining PO4 out of the rock and then add it to the tank along with my biopellets and SW to get the bacteria population up and running. Look mom, no more aiptasia:

Thanks Jason. It's a pretty cool tank. You'll have to stop over once it is up and running.

Making progress. Got the plumbing glued and just waiting to figure out what to do about the light. My original plan was to run the light on a barn door rail so that I could move it forwards and backwards as needed. It wouldn't be much, but it would be nice to adjust it. The problem is that the cieling joists run parallel to the tank and the one that is located over the tank, is not centered in the room. In this picture, you can see the three windows above the old tank. The new tank will be in the same spot, but will be a pennisula style so I want the light (which is 4' long) to extend over the tank. The cieling joists are parallel instead of perpendicular. My thoughts would be to drill 2 holes in the cieling where I want the light to be, then get up in the cieling and lay some 2x4 across the parallel joists to cross the joists and connect to the 2 holes that I drilled in the cieling. This needs to be very strong and secure, since the fixture weights 55 lbs.

Yup, it's steel tubing (it was my old stand). Here is a picture for Rich.

Yup. That's the stuff that I've got. I'm going to drown that bleached rock.

I was thinking about vinegar, since it is cheap and readily available. That or go with the potent stuff and try some muratic acid. I don't mind losing some of the overall mass as long as it releases alot of the PO4.

So far so good, although I need to keep moving on the project so that they don't have to sit in the sump for too long.

Or just a gallon of bleach.

Yeah, bleached it. I have always had PO4 problems with that rock so I figured i would start fresh. I'm going to bleach, then flush it with acid and then a couple of doses with lanthanum chloride.

Did one better. I put it in a trash can with a gallon of bleach and a mag 5. I'll give it a few days and then hose it off and let it dry in the sun

Hi Long, I would have liked a 6' version of this tank, but when this came up for sale, I had to buy it considering it would have cost more to buy the glass than this entire setup cost.

Here is the box that the t5s plug into. This way there is only 1 T5 cord coming from the fixture. Proposed rock work. We will see how this ends up, but I don't want much rock as in my last tank I could never keep the detritus from finding it's way underneath the stacked rock. I may not stack any rock, but just put a few large pieces on the PVC bottom.

And here is the mockup of the sump. Most of this equipment was from my old tank. I will add the ATO/fuge tank above the 2 part containers on a stand. I need to build the stand and plywood floor this week. Any thoughts on how to keep the steel stand from rusting on my light colored tile? My old stand had feet but still rusted when I spilled SW. And don't say, don't spill SW, cause I know it will happen.

Here is the new ATO/fuge It had an overflow at one time, but I'm not sure what happened to it. I figured I could either split the tank in half and put the ATO in one side, and a fuge in the other, or just make it a large ATO or a large fuge. It also has a blue acrylic panel attached to one side, it is not covering up a hole, it is just there. Got the BRS reactor mounted as well and I went by HD today and got most of my plumbing. Waiting on UPS to bring valves and the bulkheads.

Also, the tank will be setup as a pennisula.

Another thought I had was about the lumatek ballasts. The photon plus fixture doesn't have any plugs, just a hot, neutral and ground coming off each of the MH ballast. The lumatek ballast have a special plug for sunlight supply fixtures. I can either buy the female end for the lumatek ballast or buy a 20 am outlet and plugs and run them that way. I want to be able to disconnect the fixture from the ballast if I need to make any changes down the road. Probably would be able the same cost, but I could complete it over the weekend instead of waiting on shipping from sunlight supply. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, controllable. They are the older block style Tunze. I like them for the purpose they serve. Move a lot of water. They aren't pretty, but they get the job done. I'm thinking about trying to setup a gyre with the 4 pumps that I have. That would help get the water moving, but I'm not sure it would be doable from one side of the tank.

Been busy but not fast enough. I have all the parts on order for the sump and picked up a sweet. 27x17x17 tank for a fuge or ATo. Not sure what to do with that tank. Yeah, I may end up selling the 2 6100s and see if I can find a used mp40.

3 cords come out of the fixture. 2 for the halides and 1 for the t5s. The t5s then split in the control box into 2 more plugs. I thought about those coral plus bulbs but SOS lightning didn't have them in stock. I may order them from brs later in the month.

Good point. I blame my illness.

Had a bit of a set back the past few days. My son brought home the worst viral infection known to man. And guess who got the brunt of it? Not my wife, but me. So I'm starting to feel better, but it may be before this weekend before I can get anything else done on the tank.

Got the light last night and unpacked it. It is a beast, 55 lbs of MH/T5 sexiness. I got the old rails taken down and am waiting till I can get some suction cups so that I can move the old tank out of the way and into the garage before I can proceed any further. Here is the temp setup for now until I can get the new tank in place (hopefully next week because after that I'm back working)

One thing that I'm not certain about is the overflow. In some ways I think that it might work, but what worries me is the reach for the tunze on the long end of the tank. I really don't want to have a MP40 or 6105 on that side of the tank. My thoughts are to see how it works in the garage and then decide. 2 options, Option 1 leave it how it is and get an MP40 and suck it up or Option 2 knock out the overflow box, drill 3 more 1" holes in the bottom of the tank for CL returns, and use the 1 1/2" bulkhead for the suction end and use my snapper as the CL pump. This would require me to drill the back glass for an overflow. It would allow me to run a bean animal overflow (which would allow me to sleep better at night than the single 1 1/2" drain it has right now). Option 2 would be lots of drilling and could crack the glass if we didn't do it right. Option 1 might allow me to stack the rock up on the overflow like the Volcano tank on RC or Tommy's tank on ARC. Any thoughts?