acropoorer

I have dual calfo's on my tank. I just cut two 1" slots (drilled each end), but you could do a similar thing at the very top of the tank. I bought a wet saw with a diamond blade specifically for glass and some hole saws. If you need a saw I would loan it out if you need it. I love not having the clunky looking overflow box in my tank and the waterfall doesn't fill up with algae like the teeth flows do. The only downside is that you have to have the space behind the tank for the box or boxes. Here's some pic's. Instead of a slot, you could do a trough. The slot is just big enough to put my returns through. Also, I did a full 4 sided acrylic box so that I could color the back glass and not have it as part of the overflow.

Here's my advise for what it's worth. If you have a small load, get a timer to control your solenoid and set the drip to a solid steady stream, with a bubble rate of say 100 to 140 per minute. Let it run for 15 or 20 minutes and check the KH of the affluent. It should be > 25 dkh and < 40 or you need to increase/decrease the bubbles or decrease/increase the drip. 20 lbs should be plenty on the pressure. Use the timer to turn on the C02 for 4 or 5 Hrs a day and watch the kh of the tank. If the kh stays in the 9-12 range you should be good. If it creeps up decrease the on time or if it creeps down increase the on time. Slow drips and low bubble counts are your worst nightmare as the water control valve plugs (particulates) and small changes in pressure affect the bubbles with low counts. I run mine this way without the timer as my calcium load is high (have lots of big acros, coraline and lps) but many tanks run lower loads and can't run full bore 24/7. As your coral grow you will have to slowly increase the ontime once you find the sweetspot. i have a ph probe in mine but more to keep an eye on things, it doesn't control anything. Once in a while I make an adjustment to the bubbles or flow, maybe once a week. Another thing you might like if you don't have a dual chamber is to run the efffluent into a bucket with an air stone (drives off excess C02), in my tank this raises my ph about 0.2 and keeps me above 8.2 in the daytime. You may not find this a requirement if you are only running C02 in the daytime as photosynthesis burns the excess C02 off. Just works for me and no or few system failures as it is simple.

What you want to do on your reef. There are soft coral, lps and sps corals, mixed corals or fish only with live rock, or.... Any idea of what you want to put in the tank yet. This will greatly influence the type of advise you will get.

I feel your pain and was certainly not trying to make light of your situation by suggesting a controlled experiment, just drive home the point that I think you are dealing with a contamination issue from the light in the water. Based upon my experience and yours I think you need water changes. Again, please accept my apologies, I don't think there is anything funny about losing any amount of corals (lost plenty of my own stuff and it feels bad).

This is interesting as I had a similar situation 4 years ago. In my case the light was in the water (in the sump) all night and there was clearly plating removed from the reflector. Here's the thing with electricity, current will take the path of least resistance so it is unlikely that current will travel far from the light. Also, the neutral wire is really an insulated ground wire where the Hot wire is an oscillating voltage (110V rms at 60 Hz). I think the voltage swings both positive and negative so the average voltage is 0V. Can't imagine how you could get much, if any current in the tank as a current path would be very resistive through the water hose, into the tank and back to the wires. By the time my tank lighting came on (6 or 8hrs) all my corals were major freaked out, sps were covered in slime. I did major water changes and added anything that could remove heavy metals. Most of my stuff recovered after a month, but all of my stoney coral were affected, especially sps and hammers. None of my fish or soft coral suffered. I thought it was some sort of electroplating, but wasn't sure of what. The wires were copper and the reflector was some sort of light weight alloy like aluminum (the reflector had small holes eaten into it). Then there is the element in the bulb which is probably a tungsten alloy, so maybe the burned up element contaminated the water. Hard to believe a voltage in the tank would cause a problem. Voltage is just a difference in net charge between the the water and ground. Humans quite frequently develop large potentials of several thousand volts and it doesn't harm us. Walk on a carpet and touch a wall sometime. Current through humans though is a very bad thing, a few milli amps passing through your heart can kill you -- say one hand to the other. It disrupts the tiny electrical flow of the nervous system which can stop your heart if the signals are overpowered. So the fish are fine and they have hearts and nervous systems, but corals are affected? I never did figure out what caused my coral to almost die, but I still believe it was contamination from the light and after hearing your story I think maybe the element in the bulb. Controlled experiment anyone?

If you want to save $$ and get a fast setting epoxy, get it from marine depot. They have the 2 little fishies AquaStik in stone grey and coraline red, 9.99 and 10.99 respectively. These are the big 4oz sticks. I have used it all and find this to be the fastest setting and best colors (white is the worst). Just be sure to get it with a big enough order to avoid the shipping cost. http://www.marinedepot.com/miscellaneous_epoxy-ap.html

OK Eric, I'll trade. What do you have and what are you looking for?

I like the D&D aquatics high sensitivity kit (Merck test method from Deltec). The range is from 0 to 0.1 and it's best to stay below 0.045 which a lot of kits won't measure to any level of accuracy. Usually run about $90 but they have over 100 tests and last forever.

Very Nice! Do you hire out?

I agree on the chiller. I run the stock 28 gal JBJ as a quarantine tank and it gets to hot if I don't keep the lid up 2". The stock unit is typically 5 degrees above ambient at the peak. If you keep your house really cool and don't run the actinic and halides together you might be OK at peak temp, but the swing will be higher with the skimmer. A fan on the sump might work. Looks like a quality build, like the way you set up the ro/di. I'm a big fan of plywood stands -- looks like you have good carpentry skills.

Usually a 5 stage system has a sediment stage, 2 carbon stages, an ro stage and a di stage in that order. If you have two carbons (ideal for chloramine). The first carbon is a refillable granulated carbon and the second a chloramine buster. You should have all the stages you need, just a question of did they send you the right filters.

Nice build Don. You won't regret coming over to the dark side. Anything to replace MH is a fad. Welcome!

First Light, First coral. Nitrates are still high but I'm starting to run lighting and will slowly add stuff this week (off all week). Pics:

Originally, I was using uri super actinic but now I use UV super actinic. I have been told that they are the same company, different name or something to that effect. If I'd have known about the cree 3 watt leds when I started buying this stuff I may have gone to all led for actinic. Still haven't seen the 3 watt cree's but Mike Delgado claims they are the bomb. Maybe in the future after I get an aqua controller...

We left out VHO T12's. Some old school people like their actinic. Here's mine with LEDs (finnex), haven't mounted the halides yet but they fit in the square holes with luminarc reflectors.

T5's have better bulb choices and I think higher par per watt, but if you want the bomb get t5's with a strip of blue LEDs. The leds will add a shimmer to any kind of florescent lighting not to mention they are incredible at night (1 watt blues look great and I hear great things about the 3 watt blues). If you aren't a build it yourself type, there are T5/led combo's available. I got mine from finnex they make led strips 2' x 2"x2". finnex also makes a combo T5 with led. I can recommend there blue LED but I know there's a lot of other stuff available from other companies. Cree has the best name for led bulbs but mine look great and I don't think they are Cree. I hear icecap has some great bulbs that can be overdriven with the icecap ballasts. Few people use pc bulbs any more except for specialized situations (spaces were a 2' minimum bulb is to big)

Probably to late to add anything, think I'm near the end. Just has taken a long time -- a month. Starting coraline and a few corals this weekend if the parameters look ok. Let me know when you are ready to start planning your tank build and feel free to call me if you want.

I have seen your posts, your tank is gonna be awesome! With regard to stand structure, I used a 3x6 plywood glue lam on the ends and 2.25x6 on the front and back. There is are six points of support to the floor as the front and back have a center support. I didn't use styrofoam, but leveled the base and built the tank in place. The bottom is 1" pvc landed on a 3/4" sheet of plywood. So far so good.

I will start soon, maybe this weekend if the nitrites get to 0. I plan to move slowly, not looking to lose livestock.

I mounted your 2 finnex lights on the side for a total of 8 led strips. Gotta get the shimmer and glow!

Free advise here! Always willing to help out and remember, bigger is better. I just finished installing most of my lighting until I take down my existing tanks and salvage the remaining lights I need. Still to add 3 luminarcs with 400 watt halides and one more icecap with two 6' T12 actinic but the heavy lifting is done. See pictures below. Next phase is to place the light hood on the tank to bring up coraline on my dry rock. Still waiting for the stuff to develop bacteria. My ammonia is 0 but the Nitrites and Nitrates are pegged on my tests. Not sure how long this will take and can't find much good literiture on curing dry rock. Everyone says use dry rock to avoid the bad stuff but then they tell you to seed with existing rock. How do you insure that you don't get bad stuff if you use existing live rock to start the dry rock? Been struggling with this. Let there be actinic! Lights off.

I have a couple of the 110 gal watering tanks with a side bulkhead plumbed in. Plan on using one as a cryptic fuge and place for sediment to collect under the tank (overflows will empty into tub) and will use a large single 3" drain out to the garage sump. The sump in the garage has a skimmer and physical filter and 2 return pumps - chiller on closed loop to main tank will also be in the garage. I am thinking of feeding my closet tanks to the tub to reduce the flow in the sump. The tubs are also handy for temporary holding when doing tank reorganization or cleaning tank out. I love the tubs, got them used for $45 each, very handy.

Interesting link. Regal plastics sold me an adhesive that also bonds plastic to glass which I didn't use(called E6100). I met a guy in Houston that had a small business building skimmers, fuges and an occasional tank (sapphire aquatics). I went with his recommendations on how to glue to the pvc bottom joint (he was quite certain the plastic to glass adhesives will fail). So far no regrets, but I still have to move the tank.

Great video Mark, how about doing a video for acro eating flatworms (preferably not your tank). Far less info on this topic. Clint can tell you what not to do!

We have water and Nh3. Been waiting two weeks now and still have high ammonia ~2ppm. Water still looks pee yellow and I soaked my dry rock 3 times in RO/DI for a week before going with salt. I'm new at this dry rock thing but was hoping for faster results. Just changed out my carbon tonight. My plan is to move all my stuff out of my existing tanks to the new monster in the garage. The setup is temporary and halides will move one at a time with the coral. I have the big panworld pump doing all the work and man does it rock. 1850 gal/hr thru my chiller and back to the tank, the final system will only be 1000 - 1200 gal/hr on the returns and the pan world will be closed loop for my chiller only. Borrowed a few items from friends to run temporary for the change over -- deltec skimmer and a phos reactor. Working on my lighting now to get ready to grow some coraline. The skin may be a while, need to get a week off from work. After going over to Mike Delgado's spring break I decided to add 6 finnex led strips for moonlight but will probably run them all the time for supplemental light. They only burn 9 watts per strip and never burn out, so why not. As a moonlight, the view is like going another planet -- never seen anything like it! Thought he put something in my drink! No! It's not what it looks like, the color is from the dry rock.