acropoorer

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

have you tried a bacteria in a bottle product like SeaChem's Stability? It worked well on my 90G that was taking forever to cycle. Once I added it, the cycle completed in 3 days.

Hey Mark,

Where did you get it? I'm willing to try whatever it takes and would prefer not to add rock from my existing tank. Summer is closing in and I need to get this stuff moving so I can get the tank in the house.

Looks great Dale. Let me know when it's time to move things and the tank

Hey Don,

Could be a while before there is a major move as the dry rock has been very slow to come up. Still high nitrates so little or no anaerobic bacteria (at 6 weeks now). At the point where I may be ready to contaminate the rock with my old stuff and stick a bunch in there to get things going. Can't wait all summer as the chiller costs will kill me running two tanks with one in a very hot garage. Anyway, I put a few lps and zoas in the tank. Pretty! Watching closely, but they don't seem to mind the Nitates at 10 ppm. Here's a few pics.

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:

dale...what brand/type of VHOs are you using?

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...

There's a number of good online guides out there, but basically you have choices of:

Power Compact

T5

Metal Halide

LED

Or some mixture of those. That list is in order of efficiency, least to greatest, in terms of PAR per watt. If you want the shimmer effect, you need to go with lights closer to a point light source, so it needs to be MH or LED. If your tank is fairly shallow, a lot of PC or T5 will be plenty, but the deeper the tank, the more powerful and directional the light needs to be to reach the depths with reasonable PAR. If you have a mostly deep tank, LEDs with tight optics would give you the best PAR deep in the tank, most tanks will get pretty well covered by a MH lamp or two, and T5 will give you a fair amount of power with the same blanket lighting style and no shimmer effect. PC is uncommon in very large fixtures simply because T5 is more efficient, produces less heat, and is more powerful.

Going from 65W PC to 54W T5 is probably approximately the same, with a little extra power in the T5 bulbs. The real advantage with T5 in this case would be if each bulb had an individual reflector (and a good one), in which case 54W T5 bulbs would be tangibly brighter than 65W PC bulbs. As said, T5 bulbs in standard lengths also come in a lot of varieties so you can fine tune the color and look of your tank fairly easily.

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)

Hi Chris,

I have a suggestion for the plumbing if you are going to run a remote sump. Add 2 - 1.25 inch pitched drain lines to the sump below the tank line (~30") in the room were the tank sits and above the sump line in the closet (as high above the sump line without sacrificing to much pitch). Add 2 - 3/4" or 1" for return lines -- these can run low and at any angle. You may not choose to use both returns (two return pumps) but may if you decide on a chiller. Also, think redundancy in case of failure. Also, two overflows is almost a must for a large tank. Just my humble opinion.

Lights look good Dale. No problems growing anything with all that light.

On the dry/seeded rock, I used 50 lbs of dry rock and seeded it with a 5 lb live rock. With some MB7 and prodiobio, it was seeded pretty quickly. I think that it will take a while for a larger amount of dry rock, but with good circulation and nutrients, the bacteria will seed quickly. I don't think that you'll need light for the bacteria, but perhaps the corraline will need it.

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.

Wow, you have really done a great job!

I'm putting together a 440 gallon right now and we are building everything but the tank. I was to nervous about doing it right and the possibility of some sort of catastrophic failure.

I have a question for you, your tank is approximately 3500 lbs, did you worry at all about the strength of the stand? I was worried about our stand especially after glass cages told me not to build it from steel. I started to find an engineer to design the stand so that I could sleep well at night but decided that wouldn't be necessary at the last minute, I hope this wasn't a bad decision.

Did you put styrofoam under your tank?

Very immpressive!

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.

Lights look good. When do you think you will make the switch?

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

holey cow !! thats gonna look awsome

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

Dale, I'm going to bug you in a few months about building a tank. I'd love to build a tank myself.

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.

Hey Chad,I just cured 290 pounds of dry live rock in my new tank. Dry live rock is dried rock that was once live, so if that is what you have I wouldn't put it directly in your sump as it will generate a lot of ammonia and probably overwhelm your bio system then kill your stuff. Use a large container to cure it first and I would do a couple of rinse/soaks with ro/di like pat described before adding salt water. I rinsed and soaked for a week in ro/di (completely changed the ro/di water three times) before adding salt water to my rock and still had a long cycle of ammonia (3 more weeks of skimming, rowa phos, carbon and few regular water changes}. After the ammonia is down (0ppm) you could add it to your sump and it will develop anaerobic bacteria in the rock over time. When the ammonia is zero the dead stuff is completely decayed.

One other thing. While this stuff is soaking there will be phospates in the rock and water. If the phosphates are really high some of it will stay in the rock and leach back out later when you put it into your tank. Be sure you are running rowa or some other phosphate sponge in your system when you put the rock in your tank or that you extract it all while it's curing. You can call me it you want to talk about it.

Hey, looking fantastic. A little change in topic perhaps but I noticed you seem to be using a rubbermade vat for a fuge. Could you go into details on your current usage and plans? I ask as I'm considering running plumbing through a wall to use one on my 180.

Concerning the yellow tint when was the last water change? My 180 is starfire on 3 sides and the only time I see a yellow tint is just before a water change.

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.

http://www.dymax.com/products/plastic/index.php

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.

I'm looking for a couple of frags a Tort and efflo. Let me know what you got.

Clay, I have oregon tort and cali tort(aka, blue green tort}. Also have a small efflo that is in my frag tank (not colored up but healthy). Would have done some trading for your stream but someone already posted for it. Pics of my oregon and cali below post me if you are interested.

Nice looking tank, can't wait to see it in person.

Done deal! Thanks again for the new coral "frags". Some of them would hardly be considered frags due to their huge size. They look great in my tank. I've been staring at my tank since Saturday, as if I can see them growing. My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy and she's probably right. It was worth the drive from killeen just to see your new tank. Anyway thanks for everything.

Enjoy and thanks for the visit.

down to these:

JeeperTy

acrpoorer

Zara

acropoorer = Dale McQuirk they know me at RC.

I would like to buy the rainbow acan. I live up north near 620 and Anderson Mill, when can we meet to do the deal.

Dale

The superman generally does fine in high light--faded blue will recover it's color as long as the polyps are healthy. Also, I can hook you up with acro advice and nice size sps frags at a very reasonable price if you are interested (post me if you want). Also, there are bargains posting all the time in the for sale section.

We got ourselves a horserace goin on folks! go coralife go..........

Mikey likes it! You should try it too.