azcummins' Blog

[+mcallahan]

Well my orange zoas haven't opened up again since the tank got clouded..that was over a week ago. They have always been moody - a fish swims by and they freak out - but this is kinda crazy!

My corals seem happier since the PO4 dropped. Plus with the phosguard media, I dont have to worry PO4 leeching back into the tank. Great product for $44, esp. considering it comes with a pump!

The Tunze nano would be perfect for your 20g. I used one for my old 20g, then I just switched it over to my 55g. They are a little picky about fluctuating water levels but as long as you top off everyday or at least every other, no big deal. Of course, if you don't have big water level swings, no big deal.

[+mcallahan]

I'm upgrading to a 90g RR so mdavis375 loaned me his aquapod to house my fish and softies until me new tank is up and rolling.

I filled the aquapod with water from my 55g and some LR from the tank as well so the slow death of my 55 has begun! Hopefully by using old water and rock from my 55g the aquapod won't cycle much.

Friday should be the installation day on my 90g...I can't stand waiting..!

[+ACampbell]

Cool, a new chapter has begun.

[+mcallahan]

Cool, a new chapter has begun.

Yeah...I'm excited. Can't wait to get the new one up and rolling.

Anyone want to ditch work on Friday to help me setup a tank?

[+mcallahan]

Its finally Friday and I finally got to setup my new tank!

Below are the pics and the explanations, but I wanted to say thanks to "prof" who built me a great stand and helped me get all the plumbing worked out. If you ever need any custom wood work done, or if you want to pick over his pile of aquarium stuff, he's the guy to talk to.

The build started @ 8:15am when prof (Dave) showed up with the stand. My 55g was pretty much all broken down by then so when Dave showed up, we moved it outside. (BTW...my 55g and stand are for sale if anyone needs one...)

We then unloaded the stand from his truck and measured out where the bulkheads would go. Off came the tank and out came the jig saw so that we could cut enough room to get to the bulkheads with a wrench. Good thinking Dave! I would have just drilled a hole and had the bulkhead drop through...oops.

Marking the bulkheads

I love powertools

Success! Plenty of room to get to the bulkheads

Our next step was to set the stand and tank, setup the plumbing and start filling the tank. Plumbing was straight forward. The drain drops straight into my sump and the return line is hooked up to my mag 7 via flexible hose. Home Depot didn't have a 1/2" to 3/4" barb fitting, so we had to go with a 90 degree elbow. I'll swap that out over the weekend.

Next came out the garden hose and on came the water. It only took about 5 mins to fill the tank before the sump started filling. I plugged in the Mag 7 to start the flow and....NOTHING. Nada...ziltch. What the hell?

Dave reminded me that often times things get stuck in the pump so I stripped off the cover (4 screws..piece of cake) and sure enough, there were some pieces of shells that were blocking the impeller. I cleaned those out, replaced the cover and we were off to the races.

In goes the water

Filling the sump

The pump is pretty loud, but that's mainly because right now its sitting on the bottom of the sump which is acting as a great amplifier for the vibrations of the pump. Add in the wooden stand the sump is sitting on and you have a nice natural speaker system! I'll fix that issue over the weekend as well.

Mag-7

The tank filled nicely and my sump filled to a level that was perfect for me. Plenty of room to have the tank drain down. My overflows are pretty loud, but I've read they can take a while to break in. Luckily I can close the doors on my office where the tank sits so that I don't have to listen to overflow gurgling all night.

Overflows

Overflows

I'm adding salt throughout the day today so get my salinity right, then I'll check pH and KH before adding in my LR. Hopefully I can add the LR tomorrow and get my tank cycling.

Overall I'm happy with the new tank, but I can't wait till its ready to take my fish. Right now my fish are real pissed at me as they are stuck in a 24g aquapod with a lot of coral, but they'll get over it once they see their new place.

I'll also add my stand cover back in front of the stand so that I I don't have to paint this one. Plus it makes for easy access to the sump for servicing.

[fishypets]

Looks like this will be a fun upgrade for you. One question though, did you use RO/DI water?

[+mcallahan]

Nope. City water. I added declorinator and amazingly, all the snails in the sand lived.

[AndrewT]

New tank looks awesome... congrats. Thanks a bunch for letting me take your hob reuge off your hand. its been working great on my 55g. Nitrates are allready on the decline. good luck with the new tank Thanks again

[fishypets]

Just curious why you would fill a brand new tank with tap water vs. RO/DI? Didn't you have nuisance algae problems with your last tank?

[+mcallahan]

Just curious why you would fill a brand new tank with tap water vs. RO/DI? Didn't you have nuisance algae problems with your last tank?

I only had 20g worth of buckets and I didn't want to make multiple trips to the LFS to get the RO/DI. In addition, all the rock I'm adding to this new tank is 100% dead. I'll add in a couple of pieces from my old tank to start the bacteria growing, but these pieces are pest/nuisance algae free.

[blindside]

i did the same on my tank, everything went great. nice tank, let me have your 50g. ha

[+mcallahan]

My new 90g has been up and running for 5 days now and the tank is well...cycling. I thought I could avoid a full cycle, but no luck. My ammonia is @ a full 1.0 for 4 days so I'll be waiting this one out. I've been adding "stabilize" to help things out so now its time for the bacteria to do its thing.

In the meantime, I did some fine adjusting to the tank. First off, I borrowed mdavis375's Tunze skimmer for the time being. As he describes it, it's model # "old". But it is pulling out some junk so that should help with my cycling. I picked up some egg crate from "prof" tonight so I'll be building a stand over the weekend so that it can get put into the skimmer section of the sump. Right now its in the refugium section of the sump.

Skimmer

Next, I suspended the mag7 with a eye hook and some cheapo twine. It works great though as the pump is suspended and it can't send its vibrations through the sump and therefore through the wooden stand and floor. I'll need to replace the twine at some point as I'm sure it will rot away, but for now, the room is mostly quiet.

Suspended Pump

Finally, I picked up some dead rock from a friend and I laid down an initial idea I had for aquascaping the tank. I knew I wanted some arches and the pieces I picked out worked great. I've gotten quite good at getting the rock to lock together so it doesn't move. I've got another 20# or so in the aquapod so I'll have to keep working on the final arrangement once the tank is ready to take fish/corals.

Rock and aquascape

I'll be replacing the fan in the refugium this weekend as the stock one is really, really loud. The stand for the skimmer needs to be build as well as frag rack for the sump. On top of all that, I need to pull the 90 degree elbow on the return standpipe and plug the anti-siphon hole. This will make the overflow very quiet and I can use the the output nozzles to break the siphon.

Hopefully by the time all that is done, the tank will be cycled.

[+mcallahan]

I picked up an ATO unit from Britfish and I've had it up and running for about a week now. If you don't have one of these units, you really, really need to get one. No more lugging buckets through your house, heaving them over the tank, stressing out fish/corals when you pour in pure fresh water, etc.

Instead you get a nice constant salinity and all you have to do is make sure your RO reservoir is full.

After a week of having my setup, I've noted about a one gallon a day evaporation rate.

One day evaporation rate noted on side of bucket

This rate seems a little high to me as I'm not running any lights on my tank yet as it is still cycling. One thing I have noticed is that my sump area stays pretty warm and humid so those facts are probably adding to my high evaporation rate.

I went looking @ wally world last night for a small fan to help circulate some air through the sump area, but its now below 70 degrees in Austin, so all they had out was heaters! Anyone got a small fan lying around they don't want?

Doing some quick math, I figured I'd spend about $7.50 a month on R/O water if I bought it from Aquatek. (They charge $.25/gallon for R/O water. Given I only have 5 gallon buckets, that means I'd need to go by the LFS about once a week to refill my R/O water. Oh darn...gotta go by the LFS again....

[+mcallahan]

After 12 days, my 90g has fully cycled.

Considering I used dead sand and filled the tank with city water that I then dechlorinated, I'm pretty happy with having my tank cycle in just 12 days.

NOTE: On the graph below, day 3 is actually day 7 in the tank's life. After the first week, I started monitoring tank parameters daily.

I did notice a couple of interesting things throughout the cycle period:

1. I started adding "stability" from SeaChem around day 3. Once I started adding it, the cycle really, really accelerated as shown in the graph.

2. A turbo, bumblebee, and margarita snail all hitch hiked into the tank on the 4 pieces of LR I added and they all LIVED throughout the cycle. Even through the high ammonia and high nitrites.

3. The nitrate part of the nitrate cycle is somewhat still going on. 20 mg/L isn't bad for me and if it rises a lot higher, I'll do a 20% water change.

Here is the graph of the cycle. I didn't include Nitrates on the graph as the Nitrate scale is much higher than the ammonia and nitrite scale. Nitrate graph can be found below.

Here is the nitrate graph:

[mdavis735]

awesome man.throw the fish in and take pics.haha

[+mcallahan]

I've been throwing in inverts for the past 24 hrs. They are all fine and I even threw in some corals today and they seem happier than being crammed into the aquapod.

I'll check the levels in the am and then float the fish.

Then, I'll take pics.

[mdavis735]

cool.got your lights on yet?

[+mcallahan]

yup. heat up my 90g 3 degrees as well. I think I'll need a chiller next summer since my tank stays @ 79 degrees w/ the heater off.

[+mcallahan]

yup. heat up my 90g 3 degrees as well. I think I'll need a chiller next summer since my tank stays @ 79 degrees w/ the heater off.

[+mcallahan]

Being that its Thanksgiving and I had family around (i.e..extra hands to help with the fish tank), I decided to take some time today and put the finishing touches on my sump.

First of all, I made a stand for my skimmer so that I could move it into the skimmer box section of the sump. A couple of measurements, 3 pieces of egg crate, 6 zip ties later and we're done. I'm a little concerned that there might be too many bubbles from overflow downpipe as the skimmer is sitting at the same level in the water, but the bubbles in the skimmer aren't reaching as high as they normally do. I'll give the skimmer a day or so to see if it settles out.

Skimmer Stand

Next, I made my frag rack for the future frags that I'll take from my corals. Crack goes the egg crate and 9 zip ties later, we're up and..standing? I had to put a small piece of LR to weigh down the rack to keep it from floating away.

Frag rack

Finally I made a grate out of my remaining egg crate to keep my chaeto from getting caught in the pump. Chaeto should get here on Tuesday from reefcleaners.org so once it arrives and I install a new fan in my fuge fixture, I'll have the sump & refugium 100% done. Oh, gotta tighten down my zip ties to that hold up the cords. Can't forget about that.

Overall setup

Props to my father-in-law for helping me measure and cut!

[mdavis735]

that is a good looking skimmer.haha.

[+mcallahan]

yeah...crazy discounts on "old" model # skimmers.

[mdavis735]

yeah i'm trying to negotiate such a discount on a similar much smaller unit.

[+mcallahan]

yeah i'm trying to negotiate such a discount on a similar much smaller unit.

yeah, but the smaller unit is model #"like-new", not "old"....

[+mcallahan]

I picked up a checkerboard wrasse from aeroaustin and he's a beauty! He doesn't hold still for pictures though so I had to use my flash (boo) to get enough shutter speed to stop him.

He was a real PITA to catch. I got to aero's house and there was the tank...NO FISH...no where. No buldge in the sand...nothing. So I started sifting through the sand with my fingers to find him and no beans. So next we drained the tank. Again, I went sand sifting and I felt him move, but he was instantly re-buried somewhere else. I found him again pretty quickly and I grabbed him bare handed and put him in the bag to go home. They sure love the sand! Nothing like exfoliating as a fish.

Around 8pm, he was history...no where to be found. He's buried himself for the night so I won't see him till tomorrow morning! Night fishy..fishy...