Integral9

If you live in a commercial building (apartment complex or condo complex) then it's probably conduit. Best to avoid cutting into it. Get a piece of molding meant for the corner of a door frame. Should be square and anywhere from 2 - 5". Paint it with ceiling paint and anchor that to the ceiling, then you can use that to anchor your light with an eye hook or something.

I understand your caution, but generally when PI is already in the PD, there is no need to hide it. Hiding it is just providing a service for free. On a related note, I for one would REALLY appreciate some kind of indication where content is removed. It really breaks up a thread when content is removed and there is no indication of it. Especially when there is reply after reply referencing that information. It basically makes the thread unreadable and kills the thread. eg: My name is John Handy and I live at <content violation: PI> . Please come over and trash my house / lawn.

Based on cuteness alone, he's hired. Pm me his contact info please. :P

I had a similar experience after I hooked up my biopellet reactor. Except it was just my skimmate cup that overflowed into the sump rather than all over the floor. But yeah. After you hook up the biopellets the skimmer will go into overdrive as the bacteria is hydrophobic and likes to get pulled out of the water. I've had to completely rethink how I skim and now I wish I had a bucket w/ a float valve to shut it off in case it started to overflow. now I have my skimmer dialed all the way down and every time I feed i get about an inch of skimmate in the cup an hour later. It's very easy to let it overflow.

It will be interesting to see if the algae survives. I think the biopellets will consume all the nutrients and then get whisked away in the skimmer. From what I've read about them, that seems to be the idea behind the BP reactor and why it's good to hook them up to your skimmer's intake. edit: I think you might want to crank up the flow on the reactor too. You also might want to put a screen on the output. I've had a few pellets jump out and they end up stuck in my skimmer's needle wheel. see this for an example of what is recommended. He goes into adjusting his reactor, but what's important to see here is the rate of flow and movement of the pellets.

I disagree with Xenia as a general statement. The longbar xenia isn't all that nice imo. But the Pompom Xenia I think is actually quite nice. It's easy to control and doesn't hurt anything that I have found. It does grow fast, but just kind of bounces off anything it runs into. I guess I was unknowingly nostalgic, but I liked having a wall of it on the back wall of my 55. It really made the tank come alive with all of it's pulsating and movement in the flow. Somewhere I have this pic w/out the macro filter:

You can do up to a 50% water change w/out adverse effects. Although I have not done many of those, only in the most dire of situations would I do one and I would probably not do one every day. imo, I think you need to give the bacteria a chance to recolonize the new water, so maybe wait a day or two between changes. If you did 5 of those 50% water changes, you would still end up with about 5% of the original water left over. Which may not be all that bad. At 20% at a time, you would need a lot more water changes to get the original concentration down to what only few 50% changes would do. When dealing with big tanks, the question is normally, how much water can you make. If you cannot make that much water, and there is a LFS nearby, you may want to talk to them about helping you out with the water changes. Many LFS have a service side and they haul water around for those service calls often. Yes you should include power heads in the turnover calculation IF (and ONLY IF) they are IN the display. if they in the sump, they do not count because they are powering things like media reactors or skimmers, not contributing to the overall flow of the display tank.

Tom is correct. The reaction got effed up when it didn't have enough h2o to complete. The chemistry is all effed up. I'd personally start over with the water. Also, unless someone else has resolved this situation before with a flocculant, I'd be concerned about it pulling other ions out of the water as well. Has anyone used a flocculant before? also, fwiw: My tank turns over about 30x per hour. 2 x 1400 gph power heads and a 1080gph return pump.

My biggest issue w/ flex tubing was that all the returns into the tank had to be anchored down or the flex tubing would effect the direction it pointed based on the tubing's curve and twist.

Porites

Oh... I thought it was on your reef tank, and from the pic it looked like it was in the open and had light on it. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

Wow! That's a helluva difference. There's got to be a large differential in your basements ambient temp and what your tank would be at w/out the chiller. What's the ambient temperature outside your tank? edit: How does cleaning that thing work out? Looks like a PITA.

That's how I drilled my tanks, 135 & 30. I used plumbers putty to build a wall though, and rapid the back wall with duct tape. Basically all you are try to accomplish is to keep the bit and glass cool or it will crack. One thing that is key to remember, you are not cutting the glass, rather you are grinding through it. Patience is key. If you go the bath route instead of the stream the water will turn milky white as it fills up with tiny bits of broken glass. Dispose of this water and broken glass carefully. It is very bad if you injest any of it. I wouldn't even get it on my skin if I could help it. Soaking it up in a paper towel worked well for me. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

Nice. oh, and the bio pellet reactor looks good too, btw.

Well, I hope that doesn't apply to acan echinata too...

fwiw: It's best easier to post the pics on picasa or photobucket or whatever and then link them into your post.

some good info here on drilling: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=603816

All the stuff that worth looking at is in my build thread "The Integration Room"

Is that Jacques Cousteau's microscope?

They will find out eventually, and it will be their friends who tell them, if you don't. So, imo: It's better to be the source of information like that, than to let their friends be the source.

hehe. It's not much to look at right now. Hopefully one day I will be proud of it.

I'd go with one from AWI. I have a spectra pure unit, but have replaced all the fitlers with AWI filters. So I am not sure I can say it's a spectrapure anymore. Frankenstein RODI maybe? Essentially, I am turning my RODI into a Typhoon by adding the accessories my unit lacks. Anyways, the Typhoons have all the bells & whistles you could want.

Sounds like something someone I once knew would have done. You didn't go to Stuart did you? I'm in Countryside by the highschool.

+1 Clam looks find to me. I have 2 ORA clams and both of them have an opening like that. I assume to suck water in / blow it out. They also both have a snorkel of sorts protruding out. that's the other end of the filter feeding loop.

Yup Yup. Was a good time. Thanks to all to helped organize and pitched in to help. Clearly I missed out on the SPS give away... Got plenty of LPS though... oh well. Win some, lose some. I don't know about you guys, but I dipped all my frags in Pro-coral cure, then in a Revive solution and then let them soak in a solution of Coral Amino and Restor. btw: Did someone get a leather that's not doing so well? I heard someone may have lost a finger cutting up coral.