AlanM

Set up dyndns and an apex and a webcam so you can see tank stats from Phuket? Put a couple moisture sensors on the floor feeding info into apex and texting you and your reef buddy to come drink a beer and please mop while you're there.

So I'm in bidness. Took advantage of some black friday sales at BRS and Avast and Quantum Reefs and started buying stuff. Hooked up my first saltwater tank related thing. An RO/DI unit. When I did the plumbing for a basement bathroom I added an additional outlet with a 3/8 shutoff for an RO/DI and I hooked it up today. Fun. Filling up a brute with water so I can acid bathe some old rock in it which I've already bleached.

Are the pipes right up against the back of the tank glass? A shadowbox would be very cool instead of black on the back if you have room between the back and the pipes. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1868825&highlight=shadowbox If I was doing an in-wall one I'd for sure be putting a shadow box behind it. 8)

Yikes. I just received my RO/DI and float valve yesterday and was going to install it in my trash can today. Good thing for me to read right now.

Is the back of the couch up against the wall beneath the tank or is there space? Maybe put a nice shallow table or desk beneath the wall opening with a chair by it and some pictures on the wall around the opening. Is there any way that the tank would fit in that opening like could you pull it out 4 inches so the glass was nearly flush with the wall and then put the quarterround that smallreef suggests on the front of the trim rather than the back to hide the frame on the bottom?

Think a frogspawn would work in there near the top of the tank if it's not too close to other stuff? I know it's LPS and then I'd have to watch calcium and other stuff. Hairy mushroom would be fun to watch and there are some really pretty ricordia and zoas. Want to see if I can get a Xenia to pulse, too. Some people say they grow in a salty ditch, some say they are hard and they melt on them. I'll be running 2 96W power compact lights, so not a whole ton of light. Was going to get one 420nm/460nm bulb and one 420nm/10,000 bulb to try to get some nice fluorescence from any coral and brighten up the fish. Also will run two Koralia 750's on a Red Sea Wavemaker that I also got in the pile of stuff which should give lots of flow. Shouldn't create a noise issue, but I'll ask the assistant directory who has an office door right there if it will make her have to tinkle all day. It will go in the waiting room by the front door. Turns out the lobby has too many other things in it: fire-alarm panels, auto-defibrilator, fire extinguisher, two sign-in touchscreens. Straight across from the doors as you enter would be great, but that goes right into the gym/multi-purpose room. So it will go just inside the door to the admin offices where there are nice couches and a table. Less visible for the kids, but I hope people will check it out regularly. I have a QuietOne return pump from the pile of stuff I got from Karl. Looks brand new after running some muriatic through it for a while while descaling the tank with the same. I was just going to use it to push water through a reactor or up to a separate fuge in my home tank eventually, but I can put it in the school one.

Thanks, Dave. The building is climate controlled 24x7 much better than my house. Was considering just skipping the heater and counting on the combo of lights and return pump and powerheads for heat in the high 70's. I had hoped that an auto-feeder dropping flakes and pellets would take care of the weekends and holidays. I'll skip the starfish. Do the other ones sound OK for a school tank given your experience? I'm there every week day morning and evening and work on the NIST campus with the center too, so can get there quickly if bad things happen. Eventually I'd turn it over to someone like zygote2k's service company if I stop being involved or break it down and keep it at home. Seahorse tank would be well loved by the kids, I know, but they seem a bit beyond my husbandry at the school, and I think they need to be fed very often, right? It will be fun to get this one into the school, and maybe once they have one saltwater going in the lobby the classrooms could get a fun one like a little mantis tank which could eat stuff and generally look like an evil little alien creature. I think to make the tank safer I'm going to put in a glass-holes overflow to a 20L sump and put the HOB skimmer in the sump. Just got the overflow and 20L from a member here.

I didn't even realize that the guy in the doctor's office was a royal gramma. Thanks. Kind of ironic, though, that I'm contemplating setting up a tank like the one that all of the characters in the movie were trying to rescue Nemo from. Good thing irony is lost on pre-K kids. So for a Nemo tank I'd gradually add: a cleaner shrimp (Jacques), clown (Nemo), tiny hippo tang (Dory), with plan to move it to my home aquarium within a year, royal gramma (named Gurgle in the movie apparently, never knew that), red bali starfish (Peach) once I've got a good crop of algae going and a bunch of snails, crabs, and pods and some softies. Would feed pellets and flakes daily on a timer and nori sheets for Dory and maybe some of Jan's food couple times per week for the crabs and coral and other fish as a treat. Wonder if I should just go ahead and drill it and put an overflow and return on it so I could put the HOB skimmer and ATO underneath and away from prying hands. Even though the tank is only 12" deep, so a 20L wouldn't fit, but I could have it off the wall a bit. I don't think there's a brace in the back down to the floor. All the weight is on the ends in this stand.

Thanks, Dave. I know you've set a bunch of them up in schools and Karl said that he'd given you stuff in the past but you couldn't take this stuff for a school at the moment. What have you seen success with in schools? I assume it would need to be some softies and fish that aren't finicky eaters but can tolerate a little bit of overfeeding, underfeeding, tapping on the glass, and less than perfect water quality since it won't be tweaked all that often. Think I would be successful in the 45g if I did a few softies, 1-2 clowns, a royal gramma, a saddle valentini puffer (as the big guy in the tank), a banded coral shrimp (which might end up as puffer food, I guess), and a buncha snails and crabs like hermits, emerald, porcelain for the kids to watch and skip the goby/pistol pair because it's bare bottom?

Dunno. I'm not the expert, but I'd say not really safe since its presence at all indicates one of a few choices. One would be that you're getting an errant reading on the test, one would be that there's something dead in there which keeps generating ammonia as it rots, one would be that the bacteria that is supposed to be processing it isn't doing it's job for whatever reason. If the ammonia is really sticking around with nothing in the tank it almost seems like it's not cycled.

I've read that Prime binds ammonia and will "detoxify" it, but it doesn't really remove it, so it will show up on a test. Seems like Stability should get rid of it, though, since it's bacteria, right?

I know you have a foam wall. What do you think my chances would be of making a nice slim one on the back of that skinny tank to stick some xenia, leather, torch, frogspawn, zoa/paly, with some rock on the bottom for shy guys and for some GSP to grow on? How do you keep the behind parts from turning into a nitrate factory? I saw in your thread that your bristleworms live back there, so maybe that's how. If I was keeping the tank for myself I'd foam the left wall and the back and drill the top of the left wall for an internal overflow box and then hide it in the foam and rock up along that wall. Would be hard to fit a sump/skimmer beneath a 12" tank, though, heh. I have my eye set on a Deep Blue Edge 75 for my living room, though. I think the colors on a royal gramma or a dottyback (purple/yellow) are more striking than even a Bartlett's Anthias, but one of those could be good too. I guess I was thinking I could only have maybe 2-3 fish total in that tank. It looks huge to me at 3foot by 2foot, but it's so skinny. You think a clown (maybe 2?), anthias, royal gramma, couple pajama cardinals, watchman goby, and firefish would do ok in there? Seems like a lotta fish. I'll look up the toby puffer. The kids would get a kick out of one of those. It's funny, I don't care about reef-safe, so that should open up lots of possibilities, but given the tank size most of the non-reef-safe ones are too big for the tank.

Right, so maybe nemo, yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp, royal gramma, pajama cardinal or sixline wrasse or firefish, cleaner shrimp, and a pile of crabs and snails, some Xenia, some frogspawn, some hammer, some zoas up top. Does that sound like a plan? Is it too much in the 45? What do you think of the foam wall with ledges or structures to make more sand available? Maybe with foam wall I'd put in some LEDs in the front of the hood tilted towards the wall to try to illuminate it enter and grow more stuff on it. Sorry, lots of questions.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks. Didn't look at max size on cowfish. The kids eat frozen fish sticks, I'm sure. Isn't that about the same thing?

Btw, Why do cowfish need such a big tank? Live aquaria says 125 gallon. Seems like they can hardly swim so wouldn't need much room.

Any neat fish you'd recommend in addition to clowns and goby given the size? Thought about checking into something weird like an angler or something. Apparently they don't require big tanks. Would have to be fed separate from an auto feeder which would do flakes and pellets, mostly. Any other non reef safe fish for small tanks that parents and kids would like?

Would also put in some koralia nanos for flow, btw.

Right, I probably wouldn't ever get a nem in there because of the size, lights, and skimmer, but maybe the kids and parents would think a nice big frogspawn was anemone enough and some clowns would be confused and live in it too. Probably no tangs or other nemo crew other than clowns and cleaner in the 45 gallon either.

I bought a pile of saltwater stuff from Davelin's friend (and former wamas member) Karl a few weeks ago. Among the stuff were some gems like an ATC refractometer, a lot of powerheads, maxi jet 1200, 600, small quiet one pump, aquac remora, a bucket of D&D H2Ocean Pro salt, a 45 gallon 36x12x24 tank, stand and hood with a 2x 96W power compact retrofitting it as well as some nice old rock and sand. I'd like to use the tank, skimmer, stand, lights as a tank for the daycare center that my kids attend and where I'm on the board. I would do bi weekly 5 gallon water changes. What can go in a tank that size with the listed skimmer and lights that the kids would enjoy watching? No hard corals, obviously. Maybe some Xenia and other softies? If I put the rocks in there's almost no beach with the 12 inch depth, so I am almost considering a foam wall to stick some ledges on for softies to leave some of the sand freer. Was thinking lots of crabs and snails, urchin, starfish, shrimp, couple clowns, maybe shrimp/goby pair, but I don't have salt experience. What do you think could be fun for the kids?

It's really close to the water line on the top. Wonder if a simple U shaped piece of stainless sheet would be enough to extend it a fraction and cover it. You could screw it in from the back. Or nail on a small piece of facing trim to the edge if its really close.

Thanks. I will have a reeflo blowhole 1450 as the return. Maybe in the basement if I work out issues with bean overflows and horizontal runs (which BeanAnimal disclaims as ruining the concept) I would run it full out and it should do fine with 15 horizontal feet and 10 vertical feet, but under the tank I will select a lower speed. If you're running the eheim and getting like 1k of flow through your 1 inch at 75 percent closed, though, I'll have to run mine at around 90 percent closed or put an orifice on the end that's easy to clean when it clogs or something if I use 1" pipe.

haha, yep, we were posting at the same time. That's where I got my number from. I'm interested in practical considerations to running a half inch drain. I know it will flow at the right rate.

I've seen that chart, but those rates are not vertical full siphon. That chart shows the minimum flow you can expect in that pipe size. Quote from the page: Also, they assume 6 ft/s full velocity. Acceleration of gravity says that things increase in speed 32 ft/s per second they spend falling. So in 3.5 feet of drop the water is moving way faster than 6 feet/sec. Full siphon can be calculated pretty easily and then subtractions are made for friction with the equations and convenient calculator on this page: http://www.beananimal.com/articles/hydraulics-for-the-aquarist.aspx So that's the theory on the page and where I got the 873gph for 44 inches of drop on a 1/2" PVC. I guess I know it can handle the flow I need, what I'm curious about is anyone's experience running a half inch drain to see if it's just too small to be practical on a day to day basis. Like it's the perfect size to trap a snail and overflow, or it's too skinny once you get a film of protein and gunk on the walls and the flow rate drops dramatically, or it's too flimsy to use and you'll crack a bulkhead by accident, or stuff like that.

I'm researching setting up a 75 gallon non reef ready tank and drilling the bottom for bulkheads (it's not tempered) and to install an internal acrylic overflow. I'd put 3 drains and two returns in there to do a bean type overflow. So five holes drilled in the bottom of the tank. On ridetheducati's current build thread there was a discussion about just how much flow a 1/2" schedule 40 PVC at full siphon can handle. Turns out it's a lot. I'd only want about 5x turnover because I'm putting in an Avast CS1 which I seem to remember that they say works well at about 350 gph, so that's 375 gph that I'm aiming for. I should have about 44 inches of drop to the water surface in the sump which BeanAnimal's calculator tells me should give me 873 gph minus friction and fitting losses. So it seems like 1/2" would work just fine, but the folks on RC seem to always want much larger pipes for their Bean overflows. I can't find exactly why that is in the 200 page thread. I could go with larger 1" pipe on the open channel and emergency because they're supposed to get film flow down the outsides of the pipes, which is hard to maintain with small pipes. Does that sound like a good plan? 1/2" for main siphon, 1" for emergency and open channel and maybe 3/4" for the returns or just split the difference and do 3/4" everywhere so I don't have to buy 3 drill bits. Or maybe it would be simpler to do all 1" bulkheads and use reducers to get 1/2" pipe for the main siphon and 3/4" for the returns so I'd only have to buy one bit and one bulkhead size?

Is it wise to get a rider or special endorsement on your house insurance policy before setting up a bit tank, or is it typically covered by insurance already? I remember I had to get one for a waterbed when I was renting a long time ago.