dante411x

So, I ended up getting the cr 44 sump. It was Black Friday and I just got tired of thinking about it. The tank came today and I just finished assembling the stand, so put the sump in there to see how it fits and how annoying it will be if it’s all the way in the back. Good news is, it fits well. I can basically climb inside the stand of this thing, so maintenance on any part of the sump is going to be pretty easy. Not completely sure if I want to keep it in the front instead since access to the back will be difficult if I do. I’d have to have a lot more plumbing and reach across the sump to get to it. The only things currently going in front of the sump will be an ato container and a skimmate locker, but both of those id rather have fast and easy access to. Cat for scale! The bookshelf and the picture will be going away and the stand will get moved a bit, but this is it’s final(ish) place: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks y’all. I have both on the way.10% off is plenty good enough much better than nothing. I was mostly kidding about the 50% I know that’s not gonna happen, I was basically implying that driving up to nova is just too far these days. Every time I do, it turns out to be a 5+ hour round trip. Not worth doing that to pick them up in a store for 10-15% off. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If anyone sees mp40's up for sale somewhere, hmu! I needs me one of those and a battery backup, just waiting to see if they get lowered for actual black friday on the major sites. Unfortunately, it'd have to be like 50% off for me to be willing to drive up to nova for it instead of getting it shipeed to me...

Oh snap! Welp, I always use amazon smile, but never thought WAMAS was on there. Though, do you guys really want my $10 to go here instead of St. Jude's? Looked at St. Jude's. They got like 8m this year. my $10 can go to WAMAS instead

Looks like this stuff is still on sale. Thank you! I need 100+ lb for the new tank and wasn’t looking forward to spending $3-5/lb on it. Edit: There's also a coupon for $12.46 off that applies at checkout. So they actually cost $70.61 for 40lb right now. Bought 3. 1.76/lb. Not bad at all. This is 160/box on BRS too. Sweet :)

The grow out area is an interesting idea. I.. don’t actually know how that would work. Like a mini frag tank partition inside the sump? that.. is awesome. Now I definitely have something to consider.

Bah. Yeah, maybe I should have one built. That said, Eric, that icecap sump is basically that exact size with the top off in there. Thing is, if I had one built.. I honestly don’t know what I’d change in it from the prefab. I could just take a basic 40g and put some baffles in it and call it a day. Btw, with the stand being so wide, the 44” trigger systems sump would be the length of the stand but only half the width. So I’d still end up with 44x16 amount of floor space inside the stand with it in there.

So, I'm bad at sticking to things and wife ok'd it, so I bought a new tank. Nuvo 150 INT to be specific. Probably going to stick to this one for a good long while. Seems like a perfect size for most things I want. Anyhow. So, now that it's in transit and should arrive soon.. ish, I'm making up a shopping list for equipment I will need to make this thing work. And the sump question is.. bothering me. The inside of the stand of this thing is 44.25” x 32.37”x 33.75. So, a large sump would fit. And from my personal experience, bigger is better in sump world. So, with that in mind, I've been shopping around. I actually want to buy a sump this time. I've always made my own and honestly I'm just tired of it. It's always a compromise and..... honestly, I have the money and I'm tired of compromise. After looking at all the things. Well. Not all. Whatever BRS and MD have to offer. I decided on getting the trigger systems sapphire cr44. 44" long x 16" wide x 15" high. It seems perfect. Almost. It's real huge. Which is great. It will barely fit inside the stand, but only take up half the room front to back. Plenty of space for an ato container and some other equipment. The idea is to keep everything electrical out of the stand and in a shelf I'll build for it beside it, so the vast majority of the random crap that I usually house under the tank wouldn't be in the way. So. Fits well, has a huge refugium, is huge. Overall great. Then I stumbled on the Icecap 36xl. 36 x 23.5 x 16in... and now I'm not so sure that the trigger systems one is better or not. This thing actually takes advantage of the wide room inside the stand and isn't as long, so I'd have some space to the side. Not alot, but way more than before. Half an inch vs 8. The refugium is weird, passive fed, but honestly it wouldn't take much to just put in a pump to feed it if i needed it. It has a built in ATO. Which seems actually kinda dumb, but it's bigger than my current one, so that's kinda neat. And it's cheaper...... As much as I have the money, this is going to be an Expensive upgrade and saving some cash here or there doesn't hurt. Im really not sure where to go here. I want the biggest possible sump that'll fit in there. With as big of a refugium as possible. The built in ATO is nifty but with the extra room I'd have with the trigger systems sump, I could put in a 20 long behind it and have a bigger ato container for practically nothing. Help? If there's something else I should look at, please tell me! I have looked through MD and BRS, but not really ventured far beyond those. And I really don't want to have a sump custom made. 1- It would likely take a while and 2- it would likely cost more and I'm pretty sure the wife is already sharpening some object to stab me with.

Yeaaa well, I don’t really have a rim, so everything else around the tank in a 3 foot radius collects a lot of crap from time to time. That’s partially (mostly) why I want all that extra space on the stand. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mean, I’m right there with ya. That’s why I’m trying to figure out what changes I’ll need to make to the structure to make it work. That’s what I was thinking.. Actually I was considering making two top cross braces at 36” apart, two back braces at 36” apart and a single removeable front brace. For the doors to close against something and for a little more support. Perhaps using some metal 90 degree bits screwed in between the top braces and top frame... Also, after further consideration, I’ll probably end up making a stand sized for a 90g. That way, if I ever get a chance to set one up, I’ll already have a stand that will fit one. That looks way way more sturdy than the IKEA shelf that’s holding mine up lol

Simple enough problem. I want to build a stand for a 40 breeder that's larger than the tank. The dimensions of a 40 breeder are 36x18 and I was thinking of building a stand following the reefcentral diy template and adding a plywood top. But I want the stand to be 44x22. Idea is that the tank would be sitting centered on the stand with the back of the tank flush with the back of the stand. Creating a 4" shelf around it. I figure that beside it being useful to have a shelf right around the tank to put stuff on, it will also be fantastic to have extra room under the tank to give me a lot more leeway with sump/equipment. I'm just not sure if this will create structural issues. Or more like, since the stand is already extremely overbuilt with that design, if the structural issues will be a concern at all. Could use some of that awesome wamas advice here.

Well, after a week of turning down the lights to 30%, flow down 10-15% and moving them down to the bottom, opposite and behind a rock...ish from the MP10, they are all looking much better. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ooh. This is most excellent. I’ve been planning a 120 build in my head for a couple months and this should be most helpful. Is that the dual back overflows tank or the single corner? And what is this stand? Haven’t heard of it.

That’s definitely possible. I’ll do that for a while and see how it goes. And yea, the pump is in the top 3rd of the wall. The coral is on the bottom on the opposite side. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's extremely helpful. Thank you! That said, with this info, I'm definitely ruling out too much light as the problem. There is no reason a hammer coral should be unhappy with too much light at 50-100 par. Sigh. I moved the MP10 so it's flow gets broken up a bit by the rock, it was fairly direct. I'm really not sure what to do now.

This is my light schedule. So, going up to max 60% power and 50% color

From center of one to the other, about 6.75” And about 13” from waterline

I haven’t yet. Signed up for the borrowing thread but I think it’ll be a while before it gets to me. If you wanted to do that, that would be super helpful. Originally I figured that 50-60% would be about right for two lights mounted that close at that height, but that was just a very slightly educated guess

So I just went and did some actual measuring instead of eyeballing it. The lights are almost exactly 12” from the top rim of the tank. 13.25” from water level. The hammers are all about 8-9” below the water surface. This is my light setup. All the hammer frags are in the front left corner of that pic. They are 6” away from the center of the left light and 12” away from the center of the right light. The MP10 is running in lagoon mode for most of the day at 30%. At night it goes into constant at 15%. And the salinity is checked both with conductivity probe and refractometer. I also use 35 ppt calibration fluid pretty religiously and they are always measuring exactly the same. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t have iodine. Actually I don’t really have any medications. That might need to get fixed. What would iodine do though? I haven’t tested calc and mag. However, there have been frequent enough water changes that I highly doubt either of those is extremely out of whack. Too much light is what I thought too. I did move them already, the tank is pretty small, hard to find a shady spot. I’ll turn all the light down 50% for a few days and see if that helps. When I say 50% I mean turning them down from 60% max to 30% max. Thing is, it already only had a photoperiod of about 4 hours at 60%. The rest of the day it was at much lower. It doesn't look like they care at all.

fixing this

Heh. You’re most likely right. I don’t think there’s going to be anyone holding it, not anywhere close to where I live anyway. I suppose I’ll just keep up with the maintenance and hope they make it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

About 5 weeks. The rock was cycled for much longer than that. But since it was completely setup and fish added, 5 weeks. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I really don't know how to title this better. My hammer frags have been... rather unhappy for about a week. Everything seems to be pretty stable, I've been doing all the tests constantly, but I'm getting absolutely no extension from them and there's always some... weird long strings of black looking stuff coming off of them. I just ran some more tests and got this: Salinity: 35 (apex probe and refractometer) PH: 8.2 (apex probe) Nitrate: 4 (red sea) Nitrite: 0 (red sea) Ammonia: 0 (red sea) Phosphate: 0.06 (hanna) Alkalinity: 8.68 (hanna) Temp is super stable at 78. There haven't been any real.. anything. I thought maybe there was too much flow or too much light and moved them all the way opposite the MP10 and turned the flow way down. Still no change. Lights are about 18 inches 13 inches after measuring off the water and the frags are about 10 9 inches under water, kessil A360we running at 60% max. I seriously don't know where to go from here. Everything else in the tank is happy. What's their deal... Edit: here are some terrible pictures to show what I mean.

I just bought glass at a lowe's and cut it myself. the glass cutting tool is super easy to use and costs like $2. I think I spent like $10 on 4 baffles in a 75g tank I was using as a sump (3 for return pump chamber, 1 for refugium side.