DaveS 210 Redux

[amay121]

Should be clear now. Snap a few pics why don't ya.

[DaveS]

Here's a couple of updates. First, over the Thanksgiving holiday, I finally figured out how I was going to plumb in my Oceans Motions 4-ways.

 

The problem was that I have two of them to provide flow to the 8 holes in the bottom of the tank. Since the sump is under the tank, the big question was how to mount the OM4s in such a way that they were fully supported, could easily be serviced, and didn't have pipes running everywhere. I've seen them mounted sideways in other places but that would have required lots of pipes. The solution I finally came up with was to turn them upside down! This would keep them above the sump but still allow me to take the motor and lid off for servicing. It was a pain to do the all the fittings to ensure they didn't take up too much space but with enough 45's, you can pretty much make anything happen.

 

Here's a pic of the CL pump and left OM4 .

 

Here's one of the right OM4 (motor is off).

 

Here's a pic with the entire CL system.

 

And still a decent amount of space to work in the sump.

[DaveS]

On January 3rd, 2010, a few WAMASers came over to help with the aquascaping. I amassed a small mountain of live rock in preparation for this. The goal was to do a Bonsai like structure and then maybe a pillar .

 

Here's the rock we started with.

 

How about this?

 

BrianWard, Sharkey18 and me trying some configurations. L82Rise is taking the pics.

 

BrianWard and the drill

 

Maybe this?

 

Ah this is it.

 

You get the idea. After some more messing around, we got another one built. Ultimately we abandoned the Bonsai idea and ended up more with "pillars and pointers".

 

Here's a FTS with just a few frags place on the rocks.

 

The one on the right has the pointer angled towards the front, the one of the left is angled toward the back. That helps to give it a little more depth. The nice thing is that there is decent space all around the pillars. I plan to have some nice acros growing on all sides including towards the sides of the tank.

 

I'm not sure I'm done. Once my hands heal up, I may do something else like adding a rock mound in the middle. Not sure yet. I'll probably start a side thread to ask for suggestions.

 

Thanks so much to BrianWard, Sharkey18 and L82Rise for their help! It's almost time to start buying more coral!

[L8 2 RISE]

hmmm, I see pipe. I think you may have put the wrong pipe in the one on the left. It should have been on the right!

[Coral Hind]

We want some updated pictures. You can't use the newborn as an excuse any longer!

[cabrego]

great thread! +1 one on the updates

[watson_barrett]

that is a lot of pipes, yikes, looking good dave.

 

what are you stocking plans, anything specific yet?

[DaveS]

We want some updated pictures. You can't use the newborn as an excuse any longer!

 

Hah some people use that as an excuse for 18 years!

 

I can't believe it's been so long since an update. Tank looks very different now. I'll get some pics up very soon!

[treesprite]

Yikes is right - all that plumbing is scary-looking... good thing the room is practically waterproof.

 

So when are you going to host another event to give us all an excuse to come look at the tank?

[DaveS]

Ok, I finally found the right combination of time available, clean tank and camera nearby. Here's just a few quick shots so people get an idea of how the tank is coming along.

 

FTS

 

Left side

 

Right side

 

What doesn't come through in the picture is the on the left side, it's actually a pillar with a section that cantilevers to the right in front of the background of rocks. I think once the corals grow in more it will be come more evident. There's still more tweaking to do like finding the right spots for the corals. But at least the big stuff is done for now!

[Coral Hind]

It really looks good, and a lot of growth since I saw it last. How do you like the AGE tank so far?

[DaveS]

Time for a few update pictures.

 

Full Tank Shot

 

Left side

 

Center

 

Right side

 

Bar area all finished

 

The back room.

[zoozilla]

Looking great, Dave!

[FearTheTerps]

Looks awesome Dave, and no one had to beg for pictures this time.

 

Whats the new rubbermaid tub in the equipment room?

[DaveS]

Thanks guys!

 

Whats the new rubbermaid tub in the equipment room?

 

The tub is borrowed from L8 2 Rise. I used it for a QT setup when I bought a bunch of fish a little while back. It actually worked out very well. I put the skimmer and heater in there. Then I ran the output of a MJ1200 with a hose up to the 40B I have on the shelf above that is to the left of the frag tank. I took the overflow output and diverted it from the pipe that goes to the main sump and had it flow right into the tub.

 

So the tub was kinda the sump for the 40B and between the two of them I had enough space for a few fish to rest. I may have to make this a more permanent set up. The only thing is that the 50G tub is a little bit too wide for the shelf and hangs over a bit. But we'll see if I can come up with something for that.

[Mopar32985]

I just made a trip out to Daves house today to get some frags. Very nice guy also tank is beautiful. Even the room behind the tank is done very nicely. By the way thanks again Dave for the great deals.

 

-Chance-

[roni]

Dave,

 

looking great!

[Reefoholic]

Looking AWESOME! What a nice filtration and maintenance system there!

Edited April 23, 2011 by Reefoholic

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Two years? This needs an update. You had a nice for sale list of sps at the last meeting, I would love to see some shots of them in your tank.

[matt]

+1

[DCReefer1964]

Two years? This needs an update. You had a nice for sale list of sps at the last meeting, I would love to see some shots of them in your tank.

I made a trip to Dave's house before last meet. It is what he say it is!!!! took a guest and that is all he talks about. After seeing Dave's tank he became a WAMAS member. I guess my tank sucks! LOL

[matt]

That's why I want the eye candy pictures :-)

[DaveS]

Thanks for the interest. I just back from a business trip. Will update shortly.

[DaveS]

Ok, finally gathered and uploaded all the pictures needed to make a proper update to this thread.  Sorry it's been such a long time since the last update.  Part of the reason is described below...

So things were going along great. The tank was growing SPS like crazy and everything was happy.


Then one day my Dart pump blows a seal causing a small leak.  Not a huge leak which would have been better but just a small leak.  If it was a larger leak, my ATO's timer would have cut off after running for 10 minutes.  Sure it may have run dry and lost the pump but that would have been better than what actually happened. 

 

With a small leak, the ATO shutoff timer (one of my many safety measures) never kicked in.  Water would leak, ATO would top off water through my Kalk stirrer for less than 10 minutes then stop.  Water would keep leaking and a minute or so later the ATO would kick in again but still for less than 10 minutes.  As you can imagine after a enough cycles of doing this, a lot of kalk water gets dumped into the tank (not to mention the salinity going down and floor getting wet).  To make things worse, Verizon changed the SMTP relay ports on me so my AC3 email alert didn't go out.

This is what things look like after the a Kalk bomb goes off...nuclear wasteland.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:

After:

 

Lessons learned from this:

 

1) Keep a good eye on the Dart seal.  It's the only weakness in an otherwise great pump.  If you see black dust or black water starting to accumlate under the pump, your seal is about to go.

2) Don't use kalk or at least don't use it for all the top off water.  Put it on a timer/doser and provide it a limited amount of source water. 

3) Don't fill the kalk stirrer with too much kalk.  This limits the amount of kalk available for overdose (my failure happened very shortly after I loaded up my stirrer as I was going to be out of town for a while).  I've had other kalk ODs in the past but it was never this catastrophic.

4) Have your controller send you a test message every day.  If you don't get it, your ISP may have changed the networking and you may not get actual alerts.

 

I consider the above 4 items my error chain.  If any one of them had not occured, my tank probably would have been fine.  But hey, I've always said that if this hobby was easy, lots more would do it and my house guests consider my reef to be all that special.

[DaveS]

So around the time of the tank crash, I start doing a lot of travelling for work.  Silver lining to the tank crash is that when you're on the road every week for 7 months, at least there are less things to worry about.  It basically becomes a FOWLR and you just throw some food in and let the tank run.  It also makes waiting for the tank to settle down a lot easier.  So for 7+ months I just let the tank cruise and don't think that much about it.  I kind of take a mini-break from the hobby.

Travelling stopped in June 2012 and I gave myself a few months to catch up on life after being on the road so much.  In late 2012 I start restocking corals.  I also made the switch from MH lighting to LEDs.  The tank is now running on 2 Evergrown D120s with a homemade LED fixture in the middle.  The DIY fixture has 52 CREE LEDs on a 22"x10" heatsink.  I really like the output of my DIY fixture.  PAR readings were higher than a 400W Radium!

So a year or after restrocking, here's where things are:

Full tank:


Left side:


Center:


Right side:


Things have recovered and the tank is looking decent again.  I would say that it still isn't quite as good as you used to be.  Coral growth isn't as good and I get a wierd algae that covers some of the exposed live rock.  The algae can be blown off but it comes back after a few days.  I'm still working on trying to solve that mystery.

But on the other hand, I got Jan's trio of Lemon Chromis and they are spawning on a daily basis.  Here's some pictures of Dad and one of the mom's tending to the nest.  

 

Close up of eggs- lots of tiny eyes:


I'll probably start raising some of the fry once I figure out how...

 

So that's about it for now.  I'll try and update more often like whenever I make a meaningful change.  No plans to do that but you never know!