Josh's 160 upgrade

[smallreef]

Have you thought about making it look like an inwall system by finishing off the side and front and top of the tank with drywall? (densarmor or green board atleast? and then you could put a fan in there too ?)

[LanglandJoshua]

Yes, but then I got permission from the land lord to hang an aluminum frame from the ceiling rafters. There will be two frames. One will hold lights and fans. The other will hold a thick sound resistant/flame resistant curtain. It will also block light for when were watching movies or just don't want the bright light from my tank. My father works nights, so the TV's always on. We would like our 24 hour lives to not effect the tank. So believe me, that covered!

[LanglandJoshua]

WOW.. cant wait for you to start rebuilding,,, that electrical tape scares me :(

need lots and lots of blue glue for the re-build, lol

Maybe you should buy some stock in PVC piping???

Just saw this one, yes but this build will be fast. When warmer weather hits, I will build the stand. We agreed on the piping, just need measurements. I have all the gear I need in case I have to drain the tank earlier. One 96 gal trash can for my rock. One 75 gal tank for livestock. If our becomes a long term issue I will put a HOB overflow on my 75 and trash can down to my sump. Electrical tape only works light leaks like this one. Any worse and I will block the hole off with epoxy temporarily over the output, shut some valves, and it will be fine. But I will not do a rushed tank again if I can help it. Bad things happen here when you rush.

[LanglandJoshua]

As with 99% of my experience with this hobby, things have changed. I havent been updating the thread lately. So in short here is the plan for my ENTIRE SYSTEM REBUILD!!!

 

New lights arrive friday, two Acan 600pa-18B lights for my DT. I already have the one 6W skye utility light for my sumps anemone tank.

 

This week I should have my 75 gal RO/DI reservoir and 55 gallon mix tank plumbed to the system for automatic water changes.

 

In a couple weeks I will have my new steel stand rewelded and powder coated. I had someone else build it, we checked it for square corners and they were not square. So we are cutting them apart for storage, until next payday.

 

Eventually I will add another MP40ESW to the tank, I'm loving the one I have. But am just too afraid to put waves in this tank while it is sitting on my old soft wooden stand!

[LanglandJoshua]

An update, my father and I decided it would be too much work to "fix" the stand issues. So instead he cut the bottom off, leveled it, fixed some angles and built himself a new welding table. From there he will build my new stand entirely from scratch! So that time table has been pushed back. I am nearly done with the waterchange system. just a little bit left to do! hopefully one or two more trips to Home Depot will cure this disease of manual waterchanges!

 

I remember someone mentioned a fake "in wall" design. That was a great idea, I almost did it. Instead I want to go with a "clean" open design, that still hides my inevitable mess. We are looking into fabrication shops who can bend sheet steel into doors, with air vents and magnets to hold them in place on the new steel stand. As well as hanging my new Acan 600-pa 18B lights from the ceiling. So we are going for the exact opposite! haha, no hard feelings. I like the idea, but being more open will allow for easier maintenance. Not just that, but I wont be spending money on plywood. Instead I can put that towards a small grow out tank inside the stand! maybe 90-120 gallons. It depends on the space we have. If it works out I will get the plumbing and lights ran, then see how much space I have and just build an acrylic tank to fit. With all of this, it will allow the focal point to be the DT. While I can open up the bottom side to view the GT, all while allowing tons of airflow! this has surely grown in planning from a wooden wonder into a metal monster!

 

If anyone has ideas, I love input! You guys have had some great ideas!

 

 

I have one question, and will put a photo up with dimensions. However my tank is made with 1/2" acrylic, the dimensions are 30"L x 60"W x 21"H. With a 3-4" lip around the outside. And for some reason a massive center brace. Something like 18" across. With this thing in the way, I cant get the lght spread I need for even coral distribution. I wonder if it would be a bad idea to just lop the center brace off, and sand it down when we do the rebuild...Or if I should just suck it up until I can have a new tank made...a very long time!

[Jim]

I'd send a PM to Adam from Artfully Acrylic to see what he thinks.

[LanglandJoshua]

For now, I am just going to wait and leave the center brace as it is. I have some full tank pics that I can post soon. If the stuff I posted for sale goes, maybe I can have more stuff worth adding...

 

 

 

Here is a link for the sale thread, LINK

[LanglandJoshua]

I think it is time for a couple videos. this RBTA has GROWN since I bought it at 1"!!!

 

Please pardon the video quality, this was from my phone. After the first 30 seconds I tried to get a decent view of a few different things in the tank. Sadly it just made the video look worse! I wish photobucket would let me edit it...

 

 

After the first couple peices of shrimp, the big guy was still ready for more! I do not normally feed more than 1-1.5 shrimp. This time I wanted to see if the anemone would accept a full second. I guess it was hungry!

 

[LanglandJoshua]

Thanks to Christmas/New Years, I recieved some "gifts". AKA money, so of course it is going into my tank! Now I am trying to think of beautiful unique fish to add to my system. For a long time, everything I have added has been equipment. It's time to bring some life to the tank. So if anyone has some suggestions, please let me know! I will list what I currently have, and a couple things I plan on getting.

 

Have

2 X B&W clowns

1 X large engineer goby

1 X watchman goby

1 X black spot foxface

1 X blue velvet damsel(going to be evicted as soon as possible!)

1 X royal gramma

2 X mandarin gobies

1 X bristle star

3 X cleaner shrimp

1 X blue hippo tang

 

Want

2 X hoevens wrasse(pair)

5 X firefish

1 X court jester goby

1 X midas blenny

 

I will need a couple more small guys to roam around the rock.

 

Thanks for any info!

[epleeds]

I have two chalk bass. They are great fish. And some Bengali cardinals.

[LanglandJoshua]

Unfortunately both if those show tendancies towards eating shrimp. I would preffer to keep my tank full of peaceful fish. Or as much as possible. Otherwise they look great.

[LanglandJoshua]

Unfortunately both if those show tendancies towards eating shrimp. I would preffer to keep my tank full of peaceful fish. Or as much as possible. Otherwise they look great.

[Coral Hind]

To me that is too large of piece of shrimp for your anemone. They only digest food for a certain amount of hours and spit it out whetherit is fully digested or not. So you could be polluting the tank by over feeding. I have read that large meals also require more energy to digest so it can be going against what you are tring to do by feeding too large of a portion.

 

I have a fully grown Hoeven's Wrasse or more commonly called a Melanurus Wrasse. Mine is very peaceful and a model citizen with the other fish in the tank. If you have snails, shrimp and crabs it will eat them as it grows in size.

[LanglandJoshua]

That is interesting, I had found one peice that was spit out. Usually that does not happen. That time I had upped the normal meal from 1 shrimp to 1.5, though that is an interesting idea that large meals would be like celery to us. Requiring more calories than they provide.

 

The idea of no snails does bug me. I've had some breeding for quite a while. So all the babies would just be eaten. It is something I could get over, if I know for a fact the fish will eat bristle worms. Will it only eat small ones?

[LanglandJoshua]

Oh, and you said shrimp? What about large cleaners?

[Coral Hind]

I've never had mine in with large cleaners but it takes out large ghost feeder shrimp.

[zygote2k]

why don't you start pairing up the solitary fish that you have?

engineer goby, royal gramma (3 or more), foxface.

[LanglandJoshua]

zygote, its been a while but this is the first time I've checked this thread since you posted! That is a great idea, I will look into that!

 

An update, I started doing massive 80gal water changes to cope with insane phosphates. I tested/watched for a couple months, and its not getting much better. So I have devised a four phase assault!

 

1: feeding has been drastically dropped down, two scoops of elos fish food a day. Three times a week some jans fish food(carni or vegi, since I sold most of my corals I dont need the excess food for them).

2: Ordered a new skimmer, my current one is rated up to 200gal(AVAST CS1) and the system is 194gal. Going with a RLSS R8-E which is rated up to 600gal! That should clean things up nicely.

3: new skimmer will be external leaving space in the sump for a 10 gallon algae refugium(eggcrate with plasic mesh keeping smaller stuff in).

4: filter socks, this is impractical now due to the crazy plumbing. So it will have to wait for my new steel stand, whenever that gets done!

 

This will take a while! But if it succeeds and my phosphates go bellow .5ppm(running 1.5ppm now) I will be incredibly happy!

[LanglandJoshua]

To me that is too large of piece of shrimp for your anemone. They only digest food for a certain amount of hours and spit it out whetherit is fully digested or not. So you could be polluting the tank by over feeding. I have read that large meals also require more energy to digest so it can be going against what you are tring to do by feeding too large of a portion.

 

I have a fully grown Hoeven's Wrasse or more commonly called a Melanurus Wrasse. Mine is very peaceful and a model citizen with the other fish in the tank. If you have snails, shrimp and crabs it will eat them as it grows in size.

 

Oh, and as for the anemone feeding. I did take your advice, it does seem to spit much less solid food out now. As well as swell up even more! Thanks for the advice, it's always good to have some helpful thoughts!