Nathan's 93g Tank Build

[YHSublime]

Nice progress. I was going to ask why you used steel pipes for the RO/DI, then I saw you had foam covering.

 

You're not planning on using a canister filter for this build are you?

[n8n]

Nice progress. I was going to ask why you used steel pipes for the RO/DI, then I saw you had foam covering.

 

You're not planning on using a canister filter for this build are you?

I'm using the same soft tubing that came with rodi. I believe its 1/4th inch inner or 1/2 in outer. The line goes through garage so I put the line in 1/2 in PVC then wrapped the PVC.

 

The canister is for QT, with course sponge in it. The display is skimmer refug live rock only.

 

Thanks

 

Nathan

[n8n]

Last night I got my Ethernet ran to the display tank, and the apex mounted in the stand.  I also made a few fine tune adjustments to salinity of QT and it looks like QT is just about ready for first fish.

 

The next big task on Display will be to wire the outlet and get the circuit ran to the breaker box to get new 20 amp line added.

 

The last couple fittings should be here any day to finish the plumbing on display but I can't fill it with water till I get the circuit done.  (need to be able to move display tank)

 

Right now the tank population i'm kinda playing with in excel is something like:

Fish: Ocellaris Clown, Banggai Cardinalfish, Pajama CardinalFish, Purple Dottyback, Court Jester Goby, Tomini Tang

 

Exact Quantities and even fish keep changing, but 100% two clown fish [paired] not complete decided on color/type.

 

Inverts: Scarlet Reef Hermit Crab, Banded Shrimp, Scarlet Shrimp.

 

I'm considering the idea of mixing Banggai cardinalfish with Pajama (Spotted) cardinal, searching the internet there seems like there are alot of mixed results.  Most likely the Banggai or PJ will be first fish(es) to go through QT.

 

QUESTION 1: Anyone have any history with mixing these guys together and quantities?  Wife is kinda dead-set on 2 Banggai, I'm thinking I want at least 1 of each.

 

QUESTION 2: Anyone see any problems with the fish/inverts i'm considering.  Hopefully the inverts will grow large enough that the cardinalfish won't eat them.

 

thank you

 

-Nathan

[n8n]

Today I ran most of my electrical circuit for the tank.  Pretty much Its wired from the tank all the way to a wire about 3 feet from my box.  Master Electrican friend will come by and get the 20amp circuit added to the box.  Also since the stand is now reinforced and the inside is painted, i've started mounting all the equipment in the stand and sump and such.  Won't fill it up with water will the circuit is done incase I need to move tank.  Oh I also got my ethernet ran to the tank so the apex has a dedicate internet line.  I ran two lines just incase i have some reason to need a second ethernet cable.

 

Quarantine tank is setup with water and is doing a fishless cycle with Dr. Tim's.  We'll see how that goes. 

[n8n]

This weekend I ran the electrical wiring for the new 20 amp dedicated circuit for tank.  I have my wire to about 2-3 feet from main circuit breaker box, and will contact my master electrician friend Monday to see when he has time to swing by and get the last few feet done and also add the breaker in the box.  [ i don't have any plans on every personally taking apart the break box, good thing i know an electrician ].  

 

I also got the aqua illumination EXT mount on the back of my stand, with the 48" pole thing that holds the light above the tank.  I started mounting the light over the tank, and that was when i realized i ordered the wrong part.  I measured what i needed from center of light instead of edge of light (where the mount is) so I ended up with an 18" mounting bracket instead of the 12" that i needed.  18" is on its way back to marine depot, and marine depot is sending me the 12".

 

I had my heart set on the Maroon Clowns I saw available at Marine Scene, when I got there they were already sold.  After driving around town, i feel in love with two other Maroon Yellow strip clowns,.... At Two different shops.. So i bought one dropped it in the QT tank (well 2 hour acclimation), then purchased the second one.

 

The bigger one (2 1/2") nipped/bumped/grinded the smaller one (1 1/2") every 15 minutes for like an hour or two.  We went to dinner and came back, and now they seem like best buds. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aRvUsip11c

 

Here is a youtube of my two new Maroon Yellow Stripe Clowns.

 

-Nathan

 

[DCReefer1964]

Wow N8N the female is to die for. I love her pattern !!!!

[n8n]

So last night the small one staked out one back corner and the bigger onw kinda evicted it from its corner, so the small moved to the corner with the intake. The bigger was going back and forth alomg back as in video.

 

This morning both are hanging under intake within a few inch area, they show no agresdion towards each other, but its almost like they are hiding. Tried to feed them frozen mysis and they are ignoring the food. I read this I pretty common but but obviously are nervous about my newly paired clowns.

 

Thinking I'm going to try mixing mysis with garlic tonight. Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

Nathan

[DuffyGeos]

Does the intake have a strainer on it? I once lost a small clown to the intake on a powerhead....not a good feeling. Try a wider mix of frozen food. Something like LRS has 10 different ingredients so it will give them more of a choice. My clowns will eat about 90% of the LRS Reef Frenzy, but there is one item in there that they will not eat.

[moga]

can't wait to see the progress of this tank..!!

 

Great start!!

[n8n]

Does the intake have a strainer on it? I once lost a small clown to the intake on a powerhead....not a good feeling. Try a wider mix of frozen food. Something like LRS has 10 different ingredients so it will give them more of a choice. My clowns will eat about 90% of the LRS Reef Frenzy, but there is one item in there that they will not eat.

Yes the standard strainer, a mysis shrimp doesn't usually gets caught in strainer lol. where do you normally buy LRS reef frenzy locally? I'm up in sterling but work in Arlington.

 

Thanks

 

Nathan

[DuffyGeos]

Yes the standard strainer, a mysis shrimp doesn't usually gets caught in strainer lol. where do you normally buy LRS reef frenzy locally? I'm up in sterling but work in Arlington.

 

Thanks

 

Nathan

Quantum, Incredible Corals, and ERC all care it. I bought mine from a group buy from ERC

[n8n]

Well we got the fish eating.. in the QT.  Now i just need to get wife to back off on the food levels some (pretty sure we are way over-feeding).   The bracket I had to re-order for the light fixture is in, and its installed.

 

AI fifty two looks really sweet on tank.  (the light is set to blue not to blind camera)   I also got the wiring done in the garage upto the box, and have the electrician scheduled for early next week before thanksgiving to get the last few feet done with the new 20 amp breaker.

 

My guess is I'll be filling my display tank up with water over either thanksgiving or black Friday weekend, and make sure all the seals are good.  I need to get some more live rock to get in the display tank so I can start cycling it.

 

I also added a very small quantity of liverock to QT to try to help it along with bioload.  The kids in the tank [ 2 maroon clowns ] seem like they are more interesting the the air lines and bubble walls along the edges then the live rock.  I actually put up some extra I had in a box just so they would have a longer overhang to play with since they seem like they like plastic better than nature.

 

Here is a little video of the clowns playing after the live rock was added.  And yes clowns sleep together at night and little one can totally go anywhere he wants in the tank... well except when were feeding them.  Then for some reason he stays near surface @ intank and the female gets the other 3/4s of the tank.... but its funny because the little male eats about 3x as much as the larger female.  I'm sure it'll all balance out.

 

 

Thank You

 

-Nathan

Edited November 22, 2014 by n8n

[n8n]

Oh yeh.. for food.  So they started to kinda nibble at some live brime shrimp, then they finally started eating off Rods.  Its the red frozen packages at Marine Scene with the super happy looking clownfish on the label.   I have about 6 or 7 different frozen foods i've tried over the last week in small quantities and right now its the only thing they are chowing on.  They completely ignore all dry foods i've attempted but whatever as long as they are eating and i got water under control i'm cool.  Big tank is being built and in a few weeks they will be past QT and in their new large home and the next group will be sitting in this little tank.  

 

-Nathan

[n8n]

So not alot of progress this weekend on my Tank Build since the Lights AI fifity two)/Apex/AI Module for Apex.  The electrican will get my circuit added to the breaker box tuesday if all goes as planned.  Once I have electricity to the new circuit I can wet test, and will get the live rock ordered.  There are 15% discounts on practically everything online (including live rock!).  I'm very much hoping to start a fish-less cycle on the display tank within a week, and get the rock ordered tuesday once the electrican is done.

 

On the quantine side of the house, the maroon clowns are still alive (cheer).  I've got prime in the system from the the bad test kit/ammonia scare.  I keep seeing parameters way unconfortably out of wack [ could be prime] and have been doing lots of water changes.  [still cycling].  I added a powerhead to the QT tank because I saw a 'dead spot' where stuff looked like it would swirl around and get stuck on the bottom of the tank.  Now it seems like there is nearly no spots in the tank where stuff accumlates allowing the filter to pickup everything.

 

Saturday morning I was at 0.35 ppm ammonia, 0.25 ppm nitrite, and 1 ppm nitrate(fish only with a few pieces of liverock), and I thought everything was going well with the cycle seeing ammonia go down and nitrites/nitrates on the rise.  Sunday night I was at 0 ppm ammonia (cheer), 1 ppm nitrite (ok..)  50 ppm nitrate (really?).  We tested this three times, and wife ran test third time with same results.  I did a 60% water change and retested this morning at 4am before I went to work.  0 ppm ammonia, 0.75 ppm nitrite, 15 ppm nitrate.  I'm hoping the 2nd part of the cycle will be done in a few days with 0 ammonia/0 nitrite, however its alarming to me that the nitrate is going up so fast.  I'm litterally changing large amounts of water every few days.  I've tested the water that's going in and its RODI + reef crystals that have desovled for 3+ days, and the water going in the tank is zero everything with ph 8.3ish.

 

I check the filter every few days since I'm doing all these water changes and rince it out with recently removed tank water and the filter is actually really clean.

 

The fish have change from not eating, to nibbling at brime, and now will eat pretty much anything frozen/thawed that we feed them.  We started with Rods (red frozen package), there is some green flat pieces mixed in they sorta ignore.  Roger's reef food they ate too (green frozen), however with rogers it was a huge pain to defrost and get broken into small pieces.  My fish pretty much ignore anything that is really large.  We also did PE Mysis this weekend and maybe 90% of the PE mysis was eatable the rest was to large.

 

I'm pretty sure we are overfeeding, as for time and quantity its 2-3 times a day.  Either a dawn 1 oz, 8:30am unknown (wife) guesss ~3 oz, and 5:00pm (wife) guess ~3 oz.  They seem pretty slow at realizing there is even food in the tank and then eating.  There is a little bit of territorialness watching them where the small clown waits for the food to come to his quadrant of the tank, or he grabs somethign and takes it down in the pvc to stealthfully eat it and then heads back up for another piece.  We go waaay past the 2 minute mark, they feed for easily 10 minutes and lately all that is left is the few large chunks that i either net out or syphon out.

 

Anyways going to start with trying to get feeding reduced, trying to figure out if I need to add a skimmer to QT it really wasnt part of the original plan but maybe that would help out.  I plan to QT everything that comes in for ~30 days so this tank will be up for almost a year probably depending on quantity of fish that come in together, so I really need to get a handle on getting the maintenance down to a reasonable level, i'm averaging 20% water change every two days currently.

 

As always any advice is always welcome.

 

Thanks!

 

-Nathan

 

 

 

 

[n8n]

So the electrican finished my 20 amp circuit so i can continue my tank build.

 

today i got first coat black krylon fusion ( paint ) on back of rimeless tank. tommorow ill get second and hopefully final coat.

 

the live rock should be here in less than a week to start aquascaping. i also built a small dropcam stand to monitor qt. tomorrow night hopefully i can finish plumbing and do a leak test black friday.

 

if anyone has any aquascaping tips im all ears been reading / watching videos to learn all i can.

 

attached is shot of QT with dropcam.

[n8n]

I painted the back of the display. Krylon Fusion the black rustolium touch up for a few pinhole size spots. Hope to do plumbing Toda water in it this weekend!

[n8n]

Today I got my tank in its final resting spot in the living room, wet tested the bulk head and return plumbing, also wet tested the sump.  The sump is now filled with saltwater at proper salinity and temperature.  I have the skimmer online and burning in.  Put some bottled bacteria and a couple drops of ammonia in the sump to start it cycling and also put a piece of live rock from my other tank in.  (no copper so it should be cool).  

 

I've got the return setup to send the water from the return section of the sump over the empty refrugium back to the drain with the skimmer.  one big loop.  Should have live rock by next weekend to start aquascaping and bring display online.   I still don't have the plumbing done for the return side but its basically one or two fittings.  I'm debatting on if i want to fill the tank up with water before i put in live (brs not-alive) rock or not.  It seems like the whole proccess of setting up the aquascapping would be a whole lot easier to do without having the tank full of water.

 

Also... how do you edit a previous post? It looks like the previous picture i posted was way large and is preventing me from posting any new pictures of any size.  (post 41 if your an admin

 

thanks!

 

-Nathan

Edited November 29, 2014 by n8n

[n8n]

This weekend I did massive work on the tank, and actually got it filled with water, skimmer is breaking in, and return is moving water around.  Salinity is almost right.   

 

In the end I went with a simple return, with the herbie overflow:

 

I plan to remove all the nasty blue tape.  Also this (the tile) is where our christmas tree will be going once we get the tank aquascaped next weekish.  What I like is nice and clean top without any hang on back extra cords or anything.  just magically the stuff in the stand takes care of everything.

 

Apex control w/ ipad & dropcam.

 

The strainers on the overflow are not glued on, and can easily be cleaned adjusted.  I verified the it can drain on the emergency drain faster than the pump and pump water.  Also tested power outage.

 

I wrapped the return pipe so it would fit perfectly against the mounting bracket for the light & ziptied it to the framing for the hydra fifty two.

 

This is actually the back of the stand with a custom sliding door to allow access to both sides of the sump.  The lose white cable goes to the alarm system cameras.  That'll be tanken care of.  The tank is sitting on a grey tube liner.  (wife was first to spill water!)  It obviously won't catch the 93g but if i spill a little water (assuming i work from one side mostly) it won't be a huge deal.

 

 

One piece of live rock from my cycled tank.  The rest of the rock and substrate is on the way from BRS.  

 

There is a heater on each side of the drain with the skimmer.  The soft return piping is not exactly how I originally had in mind but it works.  Completely silent and made the sliding door part easy to do.  Yes there is no plug in the skimmer currently, I haven't finished getting it tuned so it just shoots any extra water into refrugium.

 

The apex modules are actually mounted on both sides of the stand.  One side has the modules the other side has the power bar.

 

Obviously top view looking down.  Without any substrate we can see the skimmer and stuff below.

 

 

This is the back with the sliding door open.  The return is wrapped for about 2" to cover the hole in the sliding door and keep the skimmer and return pump silent.  (noise comes out the little hole

 

 

Front door.

 

The strange silver box in base is actually an electric coleman lantern (should for whatever reason the power goes out and I need alot of light).

 

[DuffyGeos]

This weekend I did massive work on the tank, and actually got it filled with water, skimmer is breaking in, and return is moving water around.  Salinity is almost right.   

 

In the end I went with a simple return, with the herbie overflow:

 

I plan to remove all the nasty blue tape.  Also this (the tile) is where our christmas tree will be going once we get the tank aquascaped next weekish.  What I like is nice and clean top without any hang on back extra cords or anything.  just magically the stuff in the stand takes care of everything.

 

Apex control w/ ipad & dropcam.

 

The strainers on the overflow are not glued on, and can easily be cleaned adjusted.  I verified the it can drain on the emergency drain faster than the pump and pump water.  Also tested power outage.

 

I wrapped the return pipe so it would fit perfectly against the mounting bracket for the light & ziptied it to the framing for the hydra fifty two.

 

This is actually the back of the stand with a custom sliding door to allow access to both sides of the sump.  The lose white cable goes to the alarm system cameras.  That'll be tanken care of.  The tank is sitting on a grey tube liner.  (wife was first to spill water!)  It obviously won't catch the 93g but if i spill a little water (assuming i work from one side mostly) it won't be a huge deal.

 

 

One piece of live rock from my cycled tank.  The rest of the rock and substrate is on the way from BRS.  

 

There is a heater on each side of the drain with the skimmer.  The soft return piping is not exactly how I originally had in mind but it works.  Completely silent and made the sliding door part easy to do.  Yes there is no plug in the skimmer currently, I haven't finished getting it tuned so it just shoots any extra water into refrugium.

 

The apex modules are actually mounted on both sides of the stand.  One side has the modules the other side has the power bar.

 

Obviously top view looking down.  Without any substrate we can see the skimmer and stuff below.

 

 

This is the back with the sliding door open.  The return is wrapped for about 2" to cover the hole in the sliding door and keep the skimmer and return pump silent.  (noise comes out the little hole

 

 

Front door.

 

The strange silver box in base is actually an electric coleman lantern (should for whatever reason the power goes out and I need alot of light).

 

You may want to watch the batteries in the lantern with all the saltwater you may get some corrosion if it is covered under the tank.

[DCReefer1964]

Nice setup N8N like you tase in equiptment ! If I could recommend removing that Apeex from inside the stand .

[n8n]

Nice setup N8N like you tase in equiptment ! If I could recommend removing that Apeex from inside the stand .

 

What exact setup are you recommending?   The energybar most likely has to remain in the stand cord wise.  The display (led) will be mounted outside the stand so the only real pieces left that I could move would be the modules the probes/lights connect to.  I could put on the stand on the outside (perhaps behind the aquarium) but i'm pretty sure my wife would vote down putting them on the wall above the aquarium.

 

Anyways once again, can you make a specific recommendation?

Thanks!

 

-Nathan

[DCReefer1964]

I have used Acrylic/wood on a rail behind the display. You may also purchase a low profile cabinet  from Ikea/Target to mount on the wall.

[DuffyGeos]

I have used Acrylic/wood on a rail behind the display. You may also purchase a low profile cabinet  from Ikea/Target to mount on the wall.

Shoelace (Ed) has a nice cabinet for all his"electronic stuff"

 

Look on his build.

[n8n]

I take it you mean something like this....    

 

Even the energy bar is outside the stand?  wow thats alot of cables.  I as thinking maybe running an aquabus out of the stand (from energy bar) to the rest of the components leaving only the energy bar in the stand.  I'm going to have to do some research into this aspect to figure out what I want to do.  There is some room behind the stand (near the wall) also some room on either side, although one side will soon have a Christmas tree....   Thats a good idea but i'm going to have to figure out what will work.  I was actually kinda thinking of something next to tank anyways (where tree is going...) that would allow me to store tank stuff in it like dry foods test kits and stuff.  If i get the right piece i can fit some electronics in it too.

 

BTW live rock arrived today in boxes going to start trying to figure out how to make it less empty very soon!

 

[n8n]

Ok I got my wife on board with "something" but what it is we will have to stay tuned.