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To plenum or not to Plenum, that is my question.


Ronjunior

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The sand looks great even with murky waters! My next dillemma: how to include the powerheads in the middle of the reef as I have no pre-screening traps for the bottoms and cannot attach to the glass as there will be no walls to hide them on. (cannot find any around Clackamas) What to use, pvc with holes drilled? Any ideas? The reef is down the center of the tank with sand on both sides since it's a room divider/ 2 sided viewing tank. Cannot put the PH's on the glass, they will be hidden under the rocks with circulation pushing out both sides.

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You can make a screen fairly easily as well. Just take a 2" pvc endcap and put fittings inside that will reduce it down to your male slip or MPT for your bulkhead......then riddle it with as many 1/8" holes as you can possibly fit in it.

 

 

 

Walla...ghetto spa intake cover.....you cna paint it with black krylon paint it or paint with purple primer to help it blend in.

 

 

 

If you are handy with a table saw you can also cut it down to make it more low profile before you put the reducing fittings inside and drill it...

 

note: DO NOT cut your fingers off making one of these on MY recommendation

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I'll try finding an inside diameter 3/4 pipe...if they make it. Now I'm not so sleepy, I can think :) Might roll up some fiberglass screen as well and put on the inside along with slits made with my bandsaw and drill. Definately need a cap on the end, came back this morning and one spot of the tank had slowly pulled up much of the sand underneath and blew it around. (eventhough it was a few inches from the sand). Color doesn't matter as it will be hidden in the reef as you can see in the picture..or shall I say can't see. Now that I put in my rock to the bottom glass, I have too much sand I think...is 2 inches horrible? As I have no sandsifters yet. I'm thinking of rebuilding up the end by the overflow a higher reef like I had before, but for some reason I'm short of rock in my 33 gallon bucket. I guess I better get some out of my "sale" brew bucket in the garage before it's all sold. It's amazing how the rock puzzle never fits together the same way.

tankstep2.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
HELP??? Things went bad in the garbage can where I put all my live rock from my own tank...the pond pump ended up hitting 97 degrees for awhile!!! (I should have just put it with the bin of rock I'm selling :( which is just dandy' date=' but wasn't big enough ) I'm afraid to put it back in the tank with my fish with a possible dieoff/ammonia spike later on, but there isn't a place to put my fish.QUOTE']

Well, I think the high heat of my tank live rock may have started the "new tank" blues? I'm now getting this yellowish tan/brown crap growing and spreading like crazy;even on the sand. Is this the new stuff I've heard everyone gets from a new tank that goes away in a few weeks? It may have been introduced from a dead coral on rock someone gave me... Or is this something else I should be concerned with? It's ugly!

algae.jpg

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You can make a screen fairly easily as well. Just take a 2" pvc endcap and put fittings inside that will reduce it down to your male slip or MPT for your bulkhead......then riddle it with as many 1/8" holes as you can possibly fit in it.

 

 

 

Walla...ghetto spa intake cover.....you cna paint it with black krylon paint it or paint with purple primer to help it blend in.

 

 

 

If you are handy with a table saw you can also cut it down to make it more low profile before you put the reducing fittings inside and drill it...

 

note: DO NOT cut your fingers off making one of these on MY recommendation

 

 

I picked up some of this sewing material (I think its for cross stitching?) that is like a very coarse plastic grid. Its like graph paper withy 1/16" holes made out of plastic.

 

its what Ill be using on my CL intake design for a screen. It beats drilling a bazillion holes in the PVC. using some PVC and gluein this stuff on the end, would be cleaner and would look quiet sharp actually.

 

There is a SW safe paint if you wanted to try it,,, its at that site that sells Uniseals, I dont have the URL here at home.

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Reading stuff about this diatom bloom, it won't just go away by itself. I did read that 6500k bulbs can cause an increase, so I did remove the daylight bulb I was using and left the 2 actinic and 1 50/50. The bloom did seem to bump a bit when I started using that daylight bulb. I need to find some 110W 10000k 48 or 46 inch bulbs I guess. Someone here has some used, but don't know if they wear out as fast as actinic bulbs or not. The article I read blamed some on using silica sand.....arghhh.... I just changed to this as well. I'm slowing doing some water changes to fix salinity, but just did a major water change last week when I put in the silica sand.

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I ended up with white Quikcrete commercial 100 pound bag of (supposed 100% silica sand as per their support guy).

 

Yeah, after heating my kept rock and replacing the substrate, looks like this is going to act somewhat like a new setup. (was existing for years when I bought/brought it home). Though keeping my fingers crossed, the nitrites and ammonia keep staying at 0....they have for the 3-4 weeks I've had this resetup with fish and softies. The Coral Beauty and Lemonpeel dwarf angels seem to be enjoying the feast.

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Yeah, they usually go away when you are just about ready to throw in the towel! ;)

 

Good circulation helps, and a goby or a bunch of nassarius snails to keep the sandbed stirred.

I just threw in another ph. Who has extremely cheap prices on snails and algae eating crabs around PDX area. I have a lawnmower blenny, but I haven't seen him eat anything. I've seen stores down south have reasonable prices, but too far of a drive.

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If you want your sand clean I would go with a diamond goby or a twin spot goby (if you go the twin spot route, make sure you get two, lots of evidence shows they do much better in pairs)... They will do a great job and do not make much of a mess...The diamond can be a jumper for the first few days, but once they settle in and start to shift the sand, not to many worries, it is just when they are stressed or get spooked really bad.

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lowes i believe is where he said....its the quikrete commercial sand like for mixing cement im thinking.....but any playground sand would work wouldnt it? If it were rinsed well enough? Anyone tried a generic sand like this before? how did it work? I really dont want to buy the aragonite crap in the bag with the water from LFS since any bacteria tha WAS in it died LONG ago and its spendy at a buck a pound

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I had PM'd Reefgeek about Lowes, but now I'm actually regretting using the Lowes white sand. It's too fine and it blew around too much when my powerheads burried in my reef ended up aiming too much downward. Now I'm having a heck of a time cleaning my rocks off (I know that sounds kind of like a personal problem there :) ). My sweetheart was kind enough to buy me my very own turkey baster, but it just ends up floating in the water again, landing back where it's not supposed to be. I was also reading an article about diatom blooms and how supposedly silica sand tends to add to that problem as well. I do have the problem and hoping it will go away, but keeps creeping around from spot to spot. Maybe once it's all hit, it will clear up. Someday when I have a real job I'll probably end up replacing it with something heavier. If I had a very, very large mortar and pestal I could grind up my 250 pounds of crushed coral into sand grade and would be happy. Maybe I could just put it in bags and keep running it over with my truck...hmmm, wonder if my brother in law still has his steamroller :)

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Ron Junior......Ive got 240 lbs of Caribsea Seaflor special grade aragonite barely used(9 weeks) in a very clean system you can have.

 

Yes there is a catch. You have to come over the hill and help me disassemble my 225, take the sand out and put it back together (laugh)

 

I figure 6 hour job.........$200 worth of sand.....ill buy the beer...maybe even throw in a frag or two. :D

 

No im not kidding

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