madmike Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Hello all, I finally have bought a good camera and finally have snapped off a couple of pics of my tank. Over the next couple of weeks, i'll be getting photos up of my entire system including my 70 gallon frag/anemone tank and 2 species tanks with harlequin pair and peacock mantis. Here are a few pics of the display tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Nice work, the tank is looking really good Mike. The Idol seems to have settled in well, what are you feeding it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 29, 2009 Author Share Posted March 29, 2009 Thanks andy....i'm gonna need your help soon figuring all this camera stuff out,lol. I am currently looking for a tripod as you can see my shots are a little blurry. I feed rods food, both original and herbivore blend every other day rotating with PE mysis. He eats anything and everything put in the tank. Danik did a great job acclimating this guy and getting him to eat (luckily for me he like to eat too much and started to pick at lps.) He started to nip at my red aussie elegance coral so I have moved it down to the 70 gallon cube in the garage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Are they sponge eaters in the wild? I think I heard something about that, but not sure if it is true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danik Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Looking good Mike, i do miss the MI. I told you he eats like a elephant. I'll have to swing by sometime to check out your whole set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smann Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Nice pics love the fish, beautiful cabinet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Wow! Sweet tank Mike! The cabinetry looks really sharp and those are some beautiful fish in there. The Morish Idol looks like he is settling in well. I would love to see some shots of the rest of the setup once you figure out that camera... maybe you better go give him a hand Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fredknack Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Your tank looks great! I am looking forward to seeing the other parts of the system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chief Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 That is a piece of art. Great job. Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 29, 2009 Author Share Posted March 29, 2009 Thanks everyone... this tank and stand were a 9 month project from start to finish (well its never really finished,lol). I got the tank and steel stand and the tank was in pretty rough shape, alot of scratches. I decided to build a steel frame for the top and side that rests agains the wall, and then skin it in oak. Here is a pic of how it looked in the early stages. You can see the light rack with pulleys. I used pulleys and a linear actuator to make a light rack that can move up or down with the push of a button. This makes maintenance and changing the intensity of the light very easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 29, 2009 Author Share Posted March 29, 2009 Here is a pic of just the frame painted, and with the movable lightrack installed. In the first pic, you can see the external wavebox I built into the tank. I have always liked the motion the waveboxes make, but didn't like the space they take up in the tank...so I built one external on the side of the tank. I think it has worked out pretty well so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Looks good Mike! How about a list and pictures of your equipment? If remember right, you said all of your equipment is in your garage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerv503 Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 This tank is the bomb!!! Trust me!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 That is an awesome setup Mike! Thanks for the extra picks of the "in progress". Not only did you did you do a kicking job on the tank, it looks like you created that entire room out of what was a garage! Man... I have a few projects around the house I could use some help with Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 Thanks everyone for the kind words... The tank is a 225 gallon envision tank measuring 72"Lx30"Wx24"T. The sump is a 6 foot 180 gallon tank with baffles for bubble trap and refuge. The sump is located directly below the tank in the garage. Dual 1&1/2" drains drop thru the floor and into the sump, one of them going thru a 57 watt Aqua UV and then into a Orca Reeflo 250 skimmer. The water returns to the sump where it goes thru a GFO, carbon, and ozone reactor...before being pushed by a reeflo marlin under the crawl space of the house where a pacific coast c-050 chiller and a 1000 watt fireplug heater do their jobs before returning the water to the main tank. A ranco dual temp controller keep temps at the appropriate level. Flow for this tank is tremendous. I wanted a bare bottom tank that would minimize any dead spots to accumulate detritus. I settled on a reeflo dart closed loop that outputs thru a OceanMotions 4 way rotating device. The dart is the only piece of equipment that is under the tank. The rest of the flow is handled by Tunze equipment. An external wavebox, 6201, 6105, 6085, and 6065 and a tunze 7095 controller. The turnover on this tank is insane and insure very few dead spots. I allow a small spot in the front corner to collect detritus and I vacuum it out regularly. I value my time, and feel that any automation greatly increases my enjoyment of not having to do tank chores. I use an ACIII to monitor temp, ph, orp, and turn on and off all of my equipment. I can monitor my tank from my iphone and get email updates if any parameter is out of whack. I also can turn things on or off based upon these emails. I have my modem, router, and acIII on backup power supplies so I will still get email alerts when/if power goes out on my tank. I also use several safety float switches with the ACIII in the overflows and on the skimmer collection vessel. If the level rises too high, either the return pump or skimmer pump is shut down, preventing a flood. I really like the litermeter peristalic pumps, and use them to dose calcium and alk, do automated water changes, and top off with fresh water. I use them in combination with the ACIII to turn a solenoid on/off dependent upon tank ph. This system then either tops off the tank with RODI water or pushes it thru my kalk reactor and then into the tank. My tank ph actually runs really high, over 8.3 most of the time, and was creeping up to 8.5 before I added this solenoid. I use a spectrapure 180 gallon RODI unit with pressure pump to make fresh water and to fill my 160 gallon saltwater storage bin for my automated water changes. I have a set of latching relays controlling solenoids to automatically fill the vessels when they are low and shut the water off when they are full. more to follow... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 thanks alberta...but the pics of the tank in the early stages took place in the garage... the later pics took place when the tank was moved into its final location directly above the garage on the second floor. We were lucky enough to get into the house before it was framed, so we had a structural engineer look at the plans and had support for up to a 600 gallon tank built in for us. It was real fun to get the tank upstairs though,lol. My stairs have a narrow hallway followed by a 90 degree turn in the middle. The tank was able to get thru the turn, but the large metal frame for the lightrack had to be put thru the second story window (you should have seen the funny looks from my neighbors,lol) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kshack Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 Mike, Can you describe your lighting? It looks like Lumenbright reflectors? What are your thoughts on them and what bulbs/ ballasts do you have? My tank is 68X36 and was thinking I could place three (very close together). Tell me more about the device to raise and lower the light rack. Would you do it again? How much so they cost? Does it work as well as you had thought? etc. Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 Ken...I was just about to write about lighting... The lighting consists of 3 lumenbright full size reflectors mounted on a custom made aluminum rack with actinic VHO surrounding them. In my mind, there are only two reflectors to choose from, lumenbright if you tank is less than 36" wide, or lumenarc if it is wider. Both these reflectors have been thoroughly tested and produce incredible par values! I chose to use 400 watt dimable coralvue ballasts paired with 12K reeflux bulbs. This combo was ok at first and produced incredible par values, over 500 at the bottom of the tank with the bulbs mounted as far away from the water as my rack would allow (22" from the bottom of the bulb to the surface of the water.) I ran this combo for about 4 months. I enjoy the really blue look of the radiums, and tested the new 20K reeflux to see if I could get the "radium" look without the radium price and bi-yearly replacement. This bulb was very disappointing... it looked almost identical to the 12K I was running beside it! About a month ago, I took the plunge and made the switch to radiums and absolutely love the color. The dimable ballasts are able to be dimmed or overdriven so I can adjust using my par meter and kill-a-watt to a desired wattage and par value. If I had to do it all over again though, I would have gone with 250 watts instead of 400. The reflectors are just so good these days that you really dont need 400 watts on all but the deepest tanks. I am currently running a 250 watt radium on a coralvue 250 watt dimable ballast with a lumenbright reflector on my 70 gallon frag tank in my garage and the color and response of the corals is by far the best. This system is plumbed into the main system, so water perams are identical... only the lighting is different. An Icecap 660 fires the VHO actinics. Soon I plan on replacing one of the 72" actinics with a daylight so I can have more viewing hours. Currently the VHOs come on at about noon, but the halides dont come on until 3pm and turn off by 10pm. Moon lighting is taken care of by my ACIII and 3 lunar simulator leds mounted to my lumenbrights. The ACIII uses a calendar system to simulate the intensity of the moon. Some nights the tank is completely dark (new moon) and some nights they are on full blast (full moon), and everything in between. The light rack was designed and built by me. I had seen several similar designs on reefcentral so I just picked up some pulleys from home depot and started experimenting. I purchased a sliding actuator online. Plastic coated steel cable is connected to the rack thru eye-hooks and goes thru the pulley system and ends at the slide actuator. When the actuator is activated, it slides along and pulls the cable, pulling up the rack. The opposite happens when the down button is pushed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmike Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 Here is a quick video of the lightrack in action... you can see the slide actuator at the very end of the video. http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/smithrookie/?action=view¤t=DSC_0001.flv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kshack Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 Thanks. I have been told to go with 400's also (both Coral Vue and Sunlight Supply). I was thinking of a 250-400-250 arrangement with Radium bulb and no sup. I have a PFO pulse start ballast that I might give a try. Thinking 400W galaxy for the center, or may just go with all 250's. My tank is right on the limit for the LB (36"). My head hurts Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 Thanks for all details Mike - your design work on this whole system is really sweet. I got confused by that one pic in the garage though as the tank was roughly in the same spot so I thought you had converted the whole space around it DOH! Although... by the time you managed to haul all that gear upstairs, you probably wish you had! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fakkzz Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 That's a spectacular tank! SO neat to see what goes into it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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