Silver97's Official tank chronicle

[silver97]

Forgot to mention that all of the fish are healthy and active. My sixline wrasse gave me a scare a few weeks ago, I think he got scared when he was sleeping and scraped himself up on the rocks pretty bad. His whole left side was damaged and his fin was shredded. Really though I would have lost him, but the tough little guy pulled through and has grown everything back just like it was. The corals have mostly been good. 2 of the 3 zoa colonies have disappeared due to the hair algae problem, and a lot of the GSP is receding too. I might do another round of the hydrogen peroxide treatments and hope that the addition of the chaeto can absorb all of the phosphates.
This was what the sump and pipework looked like when it was all ready to be put together.

This is the sump filled with the chaeto in it, and right after with the light turned on. I also threw in the flame algae that had been growing in my tank, but it broke off and I threw it in there to see how it would do. It really didn't grow all too fast, not that it's supposed to anyway, but I ended up getting rid of it because it was taking up too much space.
These are some after pictures

Here is a FTS, you can see the aforementioned ghetto return outlet in the back.

This is the sump now, I know with the light on you cant really see much, but I molded the mat into a ball so that it stay a little more submerged

This is a better look at it without the light on from up top, takes up just about half of the area of the sump
Really cool to see all the pods swimming in there too.

Thats all I got right now, any more questions or comments just post and I will answer sooner rather than later

 

[yungreefer2410]

Your sump doesn't have enough empty volume so that it does not overflow when it is full? Or you have turned the power off and it was going to for sure overflow if you did not turn the power back on?

Does the water stop when it reaches the bottom "teeth" of the overflow? This shouldn't be enough to overflow your sump, in most cases anyway.

Or perhaps it is back siphoning via the return? If this is the case, simply drill a hole that will "break the siphon" just under the waterline. so when the water starts to drain air will enter this hole and break the siphon.

I typed that up before I saw your post with pictures haha.

Looks Iike your back siphoning via the return line.

Drill a small hole just under the waterline on the 1" pipe. This should solve your problem me thinks.

 

[silver97]

Sorry for the long wait on the reply, but I will do that to the return line soon. Thanks for confirming what I thought I had to do!
Well the one thing I thought wouldn't happen happened. I got off work late last night and was chilling in my room. It was about 1 AM and I still wasn't very tired, so I was just watching some shows on my iPad. I had only a small lamp on in my room, and at this point it had been on for a while and shouldn't have startled the fish.
Out of nowhere, my six line wrasse jumped a full 5 feet out of my tank.
I heard the splash and the thud of it hitting the carpet. I shot up and looked at it, I was just stunned for about 30 seconds. Then I realized I better get him back in before he dies.He went in and got right back to his hole that he sleeps in.
Today he looks a bit rugged, sort of what he looked like when I described his incident in the last post, but not as bad as then. I think he is just an easily scared little guy. No idea what scared him though. I might go and get some eggcrate soon to make a quick lid to the tank. I have a glass one but with the addition of the new plumbing it will no longer fit.
I have also been looking at the real possibility of getting a new tank soon. My eyes are set on the Red Sea Reefer 350. I really love the look of it and I will soon have a perfect place for it in my living room. In the event that everything works out and I am able to purchase it, I think I will be keeping my current tank up as a quarantine tank until I get my full desired stocking list. I will definitely be taking a slower approach to setting this one up and getting everything ready. I still need to get a few more paychecks so I can buy everything needed, but all I'm going to be doing until then is researching other people's build threads and different websites to learn the best things that go along with it. It will still probably be a few months until I buy anything for it. I was thinking of waiting until some website has a sale and buying the equipment then, but who knows.

 

[silver97]

FINAL UPDATE
Yes, it is done. I had a thread up in the last month or so seeing if anyone on here wanted my fish, but no one answered. Not a problem though, the LFS took them right away. Definitely a bittersweet weekend.

Had all of the fish out yesterday, but still a bunch of nasty algae and bristle worms in the tank. I figured the live rock would smell bad with the worms drying out or rotting in them, so I added a gallon and a half of vinegar to the tank and let science work it's magic. This also took care of any snails or other things living in my tank. I know this is a crude way of getting rid of them, but let me tell you, no diarrhea smell from any of the rocks or the tank at all. If you are actually someone who followed along and was wondering what happened to the blue tux urchin, he had died earlier in the week, otherwise I would have turned him in too. I was out of town this whole week and he was absolutely alive then, but when I came back just his skeleton remained. Cleaned everything else out and now my room is immaculate.

It is a huge weight off my chest to finally be rid of all this stuff. I think it was causing long term breathing and sleeping problems for me. We'll see after tonight. I now know what it was like to have operated a reef tank, and while I am still entirely interested in saltwater fish, i am in no rush to get another tank anytime soon. Heck, I might wait until I'm a millionaire and can pay a company to come do all the maintenance for me.

Just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on here who helped me out when I was completely clueless or needed help. I took in a lot of knowledge and inspiration over these past 3 years and know I couldn't have done it without input from those who helped me.
Until next time