lgerold
Active Member
Hi all!
We started the upgrade from our 125 gallon reef tank, to the new 210 gallon reef tank at 10:30 am on Sunday. Would have liked to start earlier, but my friend, Chad, had a very long drive.
I promise pictures soon - I took a few during the move, and I'll be taking more when the water fully clears.
We were faced with moving roughly 50+ corals, 12 fish, 140 lbs live sand, and 200 pounds of life rock. We carefully placed the corals and smaller live rock/coral combinations into bins, and removed the live rock to large bins and buckets, covering with wet newspaper (we continued to irrigate several times during the day. We next caught the fish, and carefully contained them in buckets, with lots of aeration. We then drained the tank, saving about 40 gallons of the cleanest water, and gathered the sand, placing it into buckets.
We had the 125 broken down, and ready to move out by 1:40 pm. Things were moving along pretty well.
We moved in the new stand, and tank, and began dealing with the biggest challenge, the plumbing.
The new sump/refugium is pretty cool. It holds 66 gallons, in three compartments.
Half of the water falls into a center compartment, first through a filter pad (temporary) and dispersal tray, then into a media tray with carbon and phosphate media. Then, the water flows through three very thick sponges, which Chad and the Sump Guy (The Aquarium Company - Winthrop MN) call media. Now, I'm not sold on this sponge thing. I'm told that these very dense sponges act as live rock, removing nitrates. But, I'll give it a whirl. I'll be watching the nitrates. After the water flows through this media, it heads into the sump, to be pumped back up to the display tank.
The other half of the water drops into the 'fuge through a spray bar (submerged). Water is pumped out of the 'fuge through a 36 watt UV sterilizer, and up to two outlets at the back corners of the display tank, that are set up to alternate using a scwd. Works well. Water also flows over the top of the 'fuge, into the sump.
Water is pumped from the sump using a Mag 12, up to a U shaped spray bar behind the live rock. We also have a MaxiJet running at the top center of the tank for more circulation. I plan to add another MaxiJet or similar powerhead as well, once I figure out exactly were we need more current. The power head is nearly completely hidden by the live rock.
It was pretty tough figuring out the plumbing. We were working pretty much from the seat of our pants, with a rough idea of what we wanted to accomplish. Trouble is, some of this stuff was hard to predict - we didn't exactly know what Chad had in mind, and trying to predict exactly what fittings and hose materials would work the best was impossible. We had a heckuva stockpile of fittings, pipe, hose, etc. We did manage, with only one journey to Menards (40 minutes away.)
We were really disappointed that we couldn't get our Remora C Pro into the sump/refugium. It's just too tall. We had planned to use the two undersized protein skimmers for a month or two while we figured out exactly what we wanted to buy or build DIY. That project has been moved up now. We do have the smaller Protein Skimmer installed, but that will not be sufficient in the long run.
Once we got the plumbing done (musta been about 11 pm) we began the fun part, building the tank.
First, we spread out the old live sand in the rear of the tank, saving the new, prettiest, Puerto Rican live sand for the front of the tank. We then placed the original live rock in the tank. My original live rock consists of several large pieces, and some smaller pieces.
The new live rock is all "red" branch rock. I also saw two special 12-14 inch broad plate rocks, about 1" thick, at one of the LFS. I had special plans for these two rocks, so I purchased them.
Chad carefully placed the 150 pounds of branch rock next. He started out wedging the branches in between the larger pieces of my original live rock. He created a jungle gym for the corals and fish. He left a place to snuggle in the two plate rocks, as special display areas.
On the largest plate, we placed most of my zoos. This should be a beautiful field of zoos, given some time. I have about 8 different colors, and room to add more!
Around the smaller plate, Chad set up a mushroom and soft coral section. He has separated the frilly's, yuma ricordias, florida ricordias, and the other mushrooms (names escape me now.) We've got a small pulsing xenia group, a toadstool, and a colt coral too.
I won't go into more details of the other corals in the rest of the tank. I want to give the tank some time to stabilize, and I'll take some pictures!
Mike (Wonder-Hubby) and I fell into bed, exhaused, at 3:30 am. Believe it or not, I surrendered to sleep immediately. Poor Chad didn't make it home until 4:30 am. A really long day!
The fish are completely thrilled. I can almost see the grin on Treasure's face, as he sometimes races through the wild rock work. "Treasure" is our 4 1/2" yellow tang. Scooter (Scooter blenny) is busily looking for goodies. Rainbow (mandarin) in and out of all the nooks and crannies, looking for bugs. "Puppy" our half black mimic tang, loves the taste of the new sand. He's still mapping out the pathways. The perc pair is settling back in with their carpet. The tomato female is settling in with her ritteri, at the other end of the tank. They switched anemones for a time, but things are back to normal.
The corals are mostly looking pretty rough. I expect that there was some serious chemical warfare going on the the holding tanks yesterday, even though we were careful not to allow any to touch. Already, within that last 6 hours, they are all looking better, beginning to swell back up again.
I check the water params tonight. Some of the new live rock was a little punky smelling, so I'll be watching very carefully for need to do water changes.
Nitrates: 0 to .25
Salinity: 35 ppt
Calc: 400
Alk: 11
Phos: .10 (I suppose some is released from digging up the sand?)
PH: 7.85
Can you guys help me understand something? Why in the world, would I still be dealing with low end of PH? I woulda figured, with a nearly complete water change like this, using Reef Crystals, that my PH would be higher than this. Yes, RO water.
Well, I'm sure your tired of reading this. I'll post pictures in a few days!
We started the upgrade from our 125 gallon reef tank, to the new 210 gallon reef tank at 10:30 am on Sunday. Would have liked to start earlier, but my friend, Chad, had a very long drive.
I promise pictures soon - I took a few during the move, and I'll be taking more when the water fully clears.
We were faced with moving roughly 50+ corals, 12 fish, 140 lbs live sand, and 200 pounds of life rock. We carefully placed the corals and smaller live rock/coral combinations into bins, and removed the live rock to large bins and buckets, covering with wet newspaper (we continued to irrigate several times during the day. We next caught the fish, and carefully contained them in buckets, with lots of aeration. We then drained the tank, saving about 40 gallons of the cleanest water, and gathered the sand, placing it into buckets.
We had the 125 broken down, and ready to move out by 1:40 pm. Things were moving along pretty well.
We moved in the new stand, and tank, and began dealing with the biggest challenge, the plumbing.
The new sump/refugium is pretty cool. It holds 66 gallons, in three compartments.
Half of the water falls into a center compartment, first through a filter pad (temporary) and dispersal tray, then into a media tray with carbon and phosphate media. Then, the water flows through three very thick sponges, which Chad and the Sump Guy (The Aquarium Company - Winthrop MN) call media. Now, I'm not sold on this sponge thing. I'm told that these very dense sponges act as live rock, removing nitrates. But, I'll give it a whirl. I'll be watching the nitrates. After the water flows through this media, it heads into the sump, to be pumped back up to the display tank.
The other half of the water drops into the 'fuge through a spray bar (submerged). Water is pumped out of the 'fuge through a 36 watt UV sterilizer, and up to two outlets at the back corners of the display tank, that are set up to alternate using a scwd. Works well. Water also flows over the top of the 'fuge, into the sump.
Water is pumped from the sump using a Mag 12, up to a U shaped spray bar behind the live rock. We also have a MaxiJet running at the top center of the tank for more circulation. I plan to add another MaxiJet or similar powerhead as well, once I figure out exactly were we need more current. The power head is nearly completely hidden by the live rock.
It was pretty tough figuring out the plumbing. We were working pretty much from the seat of our pants, with a rough idea of what we wanted to accomplish. Trouble is, some of this stuff was hard to predict - we didn't exactly know what Chad had in mind, and trying to predict exactly what fittings and hose materials would work the best was impossible. We had a heckuva stockpile of fittings, pipe, hose, etc. We did manage, with only one journey to Menards (40 minutes away.)
We were really disappointed that we couldn't get our Remora C Pro into the sump/refugium. It's just too tall. We had planned to use the two undersized protein skimmers for a month or two while we figured out exactly what we wanted to buy or build DIY. That project has been moved up now. We do have the smaller Protein Skimmer installed, but that will not be sufficient in the long run.
Once we got the plumbing done (musta been about 11 pm) we began the fun part, building the tank.
First, we spread out the old live sand in the rear of the tank, saving the new, prettiest, Puerto Rican live sand for the front of the tank. We then placed the original live rock in the tank. My original live rock consists of several large pieces, and some smaller pieces.
The new live rock is all "red" branch rock. I also saw two special 12-14 inch broad plate rocks, about 1" thick, at one of the LFS. I had special plans for these two rocks, so I purchased them.
Chad carefully placed the 150 pounds of branch rock next. He started out wedging the branches in between the larger pieces of my original live rock. He created a jungle gym for the corals and fish. He left a place to snuggle in the two plate rocks, as special display areas.
On the largest plate, we placed most of my zoos. This should be a beautiful field of zoos, given some time. I have about 8 different colors, and room to add more!
Around the smaller plate, Chad set up a mushroom and soft coral section. He has separated the frilly's, yuma ricordias, florida ricordias, and the other mushrooms (names escape me now.) We've got a small pulsing xenia group, a toadstool, and a colt coral too.
I won't go into more details of the other corals in the rest of the tank. I want to give the tank some time to stabilize, and I'll take some pictures!
Mike (Wonder-Hubby) and I fell into bed, exhaused, at 3:30 am. Believe it or not, I surrendered to sleep immediately. Poor Chad didn't make it home until 4:30 am. A really long day!
The fish are completely thrilled. I can almost see the grin on Treasure's face, as he sometimes races through the wild rock work. "Treasure" is our 4 1/2" yellow tang. Scooter (Scooter blenny) is busily looking for goodies. Rainbow (mandarin) in and out of all the nooks and crannies, looking for bugs. "Puppy" our half black mimic tang, loves the taste of the new sand. He's still mapping out the pathways. The perc pair is settling back in with their carpet. The tomato female is settling in with her ritteri, at the other end of the tank. They switched anemones for a time, but things are back to normal.
The corals are mostly looking pretty rough. I expect that there was some serious chemical warfare going on the the holding tanks yesterday, even though we were careful not to allow any to touch. Already, within that last 6 hours, they are all looking better, beginning to swell back up again.
I check the water params tonight. Some of the new live rock was a little punky smelling, so I'll be watching very carefully for need to do water changes.
Nitrates: 0 to .25
Salinity: 35 ppt
Calc: 400
Alk: 11
Phos: .10 (I suppose some is released from digging up the sand?)
PH: 7.85
Can you guys help me understand something? Why in the world, would I still be dealing with low end of PH? I woulda figured, with a nearly complete water change like this, using Reef Crystals, that my PH would be higher than this. Yes, RO water.
Well, I'm sure your tired of reading this. I'll post pictures in a few days!
I can't wait to see pics!
