50g FOWLR Setup

[JoJo]

congrats on the new addition buddy.

[prow]

nice additions, love the fungia.

[CMG]

Here is an update finally! I have been doing some military training then had to get caught up with work, school and life. So lots of news, not all good, and some pictures.

First the good news. I have purchased all of the pieces and parts of PVC pipe I will need to work on my overflow and sump project.

Then I found this wierd mutation on my zoanthids...Know what it is??




My other corals (fungia and bubble) seem to be doing fine and I fed the bubble the other day so it should be happy.

Unfortunately my newest addition, Shrek, was found dead when I came home today. I have been trying to figure out if he was sick or not for the last couple weeks. Some days he would seem to be peeling white flesh off kind of like a sunburn and other days he would be green and just fine. He was eating and swimming fine but would sometimes hid in caves vs. staying perched on the rocks and mushrooms.

I came home to this...




Needless to say I think my next new fish will be put in a QT tank and also given some kind of freshwater and or formulin bath.

[tbittner]

I'm sorry to hear about Shrek. I have no idea about your Zoa. I think I'd pull it and give it either an iodine bath or a freshwater bath. Hopefully someone else will chime in with advice. I'm still very new to corals.

[JoJo]

sorry to hear about that

[CMG]

Here is what I have so far for my PVC piping and sump/overflow setup. I have modified the water intake so that instead of straight piping it will have a 90 degree elbow. this is supposed to help with noise according to melevesreef.com. I put one union on the return piping for maintenance and installation. I am putting two unions on the overflow piping though since it is a little trickier. I also have a ball valve on each to control flow. Nothing is even close to being glued yet so any suggestions are very welcome!

Here is my mini mod to the overflow...

The OSHA Inspector got in the way on this shot...

Here we go..


I have a couple questions:
1) The way my return piping is setup right now the PVC stops before the top of the aquarium then goes into locline. This was for cosmetic purposes being that the loc line is black instead of white which sticks out. However I did not take into consideration that usually on a return line there is a hole drilled about 1/2" above the outlet so when water gets sucked down the return line during a power outage it will suck air and stop. What should I do about this? I assume I need to make the PVC come higher and then put an elbow on it. or maybe just make the loc line barley go into the water.

Here is about where it is now when its on the backside of the tank..


2) Can someone recommend a good light for the fuge. I couldnt find either one that was recomended on melvesreef at lowes or home depot. All lowes has is GE and Silvania or something and home depot has mostly philips and something else. I did buy a socket with a clamp to hang in there it will take up to 75watts

[JoJo]

from what i can tell everything looks good. as far as the return siphon issue, you could by a can of Krylon paint(i think thats what its called) & paint the PVC black then it can be above the tank rim & not be noticed.

[CMG]

Here is a little update on my tank:

Last night I glued all the PVC together and made a few more changes. I lengthend the return pipe so it comes up and over the tank. Tomorrow I am going to drill a hole in the last white piece so I dont get a return syphon if power goes out.



I have tested everything in the event of a power outage. The overflow does keep a syphon so I am happy about that. The flow seems to be very good to from the overflow. The only thing is that it is still too noisy for my liking and I am going to fix that tomorrow too by making a jimmy rigged standpipe in the outer box.

The sump is good. I put the heaters at both ends of it. I added a light from Lowes and also attached my skimmer down there. The fuge now has sand and chateo that I picked up today at the LFS. I didnt think there was enough flow through the fuge, seemed to be only flow over the top due to my design and so thats why I put the skimmer in there. There is now some moderate flow. Also is a piece of LR.



Looks kinda funny right now with the overflow and return plumbing sticking up but I am suposed to help my buddy build a canopy for it this month...I hope that works out.


Also while I was at the LFS I couldnt resist getting a new coral. Its a rock covered in purple coraline and Green Star Polyps. It also came with some brittle stars I think? They are soooo tiny and there seem to be dozens of them all over the rock. Yikes!!

Sorry about the pic, the sand I threw in the fuge made a cloudy tank!

[JoJo]

i think the tweaking came out real nice. i wouldnt worry about the overflow & return being seen, its part of aquariums (no different than having PHs in the DT) besides in a little while you wont even notice them. the sump came out nice too, good idea about the heaters because if one goes out you have a back up. if the flow through the fuge area still isnt enough for you, throw a PH in there so you have the flow to keep the chaeto tumbling. how much did the light run you? thats scary about the bittle stars, when i had my first SW tank, there was 2 clowns & one brittle for the longest time. i woke up one morning to the brittle wrapped around one clownfish! i put both in a container ran to the LFS so they could remove the brittle & told them to keep it.

[CMG]

Yikes! Whats really scarry about them is that they are hidden in the live rock and all that sticks out is the tentacles so there is no knowing if its just one or a bunch of them or how big it/they are!

The light was about $8 and the clamp/socket was around$10. The light I got was from Lowes and is made by silvania or sylvania and is a energy efficient one vs. a halogen. If you look down into the flood light you can see one of those spiral bulbs. I bought the sylvania one cause it was about half of what GE was charging for a similar bulb. I thinks its a 16watt comparable to a 65watt regular non-energy efficient bulb.

[JoJo]

i have a shop light that uses a power compact bulb & i think its about 15w, i wonder if that would get the job done?

[CMG]

I think trial and error are what get bulbs chosen for the fuge job. On melevesreef he used three before he found one that was really good. I think as long as it keeps the chaeto growing it should be fine. The other thing I wanted was for it to run cool. The halogen is deffenetly HOT! The energy saver ones run alot cooler. This helps since a fan would be needed otherwise.

[JoJo]

i agree with the trial & error. i did see that Melev changed his bulbs.

[CMG]

I havent updated in a while, busy with school, its starting to piss me off. I am sick of it hehe. I just want to go to work and come home and do what I want, have the whole night to myself and I just cant do that with group projects and homework and especially the papers!!!

So I am a little upset about some things in my tank too. My fungia/plate coral hasnt been puffing up at night after lights out. It usually doubles in size, I assume to try and catch food. I target fed it tonight after lights out directly into the mouth but the food just sat there, at least it didnt spit it back out liek it did a few days ago! haha Perhaps I will try a chunk of shrimp, maybe it doesnt like formula one.

Also, the brittle stars are worse than I thought. I was looking at the tank with my red light after lights out and there are massive amounts of tentecles sticking out of my new GSP rock!!! Its crazy I cant even describe it! Its too bad the rock is so far from the glass, otherwise I could get a clear picture. Its like Mars Attacks on that sucker!!

On a better note my bubble coral is doing good. It just eats up anything I give it! yum yum yum.

I get this gut feeling that something is wrong in my tank, like ever since I added the sump and pvc and all that maybe something leached into it. I say this because my mushroms have been shrivled up, the favia isnt opening at night and my shrimp isnt comeing out of his cave either. But the GSP, bubble coral and zoanthids are all acting normal. My tests indicate nothing is wrong. Can the PVC glue leach into a tank? I assume no since everyone uses PVC on their tanks.

[JoJo]

sorry to hear that. there's a chance something leached, did you do a vinegar bath on anything that needed it? i was planning on using PVC glue but Jack says to use Red Hot Glue because it doesnt leach