Tank Journal Archive

[slin1977]

Introduction

Aitutaki is an Island part of the Cook Island group. A half hour flight from the mainland capital Rarotonga, paradise awaits your arrival. Greeted by a welcoming string band , floral and seashell necklaces are placed around your neck at the small airport ,you are overwhelmed by the arrival...

After settling in for a few days relaxing by the pool, kayaking the lagoon its time to put on the scuba gear and explore the reef. We wont be going to the outer reef zone as the current and waves are too strong. We will scuba the reef back zone, where walls of zoanthids are protected from relentless sand blastings and wave action. You will come across some hard coral , maybe a clam or two.You will be greeted by some enquisitive shrimp and a few fish, welcome to my island, my Aitutaki.


This is a current photo of my Zoa garden, this tank is 18 months old.

 

[Jonny Glover]

NIce zoa garden. How many zoa types all up?

 

[MTG]

love the clam nils i think you need to clean that glass. ;) wheres this secret stand update?

 

[MagicJ]

Agree with Matt, that clam looks pretty special.

 

[slin1977]

NIce zoa garden. How many zoa types all up?

At a count I did a while ago there were 21.
There are easily more to collect, I thought I would stop there for a bit, BTW the clam is just a regular squamosa, the kind of pattern you see often.

Cheers,

PS matt, an SLR takes wicked photos compared to my camera, I had cleaned the glass, lol.

 

[MTG]

haha jeez you have starfire glass but no SLR?

 

[slin1977]

Starfire is a small price to pay compared to an SLR.
I get my glass wholesale.....costs ten percent more to get that starfire you know you want, as I said, small price to pay, lol.

Regards
The glass merchant

 

[MTG]

wheres my starfire glass? your making my next tank. you can have a vacation on the goldie :cool:

 

[slin1977]

Sounds like a great plan Matt, judging from all those hotties hanging around your place when I met you a couple months ago, you wont need to ask me twice about coming round, ha ha

 

[MTG]

haha your funny nils very funny.

 

[slin1977]

Here are some photos of the tank build.

 

[slin1977]

Some photos of the stand.

 

[MTG]

Love it Nils!! how far are you into setting it up now? :drool

 

[slin1977]

Here are some photos of the set up.

 

[slin1977]

Hello Matt,

I have not been able to move the tank into its spot yet, I am suffering from terrible man flu ATM.
I am sure its going to get filled and scaped this weekend though....Should be good to finally get this tank wet.

 

[MTG]

That will be great. now i can see you didn't realy go with a closed loop. just using the return as flow. i can see that causing some issues as the drains will be extremely noisy due to the amount of flow going through it.
i have a feeling you will need more flow then that. im guessing it looks like a 7500lph return. t'd off 3 times once you account for the loss of head due to height and diameter of the pipes it will be less then you thing. (but you could prove me wrong) any reason you didn't go with a closed loop?

 

[MagicJ]

Hi mate.

Nice looking build you have there - any concerns about the non-return connection on your return pump holding up long term?

 

[slin1977]

Hello MagicJ

Yes there are concerns about using a non-return connection like this. I have heard storys from my friends that have come home to wet floors. They still design and build tanks this way...

 

[MTG]

That wouldnt be ideal if it drained all the way down to those outlets. could you use dual non return valves for redundancy?

 

[MagicJ]

I have heard storys from my friends that have come home to wet floors.

:bulge - hope it works for you.

Are you planning on an ATO to make up for any evaporation losses? The baffle in the return section doesn't look very high?