Tank Journal Archive

DavidS

The Resident Loony
Jul 17, 2011
3,337
1,033
Ballarat, Victoria
The Mid 2013 To End The Of 2015 Long Overdue Update
Well, the poor tank is currently in a state...

The tank was doing quite well until mid 2014 recovering from the late 2012 move. Then.... my personal life starting taking over weekends, the mileage on my car increased, as did the amount of time between my water changes :P
Having so many tanks to look after, this poor tank was the most neglected, in favour of maintaining the various frag tanks that required much less maintenance.
Being a cheeky bugger, I ripped out all the corals and moved them to frag tanks so I could run this poor bugger dark for 22 hours a day, which largely helped keep the algae down.

Fast forward.....
October 2015.
Move into new house with my girlfriend (now fiancée) and her daughter. Finally, I have my weekends back (they lived 200km away before this...so I was never home), and tank maintenance is back on the agenda.
@Synodontis came around and gave me a hand with the epic task of tank moving - this time done 2 weeks after the rest of my stuff was out of the house just so I would have time to focus. This was a lot of work as there were so many to move, even with all bar the DT pulled down ready to go.

The tank is back at the point now where the diatoms are starting to make a mess of my shiny new sand, and the rock work is every where as I've been taking it out to do hydrogen peroxide dips. I literally went back to a regular light cycle when the tank moved, so the algae came back with a vengeance. The peroxide is killing it off while the various reactors and bags of wonder chemicals do their thing. Right now I've got biopellets running, a phosphate removal product in a filter sock hanging the sump to deal with the phos leeching out of the rocks, and I'm playing with running purigen in a reactor to deal wth the organics. Purigen in a reactor is a bit of a trick; right now it's just go low flow. I suspect I might try to use filter wool to keep that media contained (it's very, very fine) and increase the flow. It's generally recommended to be used in bags rather than reactors, but I like to be different.

Waiting patiently so I can put the bulk of my corals back in, as I really do need the space in my frag tanks.
Next:
LIGHTS!!!!
The old lights are starting to struggle. Periodically, another LED fails, and I've literally been cutting the blown LEDs out and leaving it running. I seem to be down 4 or 5, and I'm finding now that having this massive chunk of aluminium channeling hiding inside the hood is a pain. I've always had the tank against the wall in past, but now its literally in the middle of the room, it's difficult to get the light out the way.

Plan? I have 2 x 2ft lights I built for another tank that use half decent looking enclosures. That tank isn't running at the moment, and I have another light for a tank that I'll never use again that has a couple of spare drivers that I can steal. I've bought another one of the enclosures. The existing LEDs on the lights aren't quite what I want for my DT - the DT has a lot of still fine RapidLED LEDs that I'd like to use rather than the lower quality Bridgeluxs on these 2 foot lights, so I'll strip them all down, and re-use the RapidLED LEDs, and just make up the difference with Bridgelux.

I'll build a frame with aluminium quick connect tubing, and hang the lights from those. It'll give me space to get into the tank around them, and get the lights up further away from the water so the LEDs should last longer (lots of issues with salt build up on the current setup).
Each light fitting will only run 2 channels, and use an extra 2 cores for the fan, so using some 6 pin molex connectors and 6 core alarm cable, I should be able to rig up a tidy way of making each light fitting easy to disconnect, and keep the exposed wiring tidy. This will be a Christmas job. I hope. If the ladies of the house let me.

New build will take me from the original 40something up to 60 LEDs.

Future:
I may plumb the frag tanks into the DT so I use a single sump. If I do this, I can move the chiller out of the really annoying spot its currently sitting (in front of the DT). This will also give me the ability to better plumb things for water changes. Hopefully by the time the lights are done, the tank is starting to mature again, and I can spend my tank time on other things.

I've also started playing around with frags again. I have plenty of them. Some of them have started taking over. I have a lot of work to do, so the Loony might be back soon :P
 

Lesley

Member
Apr 2, 2013
2,086
1,079
I ran Purigen in a reactor. I placed media in a woman's stocking inside the reactor. Worked a treat. Sounds like you have a good but time consuming plan. :). Good luck
 

DavidS

The Resident Loony
Jul 17, 2011
3,337
1,033
Ballarat, Victoria
:rolleyes
Hi @DavidS - it's good to hear from you.


Congratulations :)
Thank you @MagicJ
It's been a while :p

I've been a bit slack on water changes of late, so I have some idea of what you have been going through :rolleyes
Funny how things start to get a bit messy after a while :rolleyes
Not so much fun getting them back under control... that virtue of patience is in short supply. I want it clean, and I want it now :P
 

ReeferRob

Solidarité
Oct 22, 2014
2,661
931
Bel Air
We all get busy with life mate, it's hard for me when part of my life is reef tanks, lol. Congrats on the engagement!!
 

DavidS

The Resident Loony
Jul 17, 2011
3,337
1,033
Ballarat, Victoria
Frame for the new lights: Built.
Filter wool for the purigen reactor: Check (just need to put it in)

Side tracked by realising I need more tank space soon. Sore back and CBF putting one of the stands back together, so I shoved a light over a 4ft sump, filled it with water, shoved an old ATO rig on it, and calling that one done. Only needs to house zoa colonies so it won't be high tech lol. Gonna throw some matrix in the return area (it's just pumping to the first chamber lol), just so I can establish something of a bacteria colony. Throw some bacteria balancer in there, and it might help seed the matrix a bit. Without fish, the load will be negligible, so it should be usable quickly. Just waiting on an STC-1000 and a box as the thermostat on the heater in there looks to be way off. When I decide to get the 6 footer running again, at least it's sump will be ready :P

Back to the 4x2x2 lol...
Waiting on the last light heatsink, plaster and some hookup wire. At some point I need to strip the original 2 fittings of LEDs as they're not what I intend on using on this build (they currently have some bridgeluxes on them, whereas I want to reuse the CREEs from this tank's original lighting). Stripping it will be easy. Building the new lights is going to cost me a day lol.
Right now.. sore back, so I'll just stare at the diatoms and remind myself that they will eventually go away again.