Taqpol's 220 gallon custom Miracles tank!

[Padrino]

What is that in the center? Sweet pictures btw!

[Taqpol]

I'm pretty sure its just a giant see cucumber. There were ones like it everywhere, just like giant turds of the sea.

[Rickyrooz1]

Following along

[Taqpol]

Point and shoot pictures from Bora Bora!



The second resort had a man made "Coral Garden":


Me hand feeding Auriga butterflyfish in the above mentioned coral garden:








On our last day we took a Jeep 4x4 tour of the island. Nothing like going almost vertical up a muddy path!


While there we got to look out at the reef we went swimming in (little islands in the distance):


And visit one of the islands WWII Naval Cannons:

[vincent201089]

nice tank and awesome pics

[Bigjoe2531]

Bora Bora looks marvelous. How long did the flight take? Was it non-stop? How was the food? Must be lots of fresh mahi-mahi and tuna..

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by vincent201089

nice tank and awesome pics

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Bigjoe2531

Bora Bora looks marvelous. How long did the flight take? Was it non-stop? How was the food? Must be lots of fresh mahi-mahi and tuna..

The flight from LA to Tahiti took about twelve hours, but I don't remember most of it because it was at night and I pretty much slept through the whole thing. AFter that you have to go through customs in Tahiti and then take a 45 minute puddle jumper to Bora Bora.

The food was extraordinarily expensive. The exchange rate was $1 = 95 XPF, which I thought would be good, but in French Polynesia they do not use cents so something that should cost $1 US was actually 100 XPF. The weakened US dollar coupled with island costs on food led to a simple breakfast buffet costing ~ $35 US a person!

Also, neither my wife or I are big fish eaters. I did have a salmon grill once, and it was good, but I cannot comment on anything like mahi-mahi because the cost was too much for our meager budget. We actually ended up going to a super market and buying the materials to make PB&J for most lunch/dinners!

[nanoreefbro]

I've heard it's very expensive there nevertheless, Its definitely a beautiful place... Thanks for sharing the pics..

[Bigjoe2531]

Yes, Thanks.....

[mr9iron]

Very cool setup and congratulations of being married.

[evermann]

Originally Posted by Taqpol

Exactly the tank I'm looking for. Thank You! It's beautiful. U sold me on Miracles.

Read your thread, congrats on ur marriage, keep up the good work, impressive stuff, we'll be watching!!

[Taqpol]

Big picture update time! I would like to remind the viewers that this was all done over the past three weeks, not today!

The first thing I did when i got back from my honeymoon was to get my skimmer working (a SWC 250A for anyone who doesn't remember). It requires a water depth of 6" for optimum skimming, but the water depth in my skimmer section is 10". Hence I made a 4" tall PVC/Eggcrate stand that uses screw pipes for the legs so I could level it:


I also noticed that the NW impeller of my askoll pump appeared to be bent, so I took some pictures of it. I was going to ask if it was a problem, but I hooked it up and its been running fine for almost a month! Still, if someone thinks this is a problem please let me know...


Skimmer in the sump and running:




A few days later I got to work on hooking my cube tank up to the system. I'm starting to think I should apply for the "most holes drilled through a wall in one build thread" award.


These are two 1" drains for the herbie style overflow on my 2'x2'x14" cube tank. I had to use a different style silver end cap for these, but it matches pretty well. Also notice the USB and Ethernet cable stealthily hanging out of my return pipe hole. Those two will be for hooking the APEX up to the internet and a second EB8 I will have in the cube tank stand.


Opposite side of the wall. Its getting tight in here!


Cube tank in place!


My original 24 bulb DIY LED pendant. For more information refer to the LED build thread I linked in post #1.


I used my old Current USA hanging arm kit to suspend the LEDs, but I had to make some modifications. Using a crimping tool designed for cables I made loops around a standard 1/4" eye-bolt which is passed through a 1/4" hole in the heatsink and secured with nylon locking nuts on the bottom. The cables that come with the Current hanging arm kit can be adjusted independently so I can level it further in the future.


I also plan on building some type of snazzy looking acrylic cover for the LED pendent a la Sammy113 sometime in the near future. Even though the pendent will be over a foot above the water, the acrylic cover will prevent water from getting anywhere near the LEDs and should stop any galvanic corrosion that might affect my SS screws touching the aluminum heatsink.

[Taqpol]

Besides the finishing touches on the cube tank, I am now also working pretty diligently on my LED build as my corals will need some kind of light when I finally get them home. This is taken directly from my LED thread but it is relevant here as well.



I have decided to go with the DIY CAT4101 driver designed by Der Wille Zur Macht in the LED driver thread for my large tank setup. This allows me to have a more cost efficient driver for the larger setup, as well as the ability to use only two 24v high amperage power supplies that have PFC protection built in. No more worries about my house burning down with too many Meanwell drivers.

I am only using 2/3 of the board capabilities, but that is because I wanted to stick to my original plan and control 12 LEDs a channel with PWM. Heres the actual board, only ten parts in my application!


This setup is will run five boards (sixty LEDs) and is powered by this bad boy:


Arduino Mega clone. Currently this is providing a 5v source to the CAT4101's required 5v in as well as the 5v PWM. Once I figure out how to program it it will provide 5v to the 5v in pins of all ten boards as well as controlling ten channels of PWM.


And I have light! This is two strings of six XR-E Royal Blues. When I turn down the power supply so that it is only dropping ~0.8v more then the LED strings themselves the CAT4101's barely get warm to the touch!


Tested all ten of my boards with the old LED setup.


I turned the extra board Seeed Studio sent me into a spare with all three channels populated.


Arriving sometime tomorrow should be my five 8.4"x10" heatsinks from www.heatsinkusa.com . This time I am actually going to screw the LEDs down, but only because my father's company owns a CNC machine and he offered to have the heatsinks drilled and tapped for me. If anyone is interested in the CNC files or perhaps getting your own heatsinks tapped go ahead and send me a PM.

I also have all the LEDs I need to light the big tank (120 LEDs, 60 XR-E CW, 60 XR-E RB), but I have decided to incorporate 10 CREE XR-E Neutral Whites into the setup. These will be run two per each fixture, without optics, for more even spread and to try and add some more red light into the spectrum without driving the overall color temperature down too far.

[Taqpol]

Lastly, all of these picture were taken at least over a week ago. They have not been uploaded until now, because of this little devil we got a week ago:





She is a 3 year old Basset Hound / Something mix we picked up from the shelter. We are pretty sure its pit bull or Boxer because of the brindle coloring, but she has the sweetest personality ever. Definitely reminds me a lot of the Basset Hound I had while I was growing up. Surprisingly the cat has reacted fairly well to the new addition.

[salali]

this is an amazing tank can not wait to see more pics.
Congrats for you and your wife

[jdantunes]

Alex, congratulations to you and your wife for uniting your lives in holy matrimony. All the love and god's blessings shall fall upon your union.

What a great experience you had in your beautiful honeymoon.Thanks for sharing with us. Tahiti looks out of this world, just like heaven in my eyes. I will love to be there some day, and I know I will visit some day in my future.

I would like to get my scuba certificate first and then go. My father in law has invite me many times to go to his place in Roatan - Honduras. I seen pictures from there and they look as good but not better than Tahiti. But I understand that is not expensive as Tahiti is. He and my brother in law got scuba certified for next to nothing. So I know that I have to get there first.

Got a questions about your visit to Tahiti. You said that you had to go grocery shopping to replace some of your meals with PB&J. I'm curious how expensive are groceries there? Does your room at the resort had kitchen available? I love to cook and I'm not a big fan of eating out. I wonder how expensive is to cook there?

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by salali

this is an amazing tank can not wait to see more pics.
Congrats for you and your wife

Thanks! Did you stay in Pullman over the summer?

Originally Posted by jdantunes

Alex, congratulations to you and your wife for uniting your lives in holy matrimony. All the love and god's blessings shall fall upon your union.

What a great experience you had in your beautiful honeymoon.Thanks for sharing with us. Tahiti looks out of this world, just like heaven in my eyes. I will love to be there some day, and I know I will visit some day in my future.

I would like to get my scuba certificate first and then go. My father in law has invite me many times to go to his place in Roatan - Honduras. I seen pictures from there and they look as good but not better than Tahiti. But I understand that is not expensive as Tahiti is. He and my brother in law got scuba certified for next to nothing. So I know that I have to get there first.

Got a questions about your visit to Tahiti. You said that you had to go grocery shopping to replace some of your meals with PB&J. I'm curious how expensive are groceries there? Does your room at the resort had kitchen available? I love to cook and I'm not a big fan of eating out. I wonder how expensive is to cook there?

Scuba is cool, but depending on your interests I don't feel its necessary for Bora Bora. Most of the really cool coral areas are within 10 ft of the surface, so snorkeling them is very easy. If you wanted to swim with sharks, however, scuba would be really cool. The price on groceries wasn't horrific, but it wasn't the cheapest either. Neither of our resorts had kitchens in the rooms, but I know if you are planning on staying for 2 weeks to over a month there are some very nice condos you can rent that have kitchens.

[Taqpol]

I finally went ahead and ordered my clean up crew. Thanks to a trio of irresistible little fishies I got free shipping to boot!

10 Turbo Snails
50 Astraea Snails
25 "Normal" Nassarious
25 Tonga Nassarious
2 Emerald Crabs
2 Peppermint Shrimp (1 DOA)
2 Fighting Conchs



I also got a trio of Carberryi Anthias, and I'll have two more coming on Tuesday. I had originally told myself I wasn't going to do Anthias in this tank (because they get fairly big for schooling fish in a tank), but I couldn't resist the color or the price!



Drip acclimating everything for over an hour. In this picture you can tell how much of a mess things have become.





In other news, I get my fish and coral back on Sunday!

[mpoletti]

The tank is coming along very nicely

Where did you stay in Bora Bora? I almost hate seeing pictures of the island as I doubt that we will ever make it back.

[Dejavu]

Very nice Alex. I bit your pretty happy to be getting your corals back .

[Padrino]

Sweet deal alex, looking forward to seeing everything back in the tank

[salali]

Yes I was here in Pullman taking classes.

[khaosinc]

Wow... looking good although I'm not sure I could see how anyone could leave the NW for much of anything...

And I think you left a mirror image of your cat here... LOL

[Padrino]

Originally Posted by Taqpol

I finally went ahead and ordered my clean up crew. Thanks to a trio of irresistible little fishies I got free shipping to boot!

10 Turbo Snails
50 Astraea Snails
25 "Normal" Nassarious
25 Tonga Nassarious
2 Emerald Crabs
2 Peppermint Shrimp (1 DOA)
2 Fighting Conchs



I also got a trio of Carberryi Anthias, and I'll have two more coming on Tuesday. I had originally told myself I wasn't going to do Anthias in this tank (because they get fairly big for schooling fish in a tank), but I couldn't resist the color or the price!



Drip acclimating everything for over an hour. In this picture you can tell how much of a mess things have become.





In other news, I get my fish and coral back on Sunday!

Alex,
What is with the black Acer box under the display?

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by mpoletti

The tank is coming along very nicely

Where did you stay in Bora Bora? I almost hate seeing pictures of the island as I doubt that we will ever make it back.

I didn't know you stayed in Bora Bora! I would love to see some of your pictures if you have them somewhere online.

We spent the first three nights at the Sofitel Marara and the last five nights at the Bora Bora Pearl Beach Resort.

Originally Posted by Dejavu

Very nice Alex. I bit your pretty happy to be getting your corals back .

Very!

Originally Posted by salali

Yes I was here in Pullman taking classes.

Thats good that you didn't have to move the tank!