dmorel's 220 Round & Shallow reef build

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by Dejavu

Any updates?

Only that work is a significant drain on my time...

Actual tank updates, I'm STILL dealing with random STN on the occasional coral, continued clipping of injured areas occurs. I have no idea why this is happening, none. And it's so completely random. Driving me crazy. Everything else is doing well. Water chemistry is as far as we can tell is good, though I did have a little salinity creep, but that was corrected pretty easily.

I did add two of the eco par38 spotlights, all blue... which are nice, allowed me to shut off so far one of the MH's, so I have only two of the MT-150's running right now. Trying to reduce heat a little and get a little more shadowing in the tank. I may add some more LED and start reducing even further the amount of MH I am running, but I'm not certain yet. What I do like is that I'm finally getting some different looks in different parts of the tanks. I also have been blasting some of the SPS with the deep blue superkaru bulbs, and things like my red planet are really responding to that, getting some very nice green out of it, though growth is slower than I would expect.

Overall, it's still a work in progress, and I simply don't know what to say about the random STN. Always from the base up, very very slow and completely indiscriminate as to which coral it decides to happen to at any given time.

I will take some new pictures in the next few weeks, been a crazy summer so far as it relates to work hours and business trips, so down town has been a little lacking.

[Dejavu]

Sorry to hear about the trouble. Hopefully things improve, I would love to say what the cause is but in most cases you never really know.

[dmorel]

Things are slowly getting back to normal...
Quick cell phone snaps, the greens in the red planet are fantastic (too bad you can't see it in these pics)...

[Elliott]

glad to hear it, always peaks and valleys in this business

[crazzy]

Originally Posted by dmorel

Only that work is a significant drain on my time...

Actual tank updates, I'm STILL dealing with random STN on the occasional coral, continued clipping of injured areas occurs. I have no idea why this is happening, none. And it's so completely random. Driving me crazy. Everything else is doing well. Water chemistry is as far as we can tell is good, though I did have a little salinity creep, but that was corrected pretty easily.

I did add two of the eco par38 spotlights, all blue... which are nice, allowed me to shut off so far one of the MH's, so I have only two of the MT-150's running right now. Trying to reduce heat a little and get a little more shadowing in the tank. I may add some more LED and start reducing even further the amount of MH I am running, but I'm not certain yet. What I do like is that I'm finally getting some different looks in different parts of the tanks. I also have been blasting some of the SPS with the deep blue superkaru bulbs, and things like my red planet are really responding to that, getting some very nice green out of it, though growth is slower than I would expect.

Overall, it's still a work in progress, and I simply don't know what to say about the random STN. Always from the base up, very very slow and completely indiscriminate as to which coral it decides to happen to at any given time.

I will take some new pictures in the next few weeks, been a crazy summer so far as it relates to work hours and business trips, so down town has been a little lacking.

Someone posted somewhere{ ? } that they finally found that they had stray electricity in their tank, and after correcting that problem, their STN stopped?

[s.erel]

Hi dmorel. My name is salih. I'm from ankara (turkey). İ really love your tank. But if any excuses, i wanna ask u small question?
1) First of all; where can i buy tank, like yours?
2) what is this tank cost???
3)what is this tank specific measurements?
4) thanx for asking...

good work... (by the way)

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by crazzy

Someone posted somewhere{ ? } that they finally found that they had stray electricity in their tank, and after correcting that problem, their STN stopped?

That's a good thought, I will have to check, things are pretty good right now, at least the SPS is doing well, now I have some acans that are not happy... Might be flow or light since I moved them and dropped them under a full LED fixture. We'll see.

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by s.erel

Hi dmorel. My name is salih. I'm from ankara (turkey). İ really love your tank. But if any excuses, i wanna ask u small question?
1) First of all; where can i buy tank, like yours?
2) what is this tank cost???
3)what is this tank specific measurements?
4) thanx for asking...

good work... (by the way)

1. Boy, I have no idea. I found mine in a local shop. I happen to know it was a left over piece from a big cylinder made for a commercial deployment in a rainforest cafe, which is a big restaurant chain here in the states that puts up lots of big aquariums. Finding a tank like this is more luck than anything unless you are going to spend a LOT of money
2. I paid 1200 for the tank and stand, it was a bargain. I put a few more dollars into having an overflow built and then well a LOT more dollars into everything else. Like always, the tank and stand are nothing compared to the rest
3. It's a 5' diameter, 18" tall.
4. you're welcome and thank you for the nice compliment, good luck.

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by Elliott

glad to hear it, always peaks and valleys in this business

Always. But it's good these days. I might take some pics later today when the light comes on, I didn't realize just how awful that cell phone shot was until I just looked at it again

Need to have something nicer than that as the last image in my thread...

[beex215]

the first circle tank ive seen here so far. the system is crazy. how many gallons evaporate from that system with that large uncovered tank?

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by beex215

the first circle tank ive seen here so far. the system is crazy. how many gallons evaporate from that system with that large uncovered tank?

Honestly, I have no idea... I would guess somewhere around 4/5 but I never measured.

[dmorel]

OK, a few slightly better pics (just point and shooting with the camera instead of fancy white balance adjusting etc, but better than those awful cell phone ones!)

[dmorel]

Tomorrow is a big day for the round and shallow reef.
We'll be pulling all rock, fish, coral, water and sand from the tank.
Drilling for and installing a closed loop.
Using a reeflo super dart gold with four 1" returns each with a flow accelerator.
Probably going to keep the tunze's in place as well for just massive flow.
Already upgraded the return pump to a Sicee Syncra 5.

Will scrub the rock and do a heavy dip on the SPS while it's out of the tank.
We've already made up 300 gallons of new water to replace and it's been circulating in my garage for the last few days.
Dosed some chemi clean on Saturday morning, just for kicks to help clean things up before the big day (haven't really noticed it doing anything but...)

Will obviously be doing a new rock stack, might try to get a little more open this time around and consolidating the coral in the tank into "zones" which should make both flow manipulation and lighting placement a lot of fun. (well fun is probably an overstatement).

Pics documenting the process TBD, but definitely will at least take a few shots post rebuild.
I've spent the day cleaning the skimmer, the carbon and GFO reactors (since they are both offline for the chemi clean anyway) and generally "getting ready"

Should be a fun day.

[kaserpick]

Sounds like a big project! That'll be great though for some extra flow!

I have a question. Did you ditch the Won Bros spotlights altogether? I may have skipped over that part. I know you bought new spots, but how did you like the Won Bros Spots?

[crodger]

Good luck, I always hate re aquascaping

[dmorel]

Originally Posted by kaserpick

Sounds like a big project! That'll be great though for some extra flow!

I have a question. Did you ditch the Won Bros spotlights altogether? I may have skipped over that part. I know you bought new spots, but how did you like the Won Bros Spots?

The flow is pretty great, so good in fact I was able to get rid of the tunze's completely, nothing but the closed loop and the return.

I didn't get rid of the Won Bros, but I haven't fired them up in probably 9 months. Just don't need that much light. They were "OK" but nothing like the SuperKaru's.

Originally Posted by crodger

Good luck, I always hate re aquascaping

Thanks, it came out good enough for now. I have a lot more room available. Removed a ton of stuff to let things grow out and get to about as minimal a rock stack as I could. Haven't taken any "good" pictures yet, but a quick snap after we finished moving rock around that shows the closed loop in action. (You can sort of see the crazy water motion on the surface, and that I need to take the recycling out).

[auem]

this is a fantastic built...congrats for such work...

[Elliott]

more flow, less equipment

[dantimdad]

I agree with Elliott! That has to be the cleanest under tank install I have ever seen!

Can't wait to see more detailed picks of the rescape.

[dmorel]

Things are returning to normal, and I'm very happy with the closed loop.
Picked up a few pieces from my favorite LFS Reef Culture yesterday including these off the hook zoa's...

[Elliott]

those are insane

[maxxII]

They look like Darth Maul's...

Nice!

Another nice source of Zoa is www.exoticfrag.us I picked up some very nice Zoa's there just recently....

Nick

[asacopoo]

really nice never seen a tank like this before

[dmorel]

My thoughts on the new closed loop.

When we were first planning this tank, we talked about a closed loop and decided it was a bad idea. Now that it's actually in, I can say that I wish we had decided to do it way back then.

Flow has been a major issue in this tank, even with four tunze 6055's. Now that I've got the closed loop in, even way dialed back, the flow is orders of magnitude better.

I think we probably should have gone with four outlets instead of three, since I have one area that is a tiny bit of a dead spot, though I'm pretty sure if I simply change out the single flow accelerator for a dual headed piece of locline and shoot one in each direction, that will solve for it.

At the moment however, I have most excellent water flow for my SPS, and have been able to adjust things to have several different flow zones (my ORA goni for instance likes very low flow, and I've been able to achieve creating a section like that).

Overall, I'm much happier with the flow in the tank since we did the move, and despite the number of pieces we lost during the change over, I'm glad we did it anyway.

Thoughts on the changeover

I'm absolutely convinced there was a bad bacterial infection in the tank.
Both myself and one of the guys who worked on the tank with me because fairly ill the evening we completed the swap. I had a fever in excess of 101, and for a few days after the cuts on my hands were swollen and infected. It was frankly pretty scary. We are both fine now. A third guy who helped out was fine. Dunno... I believe removing the sand completely was necessary, and I'm glad we did and replaced it with something fresh.

We were very aggressive with dipping everything while it was out of the tank. Too aggressive I think. I lost a number of very nice pieces and I'm sad about that. Fortunately nothing that is not replaceable. Most everything is starting to color back up now, except the pearlberry and a common rose milli. Both are growing, but not coloring up yet. It's only been a few weeks though, I expect they will both recover very nicely.

The red planet growth I am getting is now phenomenal, though I've noticed that I'm loosing some of the green. It was BRIGHT green before, but starting to become hard to see now. I wonder if it's just related to the massive growth spurt it's on. Don't really know for sure. Still a beautiful piece.

The one thing I can say for sure is I have yet to see the random STN return. I'm not saying it won't, I just haven't seen it yet so that's great news.

thoughts on MH spotlights
I love my superkaru's, but it's about time for another bulb replacement. I probably have another 2-3 months tops left on the current set of bulbs. That's 200 bucks a bulb at 5 bulbs, plus shipping for 6 months. Really I have to order 10 to make it even worth doing. You do the math. I'm thinking about replacing most of the MH spotlights with LED's. My LFS Reef Culture has been running their entire store on LED's and with their success and the success of other folks I'm seeing with LED's it might be time to make the switch. I'm not sure yet, but if I do it's coming soon...

Thoughts on new pictures
my dog ate the little thing that attaches the camera to the tripod so I can only shoot point and shoots instead of RAW which means the colors are never right, but I'll take some more soon, maybe even this afternoon depending on how good the football games are...

[Elliott]

interesting regarding your cutaneous infections and fever, the timing of fever really doesn't make sense though as it would probably take a minimum of a few days before manifesting into symptoms, more likely a human derived viral infection causing the fever and swollen cuts from contaminated water you were working in

good news about your flow, I've been using closed loop/eductors for some time now, with a VFD, and really happy both from a flow perspective and little/no maintenance. I'm planning a similar set up for a larger display. one unique advantage you have is a circular inertia which takes little energy to keep going, look forward to seeing pics, thanks