My 500 + gallon system. Last 13 years to now. Build, Aquascaping & more. Lots of pics

[FishyBiz]

How is the tank reacting to the new sump change?

[slief]

Originally Posted by FishyBiz

How is the tank reacting to the new sump change?

Too soon to tell. OK I guess. My temp dropped 5 degrees between 5:30AM and 11PM when I fired it back up. I think I made a mistake keeping the lights off during the swap but I wanted to keep the fish as calm as possible. IO wasnt expecting the temps to drop like that but it was cold yesterday and we kept the windows open as the fumes from the PVC glue were strong. My tank doesnt need a heater as the pumps and lights keep it warm enough to need a chiller. I turned the lights on and left them on all night so its slowly warming back up. I have a bit of concern about the temp dropping and what the results will be on the fish. Time will tell but they will get a good feeding today as I refrained from feeding yesterday.

[slief]

Man.. After last night, I was dead man walking today. I came home and cleaned up things. It looked like a bomb went off in my house, garage and backyard. After cleaning the house, I cleaned up my wires.. I decided to take a few more pictures.

Here are the Power bars for my Apex.


Connections between the 2 sumps.


Mangroves and Chaeto in the fuge.



Another view of the fuge with one light removed.



Skimmer last night an hour or 2 after setup. So far, I have to admit that I am impressed with it. I am looking forward to getting it broke in to see what its really capable of.


There is about 100 pounds of live rock in the skimmer sump.


The lines from the tanks overflow dumping into the sumps overflow. I was able to get about half of my bio balls from the old sump into the filter socks. I will keep them in the socks for a short time until I am comfortable with the sumps ability to maintain the status quo.

I will be also be adding 100 pounds of live sand to go with the 100 pounds of mud in the fuge on Monday.

[slief]

I did a tally on the plumbing work I did for this retrofit. There were 82 glue joints, 11 bulkheads, 2 teflon paste threaded fittings 10 union ball valves, 3 regular ball valves, countless elbows, 45's, 90's 1.5" and 2" rigid and flex pvc.... Not to mention millions of brain cells. To my surprise, there is not a single leak!

Only thing left to do is install thecarbon and gfo reactors and calibrate the salinity probe. There is a double union ball valve plumbed in and ready for the feed line and the bulk heads with the fittings for the reactor returns are installed as well.

I have my old knop calcium reactor as well as a large dual 30 watt uv unit. Both of which I am on the fence with. I was thinking about installing the UV unit inline with the reactors which return to the fuge.

[bullitr]

Originally Posted by slief

I did a tally on the plumbing work I did for this retrofit. There were 82 glue joints, 11 bulkheads, 2 teflon paste threaded fittings 10 union ball valves, 3 regular ball valves, countless elbows, 45's, 90's 1.5" and 2" rigid and flex pvc.... Not to mention millions of brain cells. To my surprise, there is not a single leak!

good job!

[dcopeland]

i like the clean look

[FishyBiz]

Unless the tank was packed with SPS I wouldn't worry about the temp drop.
I think its already been discussed that natural reefs see temp swings all the time.

Great build by the way. I love seeing it progress. The new skimmer is way cleaner then your old one and probably 10x's more efficient.

[slief]

I built my reactor manifold today and installed my GFO and Carbon reactors. I'll start the GFO reactor tomorrow with a minimal amount of media but I will hold of on starting the carbon reactor until my Ich treatment is done. All that is left is to finish cleaning up a few more wires and put in a bit more corregated wire covering to finish things off.

Here are some pics of the reactor install. They are mounted to the supporting joists of the tank above the sumps. They are controlled by gate valves and powered from a leg off the return pump. There is a spare valve for a my carbon reactor which I might install down the line or my UV filter which I am debating..








I dont think I put a pic in of the pumps.


Now I just need to get the carpinter back to fix the exterior drywall and hang the solid core doors below the tank.

[slief]

Skimmer is pretty impressive so far. 3 days and not broken in yet but this is the result after very little adjustment and the base set of volutes out of the 2 sets it came with.

[dcopeland]

nice

[Bax]

Looks like your changes will result in lots of power savings and much easier access ... sweet!

[dcopeland]

Maybe one day ill have a big tank right now my 75 will get me by lol but not for long

[slief]

Here are a couple LA Fish Guys videos of the sump install. Not sure what happened with the video quality of the second one but here they are. There will be more videos to follow as Jim gets them done.. Boy did I look "rough around the edges" in that second one! LOL. There are couple discrepencies on the specs he mentions such as the sump height which is 18" and not 16". Also the return pump is 5500GPH and not 4500GPH, the recirc is 4500 and not 6300 GPH.
Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lafishgu.../1/UvJt-39wH7Q

http://www.youtube.com/user/lafishgu.../0/pgH6NIrbtwo

[dahenley]

that was great!!!

[bullitr]

wow Scott
i can't wait to see it!

[dcopeland]

watch both on youtube never thought i would see u jump up in your DT that fast

[slief]

Originally Posted by dcopeland

watch both on youtube never thought i would see u jump up in your DT that fast

LOL. I had to pull my durso from my overflow. I have a double durso that I made and I think one pipe was taller than the other so when when we were filling the tank most of water came from one of the pipes from the tank and was nearly overflowing one of the overflow boxes in the sump behind the filter sock trays. Another few seconds and I would have been testing my pond liner. Fortunately it was an easy fix and will be subject of the next episode which I think he will film this Thursday.

My ich is still out of control though some fish seem to be improvinig while others look worse. I was concerned that all of my plumbing and additions may have introduced chemicals into the water so I decided to stop the Kick Ich treatment for a few days and run some carbon. I also added a heater to the sump and raised my water temp from 79/80 to 82 with hopes of accelerating the ich cycle. I plan on resuming the Kick Ich treatment in a few days.


Yesterday I added 150 pounds of live sand to the 100 pounds of mud in my fuge. Its now about 4-5" deep. My Chaeto seems to be growing and the 10 or so mangroves seem to be happy. Now I just need to be patient I guess.

The ich situation has me really bummed. I have been doing the salt water fish thing for more than 24 years. Its been more than 10 since I had a bout with ich. I just hope that my fish will rebound now that I am done screwing around with their enviornment.

[nuccadoc]

Wow! Amazing build. Well done.

[Bax]

Bummer about the ich!
Stability always helps so hopefully it'll get better soon.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by slief

LOL. I had to pull my durso from my overflow. I have a double durso that I made and I think one pipe was taller than the other so when when we were filling the tank most of water came from one of the pipes from the tank and was nearly overflowing one of the overflow boxes in the sump behind the filter sock trays. Another few seconds and I would have been testing my pond liner. Fortunately it was an easy fix and will be subject of the next episode which I think he will film this Thursday.

My ich is still out of control though some fish seem to be improvinig while others look worse. I was concerned that all of my plumbing and additions may have introduced chemicals into the water so I decided to stop the Kick Ich treatment for a few days and run some carbon. I also added a heater to the sump and raised my water temp from 79/80 to 82 with hopes of accelerating the ich cycle. I plan on resuming the Kick Ich treatment in a few days.


Yesterday I added 150 pounds of live sand to the 100 pounds of mud in my fuge. Its now about 4-5" deep. My Chaeto seems to be growing and the 10 or so mangroves seem to be happy. Now I just need to be patient I guess.

The ich situation has me really bummed. I have been doing the salt water fish thing for more than 24 years. Its been more than 10 since I had a bout with ich. I just hope that my fish will rebound now that I am done screwing around with their enviornment.

Love the sump and the fuge!!! The skimmer looks pretty awesome as well, but have you thought of putting the beckett back on line in conjuction with your cone skimmer??? Or would that be overkill for your reef??? Also have you added any cleaner shrimp lately??? That should take care of the problem in my experience anyway when I had an ick outbreak. Good work and glad you got rid of the bioballs. The liverock alone that you have in the main tank and the fuge is efficient enough for biological filtration. In my opinion the bioballs in the filter socks are unecessary as well and will clog up with crap very quickly.

Great episode from Jim...

Marc

[slief]

Originally Posted by Marc

Love the sump and the fuge!!! The skimmer looks pretty awesome as well, but have you thought of putting the beckett back on line in conjuction with your cone skimmer??? Or would that be overkill for your reef??? Also have you added any cleaner shrimp lately??? That should take care of the problem in my experience anyway when I had an ick outbreak. Good work and glad you got rid of the bioballs. The liverock alone that you have in the main tank and the fuge is efficient enough for biological filtration. In my opinion the bioballs in the filter socks are unecessary as well and will clog up with crap very quickly.

Great episode from Jim...

Marc

Thanks Jim. I do have 4 or 5 cleaner shrimp in the tank. Maybe I need to add more.

At this point I have no plans to put the beckett back on line. I would have to add another pump for it which is not in my current plan. So far the Alpha seems to be equally as capable so two skimmers would be probably be overkill in my opinion. I am planning on removing the balls from the socks over the next 30-60 days. I am just keeping on eye on my Ammonia and nitrite to make sure there isnt a spike. With the 4 socks, I think I can go 2 weeks between sock changes. It will be a week tomorrow and so far the socks seem fine though I will probably swap them this weekend for piece of mind.

[dahenley]

When you pulled your wet/dry, it looked like you just put the balls in a 5gal bucket dry. With them being dry-dryed out, wouldn't that kill the good stuff that was previously housed in them. If so, technically your socks are preventing the spikes because they are catching all the dead stuff from the balls. I was wondering what your opinion to that is? I think if they were kept wet then it would be a good thing. (Just curious to what you think)

Also, I can't wait to see the new video. I went and looked at all 5 of them.

[dahenley]

When you pulled your wet/dry, it looked like you just put the balls in a 5gal bucket dry. With them being dry-dryed out, wouldn't that kill the good stuff that was previously housed in them. If so, technically your socks are preventing the spikes because they are catching all the dead stuff from the balls. I was wondering what your opinion to that is? I think if they were kept wet then it would be a good thing. (Just curious to what you think)

Also, I can't wait to see the new video. I went and looked at all 5 of them.

[slief]

Originally Posted by dahenley

When you pulled your wet/dry, it looked like you just put the balls in a 5gal bucket dry. With them being dry-dryed out, wouldn't that kill the good stuff that was previously housed in them. If so, technically your socks are preventing the spikes because they are catching all the dead stuff from the balls. I was wondering what your opinion to that is? I think if they were kept wet then it would be a good thing. (Just curious to what you think)

Also, I can't wait to see the new video. I went and looked at all 5 of them.

My thought was that they would be a good thing for the short term. I kept some in a bucket with wet news paper on them and what wouldnt fit in the bucket, I put into a plastic bag. Both the bucket and the bag were kept in a closed 55 gallon plastic drum during that time. The balls were definately kept moist for the 18 or so hours they were out of the tank so if there was loss of any bacteria due to being out of the sump, it would have been minimal.

[Bax]

Probably no worse than a low tide for the bioballs