the 600 c.a.g. is up and running - finally !

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by aquawolf

Thanks for the information on those Gary. It actually sounds like a pretty ingenious desigh concept, and once covered with coralline they won't even be noticeable. The part about epoxy sticking well to them is a definite bonus in my book. Great job!

thanks aqua . i always like trying new things !

[gwaco]

here is the first attempt at aqua scaping without the plocks . phlewy!


a different view from the left plock ! more updates to come !!

[OneDummHikk]

Color me stupid and call me Dumm, but, what does the C.A.G. stand for?

[jamessp01]

Originally Posted by OneDummHikk

Color me stupid and call me Dumm, but, what does the C.A.G. stand for?

haha, i was wondering the same thing! I was thinking carbon activated granules.

gwaco: That is one beast of a tank! Looks awesome, im jealous.

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by OneDummHikk

Color me stupid and call me Dumm, but, what does the C.A.G. stand for?

i'm sorry ! sometimes i forget that some of you weren't around when i first coined the phase !
c.a.g. stands for carribean - atlantic - gulf !
which is where 90% of my stuff comes from .
by the way incase you were also wondering what plocks were , its stands for plastic rocks !
i won't have any updates tonight since i have to go and watch the little one sing tonight at school , but i'll continue tomarrow .

[Loverotties]

WOW! Gary! Glad to see ya and what a tank!

[OneDummHikk]

Originally Posted by gwaco

i'm sorry ! sometimes i forget that some of you weren't around when i first coined the phase !
c.a.g. stands for carribean - atlantic - gulf !
which is where 90% of my stuff comes from .
by the way incase you were also wondering what plocks were , its stands for plastic rocks !
i won't have any updates tonight since i have to go and watch the little one sing tonight at school , but i'll continue tomarrow .

Ahh. So mine is a WICGI tank (Wherever I Can Get It)
The plocks I kind of guessed.
One thing I miss since my oldest daugter graduated was listening to her sing with the school chorus.

[chaotic]

are you feeding the corals specifically, and if so, what and how often?

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by chaotic

are you feeding the corals specifically, and if so, what and how often?

no feeding . since i have been keeping the gorgs or any of the corals for that matter i have not done any type of direct feeding , but i do feed the fish quite heavily.

[gwaco]

here we go !
when i decided to do this tank i thought i would take a nice two week vacation from work thinking this would give me plenty of time to get things done , boy was i wrong !
for the previuos month i had been working on things like the stands and the filtration , but even with all of that stuff already partially complete it was the wall that consumed most of the two weeks .
inorder for this tank to work i had too cut out all but about 30" of the bottom and two layers of the top of the concrete block wall . having neighbors that are general contractors sure did pay off ! as much as they wanted to help i would not let them lift a finger to do any of the work , only help me with some of their suggestions . but i must say that i did not wavier when they offered some of the machinery to help cut the wall. thanks bruce ! i used a 14" gas powered concrete chop saw to cut the wall and man that thing cut thru like butter ! this part was the messy part of the whole process , in fact i spent two days just cleaning the dust out of the inside of the home ... when i finally did get the hole cut out i spent several days just getting the new header and dry wall up and stripping the inside wall for tiling . tiling took another two days so you can see that the first week went to nothing but prepping things . i needed this tank to fit very snuggly in the wall as to keep the outside heat and bugs out , problem was that all the great finishing work made the first attempt at getting the tank to slide in were futile . we had to air chisel out nearly all of the concrete that i had made look so pretty out , it was that tight ( needless to say the inside of the house turned into another dust bowl !) after about 10 trys with five guys and over two hours it finally slid in . next problem was that when it slid in it went so quickly that it pushed the top part of the inside stand off ! oh well nothin a few nails and some glue couldn't take care of , right . but at this point i was really starting to question wether this was the dumbest thing i had ever got myself into .
from this point things actually went pretty smooth and on the last friday of my vacation and three days of making water , two r.o. filter changes , three d.i. resin refills i finally got to fire up the pumps only to have numerous plumbing leaks ! after hours of fiddiling with those by late afternoon i finally got to transfer everything out of the 180 . i think it was somewhere around 1 in the morning that friday that i got to bed !

some of the things i needed to do with this tank was 1. make it quite inside the home home , 2. keep the bugs and heat from outside entering inside , 3. make it as easy as possible to do maintence on the tank , 4. try not to think about how much more the electric bill was going to go up !
to take care of 1&2 both insde and outside canopies are sealed tops . i used very lightwieght 3/4" foam insulation panels which i also used to insulate the inside of the outdoor canopy . on the inside canopy there are vents on each end of the canopy .on the outside canopy i mounted three major c.f.m. fans . the idea was to draw the indoor air conditioned air thru the top of the tank to cool the lighting and pull out any built up moisture out . so far this has worked perfect ! the small fan is left on 24/7 while at this time only one of the larger fans is needed for when the lights come on .
alright time for a break , so heres some pics of things before the tank was installed!


the stand and canopies . the holes on each end of the stained canopy were covered with a nice plastic grills before it was put into place .

[crvz]

I'm a little confused, where does the tank actually sit? Is it in the garage? I know one of your rules was not thinking about increased electrical costs, so I won't ask, but I know a buddy who's in-wall sat in the garage, and I about dropped when I saw the electric bill. He sold frags weekly to make up the costs!

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by crvz

I'm a little confused, where does the tank actually sit? Is it in the garage? I know one of your rules was not thinking about increased electrical costs, so I won't ask, but I know a buddy who's in-wall sat in the garage, and I about dropped when I saw the electric bill. He sold frags weekly to make up the costs!

no problem chris ! the tank sits about 20" inside the house ( which actually gained me about a foot of inside space as compared to the 180 ) and 20" of the tank sits in the garage with 8" of space being taken up by the thickness of the concrete block . so 20 in and 20 out plus 8 is my 4' depth . so when you first see the tank its pretty decieving on the actual depth . hth !

[gwaco]

the tiled wall . the hole toward the bottom middle is the pass thru for the various controllers .


and while on the subject of the pass thru hole , the only thing about the tunze streams that drove me crazy was that they never could be disconnected from the control module for cleaning let alone be able to put either end thru a 2" pass thru . so all the streams recieved this mod ! pin connectors from radio shack .


the control center .

[chaotic]

Originally Posted by gwaco

no feeding . since i have been keeping the gorgs or any of the corals for that matter i have not done any type of direct feeding , but i do feed the fish quite heavily.

are these all photosynthetic then? very very nice job BTW, so unique

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by chaotic

are these all photosynthetic then? very very nice job BTW, so unique

most are but their are a few like the orange swiftia that are not and the purple one lower center . all the non photosynthetic seem to be doing great and i've had them over six months now .
and thanks !