Doc's Reef

[drdude05]

In light of my recent tank crash and a few other issues that have been plaguing my tank for awhile now, I've decided to do a major overhaul of my system. For those that may not know, my reef was born on July 30, 2006 after about 18 months of meticulous planning. When my system was finally fully assembled and brought on line it became the largest and most ambitious system that I had ever setup.

The Tank:
Is a 180 gallon display build with a low iron glass front and side panes. It has two rear overflow boxes with two holes drilled in the floor of each for a drain and return line. The tank was manufactured by GlassCages.com.

The Canopy/Stand:
Was also built by GlassCages, however I purchased them unfinished. The stand was originally built with three doors that slid in and out of the canopy. I did some modification work and changed them into hinged doors that I hung myself. I did all the finish work to the stand and canopy including painting and caulking the inside of the canopy as well as sealing then caulking the inside of the stand.

The Sump:
The sump is an 85 gallon acrylic tank that I had built by GlassCages. I specified the size bulkheads that I wanted and had them precut. I installed them myself after I decided on the sump layout in order to have the three chambers of my sump the exact size I wanted. The sump contains a skimmer chamber as the first chamber followed by a second chamber that is seperated from the skimmer chamber by a bubble trap. The second or center chamber of the sump was designed to either house a refugium or other equipment as I saw fit. At the moment, I use it to supply water to my calcium reactor and it houses two phosban reactors (one runs phosban and the other runs carbon to polish the water). The final chamber is the return chamber and is plumbed to an external Little Giant 4MDQX-SC return pump.

These are the core components of my system. I plan to use this thread to further update the progress of my tanks "recovery" and to document/discuss the system changes as I make them.

[quader94]

whats the dimensions of the 85 gallon sump?

[biowheel]

Great sump . Keep us posted and Good Luck with the recovery

[drdude05]

whats the dimensions of the 85 gallon sump?

48" L x 22" D x 18" H

[drdude05]

Clean up efforts for the tank's recovery began about three weeks ago with the first of what has now been several 30 gallon water changes. I will post some pics of the tank status before clean up started as you couldn't see into the tank due to the thick hair algae growing on the glass. This has been rectified somewhat at this point. My perameters were:

Ca: 290 - 300
Mg: 800
Alk: 1.50 meq/L
pH: 7.8
NO3, PO4 ... well lets just not go there!

Coral wise I lost a green Milli, green tabling acropora, A. gemmifera, M. digitata, Porites sp. and had two purple Monti caps, one green monti cap, and a green gemmifera that looked like they were on their way out. Over the past two weeks they look like they have been making a recovery.

Fish wise I lost a purple tang, naso tang, two ocellaris clowns, and magnificent foxface. These losses occurred after the power outage I mentioned above when I couldn't get my generator running and thus the O2 levels in the tank dropped.

[drdude05]

Here are a few shots of the tank from the front and sides after the tank crash was well underway.

[drdude05]

It took me about 3 hours to get all the hair algae out that I could. I have since been correcting my water levels as I mentioned before. As of July 4th my tank levels are:

Ca: 385 ppm
Mg: 1120 ppm
Alk: 2.63 meq/L
PO4: 0
NO3: 0

My turbo snails have stepped up and nearly grazed all the hair algea off of my two tunze stream pumps and are starting on my Korrela. Alot of the hair algea has already started disappearing from the rocks, and I got a cyano bloom under control relatively quickly as it has been receding in size for the last couple of days.

[drdude05]

The first major project that I am tackling is an overhaul of the lighting system. I have been doing alot of research regarding T5 HO setups and have elected to replace my current MH/VHO setup with a T5HO setup.

Lighting:
Originally, my lighting setup was three 250W MH and two 140W VHO actinics. I was using XM 10K bulbs as my MH and getting pretty good growth rates as compaired to the three Hamilton Tech bulbs I was using prior. The lighting system itself was a retrofit reflector from Hamilton Tech powered by three magnaetic ballasts and one VHO ballast. I assembled and then installed the retrofit into my canopy and modified the original canopy to accomidate four 80 CFM fans.

Over the past year have been having more and more issues with the lighting system tripping ground faults and blowing out power strips. The most recent casualty has been the DC8 unit of my aquacontroller jr. At the moment I am without control of my pH injection system (for the calcium reactor) and my Tunze Osmolator system for auto topoff. I have posted about this numerous times and in the end I have been unable to find the cause. Ultimatley, I decided that I no longer trust this system ... concerned for a house fire or worse given the continued electrical issues I have been having... and therefore decided to replace the whole thing with a new Icecap SLR T5 setup powered by three Icecap 660 ballasts to overdrive the T5 bulbs. I am going to install an eight 80W bulb setup overdriven to 100W per bulb for a total wattage of 800W. Documentation of the install to follow:

[quader94]

thats a shame the tank looked great before, i saw some pics of it under the TRT reviewer post where everyone had to post their tanks

hopefully the hair algae will go away soon enough ive been dealing with it for 5 months now

[drdude05]

Finally got some time to edit my pics for the T5 lighting install ... here goes.

The first thing I had to do was remove the old fixture. I still can't figure out what exactly is causing this fixture to repeatedly trip my GFCI outlet, and it is mainly this reason that led me to decide to replace the entire fixture ... essentially I don't trust it and worry it might have become a fire hazard.

Anyway, here are a few pics of the old install.




After doing alot of reading and measuring, I decided to install 8 80W T5HO overdriven to 100W each by Icecap 660 ballasts. The wattage of my old system was 1,030W total (3 250W MH and 2 140W VHO's) thus given my space constraints the closest I could get was 800W with T5. I don't think that's too bad and from what I have read should be fine for a 24" high tank. I did however, need to do some mod work on the center supports of my canopy to make sure that all 8 bulbs with reflectors would fit.

Here are some shots of the canopy modding.

Back support




Front support

[drdude05]

The mod required cutting back a significant portion of the front and back supports. This wasn't too difficult, but it did leave some big holes that needed to be repaired to make sure that moisture didn't seep up into the canopy wood and rot it out.

Here are some pics with the holes filled and then sanded.

[drdude05]

Lastly, I repainted the inside of the canopy with a fresh coat of white gloss paint. With that done, the canopy is ready to start installing the lighting.

Here are some pics of the new paint job and the prepped canopy.

[drdude05]

More to come.

[Loverotties]

Great shots and good luck.looking good.

[drdude05]

Thanks.

One part that I could use some help on is my circulation issue. Right now I use a Little Giant 4-MDQX-SC as the return pump from my sump. It circulates about 800gph through the sump in an attempt to closely match my skimmer input/circulation of 700gph. I use two Tunze turbelle streams 6100 for flow in the tank along with a Korella at 800gph.

I am thinking of building a new sump and shrinking the size of it. I posted above that my sump has a middle chamber for a "refugium" that I have really never used. I'm thinking of building a new two chamber sump. First chamber is the skimmer chamber and second chamber is the return chamber seperated by a bubble trap. I want to use the space that I gain to add another pump under my stand and try to come up with a way to do some type of closed loop like circualtion with it using my overflows as taking the tank apart and drilling it really isn't an option. I've thought about using one overflow to feed the sump with one return line back to the tank and then use the other overflow to do the closed loop plumbing. I know this may not be ideal, but it's the best I can think of for now until I get to the point that I am designing amy next tank from scratch and can plan for holes to be drilled for a closed loop.

My only other option is to buy a new tank ... not really looking forward to that idea.