Anyone know what is going on with CA Coral Farms?

[dsb1829]

Just curious if there has been any word on Justin's new setup. Sounded like he was off to one heck of a start, but I haven't heard anything in a couple of months. Any one in the club heard from him lately?

http://www.cacoralfarms.com

[Reefer Dude]

Well things have been pretty crazy for me the last month or so. I had some major problems with my setup and it has really set me back some. I had a family member do the electrical work for the setup for me and she really did not know what she was doing. Because of the bad electrical work the big Dolphin 5400 pump I have running everything had some problems. It overheated and melted the seal which then started draining water onto the floor and motor. I am sure you guys can guess what happens to a 1HP motor when salt water is introduced. Luckily the motor burnt out before it caught on fire. Well because of where I placed my check valve the broken seal allowed all the tanks to start back siphoning the tanks water onto the floor. I lost about half my coral and fish while I scrambled make water up and move things into other tanks (all the acros made it). Well the electrical is finally getting fixed tonight and I had to send the pump to get rebuilt, and just got it back. I will start setting everything up again this weekend and slowly get things working again. I need to build up my coral collection again (I am looking forward to the next prop meeting). The setup should be nice now. I am going to have 6 60g troughs, a 50g tank which will have a bubble tip anemone and a rose anemone and soon as I can get a hold of one trade. The goal of this anemone tank is to get these anemones splitting, and available to sell. I am also going to have a 150g tank that will have my bigger pieces of acro and softies that I will trim for frags. There will be a 250g tank that will have the fish in it, a 50g live sand trough, and another 150g container for live rock. I will have everything except the live rock plumbed into a 150g refugium that has a DSB, live rock and lots of caulerpa, and 15 mangroves. Three of the troughs are going to be lit with double 250w 6500k MH’s for the acros. Two will be lit with double 175w 10k’s for the softies, and the last trough is lit with 4 NO bulbs for the shrooms. The 150 will have double 400 10ks. The 250 will have NO’s on it. The refugium is lit with with 6 60w Power Compacts 24/7. I am sorry for dropping off the scopes for awhile. This stuff with my setup was a major setback and work has been beyond crazy. I am trying not to loose steam but after all the work I had to do on the setup the first time through, I really don’t want to do it again. I will be doing a lot of work on things over Christmas and should be open for business. I will be returning all my back e-mails this week. I am so sorry I have not gotten back to all of you sooner. E-mail me if you have any questions, and would love to hear comments on my setup. Talk to all of you next week at the meeting. Can’t wait to see everyone, it has been awhile.

[dsb1829]

Man, that really doesn't sound like much in the way of fun. It is really unfortunate to have a pump blow a seal. I know that you are not the only one who would loose a bunch of water onto the floor. In the same situation I would likely loose about 30-40g onto the floor:( . It is just one of those things that you can't really safegaurd against short of installing a drain in your tank room. The water in my tanks would only drop by a few inches though, so all livestock would be fine though.

Glad to hear that you are recovering and not all is lost. The setup sounds great. One of these days I will have to swing by and check it out. See you at the next meeting.