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  #226  
Old 01/16/2007, 01:02 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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paid for 2, picked one up last weekend and plan to pick up the second as soon as they have it torn down, so this weekend or the next. One will be used as a full fledged refugium, w/ the tek light over it and the second will be a sump for overflow/capacity/etc (IE: so that the system will pass the "power failure test" and not flood the garage . I am torn about the prop setup. I originally wanted to incorporate it into the sump/fuge, but now am unsure how best to achieve that with the design ideas I have in mind. I may play around with the configuration quite a bit before I settle on the final setup. Worst case scenario I have several tanks that we can choose from to set up a separate prop tank, it just would cost a little bit more $$ to run then ($30 per month, give or take, by my calculations). But either way we have pretty much all of the hardware we will need for whatever configuration we settle on . So basically look for alot more FS threads from us once we get this design all worked out and running

EDIT: Those FS threads will also include our previous 60g custom sump/fuge (built by a company down in So Cal somewhere), our current 100g custom sump/fuge (see my sump build thread listed towards the begining of this thread) and a 110g acrylic tank that was originally slated to be the next custom sump/fuge . Along with at least 2 prop tanks FS (2'X2', 3'X3' and/or 2'X2.5', all 12" deep)
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  #227  
Old 01/17/2007, 12:18 AM
GreshamH GreshamH is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Sparkss


EDIT : The commercial fuge is nothing all that impressive, IMO. I am happy with it mainly because I got it for pennies on the dollar . I believe it is an Aquatic Eco brand fuge from a couple of years ago
You heard part of it right, Eco It's a custom EcoSystem fuge Tom. You do not want to know the price he paid for it

http://www.ecosystemaquarium.com/
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  #228  
Old 01/17/2007, 12:41 AM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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yea Gresh, I know.. they are monster expensive... and I did not mean to make light of the quality, what I meant was that the design was nothing earth shattering or ground breaking, just a basic fuge design.. but the over all build quality is definitely top notch and impressive. I should have been more specific in my statements
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  #229  
Old 01/17/2007, 12:56 AM
mrcrab mrcrab is offline
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Ha...Guess who got his rail sytem today?

Thanks for the link.
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  #230  
Old 01/17/2007, 09:32 AM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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sweet... will there be an update soon (with pictures) to your tank thread ? . Once you udate it you should post the links here, I don't need you to, since I am already subscribed to your thread . But others following along here might want a link to other implementations using those rails.
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  #231  
Old 01/17/2007, 11:04 AM
mrcrab mrcrab is offline
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Yeah I know I've been slack. I've really got a fair bit done. Lights are the last then I can start moving the corals.

Couple of things I'm waiting on upgrades is a CA reactor that I bought from a fellow RCer end of November and she's having problems getting her new one. Arrived broke and is awaiting replacement and Greg at Reefgeek is waiting on a shipment of BubbleMaster 250's that should be arriving any day.

Believe me I want to get this thing done just so I can sell off the old equipmet and start recouping some funds! Plus I'm getting tired of looking after 2 tanks.
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Last edited by mrcrab; 01/17/2007 at 11:35 AM.
  #232  
Old 01/17/2007, 12:35 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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I hear you on both counts... it all feels like we are hemorrhaging money . Just as soon as we can shut down the old tank (and stop paying to maintain it) and to finally start selling off alot of that equipment, the happier we will be
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  #233  
Old 01/19/2007, 11:11 AM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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WooHoo !!!! Our rock arrived at the shipping terminal late last night, I am leaving out for SacTown here shortly to go pick it all up, so it looks like we will have some rock to play with over the weekend .

I also went ahead and started working on the trim last night. I have it cut and ready to install, just waiting to determine the tank water height for the door bottom. I have a rough idea, and need to translate that into cut wood this afternoon so that I can install the trim and see how it looks. My initial take on it is the trim I picked out is too thin, but I won't really know until I clean the wall up and repaint everything.

Once we get the rock the only things we will be waiting on are the new skimmer and the second sump. We are also awaiting some of the skimmer specs so that we can build the sump racks. Since we don't have the outlet pipe height information yet, I don't know the exact dimensions that we can use for the racks to hold the sumps (don't want to make them too tall). Since we are stacking the twp 150g sumps, the output pipe height will play a huge role in the shelving/rack design. It is going to be close, but I think it will work out .

Hopefully look for some pictures later this evening
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  #234  
Old 01/19/2007, 02:22 PM
joshuasamuels joshuasamuels is offline
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I can't wait to that awesome rock in your new tank...
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  #235  
Old 01/19/2007, 04:28 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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You and me both... . Just got back a short bit ago, but need to get back to working my day job (gotta pay for all of this somehow ).

We had pictures (of the rocks), and they even included rulers and objects (for perspective) for comparison against for size, but unpacking that crate was a whole different expereince . Some of those pieces are unbelievably huge. I Am trying to track down our little electric pressure washer to rinse them off as best I can. I am afraid to use our full sized washer, especially since I am unsure where I put the low pressure nozzle, and I don't want to be blasting these awesome shapes into rubble

Oh, and I got the tracking # for our replacement Vortec... it looks like it won't get here until next Tuesday.

Well, updates w/ pitcures later on this evening, if everything goes as planned (or at least close to as planned ).
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Last edited by Sparkss; 01/19/2007 at 04:49 PM.
  #236  
Old 01/19/2007, 06:02 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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Ok, I couldn't resist so I took a short break and washed down a handful (figuratively speaking) of the rocks and took a picture. Yes, th0se are the 160g Reef Crystals buckets, for comparison. These represent a bit over half of the larger pieces. There are also about a half dozen medium to smaller pieces that I will get to later . If I can, I am going to try to get these into the tank (so that I can make room for the rest of the rock in the space behind the tank).



I am just stoked that the tank is finally going to start looking like a reef tank
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  #237  
Old 01/19/2007, 06:40 PM
mrcrab mrcrab is offline
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My God man...those aren't rocks they're boulders!
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  #238  
Old 01/19/2007, 06:58 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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yea, and the pictures do not do them justice for how pourous and "laced" that they are. And alot of the neat shapes comes out as a flat surface in the pictures too. I already put 3 of them into the tank.. *sigh*... I think I may have too much rock, at least for the open aquascape plan that we had planned . One that I ws going to use as the base for a cave/"table" reaches to within a couple of inches from the water line.. so there is no room for anything to go on top of it.. hehehe.. This is going to be FUN !!!!!!
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  #239  
Old 01/19/2007, 07:14 PM
jnarowe jnarowe is offline
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I wish I had some that large!
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  #240  
Old 01/19/2007, 07:54 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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ok, here are some pictures of the last of the big ones :



and here are the "smaller" ones that were thrown in, at a lesser price point, to round out the weight for us (they are pretty sweet also ) :






When I put them in the tank they started bubbling like crazy.. I'll bet they weight a ton now that they are wet and carrying water



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  #241  
Old 01/19/2007, 08:03 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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here is where it stands now.. with all but 3 of the large ones (and none of the smaller ones) in the tank.



It is cloudy from all of the smutz that I couldn't get off of the rocks (unless I wanted to break out the big pressure washer and chance breaking the rocks) and darker because I don't have the lights hooked up (I am working a little on the lighting to add from VHOs to it). There were lots of little crab pieces parts that came floating out of the rock.. this puppy is going have a pretty big cycle hit.. and likely sooner than later. I still have 50+ lbs of live rock in there already for seeding and I will add another half gallon of aged live sand from our curren tank either tonight or tomorrow morning (after everything has settled down). I will probably just put the rest of the rock in so that they can get "the nasty" out of the way then focus on designing the aquascaping, after it all settles down. It's not like I don't have enough other stuff to keep me occupied now.. adding VHOs for lengthening the viewing times (for us humans) without overly lengthening our electric bill, planning out the two new sumps and getting the racks for them built, finishing up the trim and getting a door installed (which also includes major paint touch up on that wall).
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  #242  
Old 01/19/2007, 08:10 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by jnarowe
I wish I had some that large!

Hehehe, yea, they aren't small . They aren't that hard to come by either... www.marcorocks.com. The owner, Marc, is great to work with. Started the process the first of last week, finalized the order the end of last week and put the rocks into our tank today... not too bad when you consider the coast to coast action that had to take place. And I had tracking the entire way, even though I had it come freight. It was not scheduled for pick up until next Monday, but I saw on the tracking that it arrived in CA yesterday afternoon and up to West Sac last night, so I called and went and picked it up today .

I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for good, quality base rock for their tank (and don't like buying sight unseen from these online vendors, and/or don't like buying that solid, land quarried rock that some sell as base rock.) As you can see from the pictures, this stuff is majorly pourous
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  #243  
Old 01/19/2007, 08:43 PM
TOURKID TOURKID is offline
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i had 2 rocks as big as yours in my 50 pound order. i smashed em up with a hammer. here was my end result. remember, this is 90 gallons with only 50 pounds of rocks. super light!!!



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  #244  
Old 01/19/2007, 08:46 PM
jnarowe jnarowe is offline
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very very nice, and may I make one recommendation? Don't drop them in the tank!!
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  #245  
Old 01/19/2007, 09:03 PM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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We had a bit more than a 50# order

Nice aquascaping , very open, that is more or less what we are shooting for, which will likely mean a couple of our local reefers will be able to score some nice rock
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Last edited by Sparkss; 01/19/2007 at 09:16 PM.
  #246  
Old 01/20/2007, 03:57 AM
zemuron114 zemuron114 is offline
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looking nice Tom! I bet your glad you went with mark now! those are some sweet pieces
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  #247  
Old 01/20/2007, 07:31 AM
joshuasamuels joshuasamuels is offline
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Just ordered some base rock from marc...those look awesome. I wasn't sure how they'd look in a more modest sized tank until I saw the pics from Tourkid. Now I can't wait to make myself a nice cave....
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  #248  
Old 01/20/2007, 07:52 AM
Bax Bax is offline
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Wow that's some awesome looking base rock!
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  #249  
Old 01/20/2007, 11:42 AM
Sparkss Sparkss is offline
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Well, woke up this morning to an overflowing skimmer and a tank full of green water.. pretty much expected, just not this fast . I'll bet the pods are having a smorgasborg field day.... I definitely don't need to dose any more phytofeast for a while... must have been some left over from the dose I did over a week ago.. doesn't take much . So, if it turned to green water overnight, that prtty much means that the tank had already cycled, with the little bit of rock and sand that I put in a couple of weeks ago, doesn't it ? Definitely not enough to support the bioload of moving all of our livestock over, but at least it had something established. Either way I will be adding more LS today from our currect tank, just for good measure .

I thought and thought and am still not sure how I am going to aquascape this. The biggest challenge is that the starfire makes everything look so close to the front of the glass, so there is no real sense of depth. Looking from the front the tank looks crowded right now (but then again I did just pile everything in yesterday, so crowded is what it is ), but if you look down from the top it is rather "open", with lots of space to the front and back. I think we will end up moving the rock to the back and sides, more so than I did initially, and see how things look after that. As I was placing some of those rocks in I had the thought of all of those threads about building rock pillars... when I stood most of these up they were their own pillars, reaching above 3/4 of the way to the top of the tank.

Well, today wil likely be taken up with the paint, trim and maybe even door, I don't have any plans to touch the rocks/tank so far... I think I will just let it settle in and see what transpires .

If I have time I will finish up adding the VHOs to the lighting rack, although running any lights right now is not in my plan (outside of moving the LS over, which is a small, quick task).. the green water gets plenty of spill over light from our fuge and propr tanks to feed it's light need... more than maybe I would like
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  #250  
Old 01/20/2007, 12:45 PM
GreshamH GreshamH is offline
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Tom if your worried about the "lack of depth" sensation, put some actinics on the very back area of your tank, and align you MH as so they don't hit that area as much. We used to use that trick in the LFS I worked at ages ago.

FWIW< I highly doubt that was only Phyto-Feast that was pulled out But your right though, there is no need to feed while cycling. You get enough blooms from the process alone to make any copepods happy
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