The inwall 380 starfire reborn

[jnarowe]

I glued mine to the outside of the overflow slot. It's much easier to remove the combs that way and you can keep your hands out of the tank. I have bought from AquaCave before and had good service. Unfortunately the holidays messes with business and makes things a little less consistent.

[Sparkss]

ok.. need a little clarification here , when you say "outside of the overflow slot" you mean physically inside the overflow itself, and "outside" of the tank ?

Thanks

[jnarowe]

yes. I glued mine on the tank back inside the external overflow. Your overflow may be different.

Here are a couple shots of my overflow during construction:





That is two sets of overflow combs in each of the three sections giving a total of about 6' of comb.

[Tbduval]

Wow!!!!!!! Now that is some serious surface skimming!!!

[jnarowe]

Yeah, I am a big fan of drawing off the surface. There is never anything floating on the surface and the pics of the gunk my skimmer pulls out speak volumes.

[Sparkss]

very nice Johnathan.. unfortunately our overflows are the typical corner ones, made worse by being enclosed over top by the euro bracing, so I don't think I will be able to install the combs inside of the overflows as you did, but I may still, I won't know until they arrive, and since they haven't even shipped yet, I can't say when that will be .

I was able to get the salinty relatively stable around 1.022. I am sure that it will creep up a bit overnight. I went ahead and put the hundred pounds or so of LR we had cooking in our sump along with a ball of chaeto from our fuge. I also threw a canister filter onto it, and the water had started to clear (until I started dropping a bunch of rocks into it, stirring up the sand bed again). Hopefully by tomorrow it will be relatively clear. Once it clears I am going to purposefully stir the sandbed, so that the canister filter can get out as much of the "dust" as possible. Might as well do it now versus after any livestock gets added. Once it clears I will take some picts to share .

[jnarowe]

hmmm...these things are quite thin so I think you may still be able to use it. BTW, I keep my tank at 1.026.

[Sparkss]

Thanks Johnathan.... I won't make the final determination on the combs until they get here and I can see how they will fit and work out.

We normally run our tanks at 1.024 - 1.025, I just got the new tank up to 1.022 to start, knowing that likely some more salt will dissolve throughout the night, and will bring up the salinty slowly, as/if needed. Getting it to 1.022 was enough for me to feel comfortable in transferring the live rock over from the sump. Hope that explains that bit of it .

The tank was alot clearer this morning, but was still a bit cloudy.. so no pictures yet.. maybe later today. I had not checked the salinity yet, will do that later on today (had some early morning meetings this morning that took priority ).

[Sparkss]

update time :

overflow combs shipped. They appear to be coming Priority USPS, so they should be here by the first of next week, if not sooner. That will relatively coincide with when the rock arrives, so that is good, it means that we may be able to cut over and join the tank to the existing sump by this time next week.

The box track for the lighting arrived. All I can say is that I am very very pleased with what of it I have seen so far, which is just to unbox it and check out the pieces parts. It is aluminum track (I was unsure if they would send aluminum or galvanized, like some track I have seen). They are rated for 125 lbs each track, which is more than enough for our plans



And I really like the runners that came with the track. There is a disconnect that will make things much easier in the long (and short) run. All pocket door box trak may come with this, I don't know, thinking about it they would all need something at least modestly similar, but I really like how this one was designed. Again, my lack of experience with this hardware makes it seem "special" to me, but they all may be like this. Either way, here is what I like about it.

The runners and locking bracket are relatively low profile, and are easy enough to connect and latch.



As I mentioned, when put together little head room is sacrificed



I will be installing these sometime between now and this weekend, as time permits.

I got them here : http://www.hardwareandtools.com/invt/6109649

Odd thing was I originally wanted 4 of them, but they gave a discount for an order of 5 or more, and the discount was better than the additional shipping fee, so I ended up just geting 5. As it turns out I may end up using all 5, to leverage a single light mover for the rack versus one for each light. Either way it shipped quickly and arrived in good time.

[Sparkss]

Here is a poor picture of the tank. This was taken earlier today, and it has cleared a little bit more since then and the dust and debris from the couple of cups of live sand from our main tank has settled also.




You can see the foam I cut out to block in the top portion. I need to start calling carpenters to assist with this, as the ones that had expressed interest have neglected to call back, so time to shop around a bit.

Later on tonight I will turn the flourescent shop light on over the tank and remove the piece of foam covering the tank to let the light in and try to take a better picture. But you can still see that we put a bunch of LR from our sump in to seed everything. The biggest improvement will be when we finally get it conencted up to our current sump. That will really help age the water and speed along any cycle. I want to get that done before any major cycling takes hold.. but then again along those lines I should have held off on the LR and LS , but it now just motivates me to push the timeline along as best I can, even more so

[jnarowe]

looking good Tom. That IS a very low profile track and trolley. Very nice. Is it supposed to be lubed? Mine are more heavy duty, and that is because they are motorized, but I lose a lot more vertical space because of it.

[Bax]

Those track are really low profile, nice!

[badbones]

Tom,

I don't know if you mentioned/new this, but those tracks are the exact same ones that I used in my house pocket doors. I bought them at home depot and they came with all the same hardware. Also you can buy different wheels that support more weight according to the manuals that came with my door hardware.

Just info for those that may want to do this as well.

[Sparkss]

oh, nice, thanks badbones. I checked all of the Home Depots within a 30 mi radius and none of them carried any pocket door tracks or hardware (outside of built into an entire frame, at $60 per rail *shudder*).

I plan to run a slightly "different" design. The two main tracks (12' long each, overhanging the tank 2 1/2' on one side and 3 1/2' on the other, these will run parallel with the tank, roughly positioned over the center. So for full tank access I will need to move the lights to one side or the other, depending on where I need to access. This is due to space requirements on either side of the tank (2.5' and 3.5' are about all we have for available space). Each of the pair of rails will be 2 box tracks, end to end. I have some ideas about how to line them up so that the wheels transition smoothly rolling from one to the other, as needed. How I actually address that connection I won't know until I get them up, but I am not worried about it.

Sliding on that set of rails will be another set, the 5th set that we bought. It will be cut in half and each piece will run perpendicular to the tank (from front to back), spaced out to accomodate the LAIII reflectors. They will be boxed in with some 1" aluminum square stock and running between and parallel to them will be the light mover track. With this configuration the light mover should be able to move the light rack, riding on the two 3' pieces of box track, from front to back, as one unit. Then, if needed, we should be able to slide this whole assembly out of the way on the two original 12' box track sections that are parallel with the front of the tank.

Anyways, that is my plan. I may not have explained it well, and it sounds good in theory, but still need to be proven out as effective. Rest assured that I will do my best to take pictures along the way to better illustrate what I plan to try to accomplish (I just get caught up with the work sometimes and when I finally think about taking any pictures, the job is already done... so I end up with only a before and after.. no "during" shots ).

Oh, and I did not read anywhere about it being lubed.. I don't think most pocket door hardware is designed to be lubed, except maybe the heavy duty ones, like yours. I only say that because it would be troublesome to have to take the door down every time it needed to be lubed (in a normal use scenario of the pocket door hardware.. you know, if someone actually used it for a pocket door ).

[strittmatter]

24 hours and no pictures.

[Sparkss]

ouch.. you're brutal :P

ok, here are some I took this morning then . That little HOB skimmer and Fluval 404 are really doing a pretty good job, all things considered

These were taken with just a 4' flourescent shop light on over the back right side of the tank.





All 4 vortecs are in the tank and running, well 3 are running anyways, the 4th is not cooperating. Out of 4 that I received, 2 had issues, one I was able to resolve, but I am unsure about this last one. I suspect it is related to the return from the Fluval putting lots of micro-bubbles in the water. It seems that the Vortecs don't like bubbles and don't do very well in an environment with lots of micro-bubbles. It appears that the bubles collect in the wet end between the impeller and the "protector" that goes against the glass on the inside. This causes that area to become "dry" and the unit to stop working. It seems like a bit of a design issue, but I am not going to call customer service until after I get the tank running "normally" to determine if it is the bubbles or the Vortec itself. Another oddity is that the labels on 2 of the drivers were on upside down on the driver box and another one the cable that connects it to the pump was not fully seated and the strain relief grommet was not even in place. Small complaints, I know, but after paying out $1320+ for these 4, I sort of expected them to be of a little better build quality. Since all but one are working, and that one could be due to our specific current circumstance, I will withhold judgement. I will say that the ones that do work, push quite a bit of water around, but until the multi-controller comes out to do the pulsing, wave, etc, they will not realize their true potential.

My plans for today include cleaning the garage (ugghh.. long over due, due to this project ) so that I can start working on the lighting rack, and then of course working on and installing the lighting rack. I already have some ideas mapped out in my head as to how I want to set it all up, but until I start putting the pieces up I won't know exactly where everything is going to fall. Optimistically look for more pictures tonight or tomorrow morning (PST) of the tank lit by the new lighting

The rock will be here Tuesday afternoon, so hopefully some nice FTS with a "full" tank Wednesday. Once the rock is in, and the overflow combs installed (they should be here by then also) we will fill the tank up the rest of the way with water. At that point we will likely open the taps and get the existing tank water circulating through it.

I spoke to a carpernter today about assisting with the trim and access door. We will likely just find one to build the door for us and possibly matching trim and then we will just install it. This is for several reasons, time being one of the main ones.. seems that we have more of it for the installation than the carpernters do (which is odd because I constantly feel like I don't have enough time these days).

Cheers and thanks for following along

[jnarowe]

it's so nice and clean!

[strittmatter]

I hope you realize i was just joking, about the pictures.

The tank looks really good. it's going to look great when you get it all trimmed out and filled with rocks. Can't wait to see it.

[Dustyreef]

Very cool custom tank

[zemuron114]

what taking so long Tom and Jue!? hehe j/k! Looks awesome. Can't wait until you stock it!

[Sparkss]

ok, after a long day of fighting with the box track and aluminum tubing I finished the lighting rack. I have to say that in the end it works just as I had envisioned it, although the journey to get to here was somewhat different from what I had expected .

Here is the "convenience" carrige component of our light rack. I call it that because it is the piece that allows us to move the lights out of our way and makes it more convenient to access the tank. It is the carriage that runs on the tracks that run parallel to the tank (the fixed tracks).



The carriage contains it's own set of box tracks along with the track for the light mover (in the center). Here is is "installed" :






This is the lighting carriage, that runs on the tracks on the convenience carriage (from front to back of the tank, moved by the light mover). This contains the LAIIIs and light mover.




The tie wraps on the socket end of the LAIIIs is only temporary. I will put some chain in there tomorrow. To be honest, I could remove those tie wraps and the reflector would barely move, but I put them their to help with getting the rack up in the air.

[Sparkss]

Here it is installed. The reflectors sit just 9" off the top of the tank to the bottom of the reflectors.




a bit of a closer shot of the light mover component




and here is the tank from the front.



I am testing out a IceCap ballast on the left and a PFO HQI on the right, both are running XM 10K 250W bulbs. The PFO is definitely brighter, but the IC is noticably bluer. According to Sanjay's site the PFO shoulf be pushing 9.9k and the IC 11.5k. I like the look of the IC better (not to mention the much lower wattage draw), but need to be sure that it is enough light for the tank's intended inhabitants. I need some recommendations for a good, reasonably priced, light meter, so that I can determine if the IC will work for us or not. Of course right now the tank's water level is almost 1 1/2" lower that it would be under normal operating conditions, so I would need to test it after I "topped it off" next week.

Again, looking for recommendations for a good light meter to use in our tank to determine if we have enough light with the different ballasts. Or if anyone has one that we can borrow to just test out these 2 ballast/bulb combinations in our tank.

Thanks for following along

[jnarowe]

Tom, that is freakin' awesome. What a great solution...very well built and I wish I had thought of that!

[Sparkss]

Originally posted by jnarowe
it's so nice and clean!

Yea, but we all know that it won't stay that way for long... but hopefully the cycle will be minimized by my plzns to connect it to the established sump, etc, next week.

Originally posted by strittmatter
I hope you realize i was just joking, about the pictures.

The tank looks really good. it's going to look great when you get it all trimmed out and filled with rocks. Can't wait to see it.

S'ok , now there are even more pictures for the viewing . As for wanting to see it full and trimmed out... I can't wait either !!! . I have been exchanging Emails with a carpenter, so possibly that piece of it may start moving along soon also, and the rocks will be here next Tuesday, which might be the next update I provide (unless I go ahead and do the mesh top tomorrow ).

Originally posted by Dustyreef
Very cool custom tank

Thanks, and Welcome to RC

Originally posted by zemuron114
what taking so long Tom and Jue!? hehe j/k! Looks awesome. Can't wait until you stock it!

You know that I am already working up a stocking list DJ . That is the fun part . I am sort of setting my sigths on a pair of powder blue or powder brown. I saw a pair at a public aquarium doing some sort of a dance
(reminded me of the mating dance of 2 mandarins that I saw documented once). Anyways, it was breathtaking, so now that we will have a tank of sufficient size, that is one of our goals (amongst others ).

[Sparkss]

Originally posted by jnarowe
Tom, that is freakin' awesome. What a great solution...very well built and I wish I had thought of that!

Thanks.. at least now I can better explain (with pictures) what I had in mind for our lighting rack . This is what I was trying to describe earlier . I am glad that you like my idea(s).

Right now the light mover has about an 11" travel. I need to move the stop screws in a bit on the tracks to shrink and focus that travel.. probably down to 8" - 9". I won't really know what will work best until I get the rockwork layed out, then I will work on the lighting to accomodate the aquascaping.