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  #26  
Old 01/05/2008, 09:44 PM
customcolor customcolor is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by MrSquid
Got my skimmer today - it's one of the new MXS (Xtreme) 200's. Here it is - I put the soda can in there to give you an idea of the scale. 8" diameter, about 22" high. The pump is a mesh-wheel modded Sicce.


thats a monster. now arnt u glad you downsized alittle
  #27  
Old 01/05/2008, 09:49 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by customcolor
thats a monster. now arnt u glad you downsized alittle
OH YEAH! Even if I had a sump that would take a skimmer with a 16x16 footprint, that would have eaten up a crapload of space in my stand. It's full the way it is - and as you can tell, I don't even have anything plumbed yet!

I can't imagine how tight it'll be with the tubing for everything - plus a 10g hex for the ATO water. (gotta go hex because the stand isn't deep enough to put a regular 10g in there, and I want to go bigger than a 5g bucket.
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  #28  
Old 01/05/2008, 10:05 PM
customcolor customcolor is offline
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true. i go trhough about 20 gal a week in my 125 for top off now. so you may be refilling your top off 2ce a week. you could put a brute in the basement with a power head in it to pump water out to a bucket for transport to the ato. then atleast you will have 30 or so gal just for that one emergency!
  #29  
Old 01/05/2008, 10:29 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by customcolor
true. i go trhough about 20 gal a week in my 125 for top off now. so you may be refilling your top off 2ce a week. you could put a brute in the basement with a power head in it to pump water out to a bucket for transport to the ato. then atleast you will have 30 or so gal just for that one emergency!
Finished basement. Oh well... I like my basement (no - I LOVE my basement), so I can handle filling the ATO 2x/week.
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  #30  
Old 01/08/2008, 08:05 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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I got the tank plumbed and leak tested on Sunday - everything went great. So yesterday and today I've had the tank and sump filling with RO/DI water. The one thing that I found out during the leak test is that I'm able to run everything with the one Ocean Runner 6500 pump. So now I've got a 3500 is a spare in case the big guy craps out on me.

Today I ordered up my live rock from Premium Aquatics. 100# each of Kaelini Tonga and Timora. I should have my hands on it Thursday morning.

This afternoon I finished wiring up all the lights and got my Reefkeeper 2 all set up. Now tonight I'm going to get everything cleaned up to appease the missus and get the aragonite bed cleaned and into the tank.

I can't belive that the "build" part of this project is finally almost over!

I'd post pics of the sump but I'll wait until that's organized better. It'll be a bit of a mess until I get all the wiring all cleaned up.
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  #31  
Old 01/10/2008, 02:42 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Got my rock!

I received my rock today from Premium Aquatics. Overall I'm extremely impressed. The only thing even remotely bad is all my fault - I asked them for some bigger pieces. I meant - send me SOME bigger pieces *as in a few* ... not SEND ME SOME BIGGER PIECES! (as in most of the order) Well they definitely sent me some big stuff. But some VERY NICE big stuff! And I say this having worked at an LFS 13+ years ago. This was back when nice live rock was really easy to come buy - most pieces we sold out of the store were almost full coralline coverage. So I remember nice rock, and I've seen bad rock. Overall, 80%+ of what I got is pretty nice rock.

I got a mix of 100# of Kaelini Tonga and 100# of Timora. I almost choked when I saw that overnight shipping to WI was nearly $800 - fortunately we're having a mild winder (as is Indiana, where PA is located) so I was able to ship ground ($125) and had it in two days. I was REALLY close to driving to Premium to hand pick it myself, but that's 12 hours round trip...

Our UPS doesn't come until after 5pm most days, so I picked up the boxes at the local UPS office this morning. 4 boxes, each 50+ pounds. It's nice that they actually send you 50# of rock. My full shipment was like 226#, so they're not counting box, paper, etc as rock weight. VERY NICE!

One box was 2 boxes taped together, so I figured that's where the big pieces were - so I opened that one first. Turned out about 1/2 of what I got I'd consider to be big pieces. In the end I could have probably done with about 150# or so.

Here's box #1. This one was in the roughest shape - but only the box. The rock was fine. Rock was wrapped in damp kraft paper - MUCH easier to remove than wet newspaper! Then everything was placed in a plastic bag and then in the box.


Here's the contents of box #1


Check this piece out - almost full coralline coverage on the face!


This bad boy was in box #1 too. I put the 5g salt bucket lid by it for scale. I'm glad I didn't have to take my canopy off to get it in the tank - it barely cleared my halides. The smaller pieces are rubble from the box - it's a future pod-farm!


Here's box #2 - again with the lid for scale. The smaller pieces are more rubble from the box.


Here's a couple of random closeup shots of the "dry" rock. Some funky skeletons on this one.


Nice shape and coralline mixture.
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  #32  
Old 01/10/2008, 02:50 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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I'm aquascaping this coming weekend - everything's just dropped in for now. But here's some tank shots.

A FTS from the left. This is where the medium-sized pieces landed. I actually like how this turned out for the most part.


End-on from the same end of the tank.


This is where the big pieces ended up. I think I have enough rock to do a 210.


About an hour after it got wet, I saw this worm crawling from one of the skeletons in that pic I showed earlier on. Bad pic, but it's the best I could get.


Had some fun with the macro on a rubble pile.


Gotta love the coralline - and the hole in this piece!


More nice coralline coverage - this piece is as big as if you'd slice a soccer ball in half.


Here's the big boys - I've got some work to do on this end of the tank. Can someone say CHISEL?
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  #33  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:00 PM
keefsama2003 keefsama2003 is offline
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Im guessing this was all Cured Rock.
Very nice i must say
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  #34  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:13 PM
nmhs2 nmhs2 is offline
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Just wondering how much did this cost you? I WANT ONE!
  #35  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:24 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Yes - it's all cured. My wife has a very sensitive nose and she'd have killed me if I'd brought in uncured and had any sort of "dead" smell in th house.

And cost... the rock or the whole project? The rock was under $1200 delivered. And the project? Well... I'd tell you but our maxed out credit card would have to kill you.

One change that's coming soon... my wife had the idea of moving the kitchen table that's in front of the tank into our sunroom. And the couch/lovesat that's in the sunroom will move to the tank.
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  #36  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:27 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Oh - and I should point out that my halides aren't on in those pics. (although that's kind of noticeable) It's just 4-36" T5's.

And the 3 powerheads in front are just temporary while the rock is fresh. There's 3 other MJ1200's with SureFlow mods in the tank that are permanent.
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Last edited by MrSquid; 01/10/2008 at 03:41 PM.
  #37  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:49 PM
siropa siropa is offline
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looking good. Can't wait to see it in person.
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  #38  
Old 01/10/2008, 03:56 PM
Gooli Gooli is offline
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Great work! this tank is going to be very nice

question...are you happy with the 10k xm and t5 actinic\blue combo?
are u getting a hint of blue or are the MHs drowning out the blue?
  #39  
Old 01/10/2008, 04:29 PM
labrec06 labrec06 is offline
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wow mr squid that ROCKS lol keep the pics comming
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  #40  
Old 01/10/2008, 04:36 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Gooli
Great work! this tank is going to be very nice

question...are you happy with the 10k xm and t5 actinic\blue combo?
are u getting a hint of blue or are the MHs drowning out the blue?
There's definitely a hint of blue with just the T5's. Your question made me fire up the MH's for the first time with water and rock to see what it looks like. It looks to me like there's a bit of a yellowish tint to the tank with the MH's. The bulbs and ballasts are new - only minutes on them. Not sure if that color will change with time or not. Plus the tank is still cloudy from adding the rock - so maybe the color will change in time. I don't know... But maybe it just SEEMED yellow since I've been looking at blue all day.

Maybe this weekend I'll flip-flop the bulbs front>back and see what that does visually.
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Last edited by MrSquid; 01/10/2008 at 04:44 PM.
  #41  
Old 01/10/2008, 04:44 PM
siropa siropa is offline
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i've always read you have to wait a 100 hours or so for the color to set in. plus if you only have looked at blue, it probably will seem yellow.
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  #42  
Old 01/10/2008, 04:52 PM
Gooli Gooli is offline
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speaking from experience..the color will shift on the XM bulbs...after several days the color will change from peepee yellow to bright white....lets us know how it looks with T5s when the light stabilizes
  #43  
Old 01/10/2008, 04:59 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Gooli
speaking from experience..the color will shift on the XM bulbs...after several days the color will change from peepee yellow to bright white....lets us know how it looks with T5s when the light stabilizes
Will do. It might be a while though - I don't plan on running the MH's for quite a while - not until I have to. (take it easy on the electric bill for a bit and let the coralline get a foothold in it's new home)
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  #44  
Old 01/10/2008, 11:02 PM
Water Box Water Box is offline
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Great job on the project. Definately a fellow with a similar occupation.
<---
  #45  
Old 01/10/2008, 11:04 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Gooli... my father-in-law stopped over tonight to check things out and I fired up all the lights for him - including the MH's. My wife was complaining about the yellow tint and after a couple of minutes as I was explaining the eventual color shift, they actually started turning BRIGHT white. So now I can say that the 10k MH / blue/actinic T5 combo looks pretty sweet. Maybe double-ended bulbs don't have the same burn-in time as SE's?

Tonight I got to see for the first time what the moonlights do. I thought this stuff was pretty cool - I've got it on about 5 or 6 rocks through the tank. It's not as pronounced in the photo, but in person it's GLOWING bright orange. Think glow-stick orange - it's that bright.

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  #46  
Old 01/10/2008, 11:06 PM
MrSquid MrSquid is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Water Box
Great job on the project. Definately a fellow with a similar occupation.
<---
LOL! Yeah - with this project I think I'm getting a promotion.

Always good to see a local on here!
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  #47  
Old 01/11/2008, 02:24 AM
Gooli Gooli is offline
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sweet! glad to hear the lights worked out..i will be doing a similar lighting setup myself..i'll post pics when i do.
look forward to seeing more pics from you
  #48  
Old 01/11/2008, 03:06 AM
Snowboarda42 Snowboarda42 is offline
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Looking great so far!


Whats your plans for corals, fish, inverts, etc.?
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  #49  
Old 01/11/2008, 05:59 AM
messina06 messina06 is offline
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tank looks awesome. What type of moonlights did you purchase? And are they hooked up to your reefkeepr 2?

The reason i ask is I went with the RIO moonlights and bought three of them for my 90 and hooked them up to my aquacontroller jr. I believe they have an auto shutoff switch as they do not turn on automatically but they do have poewr going to them from the controller...if that makes any sense
  #50  
Old 01/11/2008, 07:45 AM
NanoGurl NanoGurl is offline
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Beautiful tank and stand setup! Tagging along for sure!
 

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