SCIFI_3D_zoo 's ... 90 gal ... REDO

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

After being inspired by some of the "Tank of the Month" experts I decided to rework my existing tank. And it's been both a joy and nightmare. Drilling rock was definitely an experience I NEVER want to do again... ever. I was not only inspired by PWhitby and his kool tank but he encouraged me to share my experience here.

It was all planned for a few weeks well in advance.. yet ended up being one of the worst nights of my life. Paul.. you still want to do glass next on 600 gal? This 90 gal was damn heavy.

I had my crew to help and they only had 2 hours to help. I shoulda known as soon as people start making such tight plans it's a recipe for disaster. First thing that happened was everything was running 1-2 hours behind just getting started. Then I forgot a black background. Then I had to go get some other stuff somebody else forgot. Then I had to go back a couple of times for drill bits. I made 3 trips total and spent at least 1/2 my alloted time driving back and forth. I was working on it till 11-12pm at night myself. The other guys ended up helping for 3-4.


Here we are, except me, putting the background on, preparing to drill rock. Notice how dark it is outside already. OH... somebody put the background on without cleaning the glass real good first. DUH. :rolleyes: Learn from my mistakes.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0266.jpg

I realized one of the reasons I was so upset all night was the fact that you tend to get very attached to your tank. :mad2: Things are so delicate it tends to make my very sensitive. So I was on edge all night. I worried about how long the rocks were out of water, time corals were in buckets, stress from the women who didn't like the HUGE mess. Not to mention that some people were dropping rocks on my corals. I guess I spend so much time on this tank that I'm very sensitive about it's well-being.



I guess a good headline for this pic is.. "oh look, I've been drilling for 15 min. so far and have made a nice little hole about 1/4" inch deep". This is when I decided I needed a new bit. ABOVE you can see the PVC. I did aquascape with PVC but I don't have any pics. I basically used PWhitby's style with a single pole with two legs for support and stacked on top of that. AFTER I finally got some holes in the damn rock.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0267.jpg



These are the bits from the 2nd run to the sto. I don't have a pic of the first bit but they are all masonary 1"-1.5" inch hole saw bits. That first bit I had didn't have teeth... and thus sucked. No pic but it was basically stubs around the edges instead of shark teeth. DON'T buy that bit. The funny thing about hole saws is they leave a cylinder drilled out in the middle of your hole. I used the normal masonary bit to help drill that out. This actually helped me drill with the hole saw bit too. I spent a long time drilling holes in just 5 rocks. I was very careful but got impatient once... broke one rock in 1/2. HOWEVER, I did save it. I used some of that EPOXY, that doesn't really work, to help hold the pieces together while I had a big rock on the top and bottom to sandwich it and hold it together. It worked. The other thing I noticed was the bit would get GUNKED up very quickly. I added a little water to help and I had to keep cleaning the bit off. I was just grinding slush pretty quickly. I've never seen something so HARD to drill a hole in.. YET so easily and quickly will break in 1/2 on you.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0268.jpg

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

Hmm... doesn't look like much but I destinctly remember wanting to take a pic of the huge mess. The photo doesn't do it justice. This was all such a HUGE mess. Rock and water everywhere. Here the new tank is on and we're ready to add water. We kept all the old water and did a 20% water change.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0271.jpg


Everything is back together now. Only a few rocks are drilled. It's almost midnight. I had one of the worst nights of my life. I was done for the day. The rock is just all stacked on the right and the corals are safe on the left.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0272.jpg



This is where I spent the next several days till after Thanksgiving. I was so stressed out and sick of drilling rock. Movies, 42" plasma, RockBand drums for XBOX 360, Computers. I could , and do, spend hours here.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0273.jpg



One of the easier and quick things to do that was a good idea was to drill holes in the canopy top to allow heat to rise. My canopy is pretty closed and I have a dual HQI (150W) and dual Actinic Coralife fixture under there. It gets quite hot. I use to have 84-86'F temps. and I decided even though some people say that's ok altho 86 is high I was going to get my temps down.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0274.jpg



I ended up using $20 AZOO quad-fans, and a $80 Ranco Temp. Controller. It worked so well I tested the 4-6'F temp drop claim and let it go overnight to test it and my temp. dropped 10'F. I tried a chiller but it's just too noisey, expensive, and big to put in my family room/fish stand. Even at the hottest point of the day for the tank the fan keeps it at 79-80. ONE fan that is directed at the light fixture across the top of the wate. I've noticed more water evaporation. This pic shows my idea to attach the fan to the back of the canopy. However this ended up not working b/c I could push the lights back far enough to get my hand in the tank. I didn't think about it till now but I guess I could have pushed the entire canopy back. I'll have to think about that. Otherwise I was going to use wire/screws to mount it to the canopy lid/door.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0286.jpg



Here it is the next morning all cleared up. What a mess. I was actually getting excited b/c I figured most of the rock is drilled, I just need to make the pvc tower and slide it on. Boy was I wrong. I thought I was 90% done and I was actually 60%. Good thing about all of this. My tank is so well established all of this had little effect on my water quality, fish, or corals.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0278.jpg


More pics of what I have.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0279.jpg


Amazing. Some of this rock was out of water in my garage being drilled on for hours.. and poof... a featherduster is there... mushrooms still all over(can't see those here yet).
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0280.jpg

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

Here it is... Aquascaped V 1.0. New DRILLED tank. No mo OVBox. This was a pain in the a$*%. I figured out every time I move something the water gets so cloudy I can't see what I'm doing. So I had to wait for the water to clear up in an hour or two. BUT it was gonna clear up with all the rock out of the tank and the water so low. SO I had to move a rock or two... then put it all back in so filters could clear the water up. It was A LOT of work. So the left and right sides have two PVC towers and the rock is stacked and slid on top of pvc. In the middle it's stacked and done in a way so the pieces are interconnected with the towers to help hold it all together. It was either that or drill and stack the middle too. HELL NO. I was not going to drill another piece of rock for the rest of my life remember. When I was finally done I noticed I had the rock too close to the front of the tank. :mad2: :mad2: Part of this is b/c I couldn't see a damn thing.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0282.jpg
OLD TANK. Doesn't look too bad. Hmm. BUT remember. The rock is stacked (pieces fall over very easily), it's piled up against the glass (you should have seen all the CRAP back there), no flow behind the rock, this was a NON-DRILLED tank (see the overflow box).
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/P9170035.jpg



See. No room for anything in the front of tank... much less glass cleaning gear. My pvc towers are as far back as they can go but the middle can be moved. You can see the black drilled-tank OVB here too. I chose a BLACK BACKGROUND to help hide it. I also left plenty of room in the tank for the SPS's to grow up. This will help cover up the ovb too. So I purposely didn't stack the rock high.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0283.jpg


The right side of the tank. That right side pvc tower can be moved a little maybe. Also notice my flameback angel... he's a major PIA right now. More on that later. The clown... had him for 4 years now. He's been with me through two hurricanes here in Florida. The interesting story about him is I "saved" him. He was all tow-up from the flo up. He was at a LFS in a little 6"x6" box with a shrimp/crab with his fins all bit up. I think he was left for dead. Maybe crab food. I got him for $9 bucks. It feels good to save a creature. It makes up for all the crap I've killed. :smokin: OH.. you can see him in the finger leather. He thinks it's an aneome. So I get all the benefits of the symbiotic behavior without having to mess with a real aneome.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0284.jpg

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

Aquascape V 2.1. You can see there's a lot more room in the front now. It took me another week to build up the nerve to move rock around again. But I finally did it. I thought I could maybe just grab the middle section and just push it back but I ended up just redoing it completely. This ended up being a good idea b/c it gave me time to take a break from this and come back fresh to create some nice caves, and coral spots. Right in the middle FRONT is my Yellow FIJI leather. This guy took the entire process really hard. I thought I was gonna lose him. There was tissue loss and all. BUT he came back and is very healthy now.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0288.jpg



Compare to the Aquascape V 1.0 side view. I have a lot of stuff in my sand so I really needed the space.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0289.jpg



Some of the other stuff I'm doing is cleaning up the stand. Everything is coming off the floor and being hung up. I use to have my ballasts on the stands floor. Not a good idea since the old tank with the ovb use to leak water sometimes. Gotta fix the wires but that's what I'm doing in here. Those are my 2 black ballasts. I'm also building a new custom sump with a refugium using a 30-40 gal fish tank. We're gonna just drop in and out like we're doing now instead of going acrylic or drilling holes in the sides of stuff. I really just want a refugium and get rid of the bio-balls.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0290.jpg



On the other side, if there's room, I plan to have a 10-20 gal ro/di holding tank for automatic daily top-off.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0291.jpg



I have a green Acropora Samoensis not doing well at the bottom there. In fact, it's gotten worse and Diver's Den has given me credit. I bought it just a few days ago. I have one of those new Aussie Elegence's from Diver's Den there at the bottom right and it's doing really well. I've had it since before the tank change. My Red Brain is trying to recover still I think. The rock of mushrooms survived from the old tank. It takes a lot to kill them. I got some once that were falling apart in the bag and they were fine once I got them in my tank in less than 24 hours. Only other interesting thing to note is the sps at the top right. A little big of bleaching on a couple of tips and typical brown-out. Not only from all the change but b/c it's new too. I'm looking forward to them settling in and seeing their true colors.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0295.jpg



Last pic. taken several days ago. The clam is one of the best I have ever seen but he keeps wanting to lay on the glass. The other thing that has made a big diff. is new 14K HQI bulbs. You can see the diff. in this pic with the previous. I had 10K in the other ones and it was much more white and washed-out looking. I'll have to talk more later about what corals are in here.
http://www.scifi3d.com/StaffUpload/NewTank/IMG_0297.jpg

One note about the Flaming Angel. I've had him for awhile, he's established, the tank is getting sorta full of fish right now, so he's taken to chasing my poor timid Pacific Blue Tang around. :mad: I probably should have gotten one a little bit bigger. After reading a Reef Central article on how important QT(Quarantine) is and that you should do it for 4-8 weeks for fish/coral I decided to get my Tangs and a lot of other corals from Diver's Den/Live Aquaria for now on. There's no way a lot of these LFS are QT'n stuff like that. Luckily I've never had any problems except with tangs. I've had this Pacific Blue for 2 weeks now and he's perfectly fine, free of Ich, and eating everything. I might have to catch the Flameback and isolate him for awhile. DD/LA has a good 6 step QT process that I trust. There are some good LFS out there but lets face it. They make more money by people buying and killing fish... then buying them again later. Some of them also like to try and sell you stuff that you'll be upgrading or getting rid of sooner than later. That's also good for business.

My quest continues. It's been quite a ride... to hell. Lots more to do. Plus about 12 months to see where I'm at. It'll be kool to come back here and compare these pics a year from now. I'm setting up my own RO/DI system too. For years I've had somebody come in and help with stuff for $110/month but I think I'm almost ready to do it myself now. It was either that or get rid of the whole damn thing. I was sick of watching stuff die and growing mushrooms. These aren't even the good kinda shrooms. :smokin: I'm in a small town so it's hard to find people in this hobby. I'm probably one of the most knowledgable around here in reefing. You can't buy a single piece of coral in this town. I have to drive about 1.5 hours or more to find stuff. Thanks for looking.

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

I'll fix the images later. Looks like my HOST is down right now. 2 AM. So I'll fix it tomorrow OR I'll put them online somewhere else. Hopefully I can edit the posts later?

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

AH... we have pics.

[SCIFI_3D_zoo]

I figured I'd give myself a one-time "bump" since there were no pics for awhile.