Very impressive build! I like the goomba helper.
Dream 525 gallon peninsula display with large fish room.
- Thread starter Adam
- Start date
We it's been a crazy month, what's new. I seems like nothing ever runs smoothly these days but there has been a decent amount of progress since my last up date. With the help of Justin and David 99% of the plumbing that is need to get up and running is complete. There is one more fitting that needs to be glued on the 1st frag trough and it's ready for saltwater. The display, sump & frag tank are finished as well as all of the lines that run through the ceiling for ATO refills and saltwater replacement for water changes. Other than the one fitting on the frag system all I have left to glue is the skimmer. It has to be completely redone as I will not be running it external of for the time being, nor will I be running a flow meter on it. The meters can't get submerged. I have to get a few fitting to transition from 1-1/2" off the pump down to 3/4" at the Mazzei injector. Or I may do a 1" hose off the pump and transition to 3/4". Haven't made up my mind yet.
The rock work is about 75% done and I plan to get it finished in the next week or so. I rinsed out all the old sand I kept from my old system yesterday too. Man, Glad I had a respirator!!! Now I need to rinse out the mix of dry Tropic Eden sand I got in a few weeks ago. Once the rockscape is done the sand will go in and I'll wait till the end of March to fill the tank with saltwater. Why the wait you ask? Well the target date for the end of the first fish in QT is April 1st or 2nd. That's right, there are officially fish in the basement!! I'm hoping to have the copper up to therapeutic level by tomorrow or Wednesday. Hopefully the 1st won't be an April fools joke!
The fish I have is the beginning of the tang gang. I have a Yellow and a Tomini upstairs in a 20L along with two clowns, they are QT'd and read to go. I will probably be transferring them to the frag system next week. The Tomini will stay there as it's new home but the other three are destined for the display. In the 60B QT there are four more Yellows, 1 Purple, 1 Yellow Belly Regal, 1 Kole and 1 Powder Brown. There's also one Blueside Fairy Wrasse in a 20L.
Here is a pic of the progress in the display.
And here's the shot of the QT.
The rock work is about 75% done and I plan to get it finished in the next week or so. I rinsed out all the old sand I kept from my old system yesterday too. Man, Glad I had a respirator!!! Now I need to rinse out the mix of dry Tropic Eden sand I got in a few weeks ago. Once the rockscape is done the sand will go in and I'll wait till the end of March to fill the tank with saltwater. Why the wait you ask? Well the target date for the end of the first fish in QT is April 1st or 2nd. That's right, there are officially fish in the basement!! I'm hoping to have the copper up to therapeutic level by tomorrow or Wednesday. Hopefully the 1st won't be an April fools joke!
The fish I have is the beginning of the tang gang. I have a Yellow and a Tomini upstairs in a 20L along with two clowns, they are QT'd and read to go. I will probably be transferring them to the frag system next week. The Tomini will stay there as it's new home but the other three are destined for the display. In the 60B QT there are four more Yellows, 1 Purple, 1 Yellow Belly Regal, 1 Kole and 1 Powder Brown. There's also one Blueside Fairy Wrasse in a 20L.
Here is a pic of the progress in the display.
And here's the shot of the QT.
I see tons of yellow bitcoin in there
Looks great Adam!
Looks great Adam!
Everything I've ever heard about yellows is true. 4 in a 60 is 4 too many. They are complete terrors. I had to move the Kole back to the 20L with the wrasse because it was shell shocked and wouldn't eat. There are no signs of any ich or velvet on it and with the amount of stress it was under I'm sure it would have reared its presence if it was in there.I see tons of yellow bitcoin in there
Going to try and fatten it up in a more peaceful environment.
Actually it's mostly just the largest of the four chasing the smallest. The small one keeps going back for more though, it has every opportunity to chill in a piece of PVC but it continues to go back out and find the larger one. All the darting around is what the Kole couldn't take, they wouldn't leave it's PVC cave alone no matter how I positioned it. I'm just going to leave that fish in the 20L and QT it from there. So far I don't see anything to treat though. Both tanks have been dosed with Prazi and I'm ramping the copper up on the 60. I'm not sure if I'm going to use copper in the 20L or not yet, we'll see. Wrasses are supposed to be less susceptible to the copper in Copper Power, which is what I'm using but the wrasse is so tiny. I'm thinking about getting some Black Mollies to put in there. I have plenty of peroxide I can use in that tank too if it comes down to it.
The funny thing is the tiny 2 to 2.5" Purple won't have anything to do with the Yellow messing with it's cave. I will dart out and chase them away then go right back to it's PVC tee. The YBR or PB will go in it and the little guy tolerates it but you can tell it's not happy.
Awesome setup, as I read post you mention oversized hvac? I will undersized it so it runs longer therefore removing more humidity. I would personally put a minisplit dedicated to the fish room. I wouldn’t want salinity in air entering duct work and larger equipment reducing life of equipment due to rust.
The HVAC system isn't oversized the HRV air exchanger is. The HVAC is sized properly for the space of the basement, maybe a half ton more than needed.
Unless you're atomizing the water from the tanks or sumps I don't believe there is a whole lot of salt it the air. I think there's way more airborne salt from the dust when pouring it into the mixing container. In my last basement all the corrosion I saw was metal in close proximity to the tanks and sump. Fish will splash water from the tank and working in the sump gets water on things.
The rockscape is pretty much done. May tinker with it here and there but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. There will be a few islands added later on for things I want to keep isolated.
I may even start filling it this weekend. I'm about two weeks from the first round of fish competing QT.
I may even start filling it this weekend. I'm about two weeks from the first round of fish competing QT.
looks great!
I see sand
First 300 gallons in. The next 300 is mixing.
The tank was filled Saturday night and I let it run with socks for a day to catch any debris from the sand or any pvc dust that got missed in the water test. It cleared up pretty good in a day and I added the ammonia to it in the afternoon.
The filling took more water than I thought at about 580ish gallons and I didn't have enough to get the 60 frag that's plumbed into the same sump so I had to mix up another 75 gallons to get the system entirely filled. Now the full capacity is approximately 650-660 gallons.
I used a good bit of Pukani and Figi in the rockscape along with a lot of Marco for the bases of the structures. I'd done the same in my previous system but I still thought the rock and sand would displace more water. I'm pretty surprised it didn't fill everything at 600-610.
Now I'm making more water and I hope to have 300 gallons when I get home tonight. I also chewed through 4 boxes of Reef Crystals, a half box of IO and a half box of Live Aquaria salt. I quickly remembered what I hate about the IO products.
All that brownish yellow crap is cleaned out and the bottom and walls were wiped down. I won't add a pic of my wonderful wife crawling in there to clean it as I'm sure she wouldn't like her derriere posted on the web
Cleaned and refilling.
I'm now done with the IO crap and on to LA salt only.
The filling took more water than I thought at about 580ish gallons and I didn't have enough to get the 60 frag that's plumbed into the same sump so I had to mix up another 75 gallons to get the system entirely filled. Now the full capacity is approximately 650-660 gallons.
I used a good bit of Pukani and Figi in the rockscape along with a lot of Marco for the bases of the structures. I'd done the same in my previous system but I still thought the rock and sand would displace more water. I'm pretty surprised it didn't fill everything at 600-610.
Now I'm making more water and I hope to have 300 gallons when I get home tonight. I also chewed through 4 boxes of Reef Crystals, a half box of IO and a half box of Live Aquaria salt. I quickly remembered what I hate about the IO products.
All that brownish yellow crap is cleaned out and the bottom and walls were wiped down. I won't add a pic of my wonderful wife crawling in there to clean it as I'm sure she wouldn't like her derriere posted on the web
Cleaned and refilling.
I'm now done with the IO crap and on to LA salt only.
FWIW I only have experience with the browning with reef crystals, but their regular IO salt, I don’t get that residue in my mixing station.The tank was filled Saturday night and I let it run with socks for a day to catch any debris from the sand or any pvc dust that got missed in the water test. It cleared up pretty good in a day and I added the ammonia to it in the afternoon.
View attachment 39935
The filling took more water than I thought at about 580ish gallons and I didn't have enough to get the 60 frag that's plumbed into the same sump so I had to mix up another 75 gallons to get the system entirely filled. Now the full capacity is approximately 650-660 gallons.
I used a good bit of Pukani and Figi in the rockscape along with a lot of Marco for the bases of the structures. I'd done the same in my previous system but I still thought the rock and sand would displace more water. I'm pretty surprised it didn't fill everything at 600-610.
Now I'm making more water and I hope to have 300 gallons when I get home tonight. I also chewed through 4 boxes of Reef Crystals, a half box of IO and a half box of Live Aquaria salt. I quickly remembered what I hate the IO products.
View attachment 39936
All that brownish yellow crap is cleaned out and the bottom and walls were wiped down. I won't add a pic of my wonderful wife crawling in there to clean it as I'm sure she wouldn't like her derriere posted on the web
Cleaned and refilling.
View attachment 39937
I'm now done with the IO crap and on to LA salt only.
I wanted to use RC for the cycling because of the high Alk. I know the bacteria will use up a lot during that process. I used an old bag from Doug that I wish I wouldn't have. It had bricked up and it clouded the water which it never recovered from. Justin kindly offered to add the rest of the salt needed to mix the 2nd 300 gallons and he poured it in a lot faster than I normally do. I chose not to say anything because I was glad I wasn't the one standing on the ladder
When I'm mixing salt, I add it in much slower so not much salt will settle to the bottom where it will tend to precip out Alk. After the cleaning I added a longer piece of pvc to the mixing tank with a 45 on the end. I'm hoping it will force more current to the bottom an keep everything in suspension better. Fritz/LA don't have that chelating compound in their mix so I shouldn't have that issue going forward.
About time!!
