Fragfest

The first annual Fragfest, hosted by conceptaquariums.ca in Calgary, Sunday September 7, 2014.

The original thread can be viewed here for posterity with photos.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=108693

We enjoyed a FREE BBQ lunch, (much appreciated) and browsed the vendors.  While I was inside purchasing a nitrite test kit, my wife found a red mushroom coral frag at the coralmaster.com display which, after indicating was her "favorite", they gave her for FREE!  Well of course that obligated me to make a purchase LOL, so I went with a a 4 head Duncan's coral frag.  The guys there were very nice and entertained us for quite a while discussing our new setup.  I'll admit now that the coral purchase was a bit undisciplined.  I wasn't sure if my display was fully cycled, and I had been dosing some ammonia to get it going.

At this point we had to rush out to the airport, but the 14:00 draw came up just then and we won $100 certificate for the fragcave.com! Very nice.  I'm not sure what I am going to do with this yet.    

When we got home I used the test kit and observed ~3 ppm nitrite in the display.  I floated the corals in a 5 gallon bucket of heated salt water (in the garage), that was intended for a quarantine tank water change then proceeded with a ~50% water change of the display.  The next day I tested the water and with my excellent color vision could not detect any nitrite.

Unfortunately in the meantime, our new corals suffered a temperature event.  I may have inadvertently kicked the extension cord or something because when I went to check, the heater was off and the temperature was down to 68 f.  I acclimated the corals to the new tank the best I could. The Duncan's had a poop and now they seem happier living in their new home.

Since then, we have added two scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp.  I was a bit nervous about these guys because I had read reports of them being difficult to acclimate and dying.  I am happy to report they are alive and well, living in the cave network on the left side of the display.  They come swimming out  quickly when fish food is introduced.

The NEPTUNE APEX is on the way!

All for now.

Let There be Lights!

The Ecotech Radion XR15w Pros are up!  I made a temporary mount for them out of some extra PVC.  Not the most elegant solution but it gets them up and running for under $20.  A permanent solution on the to do list.

With the Radions suspended 10" above the surface of the water, the spread seems nice and even.  I may lower them to 9".  The color blending is a bit fractured and looks a little psychedelic at times.

I've been playing with the Ecosmartlive and it is pretty neat.  Looking forward to getting my Apex Gold package with the Wireless Expansion Module and Neptune Automatic Feeding System, by the end of the month.  Also need an auto top off system.

The cycling is going well, The system easily eliminates 1-2 ppm ammonia in 24 hours.  I dosed to about 3 ppm today, we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

Let the Water Flow!

We now have salt water flowing in the tank!  The "groundbreaking" first bucket of water went in on 24 Aug 2014.

Cycling

I've been dosing ammonia for a few days now to kick-start the "fishless" cycle.  From my research, I believe this is the cheapest, cleanest, safest, fastest  method of cycling a tank.  I purchased "Old Country Ammonia All Purpose Cleaner" from Home Hardware, it seemed to be the only product readily available that is appropriate for the job.  "Contains no phosphates or fragrances", and it passes the shake test for surfactant, no foam.  On Home Hardware's website, it claims "pure ammonia", but I'm not sure what the concentration is, and I can't find the MSDS on it.  I sent CP Industries Ltd. (the manufacturer) an email.  2 capfuls takes my system to ~1ppm.  I'll pick up a nitrite test kit soon.

Update: Those guys are fast I had the MSDS 16 minutes later.

Link - MSDS

Plumbing

I decided to modify the plumbing slightly to reduce the sound of the Fluval SP4 return pump.  I have now connected a length of 3/4" vinyl tube which eliminates 99% of the vibration before it hits the PVC.  The low frequency hum is history.  I also replaced the simple ball valve with a true union which is much smoother and easier to adjust, and now I definitely don't need a gate valve, which I had been considering.

Sump

I have temporarily reduced the output of the SP4, until I can solve the problem of the noisy sock hole.  A rough experiment seems to put the limit of the sock chamber at 150 GPH for silent operation.   It would be nice if I could directly measure the flow in GPH.  I guess I could place the main siphon output directly into the sock,  but that would kinda defeat the purpose of the drain chamber.

I shortened the main siphon slightly so the outlet is just barely covered.  This has significantly shortened the full siphon start-up time.  I can probably raise my emergency a bit.

There is some pukani in the fuge chamber.

Noise levels

The overflow is awesome.  At max flow it doesn't make a sound, Bean Animal overflow highly recommended.  It does what it advertises.

It is hard to find equipment noise comparisons online.  Vague terms such as "very quiet" and hyperbole such as "silent" abound.  I will attempt to give you an idea of the sound levels of my kit.

I downloaded an app for my Nexus 7 called "Sound Meter".  Although it has limitations and I can't verify its calibration, it seems to work pretty good.  It gives you readings in decibels. So sitting directly in front of my system 2 feet away:

Fluval SP4 return pump - 52 db
Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer - 48 db
Vortech MP40 powerhead continuous max - 46 db
Combined - 52 db (If I turn down the MP40 a bit then 50 db)
Opposite side of the room - 47db
Common room fan - 83 db
The equipments have different frequencies so when everything is on, it "sounds" louder because it sounds "busier".

The paneling for the stand reduces sound level by ~2 db

So then this puts the system slightly louder than my fridge, way quieter than my dishwasher or microwave.  The fan in my gaming laptop sounds like dust buster at full speed.  The Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer is reputed to be a very quiet skimmer so I guess we are doing alright sound level wise.

Lighting

A pair of Radion XR15w Pros have arrived.  I don't have a mounting solution yet, gonna put something cheap together to get them up and running.  I've looked at the RMS, and don't think the arms will mount to my tank.  Perhaps when a 4 foot rail comes available I can mount it spanwise.  Maybe there will be a demo unit at FRAGFEST on Sunday.

Stand

Working on the stand paneling.  Going to try sanded 1/4" fir plywood, reinforced with molding and a foam insulation backing for noise reduction.  Most of the noise reflects off the wall but it will help a bit.  Strip magnets hold things in place.

New Arrivals

We had shipped in a pair of Black Ice Snowflake Ocellaris Clownfish as our first tank inhabitants.  They are 9-12 months old, about 1.25" long.  Danny and Sandy (we don't know which yet) are currently living happily in the quarantine tank, and seem active, hungry and healthy.  At $50 each I thought is was a good deal.

What is on my rock?

I noticed these red spots while the rock was in the bin curing, and noticed them again once it was placed in the display.  The pukani arrived bone dry, cured for 10.5 weeks, was dried and stored for a month.  Could it be something growing? Or, is it just some minerals or something?

That's all for now.

Aquarium, allow me to introduce Living Room

Well the rig has made its way into the Living Room, and about time!

Now that I've had a few days off I've made some progress.  I reconfigured the plumbing.  Had to go to a different Lowe's to get my plywood since the closer one still hasn't recovered from their saw disaster.

Plumbing done, and it is much simpler now.  It had occurred to me to do it like this in the first place but somehow the idea was derailed, and didn't get back on track until I started showing everything to a neighbor.

Finally the tank gets moved to its intended home in the living room.  Much thanks to my neighbor for helping me move it in.  We placed it on some underlay left over from the floor job to protect the laminate.  Then I trimmed it with scissors.  I am impressed that the tank is perfectly level just sitting on the floor so no shimming required.  Kudos to the builders for a level floor.

I installed the rock that has been waiting patiently since it finished curing in the bin.

This will be pretty much where it stays, comfortably in the corner between the sofas.

Hopefully tomorrow the salt water goes in and I fire up the return pump!  My wife and I will decide what kind of paneling we want for the stand and I plan to use strip magnets to hold it in place.

Our first 2 fish will arrive in Calgary on Tuesday morning and be transferred to their temporary home, the quarantine tank, until all is well and they are transferred to the display.

That's all for now, Cheers!

Quarantine Tank Up

Not too much has happened lately, I was on vacation.  I did set up a quarantine tank a few days ago, a Marineland 20 gallon LED kit, that was on sale at Petsmart.

Some changes coming for the main system, a plumbing redesign.  Won't be able to get to it for a week or so though due to work.

A story for you to muse over in the meantime.  I went to Lowe's to get plywood cut for the sump to sit on as well as paneling for the sides of my stand.  First cut, no problem.  Second cut didn't go so well.  The sawmaster cut through the saw power cord and in a shower of sparks disabled the system.  Since I don't have a table saw I guess I'll have to wait for it to be fixed.

Cheers

Overflow Fun

I've been messing around with my overflow for a couple days now.  The SP4 pump can provide a decent flow through my sump at max flow.  It is rated at 1822 g/h.  This is reduced to ~1514 g/h  by the 39" of head pressure (according to the chart), and then some additional amount by the 4.5 elbows, and refugium diversion.  I don't really know what 750 g/h looks like so unless I get a flow meter I'll just hope it's enough.  The inside diameter of tube in the video below is about 1.2 "

The SP4 seems reasonably quiet but I don't have an equivalent pump for comparison.  I think the Curve 5 skimmer is slightly louder, I can hear it over the SP4, but it might just be a frequency difference.  I don't have high hopes for the MP40, I think the nature/level of the noise will be annoying.

The open standpipe creates some noise even at a trickle.  Looking down the pipe I see that the water splashes a little off the transition through the bulkhead.  I will try to smooth it out with some silicone or something.  A 1" sanitary tee might also help but I've been unable to find one.  Since I don't have to glue that part I'll just replace it if I ever happen upon one.  In the meantime I smoothed out the corner with a file and some sandpaper, seems a bit better.

Some thoughts about my setup.  The maximum water level in the sump is limited for safety.  Failure of the return pump and the check valve must not cause a sump overflow.  Photo with SP4 turned off.

I have a fairly deep overflow box.  Originally I was planning to put the main siphon near the bottom so it would be like a nice vacuum cleaner for the bottom (as shown in top video).  I realized that doing so would drain excessive water into the sump and limit my overall water volume.  I raised it up.

I suppose if there is a bulkhead failure this water will end up on the floor, but that is a danger anytime the system is running, and I think it's unlikely.

The water level in the display is effectively controlled by varying the output of the SP4, which I have set just short of max.  The pump sends enough volume to the display that it backs up in front of the teeth (perhaps they are a bit wide).  With the display at a good water level this creates a short, gentle, silent waterfall into the overflow that I really like.

A side effect of this, is that the open channel standpipe sets the water level of the overflow box and not the display.  I don't currently see a problem with this, I'll have to think more about it.

During start-up, I noticed that the main siphon wouldn't stabilize the water level before the SP4 started sucking air, so I placed a down elbow on the intake, as shown in the sump shot above, which was just enough.

I started testing the open channel/backup siphon and ran into an issue.  When I closed off the main siphon, while the water level in the system was rising and before the backup had purged all air and converted to full siphon, the SP4 had completely evacuated the return pump chamber and went dry pump shutoff.  (this is a feature of the SP4, and it will resume pumping after a period of time once water is re-detected).  This happened pretty fast and I was not prepared.

The only solution to this problem I could think of was lowering the emergency standpipe to a level that returned water to the sump while the system level was rising to keep the SP4 wet.  This seems to do the job, however, now there is a pretty narrow water level operating range in the overflow box requiring some pretty fine tuning, not easy with ball valves.

In the above video you can see the loud waterfall into the sock chamber.  The only way to stop this is to raise the water level in the sump to the height of the weir.  Unfortunately this put the volume above the previously stated max safe level.  I improvised by putting a flow restrictor in the opening of the sock (ie a coffee can lid with a hole cut in it.  I think if the weir from the drain was eliminated and the sock holder was lowered ~2 inches this would run perfectly.  As it is, it works and doesn't make any noise.

That's it for now, some videos below.

Overflow Shutdown/Startup Video:

Overflow Backup Demo:

Plumbing Done

Well, it took me 2 days, because I spent more time standing and looking, than sitting and doing, unless rocking out to Slippery When Wet and the Top Gun soundtrack qualifies as doing, but I pretty much finished the plumbing and glued it all together.  Tomorrow I'm going to put water in this thing and turn it on.  Hopefully my plumb job is water tight,  we'll see. I don't think I've ever glued PVC before.

Plumbing like Mario!

The plumbing has begun!

I spent several hours yesterday running around looking for some fittings I was missing and was reminded how fail the big 4 hardware stores are, being Lowe's, Home Depot, Home Hardware and Rona.  Their selection of 1 inch PVC fittings is terrible.  I didn't find exactly what I wanted, but enough to get by.

I've never done this before and unfortunately I don't have a laser guided compound miter saw for those precision flush cuts, just my semi calibrated eyeball and a hacksaw.

Everything is friction fitted at the moment, so I can really look it over before committing to glue.  The SP4 manual recommends attaching it to flexible tube to, so I tried some tubing that just slips over 1 inch PVC pipe to connect the pump but it's way too rigid to maneuver, so I'm just going to pipe the return pump and see if vibration will be an issue.  I don't really want to reduce the output diameter unless I have to.

Sidenote:

I put together the Bubble Magus Curve 5 but since the instructions are terrible and difficult to understand I'm not sure I did it right because I seem to have a left over tube.  To the Chinese: please hire an English speaking person to write your manuals and not rely on Google translate!

My tank!

May 31st I gave the build go-ahead, and it's finally here!

Now to start the plumbing.

More equipment

Some equipment I bought a couple weeks ago for the build:

• Fluval Sea SP4 pump
• Ecotech MP40w es
• Bubble Magus curve 5

There aren't many reviews on the SP4 return pump, but the people that seem to know it have good things to say.  It is reputed to be quiet, confirmed by Norman at Pisces so I decided to take a risk on this one.  Planning an unboxing/review video for the Youtubes.

I'm not confident that the MP40 powerhead will be quiet enough for me, but I really wanted one so I pulled the trigger.  If I don't like it I'm sure someone will buy it from me, at a discount of course ha ha!  Lots of videos out there on this one.

Continuing in the goal of silence the Curve 5 should fit the bill, and is reviewed to be a great value skimmer.  There is already a decent video of it running: 

http://youtu.be/URRJfzDUCBw

... but I'll probably do an unboxing vid of my own.

I still have to decide on lighting. Currently I'm set on Aqua Illumination, so its a matter of the Hydra FiftyTwos or the TwentySixs.

The tank, sump and stand are ready for pickup! Yay!  I'm sure Denny has gone over inch of it.  plan to pick it up today if it works out.

Pukani comes out of the bin!

The pukani has been curing in the bin for 10.5 weeks and I finally took it out yesterday!  The ammonia has been zero for a while but I continued to treat the rock with Agent Green (lanthanum chloride).  Once I had the PO4 down to what appears to be .03 or less I decided it was done.  In anticipation of my aquarium being finished up at Concept Aquariums later this week, I pulled it out of the bin and let it dry overnight.

  
I ran a quick test aquascape today and here is the first draft:

It will be difficult to make it look more interesting than just two piles of rock.  I want the rock at least 1-2 inches from any glass, and take up around 50% of the total volume.  I also want lots of holes, tunnels and channels for the inhabitants to enjoy.  The setup will be in the corner of the room so will have 2 viewing angles, the front and left.  Those need to be the interesting angles.  The dark brown stuff that I mentioned previously only seems to have affected that one piece on the top left.  What I ordered seems like enough with a few small pieces left over for the fuge.  I still havn't decided if I will go bare bottom or not.

Startup

I think it's time for me to begin my tank journal. First, I have never had a salt water aquarium. I do remember being interested in it when I was young, as I did have a fresh water aquarium, with goldfish, neons, snails etc. and remember how neat I thought the salties were. Fast forward a few decades, and more recently, a few years ago I bought a book called, "The Marine Reef Aquarium" by Philip Hunt. This got me thinking more seriously about it and now I have committed, or will be committed, once my brain explodes from all the research I've been doing for the last few months LOL.

I didn't have a perfect plan when I started, but I had an idea of what I wanted. I live in a small townhouse and I wanted the tank in my living room. I wanted the biggest tank possible and I decided the biggest I could reasonably fit was a standard ~75ish gallon tank. I also knew i wanted a sump so all the stuff could be mostly hidden in the stand. I could see it in the corner of the room between 2 sofas. 

I installed an RO/DI system under my sink in the kitchen to get me started, the Aquarium II RO/DI system combo from Aquasafe Systems.



I knew I needed rock but I wasn't about to spend $11/pound at the LFS for live rock, so I ordered ~80 pounds of Pukani from Fijireefrock.

Then I realized I had a problem. The carpet was 8 years old and I knew if I was ever going to do the floor it had to be done before the tank went up. So my wife and I ordered a new floor.

The rock arrived and on May 1st, I put it in a 44 gallon bin in my garage with a heater and power head. More on the progress of the rock later.



I knew the rock could take a while to cure, and really I'm very patient with this because I also want to spread the spending out across many months. I came up with a rough estimate of 5K to get me decently set up.

I started looking for a setup. I visited many stores in Calgary shopping for a tank, stand and sump. At first I was going to buy a standard 75 gallon, reef ready tank, a proflex 4 sump, and a nice wooden stand. The more research I did, the more I realized this was not what I wanted. I was also researching how to set up the quietest system possible, and I discovered the "Bean Animal" overflow system. I knew I wanted it, and I knew I wasn't getting it from big retail LFS.

I discovered a business in Calgary called Concept Aquariums, and went on down to check out their shop. It was actually the day the floor was being installed, which went from this:



to this:



I was in there for an hour talking to Denny about all of this, and a couple weeks later I decided they were it. They currently have my order for a custom tank, sump, and stand, and they have been very friendly and helpful to this noob, and have answered all my dumb questions.

Tank:

Sump:

Metal Frame Stand, which I will panel myself.

I have purchased most of the pvc fittings i think I will need for the plumbing, valves, unions, elbows etc.

The pukani took about 6 weeks to cure and is now sitting at 0 ammonia. The phosphate level was pretty high, as I suspected it would be from research, so I've been treating it with Agent Green, a lanthanum chloride product I found at Big Al's. It's sitting at about .2 ppm at the moment. I still have a few weeks to treat it before the tank is ready. I'm probably going to hose it out and dry it off because I really want to spent some quality time dryscaping before installing it. There's also some dark brown stuff appearing on it.

 

I know I'll have to recycle it once it's in the tank. No worries. For now it is happy in the garage.



That's mostly the story thus far. There are still many decisions to be made.

(Originally written 22 June 14, and posted at Canreef