0.2KGal Reefer

[DrunkG0D]

10 minutes ago, Jeebusai said:

Open concept is good bro. Happy Wife is happy life. Land area at least 1800 sq feet? Nice!

It's costing a bomb. Pocket not happy.

[DrunkG0D]

Managed to go visit the house today. Floor leveling works starting today and hopefully by next week will start to see the tiles going down. Still a giant mess. Had issues with the tiling contractor and their quality of work. Hopefully they buck up. This will be the location of the tank. That whole area under the stairs will be store room up to the column. Everything to the right of the column will be tank and cabinets. You can just make out the drain and water pipe in the store as well as the pre-laid cables for the power points where the tank will be.

On a side note decided to test out the Hanna test kit last night and do some water tests for my 20Gal. I like the hanna kits except for the Phosporus ULR which has a really short timeout and auto shut down. Seriously... between getting the sample in and doing the first reference reading, then mixing the reagent and shaking for 2 minutes, the 3 minute time out is not nearly long enough. Had to repeat the test twice to get a proper read. Readings last night:

Nitrate : 0 - Colombo Test Kit

Calcium : 410 - Hanna Kit

Alkalinity : 7.9 dkh

Phophosrus ULR : 11ppb or 0.034ppm (phosphate)

Not sure if this is considered ok with 0 nitrate and ultralow phosphate.... Any shifu's here can enlighten? Maybe I should reduce NoPox dosing further.

[Harlequinmania]

Look like another exciting project !

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[Nick Liu]

Csnt wait to see this masterpiece!

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[DrunkG0D]

Good morning and happy Saturday everyone!

During the planning process I decided to figure out how all the electrical works should pan out to make the entire build organized. Listing out all the equipment and where each item should be plugged into and working out roughly how much power is going to be used to run this system. 

At this point it seems that the amp draw is really low and I'm doubting my calculations a little. However with 4 main sockets I will have tons of spare supply if required. Next step is to figure out how to route all the wiring between the control cabinet, dosing cabinet, tank, raceways and lights so as to make it all neat and less of a hazard.

[DrunkG0D]

Have been thinking about how to speed up the cycle. I have gone ahead and ordered

2 x Exxodus BAC brick

2 x Exxodus Nytryx brick

1 x Exxodus BAC

Based on what I have read each brick is supposed to be able to provide nitrification for 3800L of aquarium water so I believe this should suffice. On top of that I have about 80kgs of caribsea liferock waiting to become the new scape. Once the bricks arrive I'll be placing them into a blue drum with small power head to cycle for about a month. Seeding it with some nitrifying bacteria and ghost feeding during this period. Anybody else done this before? Will it shorten my startup period?

[Jeebusai]

22 hours ago, DrunkG0D said:

Good morning and happy Saturday everyone!

During the planning process I decided to figure out how all the electrical works should pan out to make the entire build organized. Listing out all the equipment and where each item should be plugged into and working out roughly how much power is going to be used to run this system. 

At this point it seems that the amp draw is really low and I'm doubting my calculations a little. However with 4 main sockets I will have tons of spare supply if required. Next step is to figure out how to route all the wiring between the control cabinet, dosing cabinet, tank, raceways and lights so as to make it all neat and less of a hazard.

Good luck with the wiring. I gave up and bought a small ikea cabinet to hide the cables cos Wife complained unsightly.....

[Jeebusai]

21 hours ago, DrunkG0D said:

Have been thinking about how to speed up the cycle. I have gone ahead and ordered

2 x Exxodus BAC brick

2 x Exxodus Nytryx brick

1 x Exxodus BAC

Based on what I have read each brick is supposed to be able to provide nitrification for 3800L of aquarium water so I believe this should suffice. On top of that I have about 80kgs of caribsea liferock waiting to become the new scape. Once the bricks arrive I'll be placing them into a blue drum with small power head to cycle for about a month. Seeding it with some nitrifying bacteria and ghost feeding during this period. Anybody else done this before? Will it shorten my startup period?

Seen quite a few reefers here doing this. One of them is sis Marcal. She cycled a few months on advance lol

[alexcyf]

Interesting build! Very similar to the ideas for e tank that I built for my bro in law. Would love to share and discuss more, esp the water inlet and drainage ideas!

[DrunkG0D]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:42 AM, Jeebusai said:

Good luck with the wiring. I gave up and bought a small ikea cabinet to hide the cables cos Wife complained unsightly.....

I made 2 extra cabinets for this tank. One will be on each side of the tank. One of the cabinets will house the dosing containers and the 3 x Neptune DOS. The second will house all the electricals. They doors will be magnetically attached to the cabinet. At the moment I have proper doors made but I'm thinking to replace this with 6-8mm acrylic panels instead because I'm not liking the doors now. Inside the cabinet I will install an acrylic panel to mount all the electronics.

 

[DrunkG0D]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:43 AM, Jeebusai said:

Seen quite a few reefers here doing this. One of them is sis Marcal. She cycled a few months on advance lol

Yeah I hope this will seriously shorten my overall cycle time. So that I do not have to stare at an empty tank for too long.

The plan currently will be as follows:

1) Start cycling the bio bricks/media (Now)

2) Tank in, scape done, equipment installed (End Aug - Mid Sept)

3) Fill Water (Mid Sept)

4) Cycle additional 2 weeks

5) Livestock in (Early Oct)

[DrunkG0D]

20 hours ago, alexcyf said:

Interesting build! Very similar to the ideas for e tank that I built for my bro in law. Would love to share and discuss more, esp the water inlet and drainage ideas!

I'm open to share and discuss and would love to learn more from everyone. Currently I am debating with myself whether to have a separate container within the store to act as ATO. As I'm going to use Triton method I believe water changes will be kept to a very absolute minimum so I don't have plans for an auto mixing/water change station. But if required I'm sure I can add that into the store room.

At this juncture I will have a 1 inch sand bed so will definitely need to look into how to conveniently clean that. At this point after watching some videos I think i can do that with just a simple siphon into a a big ball of filter floss back into the sump.

[Ranz]

for Triton - auto mixing/water change station is not necessary. however you need to be able to mix water when the needs arise. Example: if your icp test come back with metals and the recommendation is 6x15% water change. 

for sand - normal cleaning with siphoning will do like what you describe. i don't siphon my sand anymore after getting a sea cucumber. he keeps the sand sparkling clean 

[DrunkG0D]

37 minutes ago, Ranz said:

for Triton - auto mixing/water change station is not necessary. however you need to be able to mix water when the needs arise. Example: if your icp test come back with metals and the recommendation is 6x15% water change. 

for sand - normal cleaning with siphoning will do like what you describe. i don't siphon my sand anymore after getting a sea cucumber. he keeps the sand sparkling clean 

Good point on the mixing station. I have 4 of those blue drums that I posted in my earlier post. But it may/may not be big enough. What I think would be a more cost effective option is to get a few cheap power heads to do the mixing in those stations. I do have a spare Vectra S1 that i can use to pump the water back into the tank. So this should be fine. But the thought of having to do 6 x 15% water change over 6 days is daunting...

Sea cucumbers are butt ugly though...  hahahaha

[Ranz]

for the water change - it is in a period of 6 weeks, not 6 days. 

in any case, as with all reefing method, stability and patience is key. if things become stable with Triton, you don't really need to change water. i haven't change water for past 15 months until recently whereby the ICP test came back with something rusting in tank (found a rusted screw in return pump). 

as for the sea cucumber, it is the best cuc i have ever gotten. although ugly.....

[DrunkG0D]

10 minutes ago, Ranz said:

for the water change - it is in a period of 6 weeks, not 6 days. 

in any case, as with all reefing method, stability and patience is key. if things become stable with Triton, you don't really need to change water. i haven't change water for past 15 months until recently whereby the ICP test came back with something rusting in tank (found a rusted screw in return pump). 

as for the sea cucumber, it is the best cuc i have ever gotten. although ugly.....

Nice tank nice coral nice fish then suddenly got one moving poo stick...

[loong mun seng]

Nice!!

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[MarCal]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:43 AM, Jeebusai said:

Seen quite a few reefers here doing this. One of them is sis Marcal. She cycled a few months on advance lol

Waaa don't quote me leh. I did cycled but still not mature enough...aka mission failed

[Solo77]

Refer to yr ATO, I presume u are referring to auto-topup? Think irregardless which sys you choose, u will need ATO to compensate water lost due to evaporation to stablise yr salinity.

[DrunkG0D]

14 hours ago, MarCal said:

Waaa don't quote me leh. I did cycled but still not mature enough...aka mission failed

So what happened when u tried to cycle early. What was the failure point and what would you do differently next time?

[DrunkG0D]

12 hours ago, Solo77 said:

Refer to yr ATO, I presume u are referring to auto-topup? Think irregardless which sys you choose, u will need ATO to compensate water lost due to evaporation to stablise yr salinity.

I definitely will have an ATO just a question of whether the one that comes with the reefer is big enough. If not then I'm considering a 100 or 200L storage drum in the store room or running the line directly from the rodi to the sump or to the ATO tank that comes with the reefer. 

[MarCal]

11 hours ago, DrunkG0D said:

So what happened when u tried to cycle early. What was the failure point and what would you do differently next time?

No idea. I soaked. I washed. I soaked again w RODI water. I sunned for almost a month. Then I rinse before stariting cycle. I dose bacteria. Yet my tank not doing well. Fishes died. Algae bloomed. Don’t know what went wrong. Didn’t experience these w my Lagoon tank. N they say bigger is better

Edited July 25, 2018 by MarCal

[shetland]

Bigger is not better, its just allow u more time to react if anything were to happen example power failure. Learn it the hard way previously, added too much too fast. Even with a bigger tank, need to be patient and allow the tank to mature. Once its mature, u can add stuff in slowly and u will see that all will survive.

[DrunkG0D]

So decided to quickly get a cycle going. Got a blue drum and a wave maker hooked up with some spare rocks that I had lying around and bought a box of maxspect biospheres to dump in there. Still waiting for the bricks to arrived but for now this seems fine. What I have lying around and the bio spheres.

Got 2 bottles of beneficial bacteria to dump into the blue drum along with all the medias.

Threw a small handful of fish food and a tablespoon of mysis feast to get it all going. Will need to measure the water parameters in this daily to make sure everything is on track.

[DrunkG0D]

Seems like the cycle is underway. Ammonia at 2ppm after 18 hours.