New 5 footer......

[May&Bruce]

Well, the 5 footer has now been running for about 3 months.....finally got around to taking some pics. Details are:

- 5 foot x 2 foot x 2 foot

- Jaubert plenum system with 5 inches of sand - no coral chips, no bio balls or anything else in the sump

- Ocean Werx becket skimmer (excellent)

- Hailea HX6550 external return pump

- Resun chiller

- Other pumps, for chiller and skimmer are Rio MH series - excellent pumps (high pressure high flow rate and low power)

- Dosing kalk with a mini peristaltic dosing pump

- 2 x 150 W MH and 3 x 36 W blue fluoro

Tank water parameters all good, nitrates 5-10. Banggai cardinals gave birth after being in the water less than a month, so water quality must be ok, right? (Actually have thoroughly tested and the water is good).

Next addition will be a kalk reactor, or maybe a CA reactor.....

[May&Bruce]

becket skimmer and chiller

[May&Bruce]

great skimmer from Ocean Werx

[May&Bruce]

general view

[May&Bruce]

Hammer doing well

[May&Bruce]

Mushies also doing well

[May&Bruce]

...

[May&Bruce]

happy tank mates

[May&Bruce]

Muumy banggai

[May&Bruce]

skunk clown loves the elephant ear coral

[May&Bruce]

...

[May&Bruce]

babies in the 1 foot tank. Will throw them in the main tank in a couple of weeks...

[dsam]

Good work Bruce...or May? Can PM me the price of Beckett?

[framerunner]

Can your chiller can chill a 5 footer?

[ervine]

nice work... hope you coated your stand with a few layers of marine grade paint though... it might start to rust in no time..

Also, does your cabinet have a hole in the back for the chiller exhaust?

[May&Bruce]

framerunner & ervine....

yep cabinet has a hole in the back and the chiller air outlet is ducted out - no heat problems inside the cabinet at all. The CL450 is working on my 5 foot tank. The tank temp is nominally 26.5 degrees, so it is bringing the water down from an ambient of about 29 degrees. It comes on during the day for about two hours then off for 1 hour or so.......at night it will be on for about an hour and then off again for about an hour or so. So you can see that it is cooling enough while not overworking. I reckon it is on the limit though and I am thinking of upgrading it.

Re the stand, yep I know about steel stands rusting (my previous tank also had steel stand). I coated it with 3 additional coats of paint and am careful about spilling salt water.......

[Melvyn Tan]

May be good if your sump is resting on styrofoam too?

[May&Bruce]

melvyn...good idead (wish I had thought about it at the time). Its currently resting on plastic tiles. When I next do anything major to the sump, I will chuck a piece of faom under it...thanks

[blueheaven]

The CL450 might be a little underpowered for your tank size

Chillers do take in a lot of power you know?

[Melvyn Tan]

The purpose of the styrofoam is to spread the loading stresses (if any due to uneveness) and also to prevent localised stresses as glass is weak in tensile strength and may break in any localisation.

[May&Bruce]

BH...actually I am an electrical engineer, so I can figure out how much power is required. However, given how much money the entire hobby costs, the electricity bill is just another one of the many high costs......:S

However, I do want to upgrade it, to be on the safer side.

[ervine]

yep cabinet has a hole in the back and the chiller air outlet is ducted out - no heat problems inside the cabinet at all. The CL450 is working on my 5 foot tank. The tank temp is nominally 26.5 degrees, so it is bringing the water down from an ambient of about 29 degrees. It comes on during the day for about two hours then off for 1 hour or so.......at night it will be on for about an hour and then off again for about an hour or so. So you can see that it is cooling enough while not overworking. I reckon it is on the limit though and I am thinking of upgrading it.

oh that's pretty small for a 5 footer... i use my 450 on a 2.5footer.. well as long as it gets the job done...

Nice tank btw... I would go buy some matching plywood to cover up the stand and make it into a pseudo cabinet to complete the look...

[May&Bruce]

ervine...yep that's what I did on my 3 foot tank but I am getting lazy. Looks like I will need to do that though......i just need to remember where the place is that supplied and cut the plywood last time.....mmmmmm

[May&Bruce]

Am finalising building a kalk reactor - will only need to worry about topping up the kalk fortnightly......ready mixed and automatically dosed :-) Will publish pics when completed.

Now at the conclusion that I will upgrade the chiller. Question is do i upgrade to a CL650 or go bigger still.....grrrrrrr, money money money.

[framerunner]

Wow, share your kalk reactor building process.

Btw, imo cl650 may be still undersize for your 5 footer. It's better to go for the biggest (once and for all) than to keep upgrading as you will waste more money doing upgrades