Desi & Ketchup 4x2.5x2 tank

[desideria]

btw those check valves to prevent back siphoning do not always work well.. calcium solidification and snails can prevent it for functioning.

best is to make sure your sump able to take the "EXTRA" water incase of power trip

oooo... I shall check with elvin later as he is coming over one more time when the NSW is being delivered to show me how to work the entire set up etc. I will be taking notes!!!

I hope no power trip as I had done some rewiring to bring over another circuit for the tank but sometimes don't strike 4D, other stupid things kena strike.

Unforunately because we are leaving space for an external skimmer and the water reservoir and we set up a refrigum, there isn't much sump space so called.. Oh well.... Cross fingers and pray. Guess no long holidays for a VERY Long time!!!

Thanks for the tip!!! We will take note

[zorden]

oooo... I shall check with elvin later as he is coming over one more time when the NSW is being delivered to show me how to work the entire set up etc. I will be taking notes!!!

I hope no power trip as I had done some rewiring to bring over another circuit for the tank but sometimes don't strike 4D, other stupid things kena strike.

Unforunately because we are leaving space for an external skimmer and the water reservoir and we set up a refrigum, there isn't much sump space so called.. Oh well.... Cross fingers and pray. Guess no long holidays for a VERY Long time!!!

Thanks for the tip!!! We will take note

Return pump failure? then water will back flow. i used those b4 but its good to have not a must have. a bigger sump will be a better option.

[dachkie]

Return pump failure? then water will back flow. i used those b4 but its good to have not a must have. a bigger sump will be a better option.

and drill a air hole in the return pipe so that during backflow it will suck in air and cut the siphon

[desideria]

Day 3.. Delivery of NSW and START of cycling!

With the help form Elvin & Eugene, we got our system started with the cycling process today after delivery of the NSW from Irwana. Took about an hour or so and the "dust" from the black sand had more or less settled. We had poured in 8 bags of Nature Ocean live sand and then topped it off with 4 Bags of Carib sea Hawaiian Black. The result as shown below You can see the prawns on the sand.. LOL

With the purple and blue atinics on :

WIth purple, blue atinics and the MH on :

Ketchup just had to take a close up of the prawn... lol

And now begins the 3 weeks of cycling so it would only be 21st of Jan when we shall start stocking! COUNT DOWN BEGINS NOW!

Oh yes, and I brought up the issue of the safty valves not working. Elvin has told me that I can test it every now and then by turning off the return pumps and I should hear a loud PANG sound of the safty valves falling down. If I don't, then he has taught me how to remove the safty valve section to clean it and so it should work again. So thanks for highlighting this to me, now I know too!

cheers,

D&K

[zorden]

nice work. i also tried to cycle my tank today but with salt mix. Result: manage to top up only 20% of my tank with DI water.. the flow rate from the di unit is too slow,. try to observe if there any critters in yr LR

[Ketchup]

nice work. i also tried to cycle my tank today but with salt mix. Result: manage to top up only 20% of my tank with DI water.. the flow rate from the di unit is too slow,. try to observe if there any critters in yr LR

I dont think there's much critters, if any, in the live rock.. We bought it about 5 days ago and put in a separate tub to clean/prepare for it... Anyway, nothing in the tank now except for the prawns:P

[yikai]

nice rock work!

[peacemaker]

Nice rock scape, but it will be a challenge to place your corals. You guys will probably need lots of epoxy or super glue gel.

[MarcoVan]

hey hey hey dont just push blame to me hor, u also find them boring

no lah, not this lah. although i believe they breed quite easily? haha

I was referring to the red-dotted cardinal. haha (:

nice tank! (:

Happy Reefing,

Marc J.

[MarcoVan]

and drill a air hole in the return pipe so that during backflow it will suck in air and cut the siphon

I think this setup cannot bro, cause their return are directly under the water. unlike ours which have extra pipe sticking out of water :X

Happy Reefing,

Marc J.

[ReDDeviLs]

ur wavebox position will not work,u need to remove the wavemaker infront of it.

[dachkie]

I think this setup cannot bro, cause their return are directly under the water. unlike ours which have extra pipe sticking out of water :X

Happy Reefing,

Marc J.

mine also under water , hole from behind the back glass, drill a hole at the highest point of the return pipe , so at least if touch wood , check valve fails also wont drain until the hole tank dry

then again maybe no need lol

[zorden]

mine also under water , hole from behind the back glass, drill a hole at the highest point of the return pipe , so at least if touch wood , check valve fails also wont drain until the hole tank dry

then again maybe no need lol

make sure the sump tank is good enough to hold the additional water when the pump fail or power trip is safest. Wow.. my FR fan sleep so late.. must be writing his own FR @ other forums. Now my turn to ask.. what your nick @ other forum leh do not refer to absolutereef orh. other forums u know what i mean... .. share leh...

[desideria]

Hi all,

Day 2 of cycling.. Thanks so much for the tips and advice. I have checked that the sump /refrigum below is enough if the return pipes failed. WE have turned off both return pipes and watched as the water gushed in until the water in the tank went below the overflow line.. and there was still allot of "space" left in the sump for even more water so no worries. Elvin had reassured me that it won't happen and after testing, I believe him!

Yes about the wavebox, that's our dillema, we have no choice but to put it there because of the bracing which is preventing us from putting it facing the long side so bor pian, face the short side. So it's stuck there but yes I will remove the teeny tiny NANO wavemaker in front of it.. LOL I just put it there for now to give a bit more movement to the water... Actually, the wavemaker position and the rockscape is still tentative as ketchup is determined to change it when he comes back from Cambodia ( he left this morning)... then again, maybe by the time he comes back, he'd say : LEAVE IT LA.

Btw, the water seems to be getting cloudy and one of the prawns floated up! Should I cover the prawns with the sand so that it doesn't float.. it's now stuck at the part where the water flows through the "teeth" to the overflow box... lol.

will take some pics of the water flow later now have to go send my cousin's car in for a car wash!

Thanks all, 20 more days and counting down...

Cheers,

Desi

[desideria]

Some pics showing the water flow.... was too "tanked" out to do it yesterday so here it is..

FIrst the top of the tank from the overflow teeth down to the overflow box!

The overflow box itself

Down to the acrylic box with sponge and dripping down to the bilogical filter.. the chiller right now I just set it at 27 degrees, when my livestock goes in, i will bring it down to 26. Very kiasu, just added a clip on fan to blow at the chiller during the day and off at night.. See how it goes whether really need the fan or not. HAH

From the above, it flows to the regfrigum filled with the DSB and then to the mini area where I put more sponge and Filter media.. currenly there's only ROWA CARBON in there. I have been advised to leave it for 2-3 months and then remove it and only use it if for some reason my water is not clear as it releases allot of phosphates.

And then it goes to the return area which is housing the temporarily skimmer... my original skimmer will be placed externaly so that space will be feed up!

Will be observing next few days...

Happy NEW YEAR ALL!!!

Cheers, D&K

[samsies]

Btw, the water seems to be getting cloudy and one of the prawns floated up! Should I cover the prawns with the sand so that it doesn't float.. it's now stuck at the part where the water flows through the "teeth" to the overflow box... lol.

Once again, lovely couple tank! Can't wait to see it filled with LS ...

Don't cover the cycling prawns with the sand, you'll have a hard time retrieving them when they start to 'nua' into mush.

Try to transfer them into a filter bag for easy retrieval later.

[macrobutt]

.. the chiller right now I just set it at 27 degrees, when my livestock goes in, i will bring it down to 26. Very kiasu, just added a clip on fan to blow at the chiller during the day and off at night.. See how it goes whether really need the fan or not. HAH

Happy NEW YEAR ALL!!!

Cheers, D&K

Awesome tank!!!

About the fan, I think it will make more sense to have a fan that will bring in cool air (general ventilation) or bring out hot air (exhaust ventilation), though I will usually recommend having both. Circulating hot air from the chiller with in the cabinet doesn't help leh.....

[desideria]

Macrobutt, that makes sense... .. unforutnately we have no exhaust fans for the chiller... just the ventilation holes behind.. and most of the time we intend to leave the front door of the chiller open to allow more air circulation and we will only close it if we have guests.

I'd leave the fan there for now and perhaps only turn it on when pyscologically I feel it's too HOT. lol

CHeers,

Desi.

[macrobutt]

Macrobutt, that makes sense... .. unforutnately we have no exhaust fans for the chiller... just the ventilation holes behind.. and most of the time we intend to leave the front door of the chiller open to allow more air circulation and we will only close it if we have guests.

I'd leave the fan there for now and perhaps only turn it on when pyscologically I feel it's too HOT. lol

CHeers,

Desi.

Can DIY mah.... get Ket to do loh... haha

[comycus]

Love your setup pics

cycling don't really need to switch on lights/chiller. If you really want to switch on the chiller, maybe set to 30 degrees? Save electricity...

[yikai]

yup. turn off the lights when cycling. this way, can prevent nuisense algae from growing at the same time.

[desideria]

yup that's what i'm doing.. the lights are off.. turn on lights to take nice nice pics hee hee... all for the tips and advice.. keep'em coming!!

my cousin was around when we were doing the last bits of the tank and he just couldn't get over the fact that ketchup and I were just sitting around doing nothing but starting at an ... to him... EMPTY TANK devoid of life.. lol.... signs of addiction..

19 Days more!

cheers,

Desi.

[comycus]

my cousin was around when we were doing the last bits of the tank and he just couldn't get over the fact that ketchup and I were just sitting around doing nothing but starting at an ... to him... EMPTY TANK devoid of life.. lol.... signs of addiction..

Welcome to the hobby! hahaa it's a sure sign that you are enjoying it I think it beats staring at the TV or monitor screen.

[zorden]

Welcome to the hobby! hahaa it's a sure sign that you are enjoying it I think it beats staring at the TV or monitor screen.

well nobody understand that why we are keeping a glass cage of water with few colored "rocks" and spend $$$ maintaining it. As what brother jmng said. tis is a hobby where we can be the scientist, the artist and the engineer.

[desideria]

Hi all,

a little update on our side. It's Day 9 of our cycling and all our 5 prawns have more or less disintegrated.. As you can see from this pic of the 2 prawns which are the only ones visible.. not much of it is left.. most of it is the white slime which covers it.

Did a bit of testing and got the following results :

Salfiert test kits :

Nitrite : 0 -0.1ppm ( couldn't really tell as the color was so light!)

Nitrate : 10ppm

Magnesium : 990 mg/L (The instructions were in german and there was no english! so I had to hantam using my limited memory of my german lessons to decipher what the blazes I should do)

GH : 2.74 Meq/L

KH : 7.7DKH

Elos test kit :

Ammonia : 0

Old API test kit : (Phosphate and Calcium were out so use old ones for now)

Calcium : 380 - 400 ppm

Phosphate : 0

PH : 8.4 <-- this is using a digital one and just calibrated so it's accurate.. too high?

SG : 1.019 <-- this is unforunately using the plastic Hydrometer. I am thinking of getting a digital refractometer for better accuracy. Is it worth getting?

We will continue monitoring the tank for a couple more days. From the above, we would have to dose some Magnesium and Calcium as it's a bit too low. We believe the Magnesium reading but somehow we want to get better test kits for the Calcium and Phosphate readings before we make a final judgement on that!

I will be borrowing a friend's refractometer on Monday to get a more accurate reading and if the SG is still that low then I guess i have to dose a bit of SALT!

It seems that the tank cycling is apparantly done since the Ammonia and nitrite is almost zero but the nitrate is going up, if over the next few days, we test that the nitrate level does go up but the rest is almost negligable, then by the following weekend we will do the following :-

- water change ( we were thinking in the range of 20-50% depending on how strong we are that day to make THAT much salt water!)

- Start throwing in our filter media to reduce the nitrates ( bought seachem purigen for this very purpose.. besides that, we got ROWA PHOS)

Once the nitrate level is down to naught and we have corrected the Magnesium, SG level and Calcium... it's time to start STOCKING!!!!!

Am I right or have I missed out anything? advise Please!!

Desi