Another Build Thread You Won't Read

[Turbo's Aquatics]

IME dinos are a result of too many changes in the tank. This can be as little as lighting or flow changes to as much as flipping and scrubbing rocks. Of course not the only reason but just my experience

my solution went against other recommendations (tank blackout, etc). I go the opposite - high power lighting. Burn it out (i.e. let it starve) by running the lights at a high setting most of the day. Then only feed as much as the fish can eat in 3-5 minutes, and only about 15 minutes before lights out.

get an airline hose and a couple feet of hard bubbler pipe (like what is used in undergravel filter tower pipes) and connect the two, use the hard pipe to target the dinos and suck them out with the hose to a bucket. For my 120g tank back in the day, I could suck out all the dinos in 10-15 minutes and only pull out about 1/2 to 1 gallon of water.

Then blow off with a powerhead, net what you can, and use a filter sock to capture the rest. Remove the filter sock after the water clears.

I'm sure there was more to my technique but that's it. The other part of my theory was the no matter what you do, dinos will last about 7-14 days. So all those methods were really reliant on the timeframe and then "see, it worked!" I guess mine is the same. Try it, you'll say "wow, see? It worked" magic

 

[Devisissy]

It's a direct result of the fluzocole treatment. No, light doesn't seem to bother this. At all. I blacked out the tank for two days with no effect except annoying my fish. Surprisingly this morning after running this small uv is the most noticeable difference. I have a microscope but we are having the house staged for photos because we are selling so everything is on storage. Horrid timing. Today is the tanks best look.

I had byropsis pretty bad so decided to deal with it. That's what caused this. It's fine, I can wait it out. I might go get another uv today if I can find one at a local store.

I have a siphon already made up for another tank, so I will get to work. B clown will attack the crap out of me but oh well.

Silica were at 156 on triton testing now showing what looks like zero. This $50 test is worthless. Should I dose? Or naw?

 

[Devisissy]

Ok just tried to syphon out some of this with my little siphon. It worked but holy heck. I'd be here all day. So yeah. As time goes on the diatoms appear to be recording since I woke up this morning. I think I'm going to hook back up the carbon. Skimmer is still overflowing too much to buy cup on. Making a huge mess.

 

[Freenow54]

University drop out old lady here that picked the wrong year to stop drinking. Nobody cares about my stupid tank, but here it is. My build thread. It's like losing weight, if you don't tell people you are trying to lose weight then you have no accountability and you stay fat. Right? Or something like that.

I have had this 90 gallon Custom Aquarium Brands tank and a Trigger sump for years. They were free. However they didn't come with a stand. So for years it just sat there.

At this point most everyone has tuned out. Not enough photos, too much talk. Let me tell you something if you haven't moved on. Custom Aquariums Brand tanks are U G L Y. This thing is sooooo ugly. I hate it. It's the stupidest messing thing you have EVER seen. Their overflow is stupid, the intake is stupid, the frame is stupid, their sumps are stupid. I hate this tank. However, this thing is a freaking ugly butt TANK tank. Like inch thick glass, aluminum frame, 3 inches of globbed on black silicone RTV40 in their stupid ugly thick frame. I hate this tank in equal amounts of the peace of mind I have that I could shoot a Blackhawk with 454 casull at it and probably be OK. If Custom Aquarium Brands read this, they won't, but if they do, your tanks suck and your sumps suck, and could you make your intake a little bigger and uglier? I mean it already looks like toilet waste plumbing I'm sure you could up your game and make it even uglier.

I rest my case.

If you willingly bought this tank and it's not in an office building, I would like to know what your drug of choice is and ask you to share it with me.

Why use this tank? Because it was free and knowing what I know now I would have never loaded this 200 pound chunk of silicone and toilet plumbing into my car, then this thread would have never happened, and maybe I would have a life.

First things first I removed the toilet plumbing. Since the man who bought it before me had it plumbed like a literal toilet there is only one bulkhead for a 90 gallon tank. So I am forced to use undersized overflows. Which I don't know what happened in the last 6 years, but there is like 2 companies now? So go with undersized crap that looks good or flushing toilet. So I got the Eshopp Medium. Will it clear the MASSIVE BLACK ALUMINUM 2 INCH WIDE RIM? Probably not, but that's for another post.

So the Trigger Sump is a Ruby. It was abused. Man who had it before had that bad boy straight piped like a Ford trying to run a 6 in a redneck's backyard race track. Imagine Niagara Falls. Now imagine Niagara Falls in your living room. I bet they were hoarse from all the screaming. So he cut out the acrylic. It looked like a small muskrat got caught in a trap and tried to make their way out. Or maybe not a muskrat, maybe just a dude that didn't own a Dremel and only had a chisel and a will. A will to have the world's loudest aquarium. So me being stupid decided, oh all these scratches and defects, I'll just buff them out with all this crap I have lying around the garage. Realizing about 3 hours in I'm closer to death then I have ever been, I gave up. I also decided cordless drills might not be the best for the job at hand. Maybe if Tesla had his way we would never need to charge these things.

This is what defeat looks like.

I got on the world wide web and surfed on over to Trigger and bought the same sump but the Crystal model. Now, I dunno if it's the red color or what. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a 9 year old Ruby Trigger sump and a brand new Trigger Crystal sump. There are more defects in the acrylic, nothing structural, but just ugly spots throughout. And whatever wax they use is just one giant lube mess. I had to wipe this thing down with a microfiber every time I touched it. It's got cloudiness, scratches, crazing, all sorts of garbage. But it was cheap so there is that, and it came with socks so WOO HOO!

I had this old JBJ 45 that I sort of liked, I do like some things, but learned to hate the AIO. It was always a challenge to do anything. I have man hands OK? This last crash I almost gave up. After tearing it down I found my MP10's magnet has been rusting into the tank. And the ATI test shows that. So maybe that was it who knows. I live in a tiny house so I have to make room which meant getting rid of this old tank. I put it on Facebook market place. I don't know why. Maybe because I like to hurt inside and have lost all self respect. After weeding through all the bullcrud people asking stupid questions I found a normalish person.

The guy who came to get it looked so bewildered. He had NO CLUE what he was picking up. All he knows is his wife wanted a "small" tank. He looked scared. He said, "I wasn't expecting it to be this nice, or big." It was LITERALLY in the ad. Here is what he got. For free. It's like The Ring. You remain cursed until you, oh wait if you haven't seen the movie skip this, /spoiler you have to make a copy of the video and give it to someone else. Same with tanks, I was cursed with Custom Aquariums custom crap tank, so now I have to pass it on. He is what he got.

I think he got the better deal.

So now with that gone we took all the furniture out of the room, painted, and today an engineer is putting in a 2,000 dollar beam so this giant messing glass box and aluminum frame don't fall through the floor, and then keep falling through the floor, down through the crawlspace, the ground, past the earths core, right on to the other side of the earth. So essentially I'm not protecting the aquarium, I am protecting my house from the aquarium. So next week new flooring goes in to cover this new massive beam.

I have some fish and some corals from the old tank. I threw the corals in the macro tank and they hate the Tuna Sun, cause it's not Tuna Blue so fingers crossed they don't all die one buy one. Fish and the old rock, snails and urchin live in a Tupperware. They have a window for light, a sponge filter, heater, and a skimmer. And dang it, that's what they get for the next month and a half. And they better like it.

It is the best scape I have ever done.

Equipment is two MP40's and one MP10. Yes, I ordered a new wet side. Sheesh. I got the stupid outdated Ecotech live box thingy to control them all too. Two reef breeders 24inch because I already have them so yay. Bubble magnus that came with the 90 gallon and was surprisingly not in crappy shape. My Loop DC return pump. My stand is custom because stupid Custom Aquarium Brands puts the world's largest rim on their tanks with the thickest glass ever it won't fit on a standard 90 gallon stand. It's aluminum just like the frame of the tank. I stood on it to paint. I have no idea how I am going to skin it yet. I can tell you right now it won't be with fabric, you all know who you are. Stop it.

Oh and because I am generic in life without any single unique vision or will, red with gray plumbing. JUST LIKE EVERY ONE ELSE. At this point places should just charge double for those two colors.

Stay tuned for all my failures.

I am always here for you. Why don't you just take up scuba diving. Just be aware you cant talk underwater lol

 

[Devisissy]

I am always here for you. Why don't you just take up scuba diving. Just be aware you cant talk underwater lol

On the flight down to the Cayman islands my nose got pretty dried out. I didn't think anything of it once we got there because I was so excited to get my deep sea certification. My partner was my mom who ended up being as worthless as a raincoat in the desert. Her hand signals were all wrong and she kept getting distracted.

Well it was at about half way through when I realized my mask was rapidly filling with blood. My nose from the plane. I tried to get my mother's attention but she had spotted some sort of fish, I couldn't see because now my mask is blood filled, and she was blissfully unaware I'm blind.

Well don't panic clear your mask like you were taught. So I try it but my nose is bleeding so bad it's not working. At this point my mother finally realizes the issue but instead of helping me work my way to the surface she abandons me to find the instructor. So I'm blind, in a cloud of blood, in the middle of the ocean.

I did get my certification no thanks to my mother who took everything we had learned and **** all over it. Moral of the story, don't use your mother as a dive partner and use saline spray on the plane.