erictorres0311
Active Member
Man that's a tank , makes my 125 look like a nano. And I had a hard time convince wife for it also.
Our 12ft self contained reef
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Very nice and clean setup. You're right about the tank cycle stages, I have a tank very similar size to yours that is about 10 months running and went thru the algae stage, first cyano then hair now it's aiptasia , it's just part of it all 
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Synodontis
Active Member
Thanks Eric, I guess I'm lucky that Jen is also heavily involved with the tank as well. Makes my life a lot easier lol.
Thanks mate, we are around the 5 month mark now & while the worst of the algae is gone, there are still patches around the tank. Frustrating but a fact of life. I'm really looking forward to that 18 month mark when hopefully everything will have settled down & sorted itself out lolVery nice and clean setup. You're right about the tank cycle stages, I have a tank very similar size to yours that is about 10 months running and went thru the algae stage, first cyano then hair now it's aiptasia , it's just part of it all
Where am I finding pics of your setup?
Where am I finding pics of your setup?
I'll start a build thread on here someday lol here is a pic of the house being built around the tank, house is built and it's been running for almost a year now
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Synodontis
Active Member
Thanks Renae
Hahaha, I would hate to think about relocation costs to get everything over your way mate.
lol, Thanks Doug, we usually get that response when people are standing in front of the tank the first time.
Wow mate, I'm pretty sure everyone in this place would love to a tank journal on your build. You need to get that happening I do believeI'll start a build thread on here someday lol here is a pic of the house being built around the tank, house is built and it's been running for almost a year now
Having the ability to build & design the house around the tank must have been a bonus.
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HAHA that's crazy!
I'll start a build thread on here someday lol here is a pic of the house being built around the tank, house is built and it's been running for almost a year now
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Synodontis
Active Member
Hello again,
About that time of the month again huh. Not a great deal has changed in the last month. I'll dribble on about some of tho.
Lets talk sulphur! Don't that stuff stink lol. I was doing a water change one weekend & had everything turned off. Can't remember why now. Anyway, when I started the main reactor pump up all was good, started the recirc pump up & walked away. A few mins later I thought Hmm, tank looks a bit cloudy. Didn't worry to much, until it started to look very cloudy. Went looking for the problem & noticed a sulphur ball floating at the top of the reactor lol, that aint spose to be there I thought. I shut the recirc pump down & the lump settled back down to the base of the reactor. A 20Kg block of sulphur is not what we wanted. I figured I buggered up & had to much sulphur in there, pretty straight forward one would think.
Solution, over a coffee, mate Dave & I decided that breaking the sulphur up with a layer of K1 media would help with water flow through the media which would stop future bulk clumping. Left the recirc pump off & it ended up being about 3 weeks before I got in there & sorted it out. So now there is a 5Kg layer of media, a layer of K1, another 2.5Kg of media, more K1 topped off by more sulphur. Seems to have solved the problem.
This time around I made the 10"x2" pre-filter fit in there. I figured 1 micron spun filters would work well. I guessed wrong lol, they block up in about 4 days. So now I've ordered a few 20 micron filters to try before buying a bulk lot. It's doing the job tho, no detritus in any of the reactors. I'm still happy with how they are working, just need to tweak here & there.
I finally got around to buying a decent camera! No idea how to use it tho buttons & lights & dials & screens & the instruction book is a bloody novel! like really, who is going to read all that? So I've been studying the photo threads in here trying to understand them. Makes some sense so I set the thing up with the first set of settings & it seems to work OK, but a little dark. When I get some time I'll have another play around with it. I did play around with the brightness but I haven't got the patience to sit here & dick around with pics lol. Found a thing online that bulk resizes pics which was handy. So now I'll dump a heap of coral pics here as they are better then my usual attempts.
About that time of the month again huh. Not a great deal has changed in the last month. I'll dribble on about some of tho.
Lets talk sulphur! Don't that stuff stink lol. I was doing a water change one weekend & had everything turned off. Can't remember why now. Anyway, when I started the main reactor pump up all was good, started the recirc pump up & walked away. A few mins later I thought Hmm, tank looks a bit cloudy. Didn't worry to much, until it started to look very cloudy. Went looking for the problem & noticed a sulphur ball floating at the top of the reactor lol, that aint spose to be there I thought. I shut the recirc pump down & the lump settled back down to the base of the reactor. A 20Kg block of sulphur is not what we wanted. I figured I buggered up & had to much sulphur in there, pretty straight forward one would think.
Solution, over a coffee, mate Dave & I decided that breaking the sulphur up with a layer of K1 media would help with water flow through the media which would stop future bulk clumping. Left the recirc pump off & it ended up being about 3 weeks before I got in there & sorted it out. So now there is a 5Kg layer of media, a layer of K1, another 2.5Kg of media, more K1 topped off by more sulphur. Seems to have solved the problem.
This time around I made the 10"x2" pre-filter fit in there. I figured 1 micron spun filters would work well. I guessed wrong lol, they block up in about 4 days. So now I've ordered a few 20 micron filters to try before buying a bulk lot. It's doing the job tho, no detritus in any of the reactors. I'm still happy with how they are working, just need to tweak here & there.
I finally got around to buying a decent camera! No idea how to use it tho
buttons & lights & dials & screens & the instruction book is a bloody novel! like really, who is going to read all that? So I've been studying the photo threads in here trying to understand them. Makes some sense so I set the thing up with the first set of settings & it seems to work OK, but a little dark. When I get some time I'll have another play around with it. I did play around with the brightness but I haven't got the patience to sit here & dick around with pics lol. Found a thing online that bulk resizes pics which was handy. So now I'll dump a heap of coral pics here as they are better then my usual attempts.
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Synodontis
Active Member
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OP
Synodontis
Active Member
Thanks Nick, it's slowly getting there
Well not a lot has changed in the tank in awhile. Things are growing, still dealing with algae. Everyone seems happy. We had a large colony blue ecky rtn over two days for some strange reason? It was going really well to Then another small piece about 4ft away lower down in the tank did the same thing? Everything else was going well so I have no idea what went wrong. I didn't go changing anything & none of the levels had changed so I left everything alone. No other SPS rtn'd or even looked worried. Sometimes these things just happen? The ecky piece was only in the tank for about 2 months, the other piece had been in there since the tank was started.
Only new additions lately have been 3x Margin butterfly's. Everything was going fine then one got singled out to be picked on. That one is now happily living in the frag section on the sump. The other two have paired up & things have settled down in there.
Only have one new toy to play with this weekend.
A friend has been building a light controller for us & the proto type came home this week. We have had one board running for awhile now with no problems so having all the lights on one controller will be great. Still have one side of the tank running on ELN-60-48D drivers, these will now be replaced with LDD's.
Everything is mounted in a 2RU rack enclosure so will fit in the electrical side perfectly. No bells whistles with this, I don't change the settings once everything has been set. on up run down off, what else do you need lights to do? Not trying to breed or spawn anything so no point in anything that mimics true weather patterns anywhere in the world & we really don't want lightning,that would just be annoying lol.
32 channels (0-31) plug & play expandable to 256 channels
Pretty easy setup, easier when the wi-fi app is finished
1. Set the sunrise / sunset times for each channel
2. Set the system time
3. Fan control. 2 options you can set, timer or temp
4. Min Max brightness levels. This changes the duty cycle of the LDD channel so setting at 75%, means the LDD will still be getting 100% of the input current 3/4 of every second.
5. WiFi. The software has not be completed for this bit yet
6. Channel colours. In his bit I can assign a any of 9 preset colours to any channel. This will be used in conjunction with WiFi app when complete.
7. Alarms. This has 2 built in alarms which is handy as I'm always turning something on or off & then forgetting about them so alarm will help.
8. Multi scene. The best bit I think. Two time groups Group 1 will be Monday to Friday while we are at work. Group 2 will be Saturday & Sunday so everything will fire up earlier as we are home all day. All without changing anything extra.
9. Printout setting
The coding & extra bits are still being done as this is a work in progress. Anyone have any ideas on what else it could do?
All in all we are very happy with the whole setup
Well not a lot has changed in the tank in awhile. Things are growing, still dealing with algae. Everyone seems happy. We had a large colony blue ecky rtn over two days for some strange reason? It was going really well to
Then another small piece about 4ft away lower down in the tank did the same thing? Everything else was going well so I have no idea what went wrong. I didn't go changing anything & none of the levels had changed so I left everything alone. No other SPS rtn'd or even looked worried. Sometimes these things just happen? The ecky piece was only in the tank for about 2 months, the other piece had been in there since the tank was started. Only new additions lately have been 3x Margin butterfly's. Everything was going fine then one got singled out to be picked on. That one is now happily living in the frag section on the sump. The other two have paired up & things have settled down in there.
Only have one new toy to play with this weekend.
A friend has been building a light controller for us & the proto type came home this week. We have had one board running for awhile now with no problems so having all the lights on one controller will be great. Still have one side of the tank running on ELN-60-48D drivers, these will now be replaced with LDD's.
Everything is mounted in a 2RU rack enclosure so will fit in the electrical side perfectly. No bells whistles with this, I don't change the settings once everything has been set. on up run down off, what else do you need lights to do? Not trying to breed or spawn anything so no point in anything that mimics true weather patterns anywhere in the world & we really don't want lightning,that would just be annoying lol.
32 channels (0-31) plug & play expandable to 256 channels
Pretty easy setup, easier when the wi-fi app is finished
1. Set the sunrise / sunset times for each channel
2. Set the system time
3. Fan control. 2 options you can set, timer or temp
4. Min Max brightness levels. This changes the duty cycle of the LDD channel so setting at 75%, means the LDD will still be getting 100% of the input current 3/4 of every second.
5. WiFi. The software has not be completed for this bit yet
6. Channel colours. In his bit I can assign a any of 9 preset colours to any channel. This will be used in conjunction with WiFi app when complete.
7. Alarms. This has 2 built in alarms which is handy as I'm always turning something on or off & then forgetting about them
so alarm will help.8. Multi scene. The best bit I think. Two time groups
Group 1 will be Monday to Friday while we are at work. Group 2 will be Saturday & Sunday so everything will fire up earlier as we are home all day. All without changing anything extra. 9. Printout setting
The coding & extra bits are still being done as this is a work in progress. Anyone have any ideas on what else it could do?
All in all we are very happy with the whole setup
FL_Reefer
Valuable Member
Your tank is so dope! I really like all the planing you put into this amazing reef. The way you have your chalices placed is imo the best way to place them. It looks so cool with the outward growth almost like a monti cap. Great work my friend
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Synodontis
Active Member
Hey Sam,
Chalice collection is getting there but new ones keep popping up lol
Lee at Australian Aquariums built the tank & sump for us Justin.
He builds tanks to last & does great work. Very happy with the quality of his work.
Thanks ReefQueen lol, I'm happy with it. You play Xbox?Awesome build! You are living my dream life lol. Australia, 12 foot reef, and Xbox all day
Thank you Reefer, we like to have the Chalice's hanging off the edge of the rock, looks like they are floating & more room for Acro's lol.
ReefQueen
Amphiprion Admirer
I actually haven't much lately with my schedule being crap. The hubby got tamriel unlimited not long ago and ive been wanting to try it out, but have gotten back into wow recently. That's been my evenings after the kiddo goes to bed the past few weeks haha.
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