Kessil

Insomniac's 150g "downgrade"

I've been a very busy guy the last 4 or 5 years, and have found myself neglecting my livestock which have lived very much in spite me. When i first started out in reefing, I picked up a small 70g RR tank that someone was selling off. It was stocked with a few corals, plenty of nuisances, and a bunch of desperate looking fish. I went through all the regular curves that every reefer does, as well as transitioned to little colorful sticks. It was thriving quite well for quite some years. Fast forward 2 moves and 4 tanks later, kids are in competitive soccer, work exploded, and i ran out of steam. I slowly let most of the stuff i liked die off, and the strongest (easiest) coral took over. Somehow through all of that, almost every fish i had since my original tank have survived and thrived!

Now this brings me to today.

My new tank was ordered, my 200DD has been drained and replaced, and my journey begins...again...

Here's what i did:

I put a lot of though of thought in this swap, in an effort to move forward on the new build quickly. All Display rock was basically killed off. This rock was replaced with rock and media which has been in my sump system for quite a long time. Any display rock that I want to keep will now go through a very long cook cycle, and then re-formed into something nice to go back in the display.

I also built a few structures in my spare time. Mostly just for filler for my new baron tank. I will keep some of them. Others will be replaced by whatever i build from my original Display rock.

I decided to consolidate and relocate my sump(s) to another room, and drastically re-plumb everything to exactly how i wanted it. The goal is maximum efficiency and resiliency. Resiliency, i already had a head start on.

My display will be nearly silent when done. I will settle for nothing less. Being that I intend on making this tank pretty torrid while still maintaining sand, this makes it even harder. But it will be done!

I only have one picture of my new baron tank and it's inhabitants (almost none of which you can see atm). I will post a few pics of my ugly but very practical (for me) sump system soon. You should expect to see quite a bit of change over the next 6 months.

Be gentle. I know it doesn't look like much now. It has been quite a bit of overhaul in a very short period. The rest comes with time :)
 

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No, there is a magnetic food clip and a mini thermostat from when i was moving tanks. I'm just too lazy to move them.

All previously cooked LR. Glued and epoxied. They are quite a hodge podge mix between pukani, base rock, and tonga. The back left structure is man made (not by me). It was part of a larger swim through cave, but I didn't like it. When i'm done, I probably wont keep that piece either.

More random pictures to come.

Fish are looking good. Is that a teeny tiny algae scraper? You built some of your rock structures? What did you use?
 
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Everything is still filthy and not entirely routed properly, but the brunt of the hard work is done. My lighting in this room is very dark. I basically allow the aquarium to brighten it. I probably should have turned the blues down so i could get better pictures, but meh...
IMAG0614.jpg IMAG0605.jpg IMAG0613.jpg IMAG0619.jpg

The sump and filtration is a 2-3 parter.

The top half:

All drainage comes via 1" siphon into a rollermat. There is a 1 1/2" backup drain that drains directly into this tank in case the primary drain fails. For now, i have the 3rd drain T'd into the emergency. After the rollermat cleans it up, it is dumped into a LR(this is presently seeding my nano) and Pond Matrix tank. The external skimmer pulls from there. There are redundant overflows from this tank down below to a single level sump.

Sump-filtration-maze.jpgIMAG0608.jpg

The bottom half:

The single level sump drains in the back and flows through chaeto, then a small frag section, and finally to redundant return lines which live on 2 different GFCI outlets. Not that it should need much agitation, but i have a MP10 in the frag section to keep things moving.

IMAG0611.jpg IMAG0612.jpg IMAG0610.jpg

The lighting is a LED/ T5 hybrid with 1 true actinic, 1 Coral plus, and 2 blue plus.
There are 2 - Kessil 360WE and a rapid LED ONXY fixture in the center. Sump lighting is a home built full spectrum LED rig for frags, and 2 15w horticulture lights. I also have some 5500 clip on lights for more light.

Flow will be mostly returns with random flow educters, paired with 2 powerheads master/slave. At the moment those are PP-15 wavemakers. This will probably change in order to quiet the motor noise down. I also have an MP40QD to add to the middle of the tank if needed.

The plumbing on the back of the tank is pretty much complete. Just needs cleaning.
 
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So is the sump in the room behind the tank? That’s a lot of room behind the tank. Is that so you can squeeze back there if needed?
 
So is the sump in the room behind the tank? That’s a lot of room behind the tank. Is that so you can squeeze back there if needed?

Yes, to both. I am getting older and much grumpier when i need to do gymnastics behind the tank. Neither my wife and i are too keen with all the extra space (besides when i need to maintain things, etc.), but I plan on putting up a black out curtain on a rod between the tank and wall. This should hopefully avert the eyes to what matters.

If im still not happy a year from now, I'll drain it, cut 4 pieces of pvc and pull the tank back to the wall.
 
I ended up adding my mp40 to the middle to the tank to make flow more random. Now I have the common issue of finding a placement for the powerheads that doesn't reorganize my sand. I really like having an external overflow box, but it sure is in the way! I may have to run a tunze if i need to place the MP40 any higher in the tank.
 
Added a few frags 3 days ago. 2 were very ugly. The 3rd was one of my favorites. I'll let you guess which was which..IMAG0648.jpg IMAG0649.jpg IMAG0650.jpg

Water parameters have been fine. Orp and PH are perfect. So far, the only thing that will likely go through a regular cycle affect is the rock that I added. They are already starting to brown, but that was expected.
 
Just shoring everything up before I head out for vacation. Decided to hook up the old fishcam. I actually have a HD camera that I cannot find at the moment, so this one will have to do. It's so weird seeing a baron tank. But that should soon change!

http://albertshack.com:86/videostream.cgi

login: view pass: view if anyone gets bored...

Now if i can find that other camera, i'll have a sump cam!
 
Just tried again and a still photo opened right up to tease me, then a message saying "a problem repeatedly occurred." Keeps happening but I will check again.
 
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