Fishy Business

Willie’s Last Aquarium Build

Did I ever tell you that I use to have a life full of DRAMA ? Well I still do sometimes. Reef Drama. Lol.
Last year. May 2024 when I set up the 320 in the breakfast room. I had heavy metals. Sps died or was struggling. I live on Struggle Street. After months I figured out it was rust that some how gotten into my water mixing container. Ok. Fixed that problem.
Well this year. I moved the 320 into the shed. Cool. It’s should be all good. Right ? Nope. Heavy metals again. I think I got a piece of bad dry rock. It would leach and leach. I must have spent like 200 dollars on cuprisorb, carbon, filter pads, test kit reagents, etc.
Well months and months again. I’m finally getting ahead of the copper and heavy metals.
At the same time. I keep noticing water on my floor. Found a few leaks. Fixed it. Then they leaked again. Fixed it again.
Now here’s the kicker. I put Urban Farmers Schedule 80 fittings in the back of my aquarium for the returns. Cuz I didn’t want to ever have to change them again. They are the best. Each fitting is like 25-30 dollars.
I’ve been looking for a leak for months and months again. In my UV line to the aquarium. I thought it was in the plumbing or UV itself. Well I finally found it today. It’s a hair line crack. Not even on the mold seam. I think I just won the bad luck lottery. Tell ya. This aquarium life is crazy.
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Fortunately.....
You found it
It was not catastrophic
You don’t have a neighbor down below....with a water filled TV
Replace that bad boy and get that water flowing!
 
Impressive though, how you were able to fix all of this and remain resilient overall. Each one of these issues would have made me doubt to remain in the hobby.
 
Turkeysammich said:
Did I ever tell you that I use to have a life full of DRAMA ? Well I still do sometimes. Reef Drama. Lol.
Last year. May 2024 when I set up the 320 in the breakfast room. I had heavy metals. Sps died or was struggling. I live on Struggle Street. After months I figured out it was rust that some how gotten into my water mixing container. Ok. Fixed that problem.
Well this year. I moved the 320 into the shed. Cool. It’s should be all good. Right ? Nope. Heavy metals again. I think I got a piece of bad dry rock. It would leach and leach. I must have spent like 200 dollars on cuprisorb, carbon, filter pads, test kit reagents, etc.
Well months and months again. I’m finally getting ahead of the copper and heavy metals.
At the same time. I keep noticing water on my floor. Found a few leaks. Fixed it. Then they leaked again. Fixed it again.
Now here’s the kicker. I put Urban Farmers Schedule 80 fittings in the back of my aquarium for the returns. Cuz I didn’t want to ever have to change them again. They are the best. Each fitting is like 25-30 dollars.
I’ve been looking for a leak for months and months again. In my UV line to the aquarium. I thought it was in the plumbing or UV itself. Well I finally found it today. It’s a hair line crack. Not even on the mold seam. I think I just won the bad luck lottery. Tell ya. This aquarium life is crazy. View attachment 75077
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I too have purchased plumbing from Urban Farmer
the valves I bought and installed (glued)...LEAKED

I don't shop there anymore!!
 
I was watching a YouTube video of the owner of Cove. He has some light covers out of colored plexiglass. I was like. I can make that.
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While doing that I figured I would move some hammers around. I never really liked my light suspension system.
Then this happened. Lucky the lights didn’t fall in the water.
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So I made this. Took a little fabbing. But all good. Slider set up was only 35 dollars.
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Well it’s February. My 320 and Fowlr are still settling in. GHA is everywhere. Just gotta wait until it matures. Probably another half year. I can keep sps tho.
Anywhoo. Let me tell ya about a conversation that I had with my buddy Arnold @Apon. I was like. You know my 55 QT is kinda small for what I wanted to do. Man it sure would be nice if I had one of those fish cube things that they have in the fish stores. ( Arnold ) You know I got one at my mom’s house. It’s almost brand new. WTH ? This guy has everything stashed away. He’s like, Yeah. You can borrow it. Well BHAM !!!
I just upped my game big time. Thanks Arnold again.
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Turkeysammich said:
Yes. Cup off. But sometimes on. Depends on what I’m dosing cuz the skimmer can pull it off. I also run lots of air pumps with wood or sand stone. Or you can run those freshwater sponge filters. You can never have enough oxygen. Meds kill oxygen like a lot.
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So combination of a air sponge filter/ skimmer with top off you think sufficient for copper power treatment?

I bought:

1.).a box of 4 sponge filters each rated for 125-150 gallons. With 4 I'm thinking I should have extra to just throw them away during the course of treatment when they are no good. Alternatively I could use 2 sponges at a time if one wouldn’t be sufficient.

2.) I have one of those stick on Ammonia alert badges.

3.) I ordered a above ground koi pond things that should arrive tomorrow 127 gallons. I likely won't fill it up to capacity. It's four 4 long so hopefully fish won't be cramped.
Screenshot_20260211_194444_Amazon Shopping.jpg

I have a Copper hanna checker with 25 reagents, I need to likely get another box or 2.

I also will plan to grab a bunch of xxl elbows and tees for hiding spots.

It's kinda what I'm planing to do for my fish in 210gallon. I'll share the full set up before I actually transfer them to make sure I'm not missing anything.
 
MichaelB said:
So combination of a air sponge filter/ skimmer with top off you think sufficient for copper power treatment?

I bought:

1.).a box of 4 sponge filters each rated for 125-150 gallons. With 4 I'm thinking I should have extra to just throw them away during the course of treatment when they are no good. Alternatively I could use 2 sponges at a time if one wouldn’t be sufficient.

2.) I have one of those stick on Ammonia alert badges.

3.) I ordered a above ground koi pond things that should arrive tomorrow 127 gallons. I likely won't fill it up to capacity. It's four 4 long so hopefully fish won't be cramped.
View attachment 77293
I have a Copper hanna checker with 25 reagents, I need to likely get another box or 2.

I also will plan to grab a bunch of xxl elbows and tees for hiding spots.

It's kinda what I'm planing to do for my fish in 210gallon. I'll share the full set up before I actually transfer them to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Click to expand...
Your going to try to qt all your fish in one shot ? Some fish need different kinds of qt methods Example is some tangs , some angels , wrasse don’t do well in copper. CP is the best imo but it’s really hard to get.
 
Turkeysammich said:
Your going to try to qt all your fish in one shot ? Some fish need different kinds of qt methods Example is some tangs , some angels , wrasse don’t do well in copper. CP is the best imo but it’s really hard to get.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all the wisdom.

That was kinda my plan qt all of them at once and let the tank go fallow.After fish are out cranking temp up to 82-84.

Is there a reliable information source for how to treat different types of fish that you use/ recommended? As you said some fish don't do well with certain types of treatments.

I wouldn't want to doom a fish if cp won't work. Nor do I wanna risk trying to manage ick. (I do have a few smaller tanks I could tweak to qt specific fish if different method is needed but I couldn't do that for all of them) All my tanks are in the same room so this isn't something I want to risk bouncing between tanks.

The qt pond thing I mentioned would be in my garage. I would also plan to be very strict with qt if the fish pull through from here on.
 
MichaelB said:
So combination of a air sponge filter/ skimmer with top off you think sufficient for copper power treatment?

I bought:

1.).a box of 4 sponge filters each rated for 125-150 gallons. With 4 I'm thinking I should have extra to just throw them away during the course of treatment when they are no good. Alternatively I could use 2 sponges at a time if one wouldn’t be sufficient.

2.) I have one of those stick on Ammonia alert badges.

3.) I ordered a above ground koi pond things that should arrive tomorrow 127 gallons. I likely won't fill it up to capacity. It's four 4 long so hopefully fish won't be cramped.
View attachment 77293
I have a Copper hanna checker with 25 reagents, I need to likely get another box or 2.

I also will plan to grab a bunch of xxl elbows and tees for hiding spots.

It's kinda what I'm planing to do for my fish in 210gallon. I'll share the full set up before I actually transfer them to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Click to expand...

I don’t want to hijack Will’s thread, so I’ll keep it short. I think that koi pond is way too big for a QT setup even for your amount of fish. Keep it simple method is best. QT setups you’ll need to change the water every few weeks due to the ammonia spike. Changing 60-80g of water is not ideal. Check out HumbleFish for more methods of QT.
 
MichaelB said:
Thanks for all the wisdom.

That was kinda my plan qt all of them at once and let the tank go fallow.After fish are out cranking temp up to 82-84.

Is there a reliable information source for how to treat different types of fish that you use/ recommended? As you said some fish don't do well with certain types of treatments.

I wouldn't want to doom a fish if cp won't work. Nor do I wanna risk trying to manage ick. (I do have a few smaller tanks I could tweak to qt specific fish if different method is needed but I couldn't do that for all of them) All my tanks are in the same room so this isn't something I want to risk bouncing between tanks.

The qt pond thing I mentioned would be in my garage. I would also plan to be very strict with qt if the fish pull through from here on.
Click to expand...
I don’t mean to discourage you from the pond idea. But that’s a lot of surface area, meaning it’s gonna use a lot of electricity to heat. Depending on how many fish you have and size. Plus insulation on that pond is horrible. Having said that. The swim space is awesome. The best thing is to try to reduce stress. Low light is better.
I talk to chatgpt and have a continuous conversation. I tell it what kind of fish and as much details possible. I also like Microsoft copilot. I bounce a lot of ideas off of the AI platforms to see if they think it will work. Humble fish has a what fish goes well with what meds.
 
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