Alrighty, bummed be gone! 300G Rubbermaid is installed, and has been filling up (slowly), fish have been moved in (they didn't like being moved out). This guy is definitely an upgrade for a temporary holding tank, and I wouldn't mind if it is a long term temporary solution so I won't feel quite so rushed to get stuff done. There have been some problems getting it installed, first of which was a leaking gasket, which is at the bottom of the tank, long story short got that taken care of, then I needed to move it a little bit closer to the washing machine to squeeze my sump on the side ... yeah 100g of water made that a bit difficult so drained most of the water again and kind of jerked it over... we're good. Downside is my little 20g sump is supposed to service 300g of water... I don't have any other tanks I can squeeze in there.
Now you know what a problem is with a 300g tank that's 25" tall? one full garbage bin of water fills the tank like 2" max... and being as there are already fish/coral there it's not like I can just fill the rubbermaid (which I will now call "The New Lagoon") with fresh water and mix salt together, so one Brute at a time... over and over, mix, dump (don't even heat it, it only drops the tank temp about a degree).
Here's some images, unfortunately I'm 1) taking pics with a low end smart phone, and 2) the lights make it very hard to take pictures without seeing a reflection of them so I have to take from a low angle which means nothing looks very good.
On the far side is my new overflow, simply made a box out of whatever acrylic I had lying around, and going to hold it to the side with a magnet (it's already there holding it), figure there's going to be only a slight amount of force on it, there's going to be a buoyant force because the tank water is going to be slightly higher, but there's also the weight of the acrylic, it hangs there without any water touching it so it should be good to go. Unfortunately I'm going to tempt fate and do a siphon overflow as I don't feel like drilling a hole in this thing just for an overflow, my plan is to use some fairly beefy PVC (1.5") then connect it with clear vinyl so I can keep a good eye on if there's too much air in it to break the suction, then attach an aqualifter to a timer to turn on maybe once a day to suck out any air. We'll see how well this plan works out
My original plan was to just throw the 20g sump into the Lagoon, then the entire edge of the sump is an overflow to skim the surface, granted the water level in the Lagoon would have been low but the deciding factor to make me think something else was that all the rocks wouldn't be submered (more on this later), and as evaporation happens the sump will end up low on water and the pump might run dry if I'm not right on top of things. So overflow it is! It has been going for quite a few days without enough water yet, and I can definitely see the issues without having a skimmer.
Here's another shot, the fish really love the more open feel, where as with the pond liner they stayed in the smaller bottom section without really swimming the top which kept them in maybe 20-30g worth of swimming space. Now they have like a 5' x 6' semi-oval to swim around... They like very much. Well except the Tomini tang, not sure why he stays in the caves and rarely comes out (even to eat) I worry I might lose him as I did my orange lyretail anthias, he was "fine" one day (eating food like normal) then I moved a pump in the tank and his body came rolling out from under a rock when the water blew him out. Oh well.
So lights are a 250W metal halide which pretty much gives great coverage, as I don't need to have coral growing amounts of light everywhere in the tank. And the other is my homemade LED I had over my 40g breeder, use it mostly for the blue lights as the halide is on maybe 6-7 hours a day (forgot what the time is set at). So I'm not particularly happy with the egg crate with rocks on top, it worked much better in the pond, but here not so much as I can see way too much of the egg crate for my tastes. When I get some time and I clean off the rocks from the old tank I might toss more in here. I might also rearrange the rockwork, just put my swimsuit on and sit in the lagoon and move things around, give more night time cave sleeping spaces.
Current flow in the tank is a non-controllable Tunze pump, one of those Jebao WP40s (adjustable Vortech look a like), and a *60 (forgot the prefix, it's the Tunze Stream clone), unfortunately the 60 doesn't like to start form an off state, but works fine if it's on all the time, the 40 is on some weird mode where it stays on for a really long time, then off for a long time, not sure if the controller is busted or if that is an actual mode, but regardless I like it
When I get time I probably will pull my Vortech MP60 out of storage and slap that on the side. Although I am tempted by those new Maxspect Gyre pumps, one of those on a flat edge might be pretty bad ass... plus it might help get any detritus into suspension a lot better. But regardless, my kid's party is next weekend, so I have much to get ready for, so no new stuff until at least after that
FYI, I actually like this lagoon look, and if Arnold gets a SF tank tour up I won't be embarrassed to show this off, even though this is a temporary solution
