Jason's 240g Miracles

[creefer]

That is a wonderful tank!

[jduck]

Sesh almost 2 months since the last update. A lot has happened since setting the tank in place.

I was able to borrow a drill and hole saw from Pruess. Did have to build a Jig to hold up the drill but it didn't take very long to punch out those holes for 3/4" bulkheads




Then came return plumbing. I did put gate valves on both of the returns to be able to better control the flow then ball valve that is on manifold.


You can see the overflow setup for Bean Animal style. The right one is running under full siphon, although I have gate valve closed about 1/3 the way, to allow the Left one to run at a trickle and not suck much air. The middle is the emergency that if something ever happened to fully plug the other 2 would take over. I found out that just the one 1.5" drain running wide open can handle the complete tank flow. There is a black acrylic insert with teeth that will slide in the front of the overflow box.

[jduck]

Tank is filled and Aquascaped


Took about 24 hours to fill the main tank.
For the setup on the fish hall I decided to try out Metal Shelving with the time constraint.
For the Sump I did put down 1/2" ply and then remaining foam under. Tank already had 2 1" bulk head holes. Had to drill 1.5" for the return. One of them is being used for the skimmer return. Other is plumbed with a ball valve and hose barb that I will use for water changes.






Also did quick plumbing of heating. Used 100 ft of 1/2" Pex and recirc pump. Temporary Ranco temp controller until Apex is setup. Currently have tank set at 85 to help speed up the cycle.
Excuse the mess I did pick everything up after taking all the pictures.

Plumbed in the 60 Gallon Frag tank sitting on 1/2" Ply. Used pink foam under SRO XP5000 to help quiet it down.



Manifold for Frag Tank, Skimmer, main tank returns

the super spa flex made it very easy to do all the plumbing. I also tried to add unions where ever I could.



Main Pump did have a leak, and I need to replace the gasket. Which reeflo send me a replacement under warranty. Just arrived today, need to take time to install.



Full Messy hall shot


Was able to cut down the top shelf rack and get that installed. Then hung the light for frag tank.
Wired up the temp outlets, to just get things running. I did run 2 new 20 amp lines just for the fish hall. Tied outlets for hanging florescent fixtures into existing light switch. Can never have enough light in work area.


RODI System

Massive 20" prefilters. Dual 75gpd membranes. 10x4" Fatboy for the DI.
Ive found that the pressure here is actually pretty good 65psi. But I still like hearing the booster pump, lets me know that the system is working. I have on order 2 75 Gal Vertical water storage Containers for water mixing.

I figure aprox 300 Gal of water in the system. I put in 6 50Gal bags of IO. ended up with 1.023.
Added 1 cup of ammonia and bottle of Seachem Stability to help get the cycle started.
put in a little container of live rubble that I had around. Hoping that some TE sand is still live, but possible that it isn't since system was full of fresh several days before adding salt.



Broke out the backup Apex and ran internet line for it. Forgot that I had used the temp probe to replace other. Ordered another.

Just no pictures yet of the most recent progress.

[MizTanks]

WOW! That's one heck of a build!! Sweeeet!!! Lol

[AJ :)]

Great looking build! Loving that skimmer! You really have done alot of work. Where did you find the vertical 75 gallon water storage tanks?

Thanks for the updates!

[jduck]

Great looking build! Loving that skimmer! You really have done alot of work. Where did you find the vertical 75 gallon water storage tanks?

Thanks for the updates!

Best price I found was off ebay $109. But shipping sort of kills the deal. I could of did 55 gal barrels, but your never sure what was in them before hand. Ended up being $349 for 2 of them shipped. Which was the cheapist I could find on the net. Considered going bigger but next size was 28" wide and I know it was a squeeze trying to get a 24" tank through the walkout. These are 23"x48" with 1.25 bulkhead at bottom and 8" opening with lid at top.

[AJ :)]

Yeah shipping large items can be pretty rough these days. It's too bad there isn't something available locally, that is priced reasonably.

[jduck]

After first dose of 2 cups ammonia test read pretty high.

Added a bottle of Seachem Stability that I had. Couple days later same result with the test.

Bought a bottle of Instant Ocean Bio-Spira and added that. less than 24 hours later it had dropped to Less than 1.


Nitrite over 200


NO3 very high



Even later test


I've been adding a cup of ammonia every couple days to keep feeding the bacteria.

[jduck]

Last part for water change station arrived yesterday. Was able to finish the plumbing and start filling up the other tank.
2x 75 gallon water tanks ($34
Pan world 50PX-X for water circulation ($130)
Plumbing parts ($100)
Kent Float Valve ($20)
The heater is an inline Aquanetics fireplug 500W Heater that I've had laying around.

Pumped the first fill into the right tank and added 2 50 gal bags of instant ocean. Let it circulate and heat all night. Filled up Left tank, this morning added an additional bag of salt and opened the valves to let it mix in and heat up. Will see how long that takes.


Took the time to tightly coil and zip tie the pex and add it to the return pump chamber.


This allowed me to add the 90# of Tropic Eden Aragasnow to the middle chamber for future refugium.


Return chamber, I hooked a quick disconnect up for the drain hose to the water change valve. You can see the end sticking out from under the tank. In search of a non expensive drinking water hose to use for the water change fill station also.


Lighting for frag tank set up. I just used plastic coated braided stainless wire to hang them from rack of metal shelf above.


Also moved the frag tank return to the left side to allow for more viewing across the front.

Also hooked up the SRO Auto Waste container. It has a switch to turn off skimmer when it gets full.

Bought a bunch of screen frame pieces to put over main tank and frag tank. Need to get these done before Saturday when I bring the first load of livestock back.

[jduck]

Been several months since last update. Had some issues with the move.
1. I knew the tank wasn't quite ready yet. Nitrates were still a little high, but planned on doing another large water change to bring them down. Turns out I wasn't using the Hanna tester correctly. I wasn't holding down the button after adding the reagent to sample to get the 6 min countdown timer. It was taking measurement prematurely, giving me a lower number. I had planned on dipping all corals in Revive. Keeping all livestock quarantined in frag tank, shut off from main system, just doing water changes on this tank to keep ammonia down.
2. Even though I rinsed each coral after revive dip frag tank turned cloudy. Ended up losing a couple tangs, flame wrasses, and majority of sps. Isolated main tank from rest of the system, so I could just frag tank through sump with skimmer.
3. Had to throw out several buckets of corals and do several massive water changes to get nitrates down to acceptable levels.
4. I’ve been fighting bryopsis for a month now. Had it growing all over the sand bed. Used Kent M to increase levels to 1600. Picked out what I could. It seems to be under control. Not much in the frag tank but is still growing on the rocks in display tank. I’ve been running Biopellets last couple months and need to test levels again to see where they are at. Looks like I need to do some more dosing. Looking to pick up a sea hare to finish it off.
5. Changed all the lighting over to LED. Removed T5’s from main tank and replaced with 2 AI sols, for a total of 7. On frag tank removed the T5 and replaced with 2 AJM Multi color fixtures. They don’t give quite the pop that the AI Sol’s do. May consider changing them out to something else with different ratio.
6. Started up Ca reactor and just have it on a slow drip for now
7. Big project was getting the skin for the tank done.