Abby's 260

[Timfish]

And so it begins . . .

 

[Timfish]

Making a big hole in a perfectly good tank.

I'm setting this system up with a low profile drain offset to one side away from from the back. Since it won't have a side to attach it to to keep it in place and a lot of rock setting on top of it, I'm adding a second sheet of glass on the bottom to add additional strength to the bottom.

I prefer to start by making a wood template or jig. Jigs will keep the bit in place and stop it from "walking". If drilling multiple holes a jig helps keep all the holes aligned also. The diamond bit works just as well with wood as glass (no water is required to cool it

)








Sometimes I'll use clamps (use wood on both sides of glass to protect it) but most of the time I use weights to hold a jig in place while drilling.








Glass with hole.








Silicone and setting the reinforcing piece in place. After it set up a few days I went around the edge with more silicone.








Drilling out the bottom. To keep the bit cool I added about 1/2" of water. The tank is stitting on a hydraluc cart, to help keep the bit from chipping when the bit broke through I placed several layers of cardboard compressed under the location of the hole. The cardboard also helped keep water draining out to a minimum after the hole was completed.








Checking to make sure I drilled the right size hole.

 

[Timfish]

With new setups I like to do a rough sketch of the aquascaping and general layout. There's a few considerations I use. One is how it's going to be seen when a person first walks into a room. Fish and corals will attract an observer but how can the rockwork be structured to help creat a sense of mystery and draw the observer closer. I always use the "rule of thirds" to set a major focal point(s). Always try to create as much depth as possible, besides avoiding a 2 dimensional look this can be used to emphasize "show" animals. What are the initial animals being added and how are they likely going to spread. Because a final list of animals is never really achieved and there is a wide range of lighitng requirements how can variations in the rockwork and lighting help maximize a wide range of lighting conditions without needing to alter or change settings and avoiding the potential problems associated with established corals having to acclimate to new conditions.



For this system the entry door is on the opposite diagonal corner from the tank. So I started with the rule of thirds putting the overflow about 1/3rd from the end of the tank farthest from the entrance and roughly 1/3 from the back wall but AND because I like to keep drain lines as straight and simple as possible the location of the sump under it was taken into consideration. The rock wall hiding the over flow, arch and rock against the center back is roughly at a right angle to the observer when they first enter the room so from the get go the main rock structure will dominate the veiw even without corals covering it. There will be a table in the center of the room so the most direct path to the tank will be along the left side of room. This will keep the BTA island generally in the forefront and not off to the side if walking down the right side of the table. This layout will also partially hide the rock structure in the back right corner inititially but completely hide it from view as an observer approaches from the left side, hopefully, drawing them across to the right side. To help add to the sense of discovery my thought is to have some high light, low profile corals on the sand behind the BTAs that won't come into full view until some one is standing in front of the system (that these will be about a third from the end is intentional and once the system has matured will be one of the three major focal points along with the corals infront of the overflow and BTAs). I intend to keep the back wall behind the BTAs clear to help give a sense of depth. However, the wall behind the overflow I hope to encourage encrusting corals. The lights are being mounted in the canopy asymetrically to conform to aquascaping and also to provide a wide range of lighting conditions.



The lights are Popbloom T-50 and are 60 watts per fixture. One feature I like about them is they use reflectors and not polycarbonate lenses which can brown out overtime. Another is they don't have fans which can be a bit of a hassle to replace when they fail. They come with thier own controllers and will be configured to have 3 controllers each running two fixtures (redundancy). The overall light period will be 12 hours with all the fixtures at the maximum settings chosen for 6 hours.

 

[Timfish]

Lights . . .



Near as I can remember the first time the idea of angling lights came up was in a conversation with the admin of the local reef club around 2011 or 2012. One advantage is it reduces the light hitting the front of the glass so reduces one variable that promotes algae growing on glass. Another plus is it lights up the front of aquascaping better. For this system with a fairly low canopy giving only 6" of space, a low profile light without fans was a necessary decision and angling them towards the back was kinda an obvious choice. Since the fixtures have a T-slot mounting at an angle was pretty straight forward by cutting a wedge out of wood and installing T-slot bolts.



The wedges were cut at a 20° angle. Reasoning is it's about half the angle, around 40° - 45°, where most of the light hitting the water surface gets reflected. I was planning on epoxing the T-bolts but realized when I could barely pull one out testing it that just a little paint on the end was all they'd need to stay in place.





To help hold the fixtures in place but still be easy to remove if needed I found some thin magnets that would fit the T-slots and not block the T-bolts. The locations of the fixtures and t-bolts were aligned and marked. The the magnets were glued in place with some JB Weld.





Checking the layout of the fixtures.





Once I was satisfied with the fixture locations wire runs were laid out and cable ties were mounted to keep them from hanging in the water. Brackets were made to hold the controllers so if adjustments are needed they will be easy to access.



(For the record, I am not a fan of changing lighting settings once they've been decided on, Corals adjust thier photobiology to the available lighting. Constantly changing the lighting and forcing them to adjust their photobiology is an additional source of stress and it can take weeks to months to years for corals to acclimate. Many hardy aquarium adapted varieties may not be put out much with big changes, but many of the corals for sale with fancy or exceptionally bright or unusual combinations of colors do require very specific settings. Arbitrarily making changes without knowing what a coral wants ends up in frustration more often than not.)



I did want a fan to move air so I built a box to hold a 120mm "muffin" fan. The fan can be slid in place and will be easy to replace it when it fails The bracket that holds it angles it to blow diagonally to the opposite corner and has athe intake on the back side to minimize any salt spray getting into the fan.

 

[Timfish]

Besides a bunch od local holey limestone rock I've got being seeded in a QT system with established rock, I got 20 pounds of rubble that will go in the sump, 20 lbs of base rock and 40 lbs of premium from Tampa Bay. Lots of cool stuff and of course hitchhikers. Hitchhikers included lots of really cool stuff, of note there were quite a few tiny porcelain crabs which could be very quick when they wanted to be. Not so good were some whelk snails (easy to pick off), what looked like one tiny, tiny gorilla crab which went into one of my holding tanks to see what it grows up to be. Questionable is a zebra flatworm, Stylochus zebra, as it's commensual with the hermit crab Pagurus pollicaris and shares the hermits shell it seems to me to be much more a scavenger feeding off leftovers from the hermits meal than a predator of some kind. So all the rock is in a tub right now with lights and an air line for circulation.







This is the rubble rock, that should work really well on the bottom of the unlit 40 gallon sump with some sand.

 

[akma]

Is that a standard tank?

Following along. Looking to upgrade to a 300 this year as well.

What are plans for fish?

 

[Timfish]

Yes, it's a standard Planet Aquarium tank and stand and canopy. Fish will include Chryseptera sp. damsels (yellow belly, yellow tail, springers), clowns, coral beauty and lemonpeel dwarf angels and tangs.

 

[Timfish]

For the low profile overflow I'm using a 2" PVC pipe. To set the height the PVC is cut about an inch or so less than the intended water line.





An intake screen is then used to set the actual water level when the system is running taking into account the depth of the water level running over the weir of the intake. An important consideration is to use an intake screen that has a roughly 1/4 gap between the teeth. Smaller gaps will clog quicker and wider gaps are more likely to let small fish squeeze through. I also like having removable intake screens partly so they can be adjusted for changes in water flow and so they can be removed and cleaned with H2O2 or bleach when calcerous algae and organisms grow on them. For tanks that have a lip or frame I like to set the water level just above the bottom edge of the frame so there's no glare from the lights shining through a gap.

 

[Timfish]

Cute, miniscule and belligerent little monster. No idea what species of crab this is but it did a pretty good job of evading me for 10-15 minutes in the bottom of a bucket with just half an inch of water.

Judging from the well developed back legs it's going into the sump until I get a better idea of what it is.

 

[Timfish]

Live Rock

Just like everything else living that goes into a reef system, live rock needs to be quarantined for a month. Any container will work. I don't worry about getting good lighting for rubble and base rock but I do want decent lighting on premium rock. In this case I've loosely stacked the rock with the premium on top. For circulation a rigid air line is inserted so bubbles percolate up through the rock from the bottom.





A baby Rose Coral. At this size they look similar to hidden cup corals but that it's growing on the top or sunny side of the rock and has some color indicates it's a Rose coral.





After a week or so I like to stick a hardy couple corals in with the live rock as indicators of how things are progressing. In this case I used a small duncan and red mushroom colony.





Back in the '90s my mentor owned a LFS with his wife and they always had multiple tanks just for holding live rock. Whenever he saw any sponge starting to develop a white slimy coating like pictured here he would not only aggressively remove as much of the sponge as possible but would go through all the rock in the tank and remove anything foul smelling or suspicious looking sponge. Over the years I've tried being lazy and just let thing run it's course but it seems to have led to more loss of additional organisms than I remember when I was working for him. For the last 2 decades when I QT live rock I'll start with 2 or three water changes a week (~10% - 20%), inspect all the rock closely and remove anything that looks slimy like the ball sponge in this pic or has a bad smell. Once I don't find anything to remove I'll switch to just a small weekly water change. Fortunately most sponges like the red one above do fine and don't seem to be affected even if there are sponges close by that need to be removed. The best tool I've found for doing this is a flat blade screwdriver about 3/8" wide (partly because if my hand slips I won't be stabbing my self as deep like I would with a scalpel

).