The Fish Office

[wouterdu]

Hi,

I've been reefing for +- 2 years now and recently added a bigger tank to my room with decent filters so that i can have a look into cooler corals.

(excuse the mess in the following pictures i've been setting everything up in the previous days)

The left tank is my original AIO Waterbox with some cheap light to sustain the kenya tree, currently there's no fish in it and everything is transfered to the new tank, still deciding what i'm gonne do with it.

the Back compartment is stuffed with Bio Balls/ceramic pipes + a skimmer. The filter socks are out of it due to to much maintenance.

The new tank is 160cm long 65 heigh and 60 width so it has some more water volume togheter with a Sump to maintain my parameters:

The sump consists of a Filter roller that goes into the first compartment filled with bio balls + 2 skimmers:
- Blue marine 2000 skimmer which does most of the work
- Nyos quantum skimmer that's connected to ozon which adds ozone to the water column at night.

I "modded" both skimmers so that they have a drain on the bottom and drain to a 20l bidon. i'm still monitoring how long this will last. ( the drain is quite far so for now it's stored in a bidon).

The 2nd department is my cheato refugium, which exists of 1 tunze lamp running 24/7 atm and a small cheato ball. The crate in the middle is to keep the foam between department 1 and 2 i will change this to a decent seperator but for now we work with what we have.

the 3rd chamber is the return chamber, in this chamber there are 2 reactor's attached with Bio Pellets/activated carbon and purigen togheter with an undersized UV i took from my other aquarium

Next to that i have an Alkatronic testing my parameters every 3 hours + an air stone ( upped my PH 0.3, not that much but once i'm back from holiday i'll look to set the air pump in the garage to pull in "fresher" air.

I'm also dosing 6ml Carbon every day to keep the nutrients etc in stock.

How it looks today:
* On the left is the sea water barrel where i mix RODI with salt, I've got a pump pumping RODI water upstairs so there's no need to carry bidons up and down.
* The "bin" on the right is my RODI Reservoir for my auto top off (75 liters) next to it is the waste bidon from the skimmers.
* The lights are not "straight" which is annoying me aswell, i'll look to fix that in the coming weeks .

I monitor the aquarium from away with a camera which i professionaly put on top of the salt.

My goal for the coming month is to clean everything up and fix the cable mess so that the cabin and rest of the room looks a bit nicer. I also will look into getting a CO2 scrubber so i can rise my PH ( currently around 8).

Once everything is stable i'll slowly add more fluorescent corals ( i really like the fancy green one right now) and see from there.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[wouterdu]

Not the biggest update but set everything up and tidied up a bit before my 2 week trip:

Changed the waste bin to a "container" which is plumbed into the waste drain in the garage

So the 2 skimmers now go into this container and this one has an outlet to a tube going to the garage.
(This is temporary i wan't to do the same but in a smaller form factor so i can push it behind the aquarium so it's not visible but for now it'll have to do ( also makes water changes really user just dumping the water in there ).

i also added the waste output of the alkatronic to one of the skimmer cups so that the mess that combines in this bin is more liquid and easier to go down the drain.

I've added some smart plugs to the 2 skimmers ( if anything goes wrong and one decides to start pulling out all of the water i can shut it down during the trip).
The ATO: for some reason the Tunze pumps sometimes has a hiccup (99% this gonne happen the second i leave so just wanted to make sure i can turn it off and on again which should do the trick).
The RODI pump that is connected with a hose to the big black bin in the first picture. i also added a camera on the wall to look how much water is left there ( ugly i know but it's only for 2 weeks so bear with me).


This way i should be covered to have the tank running itself during these 2 weeks.


Last but not least, i'm not that happy about the cable management but atleast it's 10 times better then before.
(I have no idea how people "hide" the cables completly lol). I suddenly get the apeal of having your SUMP etc in another room.

I'll probably end up redo-ing all the wire's when i'm back and maybe stuffing them all behind the sump(?) though that will be a big pain if i ever have to switch a cable, anyway problems for future me, for now i won't have to be embarresed if someone has to come in and change something to the tank.