Vangvace's Red Sea Max S 650

[vangvace]

They are conspiring on how ugly the tank is at the moment...

Speaking of ugly... The diatoms are starting to subside.

Flow wise I have some changes coming. I am happy with the rfgs on the various outlets, but my return pump doesn't feel the omph so I am going to take the UV out of the return line and move it to its own Varios2 pump. With the hangers I ordered it should really clean up the sump area for when my ghl fans come in.

I also picked up a pair of x250 gyres that I am toying with for the display. I am thinking one along the top and the other along the back glass, but dunno yet.

Otherwise everything from the banks are transferred over from the nanos and I am going to break down, clean up, and sell accordingly.

 

[GoVols]

Thanks for the update

How many t5's are you pushing?

 

[vangvace]

I'm pushing 6-8 bulbs depending on the day, I think one of the switches on the fixture is going bad and I need to talk to red sea about it. My planned lighting schedule is 11 hours of Kessils running and 4ish hours of T5 during the day.

The largest annoyance with the lights at the moment is figuring out where to place the autofeeder as the fixture doesn't leave much room.

 

[vangvace]

Never forget the ugly beginnings.

I have a puzzle to work out. @GoVols gave some good advice earlier in the thread and I pulled the trigger on a chiller today. My puzzle is placement of it, my calcium reactor setup, and 5 ghl boxes...

 

[vangvace]

Still going through the early tank uglies. I started my RO filter tonight and found no water coming out... Run downstairs to where the filter sits and found one of the canisters split open. The body was... almost 20 years old and went with me from Utah to Mississippi, to New Jersey, to Greece, and finally to Illinois. ;Sorry So in the morning I have to call the lfs for parts and might just order a new unit from BRS.

In other news:
My Tk-1000 is in along with with a GHL flow monitor to go with it; powered by a Varios2.
I have both of the old nano tanks fully broken down.
I ordered some critters from ipsf to seed the tank some more. I'm excited for its unboxing and arrival on Wednesday.
GHL announced more details on the ION director so I am looking forward to it.

Finally... I think I am going to head to IKEA for a Ivar shelf because I have outgrown my stand. I have just enough space between the tank and the wall for it to fit. The chiller will be on the base level and the GHL equipment above it, Which will also move my probes from the sump to the return as well.

 

[vangvace]

Houston, we have a problem. ;Dead;Dead

Installed the super swanky new RODI unit and let it run into the sink for a bit and it was all good. My top off reservoir in the tank was empty so... let me just hook up that super swanky line to fill'er up while I play some video games. Check on it and think "wow that is fast to the first notch. That's awesome!" and I go back to gaming. Check on it again and think "I have time for one more game." Check on it... mistakes were made and floods were had. Just a few gallons of water down the back of the tank, through some cables that moved, past the gfci outlet, onto a GHL powerbar, and under the stand.

Shop vac, shop vac, shop vac... fans, fans, fans...


Ok, now that I feel better... the silver lining! The powerbar did exactly what it was designed to do for safety, the P4 sent me a text alert, and none of the tank life support was damaged. I have a support ticket open to possibly repair the powerbar.

And for the final bit of happy ending. My ISPF order successfully arrived and was placed within the tank. For freebie corals they included 10 heads of blastos and a small leather. The microfauna and critters seemed quite lively and hid in the sand and rockwork.

 

[Phil D.]

Hi, would you be able to take some more pics of the Kessil/t5 retro you did... trying to replicate something like that in my RSM S650..
Thanks

If you're still interested in upgrading your lights, Red Sea has special offers to upgrade to the Reef LED

 

[vangvace]

Hopefully some pictures tonight but some thoughts/news:

The powerbar was dried out over the weekend and is working so... woohoo!

I am tempted on buying a 1" Bali Regal Angel....

 

[vangvace]

Happy little clowns

I totally need to clean the back glass still X)

The sump in limbo.

Yeah... I still need to clean this up and make it pretty

 

[vangvace]

So I made some major renovations to the sump and undercabinet layout to fit most everything in a little bit cleaner.

The chiller, 2 GHL powerbars, CaRx and the default Red Sea power center all nicely fit in. Cable management still needs to happen, but that is for another day. The Input of to the chiller comes in from the back of the stand but goes out near the front for...

The algae reactor. Replumbing everything seems to have given me a bot of a cleaner look, though I did take my UV out of line. :/ I also found out that the Sicce 9000 is too strong to run as a straight return, so I swapped back to a Sicce 7000. From left to right we have: Clarisea 5000, Varios2, CaRx stage 2, CW 200 scrubber, Nyos 160 with Davy Jones' Locker, and the return.

Last bit of remodeling to take care of is to build a box for under the clarisea to submerge it again in its new home.

This morning before leaving for work.

Things to do:
My Kessils aren't quite working as they should with the 1-10V output. I'm planning on pulling them down and cleaning them out really well to see if that helps.
Tweak my gyre settings or swap to MPs. I have the Maxspec ICV6 but it doesn't like my wifi settings.
Cable cleanup all over.
Return my KHD to service. since I have been moving stuff around it is taking a 0dKH reading and I believe it is due to a pinched water sample line.

 

[vangvace]

I found my KHD issue last night. A connector on my intake line came loose and had an air gap.

 

[vangvace]

I moved the clarisea to the front of the sump and resubmerged it. Seems to be working better than my box idea. The scrubber is doing its thing and a little bit of a pain to clean, but not too bad.

When finalizing the plumbing last night I learned I never updated my maintenance outlets so the skimmer got a little extra clean.

Oh and I added a trio of tangs. Eventually pictures will be had.

 

[vangvace]

Battlebox order of no names adjusting to their new home

 

[vangvace]

Some updates:

3x 7206 Mitras ordered
Ion Director coming this summer?
PO4 and Silicates are still out of control so steady dosing of NoPox and GFO started.
I have been throttling the flow of my algae reactor from the beginning. Oops. I just increased the flow so that should help as well.
My KHD is getting shipped into GHL for maintenance.
I started plumbing the manifold to turn the red sea flow pumps into a single one fed off a manifold. I'm thinking about having small bleeder holes throughout the manifold keep detritus from settling in the overflow area. It'll depend on the space between the manifold and walls in case I would need to vacuum that area.

 

[David_CO]

you ever finish the slow pump manifold? Im toying with the idea on my S500. Would like to go to just one DC pump for noise and flow control.

 

[vangvace]

you ever finish the slow pump manifold? Im toying with the idea on my S500. Would like to go to just one DC pump for noise and flow control.

Not yet. I have been slow rolling the tank as I was debating about leaving the hobby for a bit

 

[dustinc]

Sent you a PM