Delaware Valley Reef Club

So, a new reef club was formed in the last few weeks.  The Delaware Valley Reef Club serves Southeastern PA, Southern NJ, and Northern Delaware.  While I have yet to make a meeting, I am working on building the website for the organization.

Though it lacks content right now and hasn't officially been unveiled to the club yet, I wanted to let everyone know the URL so you could check it out:  www.delvalreefclub.org

It is based on Joomla with a RocketTheme layered over it.  Also, I have gotten a lot of help from Phyllis over at the NJ Reefers Club!  Thanks, Phyllis!

All Systems Go!!!

It has been a long, hard couple of weeks.  But, I am proud to announce that at 6:52pm on Monday, November 12, 2007, the system officially went online! 

The main plumbing system (minus the refugium) has been running for about 30 minutes now.  Let me describe what has happened over the last couple of weeks.

Plumbers are hard to come by.  Could not get anyone to show up for 2 weeks.  So, I decided to do it myself. 

A friend of a friend is an apprentice and he helped me get the RO/DI unit up and running on November 3.  So, at least I was making water.

Took my two tanks to Eagle Glass to be drilled and to have baffles made.  Don't ever ever use them.  They took forever.  Almost three weeks to cut 3 holes and they kept promising me tomorrow for days.  As it is, they never made the baffles.  So, here's some advice. If you ever need glass or acrylic cut, go to Lowes.  They have everything and will cut it for you while you wait.  No charge!

I spent the better part of November 3/4 trying to do the plumbing.  It was very difficult and by late Sunday night (November 4), I had the plumbing through the walls and hooked up tot he tank, but nothing at the back end inn the basement.

Picked up the tanks on Thursday, and (as mentioned above) Lowes cut my baffles on Saturday.

This past Saturday (November 10) I finished off the plumbing and began to try to test for leaks.  In the process, I cracked the glass on the refugium.  So, I am down a tank right now and another is on order.

I had a minor leak at the drain of the sump, but I managed to fix that with some silicone.

Powered on the pump and had lots of problems!!!  Turns out I had plumbed the drain to the return and vice versa!!!  Ugh!!!

Luckily, I had installed unions in the basement and was able to simply switch them (after getting soaked).

But, I had a new problem.  The drain side under the tank was leaking badly.  Sunday night and I am off to Pickering Valley Farm and Feed to buy new hoses.  Last night I hooked up all of the new flexible plumbing to the tank, sealed it with silicone and put on clamps. 

Tonight, my dad came over and we fired it up and balanced the system for drain/return. 

It's alive!!!

The protein skimmer is on and in the breaking-in state.  The flow is really nice in the aquarium and lots of detritus is being moved around.  I am just hoping it makes it to the basement to get cleaned out...

I will let this run unchanged until I return from work on Thursday night and then begin the process of checking all my levels and hopefully move some of my coral in this weekend!!!

Slowly but Surely

I am making progress every day with the tank, but I am still far from where I should be.  The big mistake here was buying a tank already set-up and not having the plumbing ready to go. 

I am now roughly 3 weeks into having the tank (with fish in it) but no filtration is happening. 

Over the weekend, I managed to run the plumbing from the tank to the basement.  Both the drain lines and the returns are hooked up to the tank and the plumbing is run to my make-shift fish room in the basement.  It was a bear getting the lines run from the living room down.  We ended up cutting a few holes in the closet on the other side of the wall from the tank and then drilling a big hole in the sub-floor.  We then went from the basement up.  I ran 2 lines of 1 1.2 inch Spa Flex horizontally through the floor and then up into the living room.  However, the lines are not finished in the basement.  They are just hanging out of the ceiling.

Why?  Because the folks at Eagle Glass can't seem to find the time to drill three little holes in my two tanks for the basement.  They have had them for over 2 weeks and keep telling me they will have them tomorrow.  I got pretty ticked off at them Friday morning and they said I could pick them up Friday evening.  Went down at 4pm and 5pm and 6pm and no one was there.  Worse yet, I can see the tanks through the window and they are not even started. 

Unfortunately, I am going away for 3 days now and I am praying they will have them done when I return.  Then I can finish the plumbing and get this thing powered up on Wednesday night.

Also, I got the RO/DI unit all plumbed and it is making nice clean water.  Unfortunately, I ran into an issue there too.  We have that draining into the sump in the basement (the one used for the bathroom, not for flooding).  Well, it failed last night and I had a fair amount of water on the floor.  Luckily, it was in the back area and just concrete foundation, not the finished area.  But, the hits just keep on coming.

So, the plan is to finish up on Wednesday night and fire up the pump and get some filtration going!!!

Oh I also got my 50lbs of Florida rock from Live Rock International.  It was a lot of rubble and much of it was crushed in transit.  So, I ordered 50lbs more from Premium Aquatics and that came Saturday.  It went right in the tank and is very very nice rock.  I also added a CUC (clean-up crew) of three varieties of snails and scarlet hermit crabs (also from Premium Aquatics) and they are taking care of the algae bloom from the cycle.

I hope these fish last until I can et some filtration going.

Update on my 125 gallon adventure

Well....  Things are moving along slowly.  Here is where we are right now...

I have sold a bunch of the equipment that came with the tank itself in the past week and replaced it with new stuff.  Here is a list of what has changed.  But, before I give you the list, I can tell you that the plumbing is not yet complete.  It should happen this week.  The tanks for the sump and refugium are at the glass shop to be drilled and should be done tomorrow.  The bulkheads are sitting on my desk ready and waiting.

	OLD	NEW
Lighting	440w VHO in the original canopy	Current Outer Orbit Pro 3x250MH and 8x39w T5 (no more canopy)
Filtering	2 Wet/dry filters (one is sold)	Separate 29g refugium and 29g sump
Skimmer	Berlin Hang-on (sold)	AquaC EV-180 w/ Mag-7 pump
Flow	2x Koralia-1s (sold)	2x Vortechs w/wireless controllers
Main Pump	2x Rio2100s (sale pending)	Blueline HD70
Live Rock	200+lbs in okay shape	50+lbs Florida Aquacultured & 50+lbs Marshall Island plus 20lbs from my BioCube
Sand	none (bare bottom)	180lbs total (aragonite, crushed coral)

I got 12 snails and an emerald crab from someone on the forums and the existing fish are doing fine.

The cycle is in process and my ammonia and nitrites are down to almost zero, but my Nitrates are spiking.  Unfortunately, I will have to endure another mini-cycle soon when I replace the old rock with the new rock.  I will be re-curing the new rock for a few days when it arrives tomorrow to minimize the cycle.

The old rock was not as bad as I thought, incidentally.  I scrubbed it all down and dipped it in fresh water before putting it in the tank (and then deciding to replace it).  Last night I saw a few bristle worms, a peanut worm, and a few baby feather dusters.  But, it still has a fair amount of hair algae coming back.  This is going to be a very painful set-up when all is said and done, but I think the end result will be better with the new rock.

Day One - Water, Sand, Rock and... Fish???

Yesterday was a busy day.  I spent most of the time cleaning the rock and trying to figure out what pieces were worth putting back in the tank. 

Not many. 

So, I chose the best that I could, scrubbed them down, dipped them in fresh water and moved them into the empty tank.  Next came the sand.  I put in about 150lbs of aragonite and crushed coral.

Then I took the green (barely salt) water that made the move and filled the tank to about 2 inches below the overflows. Next came the new lights (Outer Orbit Pro) and the flow (2 Vortechs with wireless controllers).

No plumbing right now.  The plan is to plumb everything into the  basement.  Here is a picture of how the plumbing will work (if I can ever find a plumber to help me out.)  I was going to buy a premade sump and a premade refugium from That Pet Place, but they were each $300 and the guy at the store convinced me to buy glass tanks and build them myself.   UGH...  I am not a DIY guy when it comes to this sort of thing, so now I need to go find a glass guy.

This set-up will have many benefits once complete.  First, all of the noise and a lot of the water will be downstairs. That means no pumps to listen to, no protein skimmers, etc. in the living room.  Second, the basement is much cooler.   When fully operational I will have about 180 gallons of water in the system and 60 of it will be down stairs where it is about 65 degrees.  Lastly, and this is the best part, water changes are simply a matter of turning 5 valves.  No siphons, no buckets, no time drain!!!

And, for those of you keeping up, here is a shot of the tank right now.

As the title of the post says, yes there are fish in there.  The tank came with about 6 fish and they have been living (and dying) in the garage.  No one bit the dust yet, but the water in that tank was horrible and the stress on them was terrible.  So, my wife and I decided that they will definitely die in the old water and they have a better chance of surviving in the big tank.  We will see.  I am hoping that they are tough enough to withstand the cycle.  (Nitrogen cycle)  It couldn't be worse than the conditions they were in back in their old home...