Questions on moving a120g system.

I'm glad to hear it worked out well. Sounds like it went very good. Look forward to meeting you as I hope you will join up with our merry band of do gooders.

 

reefo Were you able to keep the rock and substrate warm??? Do you think you well avoid a cycle???

 

So far, so good. No losses yet. Test for amonia was negative this evening. Fingers crossed. My next priority is getting the auto top off and kalk reactor up and going. Lost 1&1/2 gallons to evaporation in the last day. Another screwup was not taking pictures or drawing a diagram of how Joe had everything plumbed. I need to do it a bit differently anyway, at least for the near future. I think Joe had his RO unit feeding the kalk reactor triggered by the auto top off. He used the dosing pump plumbed in the system somehow. With the fittings I have, I'm not sure how he had it set up as I didn't dismantle that part of the system...I was on sand detail at the time. I'll ask Joe again how he had it, then I'll rig it up different anyway. What I need to do for short term is go from an RO reservior to the kalk reactor, to the sump, triggered by the auto top off solenoid.
I took a few pics when I got home...sorry they aren't very good. Note only one metal halide fixture is on due to the missing glass, so part of the tank is getting mostly actintic light.

 

Your on your way now - start a tank thread, so we can all follow along !

All the best ! Thanks for sharing the pics ! Lovely LR

 

You don't want to be putting green water from the reactor in the sump say just after the kalk reactor has stirred the kalk, it needs to settle out for a 1/2 hr or so, just keep that in mind. I had my reactor T off of the ro line and ran the ro into the sump with a mechanical float shutoff valve and T off the kalk line and run a shut off solenoid on a timer to turn the flow back on after the water had settled in the reactor for a 1/2 hr and would have the stirrer on a timer and stir the reactor 4 times in 24 hrs. You need to have the stirrer on a digital timer so it only stirs for a few minutes and however many times a day you choose, using a digital well keep you from having all them plastic shutoff and turn clips in the mechanical timers and most have a back up battery so they stay set when the power goes off. You can get them at most HD or LOwes. The tank looks great !!!!! watch the hippo as he well be the early warning sign as the least hint of amon. well have him breaking out with ich.

 

Gotcha. There is a timer configured on the Reefkeeper2 to turn on the Kalk stirrer 3-4 times a day for 5 minutes each time. So that's taken care of. I have an auto top off float switch that I can control the RO with. I don't know much about the dosing pump I have, but it has two pumps on it. I just found the manual online, so I'll check into how it should be hooked up. If I run this with a reservoir for the short term, I'm gonna need to put that pump in line to supply the kalk reactor and RO. I think I have room on the Reefkeeper to set up another timer to cut off the Kalc to avoid pumping during the stir and for 30 minutes afterward. This will take a lot of the worry and work out of it. Sure beats the old days of homemade drip systems and stirring by hand!

 

I am so glad that everything looks like it will make it! I am especially glad that the anemone and the clown fish are back together. I will miss them, but glad they are in a good home.

 

Hey now....I'm dripping right now. Don't knock the drip, lol. Some of us haven't automated yet.

 

So far so good! I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that I don't find any amonia when I test this evening. I gave the anemone a good chunk of a silverside the other night and it seemed to really enjoy it! The hippo has quickly become my wifes favorite. She loves to watch him rip into the nori! He gets pretty agressive with it.

@jason71832
Heh, heh. There's good points to manually doing things....there's just more stuff to go horribly wrong when you automate things, right?

 

Both have their shortcomings. Generally atuomation doesn't forget to do stuff. I'm not against automation, don't get me wrong. I just think the reason we all got into this was to "tinker" with the tank. I love the time I spend testing, cleaning, etc. I plan on putting some automation on my big in wall when we set it up...but some stuff will still be done the old fashioned way.

 

Reefo I would feed sparingly for a week or so until things are for sure good to go. It won't hurt anything to back off for a while to be sure of no spike. Nori has alot of phosphates as does flake. I would feed some frozen thawed in some tank water, then poured throgh a brine shrimp net and rinse the juice it was frozen in out. A hippo is actually more of a carnivore then a herbivore, they eat mostly zooplanton in the wild unlike most all other surgenfishes. Give the tank a couple weeks to settle in.
Most of the biggest tank crashes I have seen by people I've known was from being automated. People get used to not checking on stuff because they have alarms and controllers doing everything and one goes haywire and things aren't caught in time. I like doing things manually as you have to kinda keep an eye on things daily. One of my best friends lost everything but some of the fish in a 750 gal tank because some controller didn't turn the chiller on and it overheated and he didn't catch it for 3 days he figures. Thousands of dollars worth of corals.

 

Will do, fishermann. I have some frozen krill, brine shrimp with spirulina, and mysis shrimp in the freezer, too. I'm probably going to make my own food for them as well. Use to do it a long time ago and you have more control about what goes into the system that way.

 

For the past several years we have had Elvis (Hippo), I have found he likes the Nori best. This is what he is mainly accustomed to eating.

 

That is fine a few weeks after things are for sure okay. Nori is not something to be feeding until things are for sure okay, in fact all feeding should be minimal until sure there is going to be no cycle. Even a hint of a cycle, the hippo well most likely break out with ich. Hippos are not herbivores like other tangs.

 

The dosing pump you got with the system was for doing continuous water changes. it pumped water out at the same time as pumping in new saltwater. RHF wrote an article on water changes and described a way to do continuous water changes with that pump type.

 

Thanks for the tip. I got it hooked up short term for top-off from a reservoir. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get my RO unit permanently plumbed in and the dosing pump could then be used for a continuos water-change. It may have to wait a bit because the "honey do" list from my wife just got pretty large (I borrowed some of the money for the tank from her ).

 

Wow, you each have your own money? When you gonna borrow some and put some more rock in there? Can't wait to see pictures with it full of rockwork.

 

LOL, we each get a *small* allowance each month to spend on whatever we want, no questions asked. The rest of our income pays bills and goes into savings. It takes a while to save up enough to buy something like this tank. I was saving up for another firearm but decided I had enough for now and wanted the tank more. It may be a while before I can add anymore rock. I may just hunt for some interesting pieces here and there and build it up a piece at a time.

 

Remember when you buy some corals they come on live rock, Kill 2 birds with one stone that way