James' 120 Gal Reef Trials and Tribulations

james37128 · Nov 29, 2008

Upgraded from a 50 gallon to a 120 gallon with about a 40 gallon sump about... 3 months ago. Currently working on a little DIY Calcium reactor, should be complete by next week (waiting on USPS for some peices.) Here are some pics. The 2 colt corals are looking a bit bad in the pics, that's because I had just got done moving them about 30 minutes prior.

an actinic shot of some of the rics

bmshehan · Nov 29, 2008

Nice looking tank! You need to update this thread often now!!

Camilsky · Nov 29, 2008

My friend! Joy to watch! Fantastic colors! Thanks for sharing! K+!

james37128 · Nov 29, 2008

Thanks for the kind words, I am looking forward to updating often. I have never really made a build thread, so I might as well start a journal!

coral reefer · Nov 29, 2008

Nice eye candy!

baugherb · Nov 29, 2008

Beautiful tank... Awesome pics...

Otty · Nov 29, 2008

The move looks very nice.

jeremy_a · Nov 29, 2008

Very nice looking tank and pics!! Keep em coming.

james37128 · Dec 1, 2008

calcium reactor

I have made some progress on the calcium reactor, Really waiting on USPS to get the ball rolling... I decided to go with the same size chambers, I think that will make it a bit easier to make a stand/setup. Also the extra media can't hurt anything...
The reaction chambers.

Everyone loves their dremels right?

5kg co2 tank

Japanese regulator which is different size then American, I was really worried about not having any gauges to tell pressures, but this thing is really precise, and it has the little gauge on the tank to show when its empty. I was really worried when I got it, but I set it up and started some bubble action in a cup of water, and the quality of control surprised me, I think the regulator is preset to allow a maximum of 0.3 MPa (whatever that means, if someone knows please enlighten me!) and it has the one control to put it exactly where you want.

Now if that control wasn't precise enough (I really really did not thing it was when I purchased it, so I bought this other needle valve sold by a different company who makes regulators here in japan.

Hopefully I will have it complete by the end of this week, I will be leaving for 2 weeks and won't actually get it running until I get back. I would really like to get home and go straight into fine tuning it, I may set it up without any co2 going to it while I am gone, I have yet to decide.