Rocketman's New Dual 175g Bullnose Build Thread

I just got an email from the fish store and they need to ship out the fish on march 28th. I'm going to have to do some major water changes when I drop the fish in to control the cycle.

 

i work at the LFS in my neck of the woods. we've had NBA players come in and want a 200 gal reef setup by the weekend for a big party. what we do is use water from our 240 reef display as "new" water for the new tank. we also put in cured rock and mature sand from the display tank. it is pretty much an instant cycle. you can try to contact your LFS and see if they will give you some "mature" water and sand, even tho you will be adding water that already has nitrates in it, it will get you going. JMO

 

Is it bad that I'm so excited to see this setup that I'm glad the lfs is forcing it to happen sooner than later...

 

Fish issue resolved!

The guys at World Wide Corals have offered to temporarily house my fish and send them when I'm ready. These guys are awesome.

The folks at Sea in the City, who have been housing to date, have been more than accommodating and have taken care of me for far longer than they signed up for and they deserve many thanks.

Now...

I've been looking FOR EVER for a Mimic Lemonpeel Tang and World Wide Corals has one. So I bought it and will have them ship it out with the rest of the fish. They also had a very nice Swallowtail Angel so I bought that as well

 

Good deal about the fish. Did you look at the auto water change stuff?

 

I did and I'm currently trying to get my head around it

 

Here's the deal.... if you do any sort of a auto water change.... what you put back MUST equal what you take out. Otherwise you will change salinity. There are automated setups out there, but they use dual head pumps and big dual peristaltic pumps. So when they operate, the two heads are equal and they pump out what they pump in. Also.... any sort of water change requires you to turn off your ATO because you do not want it putting in RO/DI on a water loss.

So this way you just use the ATO to top off... you do not have to measure anything. The Tunze ATO keeps wter level within 1/8".... so you just use a relay to switch the ATO from the ro/di pump to the new salt water pump.... turn on a waste pump to dump out so much per day and top off with salt water. It worked brilliantly and my salinity stayed constant.

You can search for auto water changes and you will come up with those dual head pumps. People do use them and if you have the money they run $400-$600. For you though, it is cetainly worth it to automate. No more water change rituals.... just make sure your salt water resivoir is made up.

There was another guy that had a salt water and fresh water resivoir. He was trying to use salinity probes to automate everything. He was trying to make some sort of contraption to automatically add salt and mix it up and then keep tank salinity constant with water changes. He was having a hard time with that one...;D

 

Update:

I transported the fish from Sea in the City to World Wide Corals today. Pic of my Midas Blenny below:

 

Hope transfer went well, very scary to me.

 

Nice project, can't wait to see it up and running. My corals are over-grown, I don't think I even have an inch in my tank to add anything, I have to get a larger tank soon (that was the plan when I setup my current tank 3 yrs ago ;D ). We're also looking to purchase a bigger home, as great as that is my biggest fair is selling a house while buying a house, tearing down a tank and moving everything to a new tank...in a perfect world it would work, but I'm guessing the reality is that it's not that simple, hopefully I don't have to end up getting someone to hold my lifestock. Good luck with your project.