- Location
- Albany, NY
Starting a new thread on the BEAST rebuild. For those of you not familiar with the tank that I call the BEAST, it is a 450 gallon tank that is 8 foot long, 30 inches wide and 36 inches deep with overflows at each end. The tank sits on the outside wall of my dining room, so when filled it is visible from the dining and living room. The tank is connected to a sump in the basement which is 125 gallons. Above the sump was a 40 gallon long glass tank divided up for a fuge. As part of the rebuild, I had a custom made acryllic fuge built that is 1/2 inch thick to better support the drain lines from it to the sump. The system is powered by a dolphin diamond aqua sea 9250 pump which runs into a 2 different 2 inch diameter by 4 foot long manifolds providing flow for all the equipment. The equipment includes a 4 foot tall dual tube updraft protein skimmer, a carbon reactor, a gfo reactor, and a calcium reactor. Additionally I added a bubble magnus dosing system.
The entire system is managed by an Apex (Neptuensystems) with multiple temperature probes, 2 Ph probes (one for monitoring Ph and one for running the calcium reactor), 1 conductivity probe (to measure salinity), 1 ORP probe (which I find is a great monitor for overall tank health), several variable speed controller (to control variable speeds and wave motion on 4 tunze pumps), and a number of power bars to control heaters, pumps, etc. Lighting for the main tank is 4 ecotech radion pros.
Water is provided to the tank by a 6 stage RO/DI system rated for 150 gallons per day, along with 2 - 65 gallon holding tanks (one for RO/DI water and one for salt water). I am probably going to add at least one more holding tank so that I have more RO/DI water in reserve. The holding tanks use a pump in the tanks for water motion and to stir salt when mixing. Water changes are simple with activation of a drain from the sump and then water from the holding tank.
Due to a series of mishaps while I was away and I had a caretaker looking after the tank, the caretaker accidentally set off a series of chain reactions that were eventually unrecoverable. Although I lost all of my livestock, I learned a number of things with the previous build that I can improve on with this build. In the previous build I needed to move live rock, corals and fish rapidly from the holding tanks to the main display, so with the rock no longer alive, I can take my time and aquascape more efficiently making room for lots of specimens. Today was major progress after removing approximately 800 lbs of formerly live rock from the tank, and almost 1000 lbs of sand. I have now completed a series of washes of the sand with a little washed in each batch multiple times, draining the water, then ultimately storing the mostly washed sand in 50 gallon rubbermaid trash cans. I now have 3 30 gallon totes filled with rock cooking, and another 250 gallon horse trough filled with rock waiting to cook. My plan is once the rock is cooked to lay it all out in the dining and living room so that I can select the exact right pieces to build the two islands that I want in the display perfectly. Once the islands are built, I will slowly add the sand a little at a time with salt water in the tank to finish processing any remaining biological debris left in the rock and sand. Then I will drain the tank, adding live rock to seed the islands and start the nitrate process for real.
My immediate next step is to route the bulkhead holes on the right side of the tank to replace the schedule 40 bulkheads with heavier duty schedule 80 builkheads (the left side was previously done due to the schedule 40 bulkheads starting to fail). Will post some pics soon to show the holding tanks and progress.
The entire system is managed by an Apex (Neptuensystems) with multiple temperature probes, 2 Ph probes (one for monitoring Ph and one for running the calcium reactor), 1 conductivity probe (to measure salinity), 1 ORP probe (which I find is a great monitor for overall tank health), several variable speed controller (to control variable speeds and wave motion on 4 tunze pumps), and a number of power bars to control heaters, pumps, etc. Lighting for the main tank is 4 ecotech radion pros.
Water is provided to the tank by a 6 stage RO/DI system rated for 150 gallons per day, along with 2 - 65 gallon holding tanks (one for RO/DI water and one for salt water). I am probably going to add at least one more holding tank so that I have more RO/DI water in reserve. The holding tanks use a pump in the tanks for water motion and to stir salt when mixing. Water changes are simple with activation of a drain from the sump and then water from the holding tank.
Due to a series of mishaps while I was away and I had a caretaker looking after the tank, the caretaker accidentally set off a series of chain reactions that were eventually unrecoverable. Although I lost all of my livestock, I learned a number of things with the previous build that I can improve on with this build. In the previous build I needed to move live rock, corals and fish rapidly from the holding tanks to the main display, so with the rock no longer alive, I can take my time and aquascape more efficiently making room for lots of specimens. Today was major progress after removing approximately 800 lbs of formerly live rock from the tank, and almost 1000 lbs of sand. I have now completed a series of washes of the sand with a little washed in each batch multiple times, draining the water, then ultimately storing the mostly washed sand in 50 gallon rubbermaid trash cans. I now have 3 30 gallon totes filled with rock cooking, and another 250 gallon horse trough filled with rock waiting to cook. My plan is once the rock is cooked to lay it all out in the dining and living room so that I can select the exact right pieces to build the two islands that I want in the display perfectly. Once the islands are built, I will slowly add the sand a little at a time with salt water in the tank to finish processing any remaining biological debris left in the rock and sand. Then I will drain the tank, adding live rock to seed the islands and start the nitrate process for real.
My immediate next step is to route the bulkhead holes on the right side of the tank to replace the schedule 40 bulkheads with heavier duty schedule 80 builkheads (the left side was previously done due to the schedule 40 bulkheads starting to fail). Will post some pics soon to show the holding tanks and progress.
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