chipmaker
Active Member
Tank, 16 gal aga bowfront, AC500, Coralife superskimmer 96w quad and 36 w actinic in strip
Leak tested it a full week, tweaked and adjusted & everything worked perfect. So I drained it all down, cleaned it all up, & left air dry until the next day when I picked up my LR(26#) of beautiful Fiji rock added 14# LS full of critters, just like the LR added water and fired everything up. No cure or cycle time ...everyting was from a fully cured in operation tank, we thenadded the critters, polyps, zoos and leathers and shrooms & some clean up critters,2 brittle stars, half dozen tiny blue leg hermits a few assorted snails. Wouldn't you believe it, protein skimmer went haywire, powerhead I just bought quit working, after 6 hours of fiddling with the skimmer and time now approaching 2AM everything but one PH was backup and operational...Finally a chance to set down and look at it..........Considering we started to fill up tank place rock etc was started right after lunch. spent some long hours on this one which should not have been.Anyway finally get to bed, wake up the next morning to a tank full of micro bubbles it looked like a snowstorm.......protein skimmer went haywire again..............heck, all that money for supposedly good quality equipment and the thing screwed up royally...pityfull. Anyway now my temp is going to high...funny it worked perfect and held a consistent temp within .4 deg for an entire week, now its running high and nothing that would induce this heat buildup was added.So I throw on a small fan and blow air across the tanks front, and start to bring temp down to range I need...now its getting to cool, so I have to let the heater do its thing.......a few hours tinkering with heater, finally get temp to 79 deg +- half a degree and its holding ok, as long as external fan is blowing on tank. So saturday I run to electronics supply and buy 4 2" muffin fans and modify my custom made hood for additonal internal cooling. now running 4 2" fans in hood and 2 OEM fans in the coral life fixture........now I can finally get rid of that room fan..runs great all day, until today its running hot again....so I drag the fan back out, but at least its only up around 82 deg unlike it was earlier when it started to raise even higher..NOw the skimmer is working fine but its now leaking water like a sieve at the adj. knob, and its a molded one piece assembly with skimmer housing so no dissassembly can be done.. Finally figure out whats causing it to leak, (at least I think I have an idea as to why its leaking, so I make and install a restrictor orifice for the intake tube to reduce water flow into skimmer and it finally settles down and stops leaking, Maybe it stopped, ..and I may wake up to a floor saturated in salt water tomorrow. only time will tell.......heck cleaning it up will give me something to keep me occupied and out of the shop and off the tractor and cutting the much neglected grass that is now about knee high in the side and back yard and about chest high in the field...........if it was not for having centepeed grass on one side and the front it would also be knee high.........so right now other than keeping it cool with a room fan it all seems ok, so I went and bought a sacrifical lamb, er ah that is a sacrificial fish..............Spent a whopping sum of $3.26 for a Blue Devil knowing full well its a very territorial fish, and its in a small tank in which I intend to add 4 others to once the setup can run for a month without any problems other than routine stuff like water top offs etc..So now I will have this one BLue Devil that is not going to be considered as a resident once the others get added, and local fish stores do not want it, as they do not carry damsel fish of any kind around here, only store that sells them is ***** and they do not take fish back on trades which a lot of the saltwater fish stores will do if a fish is too agressive or large for a tank it has outgrown.. So maybe I'll add a couple of tons of salt to my 1+ acre natural pond and convert it to a salt water pond, or flush it down the bowl, if I can't find a home to adopt it for free. I already have the 4 fish with a deposit on them at the reef store, which sells super nice fish, and all are healthy and guaranteed and will hold any purchases for up to 30 days without any additonal charge all in a separate area they hold these critters in, and they guarantee its health as well during that time or they will replace it. I have a purple Firefish, a Percula Clown, a Dwarf Angel, and a clown Goby all ready and waiting to be brought home in addition peppermint shrimp..With as much fun that I have had with this 16 gal screwing up everytime I turn around, I just know its gonna be a fun time when I get my large tank(110 gal) here to fool with..Thing is its all done by the book, good quality items and equipment used and its been a real bucket of worms from the git go. Hobbies, don't ya just love them!
Leak tested it a full week, tweaked and adjusted & everything worked perfect. So I drained it all down, cleaned it all up, & left air dry until the next day when I picked up my LR(26#) of beautiful Fiji rock added 14# LS full of critters, just like the LR added water and fired everything up. No cure or cycle time ...everyting was from a fully cured in operation tank, we thenadded the critters, polyps, zoos and leathers and shrooms & some clean up critters,2 brittle stars, half dozen tiny blue leg hermits a few assorted snails. Wouldn't you believe it, protein skimmer went haywire, powerhead I just bought quit working, after 6 hours of fiddling with the skimmer and time now approaching 2AM everything but one PH was backup and operational...Finally a chance to set down and look at it..........Considering we started to fill up tank place rock etc was started right after lunch. spent some long hours on this one which should not have been.Anyway finally get to bed, wake up the next morning to a tank full of micro bubbles it looked like a snowstorm.......protein skimmer went haywire again..............heck, all that money for supposedly good quality equipment and the thing screwed up royally...pityfull. Anyway now my temp is going to high...funny it worked perfect and held a consistent temp within .4 deg for an entire week, now its running high and nothing that would induce this heat buildup was added.So I throw on a small fan and blow air across the tanks front, and start to bring temp down to range I need...now its getting to cool, so I have to let the heater do its thing.......a few hours tinkering with heater, finally get temp to 79 deg +- half a degree and its holding ok, as long as external fan is blowing on tank. So saturday I run to electronics supply and buy 4 2" muffin fans and modify my custom made hood for additonal internal cooling. now running 4 2" fans in hood and 2 OEM fans in the coral life fixture........now I can finally get rid of that room fan..runs great all day, until today its running hot again....so I drag the fan back out, but at least its only up around 82 deg unlike it was earlier when it started to raise even higher..NOw the skimmer is working fine but its now leaking water like a sieve at the adj. knob, and its a molded one piece assembly with skimmer housing so no dissassembly can be done.. Finally figure out whats causing it to leak, (at least I think I have an idea as to why its leaking, so I make and install a restrictor orifice for the intake tube to reduce water flow into skimmer and it finally settles down and stops leaking, Maybe it stopped, ..and I may wake up to a floor saturated in salt water tomorrow. only time will tell.......heck cleaning it up will give me something to keep me occupied and out of the shop and off the tractor and cutting the much neglected grass that is now about knee high in the side and back yard and about chest high in the field...........if it was not for having centepeed grass on one side and the front it would also be knee high.........so right now other than keeping it cool with a room fan it all seems ok, so I went and bought a sacrifical lamb, er ah that is a sacrificial fish..............Spent a whopping sum of $3.26 for a Blue Devil knowing full well its a very territorial fish, and its in a small tank in which I intend to add 4 others to once the setup can run for a month without any problems other than routine stuff like water top offs etc..So now I will have this one BLue Devil that is not going to be considered as a resident once the others get added, and local fish stores do not want it, as they do not carry damsel fish of any kind around here, only store that sells them is ***** and they do not take fish back on trades which a lot of the saltwater fish stores will do if a fish is too agressive or large for a tank it has outgrown.. So maybe I'll add a couple of tons of salt to my 1+ acre natural pond and convert it to a salt water pond, or flush it down the bowl, if I can't find a home to adopt it for free. I already have the 4 fish with a deposit on them at the reef store, which sells super nice fish, and all are healthy and guaranteed and will hold any purchases for up to 30 days without any additonal charge all in a separate area they hold these critters in, and they guarantee its health as well during that time or they will replace it. I have a purple Firefish, a Percula Clown, a Dwarf Angel, and a clown Goby all ready and waiting to be brought home in addition peppermint shrimp..With as much fun that I have had with this 16 gal screwing up everytime I turn around, I just know its gonna be a fun time when I get my large tank(110 gal) here to fool with..Thing is its all done by the book, good quality items and equipment used and its been a real bucket of worms from the git go. Hobbies, don't ya just love them!
