The Road to DanaMcK's 240g and 180g Dream Tanks

[Danamck]

Please note: this is an extension of some posts that I started in the "show us your tank" thread. Rob & I decided that this would be a better place for these posts. After getting these posted, I will delete the similar (but much less detailed) posts in that section.

The following is a brief history of the various tanks I've had over the last 35+ years. Feel free to skip to the next post if I bore you.

The Beginning

I have been into aquariums since I was a young boy. I thank my uncle for getting me hooked. I remember him having 5 or 6 tanks, and despite it being in the late 1960's he was doing some pretty cool things. I remember him telling me that the most important thing was strong water circulation, and I never forgot that.

Over the next few decades, I would always have some kind of aquarium. Usually it was a small 10 or 20 gallon. I remember at age 16 trying to breed fresh water angels (I had a mated pair that laid eggs on my heater often) with no success.

The Middle

When I moved to California in 1981, I decided it was time to go saltwater. My first salt tank was a 55 gallon and used an undergravel filter with power heads. Even with such limited technology, I found it quite easy to keep most marine fish.

In 1989, I married my best friend in the world. At that time, we lived in a small 2-story townhouse. Despite it's size, we had 3 aquariums, all salt. The 35 hex was in the bedroom, and was my wife's tank. If I remember correctly, it had a small Flame Angel, a Cherub Angel, a Royal Gramma, and a few small Butterfly fish. Of course, like all the tanks, it used undergravel filtration and coral skeletons. My old 55 gallon found a home in the Living Room.

And in the Guest Bedroom - a 240 gallon tank. A friend of mine was moving out of the area, and could not take his tank with him, so I ended up getting an amazing deal on the tank. I couldn't afford a stand or canopy - so it sat on cinder blocks and plywood. In hind site, this was a blessing - as the tank survived the big earthquake we had a few weeks before we got married. The house shook back and forth in the same direction as the length of the tank. So even though it shifted a half inch off the blocks, and spilled some 40 gallons of water on each side wall (and over my prized collection of Star Trek: The Original Series VHS tapes - yes I'm one of those!) the tank made it. And despite a loss of power for 24 hours, so did all the fish in all the tanks. I was very lucky.

In 1992, my son was born. Because the townhouse was a 2-bedroom, and Kyle would be getting bedroom #2, I had to say goodbye to the 240. Of course, it's a trade I was happy to make!

The Beginning of The End (or Going Off the Deep End)

In 1993, we moved into a new house. At the same time, a friend of mine wanted a smaller tank, and I wanted a bigger - so we traded. He got my 55 and I got his 100. I got the better end of the trade, though if I remember correctly, some cash was involved!

A year later, I purchased my "dream tank" - a 125 with a beautiful gloss black stand and canopy. I remember telling my wife that this was the biggest tank I would ever want, or something to that effect. I would later eat those words. This was my first use of a wet/dry filter (I'm very old school and slow to change). This tank also is what pushed me off the deep end. I think it was around 1996 when I added a beautiful little 2" juv. French Angel. Over the next many years he would grow so much that I was forced to remove fish to keep the tank from being extremely over-crowded (though it was still over-crowded). It soon became apparent that either the fish had to go, or I needed a bigger tank. So with my wife's approval, and an "I told you so", I set off to learn all I could learn and design what would hopefully become my "real" dream tank.

I remembered having this 240 gallon many years ago ...

[RocketSeason]

Pretty angel.

[Danamck]

I spent the next several months researching, planning, and designing. I mean, I made cad drawings of the tank, stand, plumbing, electrical, you name it. This was going to be a text book lesson in "how to set up your dream tank". As you will soon learn, nothing could have been further from the truth!

The Best Layed Plans

So, after much agonizing, I decided to get a 240 acrylic tank. I really wanted a 300 since it was the same width (8') and depth (2'), but I was concerned that the additional 6" of height (30" vs. 24" for the 240) would make it hard to work on and clean the tank. This is one of the few things I got right!

The hardest part of the decision making proccess was tank location vs. size. In order to fit a tank of this size, the only location in the house where it would fit was ... the garage. Now - it is a finished garage that we had turned into a game room. And I figured this could become my fish room. Some added benefits ... the garage stayed cool in the summer (no chiller would be needed) and there was no direct sunlight to deal with (our house is all windows - so direct sunlight has always been an issue.) I wouldn't have to be as carefull when working on the tank with regards to minor spills (cheap carpet over concrete slab.) And because it was in the middle of the garage, i would have easy access to all four sides. Perhaps the best benefit was knowing that if the tank suffered a major failure, the water would run out of the garage into the street rather than ruin the house. Seemed very logical to me. My wife didn't think it was the best idea and was concerned that we wouldn't enjoy the tank as much if it wasn't in the main part of the house. I convinced her we would.

I had a local company called TruVu custom make the tank. Really the only difference between their stock 240 and mine was that I wanted the 2 overflows to be 2' from each side of the tank, rather than in each corner. OK - this I got correct as well, as the tank is veiwed from 3 sides, so 1/4 of the side is not taken up by the overflows. Is it just me, or do other people out there love to view thier tanks from the side and dream of owning an aquarium that deep!

The stand and canopy were to be made of maple. I had the stand made an extra 6" high to give me extra room under the tank for all the needed equipment. A few weeks later, the tank, stand and canopy were delivered ... the day before we were to leave for a week vacation in San Diego! Ugggh!

Teaching an Old Dog Some New Tricks

During my research, I learned all about the benefits of using live rock as the primary form of filtration. I learned the importance of protein skimmers. I learned that the bio-balls in the wet/dry were big-time nitrate producers. I learned how canister filters, if not cleaned often, were also nitrate producers. I learned that refugiums were becoming more and more important in aquarium set ups. Jeez - about the only thing I didn't learn is the importance of strong water flow (thanks Uncle Ray). Have I mentioned I'm "old school"?

Because this was to be a fish only tank, I decided to combine some old school with some new school. From the old school: I would keep my wet/dry and it's bio-balls (the tank was going to have a large fish load) and my canister filter. I would use DLS material in the overflows. I would also keep the UV Sterilizer. And I was going to continue using crush coral substrate and coral skeleton decorations (don't say it!)

So what new school technology would I add? A good skimmer. And a refugium. And so, plans in hand, hundreds of dollars in pvc parts, I was ready.

4 Days to Aquarium Heaven ... Not!

I took a few extra days off from work to set up the tank. Adding the weekend in, this gave me a full 4 days to set up the new tank and take down the old one, more than enough. After all, I had all my plans and drawings, what could go wrong. LOTS! OK - the tank DID NOT explode when I filled it with water. So that's a good thing!

The first mistake was discovering that the holes TruVu drilled in the overflows were too small for the heavy duty bulkheads I purchased from my local sprinkler store. I had no idea that 1" bulkheads of different quality need different size holes. So I had to use the more standard bulkheads, which seem a bit fragile to me.

Oh - did I say 1" bulheads for a 240 gallon tank. Yep - that would be mistake #2. Let's not go there.

Another huge mistake was plumbing the wet/dry and refugium completely separate. One overflow fed the wet/dry, one the refugium. One pump in the wet/dry fed one return, and an identical pump in the refugium fed the other return. In a perfect world, this should have worked. Despite using identical pumps, they actually had slightly different outputs. And despite being perfectly level, the right overflow fed more water. Results? It was impossible to balance the wet/dry and refugium for more than a few days before one or the other need tweaking. This wasn't going to work long term.

OK - let's quickly recap some of the other issues I had:
* The canister filter I got from a friend leaked
* so did the UV (my fault - tightened the clamp a bit too hard and warped the plastic intake of my Coralfe Sterilizer)
* I filled my tank with crap water (I had never used RO/DI, but knew that I needed to. The dealer where I purchased the RO/DI unit told me that the "waste water" was actually RO water and the other output was RO/DI. Since this was a fish only tank, I figured RO was just fine, so I used both. I later learned exactly what "waste water" was. So about 75% of the water in my tank was crap, just slightly better than tap (and we have horrid tap water!) I learned this when I got a HUGE diatom algae bloom a few days after setting up the tank. Many 50 gallon water changes later, I got the water to an acceptable quality.

And # 1 on Casey Kasem's countdown of my Top 40 mistakes I made when setting up my dream tank - using coal skeletons rather than switching over to live rock. I'll address that in my "take 2" post.

Looking Back

Despite all the problems, the fish all loved the new tank, especially the French Angel. So it wasn't a total loss! And yes - that's a thriving Moorish Idol (who thrived right up until the point I found him being eaten alive by my one hermit crab, a hermit that was 1/30th the size of the Moorish Idol.) The Moorish Idol died a week later. The hermit crab was not as lucky. And the tank included two of my second favorite fish in the world - the Golden Butterfly. Yep - Moorish Idols are my favorite.

I look back at these photos fondly now. At the time, there were many nights when I sat underneath the tank cursing it. Of course, 3am in the morning is not the best time for rational thought! But I learned a lot. And so I decided to try again. This time my plan WOULD work. And it would be easy. Or so I thought ...

[Small Fry]

sweet tanks, bet you miss your angels alot eh?

[Danamck]

Josh -

Yes - big time. There's something about a fish that lives for over a decade and changes before your eyes. They are, to me, as much of a pet as a cat and dog. They have unique personalities and moods and swear they recognize me from other people.

Of well - in a perfect world, two large tanks. One for the big angels and butterfly fish, one for the corals. I hope my wife doesn't see this!

[gwen_o_lyn]

Very nice tanks!

[CarmieJo]

Beautiful!

[Danamck]

Thank you all for the compliments. Tonight I will post my transition to live rock. And when I'm finished, you will see that these posts do belong here - as I am about to embark on my next dream tank!

[Danamck]

My dream tank was finally set up. Through MUCH trial and error, I was able to get the wet/dry and refugium somewhat balanced. The fish were very happy. But I wasn't. Something wasn't right. I was spending WAY too much time on maintainence. I was constantly fighting high nitrates and brown algae. Bleaching coral skeletons was getting to be a real drag. Something had to change ...

Honey, I Need to Spend More Money

Prior to setting up my 240, I had read about the benefits of live rock. Yet I chose not to use it. Why? I guess I could blame it on the cost. 200 - 250 lbs of live rock was not going to be cheap. The tank project had already gone over budget.

But I think the real reason was that I felt to "experiment" with a completely different way of maintaining fish in a newly set up 240 was a bit daunting. I'm so old school. But after additional reading, talking to my LFS, more reading, and lots of internet searches (including this site!) - I came to the conclusion that it was time to "get with the program" and embrace natural filtration. As difficult as it was for me to finally come to this decision, I knew my wife would be even harder. Boy was I wrong. She was as frustrated as I was with the huge amount of time I had been spending on the tank. And when I explained the benefits of live rock, she agreed!

"You're Going To Put That In Your Tank?"

I informed my LFS that I was in the market for 175 lbs of live rock. My LFS informed me that they had a shipment coming in from Tonga next week. I asked my LFS if they would call me the second it arrived. My LFS said they would. And they did. When I arrived there were about a dozen large boxes of beautiful live rock. The owner of the LFS helped me select the best pieces, and gave me some tips on curing and setting up the rock.

I spent the rest of the evening cleaning and inspecting the rock. Over the next 4 weeks, I cured the rock in my 2 55 gallon water tanks. In my garage. For a few weeks, my garage was not a fun place to be! Holy cow - 175 lbs of uncurred live rock really stinks up the joint! I think it was at that point that my wife began to question our marriage and my sanity. "You're going to put THAT in your tank?" Uh - yes.

D-Day

4 weeks later, out came the coral skeletons and crushed coral substrate. In came the live sand and the