Making lemonade from a tank spill
I returned on Saturday morning to find that my protein skimmer collection container had overflowed all over the carpet in my dining room. For some reason, it started pulling out A LOT more water than it had previously (used to take a month to fill it half-way, and while I was gone, it was filled in less than a week).
As you can imagine, the smell in my dining room was not pleasant given that skimmer water is ever so fragrant. So, I needed to disassemble the tank and take it out of the house to clean the carpet. In the process of thinking through how to deal with this, I decided to make the best of this situation.
For a while, I've been thinking that my 45g cube (24w x 24h x 18d) has a couple of problems:
- The tank is on a stand that is almost four feet high, which means that I have to get a step stool to do even the most basic maintenance
- I'm not a big fan of the 24" height of the tank either as it means that I'm up to my armpits whenever I need to do any work down at the bottom of the tank. It also leaves a lot of dead space at the top of the tank where it's not easily feasible to stack rocks for additional corals
- The tank's not drilled and I'm always nervous about the overflow failing for some reason or another
- The 24" width leaves very little room in the stand for sumps, skimmers, etc.
So, with these problems in mind, and the need to take the tank down, I decided to get a larger tank that better fits my desires.
I went to Tongs (LFS in Orange County, CA) and was able to take advantage of their "Black Friday" sale (even though it was Saturday), and get a 60g glass tank for $69. The tank measures 48" w x 16"h x 18"d which means I won't have to reach in so far and also that there's some horizontal room for the critters to swim. The shallowness of the tank, I think, will also mean that I won't need as much lighting to get down to the bottom of the tank.
Part 1 of my plan is was to get the 45 out into the garage. This took me from about 11am on Saturday to about 9pm on Sunday to complete.
- Setup 10g tank in garage to receive corals and fish temporarily
- Empty 45g tank and put corals and fish into 10g tank
- Put remaining rocks and sand into buckets
- Capture as much water as possible from the 45 for use later
- Move 45 out into garage
- Put rocks from buckets (not sand though) back into 45
- Refill 45 with captured water
- Heat water and wait for water to clear up
- Install CPR Aquafuge PS back onto 45 to help with filtration
- Once 45 is back up to temp and the water has cleared, put the livestock back into the 45
- Tear down the 10
So far, this morning the corals looked good and started coming out when I turned the lights on. The fish are looking good as well. I bought a UV a while back and have that running on the 45 as well to minimize any parasite issues brought on by the stress of the moves. We'll see how things look tonight when I get home from work.
My next step is to get the 60 up and going. The tank isn't drilled, so I ordered the 1500 GPH overflow kit from glass-holes.com. I also ordered two of their 3/4" Return Line kit with Loc Line. Since the tank has a 10" wide piece of glass in the center of the tank for bracing purposes, I'm planning to put the overflow offset to one side or the other, and will have the returns on the right and left sides of the tank.
I haven't fully figured out how I'm going to setup my sump equipment for the new tank. I've been toying with the idea of having setting up a 10g tank I have as a refugium with cheeto and live rock rubble and drilling it to gravity feed into the 30 (ish) gallon sump I used to have on the 45. I would then have the old sump setup with my skimmer, the UV, and the return pump. I've also been thinking about feeding the skimmer directly from one of the overflow lines so it gets maximum exposure to the dirty water. I might also try and figure out how to run the output from the skimmer through the UV so I don't have to put a pump on that guy as well.
I'm open to suggestions on what to use for a return pump. My setup on the 45 used an Eheim 1250 (I think that's the one) for the sump return, and two Hydor Koralia 2 powerheads for circulation. I don't necessarily think that I need a ton of water flow through the sump as the skimmer, UV, heaters, etc., don't necessarily need a lot of flow and lots of flow also creates lots of flow noise. I'm theorizing that if I can push about 1,000 gallons per hour through the sump, that out to be plenty. The rest of the flow can come from powerheads. I've been drooling over the VorTech MPW40 for a while now, we'll see if the budget can handle it.
For lighting on the 60, I'm thinking of the 48 inch Current USA SunDial T5 HO 4x54W w/ Timers & LED from Marine Depot (I live about 15 min from their warehouse). I like that the unit's got dual times built in and has a single power cord. I have one the 24" versions on my 45 and have liked it quite a bit. Obviously, I'd love to get a Solaris, but the $2,500 up front cost just makes me cringe, especially compared to the $300 for this light.
My plan for now is to get the 60 up and going in the garage over the next couple of weeks, and then turn the 45 into my QT system. I've been operating without QT so far and it's been a pain. Once I get everything dialed in on the 60, I'll consider moving it into the house. Although, I kind of like the idea of turning my garage into a fish room. The summer heat will end up being a problem for me, I'm sure, but I've got some months to figure that out.
One other fun thing about all of this is that I've got about 500 lbs of hawaiian base rock in my garage right now that I'm planning to use to aquascape this tank. Obviously I won't be able to use all of it, but I definitely have enough to do pretty much whatever I want with this tank. I've been thinking about using some sort of adhesive or something to fix the rocks in place so I don't have to worry as much about tumbles. The downside of that, of course, is that if (when) I change my mind about the rock config, it'll be a lot more work to change things.
I've also been toying with the idea of getting a controller for this system. The DA RK2 looks good as does the RKE. I've heard that the RKE has gotten a lot of bad press, but I do like the idea of the unit and the upcoming connectivity features (ethernet). Anyone have thoughts on the controllers they've used and liked and/or used and didn't like?
I think that pretty much covers it. All in all, this has been a lot of work, but I'm excited about setting up the new tank and doing with fewer compromises and hopefully fewer mistakes than I made on my first tank. Oh yeah, and I'm also glad to get rid of that smell in my dining room. :)
To summarize some of the questions from above:
- Any thoughts on return pumps & GPH?
- Any thoughts on Controllers
- Any ideas or concerns about using a 10 as a fuge?
- Any thoughts or concerns about my plans for drilling the 60?
-Chris