Dwolson's 75Gal tank

Took my camera underwater:

nice! did you figure out your phosphates? any change in your coral yet?

everything is perking up since I changed the water. I am going to let it be, and do another water change Saturday. See if I can let the GFO and chaeto work.

try adding some more gfo also i still don't think you have enough in there.

will do this weekend. everything is looking better. I don't want to mess with it for a few days.

k. are the spa looking better or are they still browning out?

Nick are you supplying the GFO? if so you can keep coral in my tank

lol funny

yea, that's a good idea, that stuff ain't cheap. The SPS does look better today.

Ok cool and its not like im not giving u anything for taking care of it all.

Just giving you a hard time man... Lol

I figured

haha Im glad I could help out the situation

Ya thanks...

Put the other eb8 in, and made a float switch/ probe holder. As well as another probe holder for the other side of the sump. And labeled everything.

Ok so here is a picture of the probe holder

and the float switches.



And I am working on an auto water change station. I hope to have it done in the next few days, but it will replace about a gallon a day.
Sneak peak:


And lastly looks like I have 4 new heads of hammerheads coming.

Cool my frogspawn has new heads!

So I stayed up late tonight to get the water change station finished. How it works:
Water is pumped out for 20 minutes(around 1 gallon) every day at 3PM(did it at 3 so by the time I get home, it should have just completed so if there is a problem, I will be there to correct it) Its pumped into the far right 5 gallon jug(changed every 4 days) then after the 20 minutes are done the other aqualifter pumps it from the fresh SW(center 5 gal jug, filled every 4 days) to the tank until the ato switch says its correct. If the switch fails, it will only pump about 10 minutes(.5 gal) of SW back into the tank, and I will get an email of the alarm. The far left 5 gal jug is regular ATO RODI water. When I move to the next house, all three of these will be outside the house and will be about 40-50 gals each, so I can leave for a month at a time. Also, I can turn the system off anytime by turning the SW out outlet off. Everything is triggered off of that.

Here are the pics:

Its cool that you have your water changes automated.

nikecivic wrote:Its cool that you have your water changes automated.

Thanks, the Mrs. was getting annoyed with how often I putz with my tank, so I figured if I can automate a mundane task, why not. I had one aqualifter on hand, picked one up today at the LFS, and bought 2 more of the 5 gal jugs. Out of pocket today was about 40$ with the hose. Not too bad.

I wrote this up while i was doing a trial of the system, I think I am going to drop it down to 16 min. Try that for a few days, then go back to 20 if warranted.

One thing to note for your apex users, the traic outlets(1-3,5-7) will not shut off for aqualifters or maxijet600's. I had to use my 4's and 8's(mechanical relays) for the ATO, Water change pumps, and my kalk mixer pump(maxi 600). I ran my ato by itself and it wouldn't shut off, but when the ATO was used with the JBJ, the jbj pulled enough juice for the triac to actually shut off.

U getting ur leds next?

Maybe build a cabinet to hide all the jugs next to the tank.

clownfish14 wrote:U getting ur leds next?

Maybe, I want to take a break from changing/buying things. We will see how long that lasts. I more or less did the AWC set up because I could and it will save me a lot of time.

nikecivic wrote:Maybe build a cabinet to hide all the jugs next to the tank.

I thought about that, but I am going to just leave it as is. In about 6-8 months I will be tearing down the tank for the move, so I will re-evaluate what I want to do with that part of the setup then.

nikecivic wrote:Maybe build a cabinet to hide all the jugs next to the tank.

I was thinking the same thing, all those bottles would bother the hell out of me.

Just ask the people next door if they would mind some holding tanks in their living room and plum it through the wall

My neighbor does like saltwater tanks, but I don't think that much. Its definitely an eye sore. But its two fold, on temporary, and two a test. Its to see if I have a lot of issues with running a set up this way, and if I do, I won't set it up this way at the next house. When I get to the next place I plan on running 3 lines outside to 55 gal drums and a drain line. It will allow me to be gone for a month at a time, without changing the water. If I can score some 100gal barrels, I could go 3+ months while still changing a gallon a day. Also, I can set up the apex to only change the water every other day, or only for half the time. Both of those would extend the time i could be away.

Derrick for the potm contest try adjusting you shutter speed so it has a longer exposure. It might turn out to be a cool blurr type pic

It was my camera on my phone, there wasn't many settings on the free app.

this is the last "update" to the 75 gal,
the tank was sold last night, here is all that remains(well a few parts are in my garage):

And Nick's corals are sentenced to die...

A slow agonising death too.

This tank was sold, if you want to follow the new build the link is below:
http://www.masvc.org/t831-dwolson-s-150-gallons-of-sexyness-build-that-will-take-even-longer-than-clown-fishes