[dougc]

I have been laying the groundwork for my new 210 gallon AGA tank since November and it is on the verge of actually seeing water. Much of the time was spent acquiring equipment, building an equipment room, and upgrading the electric service to support the tank. This weekend I bought some live rock, which is now curing in a large Rubbermaid container.

I got my Kent Maximma RO/DI filter operational again, too. It had not been used since last summer, when I brokc down my 70 gallon tank. Since the membrane was over 3 years old, I decided to replace it and the all the cartridges. Apparently, most of the cost of an RO/DI is the consumables, because it cost darn close to what a whole new unit would cost. I now have a TDS meter, so I can actually have some idea whether the filter is working. I pretty much operated blind before. It sure is working now. It is taking my tap water from 119 down to 1.

I have some pictures out on the net of the construction, but I haven't updated it in a couple of weeks. I have taken more shots, but haven't dumped them off the camera yet. After I upgrade my computer (new hard drive, W2K), I will create proper website. This is just what my photo album software spits out. The equipment room is now equipped with shelves, the sump is in place and the plumbing is started. Just have to finish the piping and set up the electrical stuff and the tank will be ready to go. Then I will have to master the AquaController II and get all that working. I am hoping to be far enough along for a fresh-water test next weekend.

[dougc]

Ran into a snag when I started filling the tank for a freshwater plumbing test. After filling the tank about halfway, I noticed that the left front corner of the tank was not touching the top of the stand. I ran a piece of paper along between the tank and stand and made it almost to the other end before it got stuck. Yeesshhh!!! After much time ciphering, checking with a level, draining the tank, and playing around with shims, all to no avail, I finally determined that the left end of the stand was not straight. It had a convex bow to it. This is a stock AGA stand, mind you. Now I had to unhook all the plumbing connections under the tank and attempt to slide the tank sideways on the stand, so I could plane the stand level. Thank goodness I put unions all over the place. I certainly got a workout. The tank tends to stick to the finish of the stand and did not want to slide. After much wrestling, sweating, and foul incantations, the stand is planed and the tank is sitting level. It is now filled and I have run the GenX Mak4 pumps for a while. I'm glad they are in the garage, because they are WAY to noisy to have in the house.

Eventually...

[zhenya]

Good thing you caught in time,Doug,could of been heap of problems down the line. I don't envy you wrestling with that thing all by yourself

[Reefer769]

awsome, sounds cool. i cant wait to see all the pictures of your progress

[acropora]

I just checked out your tank pictures and I see that you have built your Lighting hood. I am surprised you did not build the stand also.It is the best way to assure it is level and strong enough. I know what you are going through since I have been setting up a new 450 tank and it is coming along slowly.The Gen-X PCX-40 you mentioned is a very good pump for applications where head pressure is critical,such as for protein skimmers. A sequence pump is a quiet ,dependable choice for circulation. Good Luck.

[dougc]

Originally, I had only planned for one PCX-40 pump, but when I ran through a head-loss calculator, I found that my flow would end up at around 900 gph, less than I wanted, so I added the second pump. Both are Teed, one to feed my calcium reactor and the other, currently capped off, eventually to provide circulation for a frag tank. I have them throttled back a bit, but now I have redundancy.

As to the stand, I went with the AGA stand partly for warranty reasons. I know that the tank would be the least of my problems if it broke, but there is no room in the budget for a replacement tank.

I picked up my CO2 tank today. I am feeling a touch of the Monkey SARS and may have to stay home from work tomorrow get my AquaController fired up. [FYI: The Monkey SARS is sort of an inside joke, but it is a cross between monkeypox and SARS. I wish I could play the voicemail message one of my coworkers left for me at work. It would all make sense then.]

I will get some more pictures up, but when I installed W2K on my computer, my photo software lost track of all the descriptions I had entered for the photos because a drive letter changed. I haven't had a chance to hack into the database yet (it is Access 97) and change the file paths. I have started working on a real website, but it will take me a few days to get it together enough to publish. Besides, it is hard to take the time for computer stuff when there is a tank to get running.

[dougc]

Just a quick update. I have been taking pictures, but haven't had the time to load it all up to the web. The tank has been filled and running with live rock for about 10 days now and I have been fixing a succession of problems ever since. One of these days, everything will work the way I intended for a whole 24 hours.

I filled the EcoSystem filter with mud and it took much longer to clear up than I remember from the last tank. After a few days, I siphoned out most of the water and refilled it with fresh water.

When I was testing the plumbing with tap water, I had run the heaters and pumps with no problem for a few days. When I set it up with salt water, though, I started up the return pumps and the GFCI popped about 30 seconds later. After some troubleshooting, I determined that one of Gen-X heaters was the cause. I put a meter from tank to ground and it read 40 volts. Without the heater, everything fired up just fine. I think it probably was bad all along, but there was nothing grounded in the water to let it trip the GFCI. When I fired the tank up for real, I started running my Tunze Streams, which are well-grounded. The heater has been replaced, courtesy of Premium Aquatics.

I moved my live rock from the curing bin to the tank and realized that I needed more rock. I don't want the "wall-o-rock" look, but it really looked pitiful. I picked up a large piece of Tonga branch rock to augment what I had. I really like what it does for the aquascaping. I may get a couple more pieces.

When I tried running the HQIs, I quickly found another problem. The chiller fired up and ran, but the temperature kept climbing. I pulled it out and determined that there was no refrigerant in the chiller. It is a CSL drop-in chiller and it has a bendable (not flexible) hose with a stainless steel coil on the end. This could be a major setback. I called Champion Lighting, since they are now selling Tradewinds chillers, which are built by the same guy that built them for CSL until they folded. They put me in touch with the company, but the guy who builds them was on vacation. In the meantime, I mentioned my problem to a coworker who repairs and installs our analytical instruments and he said "Bring it in. We might be able to fix it.". I did so and we realized that there was a leak somewhere in the tubing to the coil. The tubing has a rubberized conduit cover, but the tubing itself is simply copper tubing. You can only bend metal tubing a few times before it breaks, which is apparently what happened. The big complication is that inside the outer tube is a much smaller copper tube that runs from the compressor to the end of the stainless coil. This tube carries the compressed freon to the end of the coil, where is then spills into the larger coil and expands. I cut the whole coil assembly off at the compressor, removed the conduit cover, and then cut just the outer copper tube off at the coil end. I spliced in a new piece of tubing, brought the chiller back to work, and we charged it up. Good as new. I may have saved myself a few hundred dollars. I later spoke to the guy at Tradewinds, who said he had seen a few other chillers break the same way. They are now using automotive air-conditioning hose, which does not have the metal fatigue problem I experienced.

After putting the chiller back in place, I felt confident that I could fire up the HQI lights again. I still had some concerns, since the 1/4 HP chiller is underrated for the size of the tank. I started all the lights up and a short time later had to leave the house for a few hours. When I returned, the tank looked ok, but when I went to check in the garage, I opened the door to my equipment room and a wave of heat blasted me. The room must have been 120 degrees. Every surface was hot, the chiller was grinding away, and the exhaust fan was pumping hot air out of the room. The tank temperature was OK, but it was apparent that I had a ventilation problem. I had no idea a chiller could put out THAT much heat. Last night, I upgraded the exhaust fan from a 50 cfm model to one that pumps 180 cfm. This is still less than the chiller, which I found out pumps about 260 cfm. The whole volume of the room is only about 140 cubic feet, so I will be replacing the entire volume in less than a minute.

I have my MRC CR-2 calcium reactor running now, but not without some spillage. I had the brilliant idea of T-ing off one the return pumps to feed the reactor. Little did I know that the quick-release caps cannot hold this kind of pressure. Water everywhere! I dug into my piles of castoff bits and pieces and found a Maxijet 500 to use for the feed pump. No more leaks. Now I have to get a low range pH test kit, since the ones for saltwater don't go low enough. This will end up being the fourth trip to the LFS this week.

I also purchase some more plumbing fittings to fix my water cannon problem. The returns from the Mak4 pumps is currently going back into the tank through the locline piping supplied with the AGA overflow kits. It is just too concentrated a flow for the tank and I have piles of sand all over the place. I am going to replace the locline with a spraybar setup to diffuse the returns better. Will it ever end?

My other unresolved problem is the serial connection from the AquaController II to the computer. There is a known problem with ground loops causing wacky pH and temperature readings, which an isolated ground connector is supposed to resolve. I bought one of these, but could not communicate with the AquaController when it was installed. After several calls to Neptune, I know what is wrong, but am not sure what to do about it. Apparently, the output for the external switch control also provides power to the isolator, but the switch output is not working, leaving the isolator without power. I have to call Curt again and find out whether it is repairable. Then I have to figure out how to run everything manually while the AquaController is off being repaired.

I do have some actual livestock now. I have 4 turbo snails working on the inevitable diatom explosion and they are doing a fine job. I have two fish in the QT, a lizard blenny and a scissortail goby. They are eating well and seemed unaffected by the blast furnace incident (The quarantine tank is in the equipment room).

I will be picking up a bunch of critters and macroalgaes to seed my EcoSystem filter next Monday. This is being provided by a local reefer and is similar to the detritovore kits sold by Inland Aquatics.

Things are moving forward, but it is getting tough to walk by the LFS tank that is full of really nice ORA frags. Give me strength!

[dougc]

More misadventures. I am still trying to get my AquaController serial connection working with the isolated ground connector in place. I did find that a couple of the pins were not making good contact in the serial socket on the AquaController, but it still is not working after I fixed that. I have to get this working because it is throwing off my temperature and pH readings.

This morning presented a new problem to solve. I noticed that I was getting no bubbles in the counter on my calcium reactor. It seems that the solenoid is not working. The regulator is now UPSing its way to Milwaukee for repair or replacement. Sigh...

On a brighter note, he higher-capacity exhaust fan seems to be keeping the room temperature under control. I'll have to wait for the next really warm day to be sure.