Tank Journal - 225 SW FOWLR, Possible future reef

[Floyd R Turbo]

Worked from 11am to 5pm today. Spent the first hour or so finishing off the 1200 grit pattern, then about 2 hours on the 1500 grit pattern, and 2 hours on the 2000 grit pattern. It's starting to smooth out nicely...

 

[SnowZz]

we want new pictures and pics of the fish's current state

 

[capj64]

Too bad you can't use a power sander

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

New pics wouldn't really show much different unfortunately. I'll take a pic of the empty tank tomorrow and post it. The fish are still in the state of Iowa HA HA. Sorry it's been a long week.

The Clown spend his day laying on his side on the bottom of the tank. I'd be concerned if he wasn't breathing or swimming around occasionally. The Tang is doing fine, still a little skittish. Getting ready to do another PWC.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I'm calling out to all who have worked on sanding acrylic. Please view this link and pass on if you know anyone that can help. I'm about to lose my mind.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f20/sanding-acrylic-tank-need-help-128217.html#post1094223

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Ok, after a brief banging of the head against the wall, the sanding job is finally in the last stage. Technically, no longer a sanding job, it's a polishing job. I wish that I had learned what I now know about this time last week.

I went to my local woodworking store in the Des Moines area, called The Woodsmith Store, and spoke with a gentleman who was very knowledgeable and told me exactly what I needed to do. I purchased an 8oz bottle of Hut Ultra Gloss Plastic Polish for $10, then I went to my local True Value and bought a set of 3 different sized buffing wheels, the cotton cloth kind, single stitch (basically about a dozen round pieces of thick cotton fabric with a single stitch line about 1/2 way to the center) for about $20.

I got there today and did a small test area, which seemed to work pretty well. So I spread the polish across the entire inside front & sides and let it dry for 5 minutes (as recommended by the Woodsmith Store employee) then proceeded to buff it at about 1/2 full drill speed. I went across the whole tank in about 20-30 minutes, then rinsed and dried.

The result was not as improved as I had hoped - I was kind of disappointed. It looked like it buffed out quite a bit of the 2400 pattern, but there was still significant pattern left. But I figured it might be user error being my first time. I oriented the buffing wheel to go 'with' the 2400 pattern ('against' the 3200 pattern) and neither was completely gone.

So I applied polish to an area about 6" x 8" long, let it dry, and then buffed it at about 3/4 or better speed for a longer time. Not long enough to significantly heat the acrylic, though it did warm it up a bit. I spent about a minute on that one area. I rinsed it away to find a mirror perfect gloss finish. I'm talking not a single blemish at all.

So the end is near. I will be going in tomorrow afternoon for about 2+ hours and I intend to finish the son of a gun off to a completely perfect surface inside, and will probably go ahead and buff out any fine scratches on the outside of the front as well (I do have an 8000 grit pattern to buff out on the front anyways)

So the plan is this:

Wednesday: Finish buffing
Thursday: Complete sump connections; perform any touch-up buffing; apply anti-static; wash, rinse and dry tank.
Friday: Prep for Saturday
Saturday: Fill tank and fire it up; verify all connections hold; let run overnight
Sunday: Add 2 40# bags of rinse aragonite sand (not sugar size) and put the LR back in, along with 1/2 of the bio-balls in the 37 QT tank and 1/2 of the dried-out ones (will put the remainder in the 37g for the rest of the week)
Monday: Test all level and add ammonia to verify survival of bacterial colony
Tuesday-Saturday: Monitor & test; add ammonia (minimal to minimize PWCs) as necessary until total conversion occurs in 24 hours
Saturday or Sunday: re-introduce Yellow Tang and Clownfish. AND COLLECT $$$.

 

[Mitchell0605]

I like the last step the best.

 

[match55]

I like the last step the best.

agree!!! collect money!!!!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Ok, sorry folks it's been over a week since my last post. I got the polishing about as done as it could possibly be on Saturday morning, took Sunday off due to excessive celebration on Saturday night, then filled the tank on Monday in 2 shifts, 115 gallons in the afternoon and another 90 gallons after business hours, which put about 20+ in the sump, so I guess it's a 180 instead of a 225. Oh well, another incorrect thread title but who cares.

I rinsed and added 1/2 of the gravel and a full box of salt (200g mix) on Monday and the second half on Tuesday, and added another 1/2 bag of salt today to bring salinity up a bit.

I spent some time today on the LR in my tub (which threw off about 0.5 ppm ammonia in 1 week). I drained the tub & took all the rock out, then sprayed it down with hot water via a hose connected to the laundry room sink, then went a couple rocks at a time, spraying with straight bleach, letting it sit for a very short minute, then hot water spray thoroughly, and following that with spraying with straight Prime. I had to go buy more and got lucky my LFS had a 2L bottle. I think I went through about 750ml in total. I then filled the tub and put the rocks back in, put 4 power heads and a heater in, and more Prime of course. I'm going to buy a Chlorine test kit from Leslie's tomorrow just to make sure, but that should do it I believe.

Tomorrow I'll test the salinity, add salt if needed, and maybe go put the rocks in at night.

The only thing right now that concerns me a little is the bowing of the front of the tank. I didn't measure it before the sanding/polishing, but to me it looks excessive. I called my LFS and talked to someone very knowledgeable and came to the conclusion that it might be OK. The tank has rounded corners, which he said will lead to more bowing than normal. Also, the sides of the tank are pretty tight against the drywall cavity it is built into, so those can't bow that much, which to me would lead to the front bowing out more that normal. If I get a chance, I'll put a stick across the front and measure the distance at the edges, as well as taking a caliper reading off the top piece.

LFS guy told me that the first signs of acrylic failure is cracking/crazing at the joint at the top, and it those get longer than 1/2" to 1", it's time to throw it out. Hopefully, the sanding did not weaken the material to that point, but only time will tell.

Pics when I get time, I have other fires. The 125 reef I maintain hit 85 degrees today. Very much bad.

 

[Mitchell0605]

Nice job Floyd. If anything lives on those rocks I'd be amazed. Sorry about the reef. 85, not good at all.

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

How is the clown doing? ...also sorry about the 125 reef

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Floyd: "Ok, might have that, but this is really only for 24-48 hours, until I can drain the tank, replace tubing, sand out a few scratches on the acrylic (inside), and refill. I have a 92 corner bow that I've been looking for a reason to set up, but I would have to move tanks around to get that fired up. I have a 37 ready to go, just have to jury-rig a filter. So would I really need 100g?"

haha i love how we always assume the job can be finished so quickly and easily...i do it all the time

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

FULL

I've been so busy I didn't get a chance to post this, but I filled the tank on Monday, took 1 trip in the afternoon before they opened (115g), and another at 9m when they closed. Here's my van from the 2nd trip (110g)

Tank filled, sump running

I added 1/2 bag of salt on Tuesday or something like that and that brought it right to 1.025 the next day.

The LR is in the tub still and not throwing ammonia. It's going in the tank tomorrow, along with some still-live bio-balls and some dried ones I intend to take the hose to.

Mixing up 20g of fresh SW for the 37g and going to do a big PWC. I'll have to pull some water from the DT when I add all the LR, so I'll use that for another PWC tomorrow, trying to ratchet down the Nitrates (still around 200-250, haven't done a PWC in a while).

Meanwhile, my 55 FW at home has gone 2 weeks without a PWC and well over a month without a filter cleaning, but Nitrates are still under 40. However my 10g with way, way too many fry in it had pH off the bottom of the low scale and Nitrates off the top. 50% PWC brought pH to 7 but Nitrates still way up. Ugh.

 

[Zer0]

Excellent job Floyd. That tank is looking brand spankin new.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I put the LR back in today, as well as 1/2 of the bio-balls from the 37 QT and an equal amount of rinsed/dried bio-balls. So finally, you're first look at the tank with substrate and decor....drum roll please...

They had removed a bunch of the LR and put it in a FW goldfish waterfall wall that they have near the entrance, so I took that out of there and I'm going to clean it up and put it in as well. They took the coolest looking pieces out for some reason.

Also there was some red lava rock and a tan lava style rock in the tank originally, and some is still in the waterfall. All of it is going back in the waterfall, so the DT will look like it should.

The only other thing that I think is missing is a mechanical filter above the bio-ball chamber, there's a ridge around the top where it looks like you're supposed to put egg crate or something, so that's what I'll do, then take some plastic and drill holes in it and lay a piece of polyfill on top of that so the water gets distributed over all the bio-balls. Right now most of it just plunges down in 2 columns of water and the rest of the bio-balls aren't really performing any function, or minimal at best. There's no way this setup could handle a decent bio-load IMO without some mod.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Today was the big day, I put the Yellow Tang back in the tank. I put him in about 3.5g water in a 5g bucket, brought a bucket of mixed SW and RODI top off water, and 2 buckets of bio-balls from the QT. While I was drip acclimating (really just cutting the water due to Nitrates still at 75-100 in the QT) I put in the bio-balls and dumped the SW in. I filled the fish bucket, dumped all but 1g, then filled again and netted the Tang and put him in.

At this point is where I learned about the barb at the tail. He got stuck in the net and it took about 30 seconds or so to get him free, he shook loose on his own thankfully. But what is interesting is that after I got him out of the QT, as I was putting the lid on the bucket I found what I thought was a splinter in my hand. As if turns out, it was one of the tang's barbs from his tail!!! I later dug it out of the trash.

So now he's short one barb. Do you think that is anything that could result in death? I'm guessing not, it's not like it's a hornet or something.

Now that I know about the barb, I'm thinking that when I do add fish, I should add them all at once, because I'm now learning that you should really add the Yellow Tang last, and get a small one. I'm doing the opposite here so hopefully adding him first and him being the biggest won't cause a huge problem, especially with so much room in the tank.

Oh well.

 

[Mitchell0605]

It should be ok since it's a big tank. Did the barb hurt much?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Just was poking out of the side of my hand, it wasn't in that far, but it felt like a big splinter or a dry, stiff pine needle maybe

 

[Mitchell0605]

Cool. XD

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Just a quick update, since I've got the week off of work (between jobs) I'll be getting a bit of work done. Yesterday I finally got the protein skimmer put back in (Yellow Tang has been in for about 3 weeks) and added the 2nd power head back in, along with some home-made flow directors. The power heads are installed in such a way that the flow is directed slightly downward and into the corners, which blows the substrate all around, so I bought a couple of black PVC 90 degree corners and sanded down the inside so that they pop over the outflow jet, and now I can control the direction of the flow. It worked out pretty slick!

The KH is becoming a slight issue. It started out around 7.0 after the initial fill, so I added about 650mL of Brightwell Alkalin8.3 solution (mixed from powder) over a couple days to bring it up to 10 before adding the Tang. Since then I've been monitoring it and added 40mL about twice a week to keep it above 8. On 5/4 it was about 8.2, and 5/10 (yesterday) it was about 8.0-8.3.

Also last week I installed a couple of plexiglass plates into the sump with holes drilled in them to distribute the water flow over the bio-balls and allow for adding a piece of polyfiber pad for mechanical filtration as the water was getting murky (and it wasn't Ammonia). It worked out super slick also, I'll have to post pics. Thanks to my Dad for manufacturing the plates!!!

The LR is starting to get a reddish haze on top and I've had to wipe down the inside front due to algae growth, so that's good and bad maybe. Hopefully the red algae didn't survive the whole process and it's Coralline algae growth that I'm seeing, but I'm thinking now would be a good time to replace the light bulbs. Right now only 10KKs are going as there is only one actinic, and all those are way old I'm sure.

I'm thinking that after 3 weeks with the Tang in the tank with no skimmer, and new substrate, it's time to do a PWC and vac the gravel before putting the rest of the LR back in. And what better time to get it done than when I hvae nothing else to do?