the 210 gallon in wall project

well, i'm checking the output every so often with my tds meter, and its staying at 001, so, hopefully itll be ok,

well, the tank's full of water, now i just gotta wait till i make enought water to fill the sump, i kinda sorta make-shifted a pump and stuff just to get the tank full to make sure it, and my plumbing wasnt gonna leak... so far so good...

also just started working on a filter of sorts, more on that later...

main pump just came on line... all the support pumps and everything that i was using to start mixing the salt in and keep it moving while i waited for it to get up to temp have come out. the RIO 32HF is a pump'n!!!

also starting to creep up on my 1.025 salinity, i'm at about 1.02 now... its funny, when your adding a little salt to your system and you pick up a 5 gallon bucket over your head and start pouring salt in your tank!

oh, and i wanted to get ya'll's opinion on this stuff that was in one of the bags of sand i got... its BIO-MAGNET CLARIFIER.... what is it and should i use it or not?

I got that stuff in the bags of sand when I set up my 240. Sounds like we used the same sand brand! I dumped it in. I figured it couldn't hurt.

yea, that pink fiji stuff... ok, i'll dump it in mine too then...

Congrats on everything Project. It looks great. And it looks like everything is going pretty smoothly for you. Nice work. That tank is going to look fantastic when you get the trim installed.

yea, i cant wait, but for tonight its clowdy, added lots of salt today, and also a couple bags of sand, just barely enough to not quite cover the eggcrate, and then i'll need to see about getting the rock from my friend, get that stacked in there, and then start watching for the spikes....

heres what i ended up with in the sump tonight...

It is coming along great. :Cheers:

Is that what my tank looks like from the back,eh.Looking good!

Have you pick out lights yet?

no lights to pick out, i'm gonna move the ones that are on my other tank to this tank when i move the livestock... then i'll have to work on adding some, either some 2 footer t5's or maybe a smallish MH on each end, i dunno...


so, got the light installed, now i'm just waiting for some of the clowdyness to settle, gonna make a trip to the LFS later on, need to get a few things, one of which is some kinda filter material to help clear out the sand dust...

also, i was thinking, i have all this space in these overflows... what do people do with that "wasted" volume of water? looks like to me its just gonna collect gunk...

A lot of people add live rock rubble to that space. At least then it will serve some filtration purpose. Yote keeps his heaters in there. I remove my drain once a week or so and purge the whole area into the sump so at least if stuff is trapped, it gets washed out.

so, just kinda up to whatever strikes my fancy... ok, well, i had thought about putting the heaters in there, and then i didnt like having the cords there, then i thought about rubble, or even a DSB... but that kinda dosent feel like such a great idea.. i dunno.. i'll just ruminate on it for a bit...

I don't even want to look back there.Mine is probably full of hair algae,fish graveyard or in other words-nasty!

<----Project ruminating :mrgreen:

Is that my bubble pipe? hehehehehe good one kid!

so, heres what i ended up with for a filter basket for the time being, this way any time i wanna run filter floss or whatever, i can just put it in here, this time its 3 layers of filter floss and my eggcrate spacers, just till i get all the sand dust either setteled out or filtered out...

also, threw in like 6 krill to start decomposing.... I'm also adding about a gallon a day from my existing tank to this new one.. i outta get a cup of the sand too... hmmm.

oh, went to the LFS today, picked up a couple little bits of loc-line, some new krill for Snowflake, filter floss, and some garlic extract... i put a drop of it in with the 50-50 mix of mysis and brine shrimp i feed Nemo and Spike, let it soak for like 10-15 min, and then when that stuff hit thw water, you'd think they hadn't been fed in a week, i've never seen them eat so vigerously!!!! i guess they like the garlic...

so i was thinking, with the plumbing i have, and the return pump, i figure im turning the tank over about 5 and a half times an hour... i think i'm pretty happy with that... after i get a little farther along playing with the sand and stuff, then i'll set up the closed loop and the SCWD... i know that there are some differeing opinions on these, but i really just wanna try it for myself...

oh, one other thing, i picked up a couple parts that i think i'm gonna try and make into an algae scrubber... should be simple enough, i just gotta find me a crafty store near here that has that plastic screen stuff....

anywho, just thought i'd give a quick update... but now i'm headed back to my epp. of that 70's show.. HEHE

Project,

If you have a Michael's Craft Store in your area they will have the proper plastic mesh screen that you need for the Algae scrubber. I'm just starting my ATS up as well, I'm on day 6 (tomorrow will be my first cleaning) and it seems to be working. I've got some pics of the growth on my build thread. I don't have alot of Algae on mine, but I also don't have a bio-load at this point. Easy DIY.

In the DIY thread SM says to use a hole saw to rough up the screen. I found it easier to use a sawzall blade and scrape the screen like a cheese grater. Make sure you get it as rough as possible....You should get ALOT of shavings when roughing it up. Again, it seems to be working just as SM stated.

Cool filter basket you made, project5k. It's coming along nicely!

yea, michaels is where i got the first batch that i cut up to put in the round filter i made yesterday... but when i got that i was going to austin regularly, so it was easy, gotta see if there is one near the LFS, cause i still gotta pick up my tops for this tank...
maybe i can get 'em both tomorrow...

oh, and just something else, apparently my cut off 5 gallon bucket filter thingy is working pretty good cause the tank is clear enough now that i can see from the couch into that room, not perfectly, but i can see the outline of my drill anyway.. so, looks to be headed in the right direction...

thanks dcan.. yea, that filter basket just came to me when a buddy of mine was telling me about a bog filter he wants to make for his tank.....