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Brad Syphus

Fall Cleaning.

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Well with summer coming to an end, and fall is in the air, I decided to spend the afternoon cleaning out my skimmer, and refilling my calcium reactor. To do this I have to take them offline and remove them from the sump area. This makes it very easy to do some much needed cleaning, and vacuuming up all the dust,salt creep, and misc stuff when the equipment is out. The front of my cabinet comes off so it makes it very easy to remove the equipment.





While I had the chance, I replaced my ph probe as I knew it was going out. It was reading 8.65.
Now with the new one in, back to normal 8.24.

I soaked the skimmer in a muriatic acid bath for a couple of hours. During this time I was able to do my vacuuming.




Now it's all put back together and I wont have to worry about it untill next spring.








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Updated 09-15-2011 at 10:56 PM by melev

Categories
Equipment

Comments

  1. melev's Avatar
    That looks fantastic Gary. So clean under your tank. Thumbs up! Here's the link for the FTS picture thread for September, as requested: http://www.reefaddicts.com/entry.php...-for-September
  2. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    Gary?????????????
    You mean Brad. LOL
  3. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    Marc, here is the website and date I was telling you about.

    http://mountainwestreeffest.com/
  4. melev's Avatar
    Egad! Sorry Brad.
  5. Hat39406's Avatar
    Looks good Brad! A lot cleaner than mine and I don't have as Lucy stuff. Mine will get the Fall cleaning when I move it in a few days.
  6. JimM's Avatar
    Wow Brad! Looks great! Also looks very well planned out to allow for routine maintenance. Would you mind giving a relative newbie a short narrative of what components you are running... for what purposes and etc.?
  7. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    No problem Jim.
    Under my 225g tank I have a 70g sump which has a refugium section, live rock section, and a section for a filter sock and also houses my fluidized phosphate reactor. The larger section also has my auto top off and probes.
    On the other half of my cabinet I have 2 reeflo dart pumps. One for a return and one on a closed loop. Also a Deltec AP702 recirculating skimmer, Deltec PF 601S calcium reactor and a Koralin S1502 Biodenitrator.
    My tank has a 2 inch return manifold which supplies all my equipment to use the gravity fed water controlled seperately by ball valves ,so taking them offline is very simple.
    I bought this tank used, off of RC over 5 years ago from Scott Fellman. I had seen it before and loved the way it was set up, and the equipment he had. Once he put it up for sale it was just a matter of talking the wife into it, and off to LA we went. I have upgraded many things and added different equipment. But the sump area was was a main selling point to me.
    The Deltec skimmer is a monster. It allows me to have all the fish I have and still grow acros like weeds.
    The calcium reactor is also huge and I never have to worry about not haveing enough calcium/alk in my tank.
    I also had a huge Kalk reactor built , that all of my RODI water runs through before entering the tank. This stabilizes the ph of my tank and always keeps it on a constant 8.2-8.3. I don't run a heater or chiller as my tank is in my basement and stays nice and cool year round.
    Also, in my tank I run 2 Vortech MP40's to give my circulation a boost to over 12,000 gallons an hour. All controlled by a Aquacontroller III.

    5 yrs ago.


    Today.


    Over 40+ fish and unknown how many coral.
  8. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    IMO the fish make the reef. A tank with tons of coral and few fish is boring. I know I'm a bit overboard on the fish side of things, but I love the movement and "life" that fish bring to the tank. My equipment enables me to experience both worlds. I keep backups to most of the essential equipment for the "just in case" incidents, like a spare dart pump, backup batteries, big 6700w generator. I also have alarms on my floor for those dreaded floods everyone enjoys. I figure I have close to 20,000 dollars worth of fish. Crazy huh.

    Some pics of them.







  9. Brad Syphus's Avatar








    That's all for now. I'm getting off topic. LOL
  10. melev's Avatar
    Love it. And Scott F. posts on RA from time to time too, Brad. I'm sure he's enjoying his virtual visits to his tank via your posts.
  11. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    I'm sure you are right Marc. I even heard he used a few of my pictures in his speech that he did at Macna this year. Terrance told me he counted at least three.
  12. Brad Syphus's Avatar
    Well now that the equipment is clean, you have to check on it every day just to make sure it's not working too well. I'm going to have to dial it down a bit. 3 days worth.

  13. melev's Avatar
    Yep, that looks like a mess waiting to happen. Glad you are keeping an eye on it.