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Alaska_Phil

Bringing Home Baby

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12 Comments
by
Alaska_Phil
, 06-26-2012 at 02:37 AM (2226 Views)
Chapter 1 History
About a year ago I took a job that required me to be out of town for 4 weeks or more at a time. So I gave my 55 gal reef to a friend and fellow reefer. The job didn't work out and I ended up unemployed for a while. Now, I've got a good stable job in town, and my friend offered me the reef back. Seems he was tired of taking care of 2 systems, especially with our electric prices here.

Chapter 2 Bringing it home.

I'll let the photos do the talking now.

The tank as it stood at my friends place.

Full tank shot before the move.

My custom light hood, 4x54W T5 icecap retrofit kit.

Sump broken down and moved.

One full truck load, and thats not all of it. The lighting hood and one bucket were in my friend's car. And yes, his place is on the second floor, so all that came down the stairs.


And over to my place. Yes Tuan, we have to pack everything up all those stairs now.

yeah, I see what the dog did, now lets get to work guys. LOL

Plumbing and sand set up again.

Rocks...

And full again.

And all done. Just have to wait for it to clear up now.

And the new full tank shot.

And just for fun, here's a shot of the sun streaming in through the north windows at 10pm. Gotta love Alaska in June.

Since my orders from Marineland and Bulk Reef Supply haven't come in yet I've got a few things left to do. For one thing, I broke the mounting stem on my only spare power head, so right now the only circulation is from the return pump. One of the orders have my new SCWD, as soon as that arrives I'll get my 1100 gph pump running the closed loop again.

I'm also waiting on my test kits and dosing supplies. So right now the water parameters are whatever comes in Instant Ocean. Once that gets here I'll get everything dialed in again and set up a two part auto dosing schedule.

Chapter 3: Upgrading to 75 gal.
Coming soon.

Phil

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Updated 06-27-2012 at 02:20 AM by Alaska_Phil

Tags: 55 gal, moving
Categories
‎ Tank Entry , ‎ DIY projects

Comments

  1. Midnight's Avatar
    I'm surprised you didn't fly your tank home. looks like a pretty day in Alaska. Did you rinse the sand?
  2. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    LOL, look at how full my truck was, It would have taken 6 trips with my little plane.
    And it was a gorgeous day, 80 degrees out. So nice to move a tank without worrying about the livestock freezing.

    Yes, the sand was very thoughly rinced, except for a couple cups of seed stock. I did a late night examination with the red flashlight last night and found a few pods, several peanut and tube worms and one baby brittle star, so my micro fauna should be healthy again shortly.
  3. melev's Avatar
    Great to see you back in the game again.
  4. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    Good to be back. I've been enjoying your photos as usual Marc. Gives me a goal to shoot for as a reef keeper and photographer.
  5. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    Came home tonight and the house stunk to high heavens. Started doing the sniff test on everything after opening the windows. Culprit was one arm of my closed loop. The one that hadn't had any flow through it for several months. It was still full of the stagnant water. Yuck! I'm going to have to throughly flush it before reusing. In the mean time, I'm using a pair of Maxi jet 400's with the propeller mod. It's tempting to just keep them and forget the closed loop. The move a very impressive amount of water.
  6. melev's Avatar
    Did you know the new Maxijet pumps come with the propeller option? You can get way more flow out of those pumps, and they have the bigger shroud too. Might be worth your time to ditch the closed loop & scwd and use two of the MJ Streams.
  7. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    Not until I opened the boxes I didn't. LOL I'm not familiar with the MJ Streams, I'll have to look those up.
  8. melev's Avatar
    It's not their official name. They are still sold as Maxijet 1200, 900, and 600. Here's a quick link I found you:
    http://www.amazon.com/Marineland-Ml9.../dp/B004IMPOJ8

  9. Midnight's Avatar
    So, it's the same motor just turned in its side and propeller and shroud are installed?
  10. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    Midnight, correct.
    I've got 2 of the Maxi 400's now, and they're generating a lot of current. Plus they're a lot quieter than the Pan World pump that runs the closed loop. But I do miss the alternating current the SCWD provides.
  11. melev's Avatar
    If you use a controller, you can cycle these on and off, but not every seven seconds like a SCWD.

    Yep, it comes with all the stuff in the box to use it either way.
  12. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    I'll definitly look into some of the cheaper controllers for them. The 1" SCWD would only have switched about every 90 seconds with the pump I've got.