cainechow

Ron you are much more hard working than me! I think I'm just a lazy guy How big are your tanks Ron? 15 gallons or more?

If you are running or think that you might end up running a rack with more than 2 aquariums, I'd totally recommend doing an ATO setup. It cuts down a lot of work and keeps your tanks at the same mineral levels, discounting what the shrimps and/or plants use up. I'm running a similar setup as SKA except I only have one reservoir for RO top off water. As it is now I can run ATO for up to 8 tanks, but adding more is as simple as adding another manifold. My reservoir is a 30 gallon that sits on the top shelf of my rack. I have a 1/2" schedule 40 PVC syphon to deliver water down to the tanks and terminated in two manifolds. Each tank has a float valve which shuts off when the water hits the right level. These valves where cheapest via ebay at the time when I got them. The little bag in this picture is just carbon for this new-ish tank. Since i don't have a remineralized water reservoir, I drip my water change water through an airline with a small valve. I adjust this to go about 1.5 drops per second or so for caridinia. I go a bit faster up to 2-3 drops per second if it is a neo tank, but I am not keeping any neos right now. The extra remineralized water reservoir is a great idea though. I may considering will be doing that in the future I think.

Ooooh clear. Where from?

I thought about that too Ron. I was planning on ball valve, then two check valves. Because sometimes crap happens to check valves... hopefully not both at the same time.

If you are going to put in a canopy, then I'd just go with what jvision did. No drilling needed. What about http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/hy-htil300/Hydor+Inline+Heater+%28300+Watt%29.html for a heater?

Yeah. The plan is to put the overflow on the side closest to the wall which will go straight down into the sump. I like the overflow like the reefers do because it pulls all the crap that can collect on the surface and runs it through the filter. I might have to custom build my sump also because I'm not sure if there will be as much room as I'd like for a regular sized tank to make a sump out of. The return will be drilled on the bottom at the end closest to the camera. The plan is to add just enough pipe so that it clears the substrate, add a 45deg bend and hopefully hide it in some rock work. Since the tank is so long, there is a lot of room for rock work With this setup I should be able to get water to flow completely through the long tank. It may not be a raging rapid, but because water has to go in through one end and out through the other, it should be good or good enough. There could be some spots of lower flow depending on the end rock work, but I'm not going heavy planted on this one I think. The only problem with this tank is that it is not cheap to have built. I should get a quote for just the starphire glass with flat polish. I think just glass will run about $700 or $800. A full build is something like $1700. If I went float glass, it would be like half the price, but on this kind of dream tank... who wants float glass? Krista, if you want, I have a tool that will calculate the size of the glass panes you need, including overflow box & cutout if that is the flavour you like. Just send me a pm and I can send you the url. And if you are interested in ADA type silicone work, we can talk too

You can also get clear PVC and acrylic pipes in schedule 40 sizing from Industrial Plastics and Paint. That way you don't have to worry about glass breakage as much.

Jvision, is the double dose of kno3 for the plants or does it inhibit the cyano or something else?

Yeah, on your way to crazy MTS that is. Everyone says they won't but we know better.

Very nice.

The vertex from J&L looks like a pretty okay deal. It is a 3 stage (sediment, carbon, RO) filter. Realistically, being in Calgary we could probably go dual carbon stages before the RO. I've never seen our tap water have any turbidity at all. It comes out to 115.00 before GST and I free shipping on orders over 100.00 http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/store_pages/product-info.php?product_ID=vt-ro100 I think the guys at Concept Aquariums cary Vertex units as well. Check with them also.

To further the comments on RO and chlorine. Like Ron mentioned, chlorine will kill most RO membranes. The carbon in the RO system removes the chlorine. It is important to stay on top of carbon filter replacements.

Another trick for tight spots is to take a pair of pliers and crush the nozzle so that it is flat instead of round. That way you can get more pressure into the area between the trim and the glass. tape is always a good idea to keep the silicone off anything you don't want it on. Just remember to remove the tape before the silicone cures and to make sure to feather you silicone fillet right down to just about nothing at the edge of the tape. Good luck

Looking good!

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/?page_id=1635has a calculator you can use. Make sure you convert to mm. For those dimensions, if you go with 10mm glass, you'll get a safety factor of about 8.3 (really good) and a reflection of 0.1mm. That is without braces. You could probably go 6mm glass if you did a euro braced tank? If you are planning to do the silicone work yourself, last time I called around, Concept Aquariums was the place that gave me the best price on fancy starphire glass. As for silicone, get csc 1200. It is a construction grade adhesive, not just a sealant and safe for aquarium use. The best price for it is Calgary Fastener at something like $6.00 a tube. The LFS is easily double the price. If you want to chat, just give me a call some time. I've done a few builds. I can even teach you how to do ADA style fillets. [CC]

Believe it or not some sewing stores like Sewing World in Calgary have those wave shaped scissors in high quality stainless steel for under 20.00

That's the space. I'm going to try to keep the area above the tank as open as possible. I'll probably use 3 or 4 pendant LEDs.

Which substrate are you switching in?

I was in contact with flyfisher and it seems like baleen is our hope for Aru II's. If anyone can do it, he is da man. These little guys are so fantastic. It would be great to get a few more people breeding them. You can never know when some disaster could befall on their habitat like what happened to the chili rasboras.

Just send me a message when you are over this way and we'll see if we can connect up

Vimmer, if you are in Calgary I can hook you up with some Amazon Frogbit.

I'm thinking of drilling because I don't want any wires on that far end. I won't have a canopy to hide things like jvision does. I should take a pic of the space.

I'm thinking FW iwagumi display tank for shrimps. Probably more rock and substrate than plants. I'll have some plants, but I don't want to be trimming all the time on another tank. I was thinking about it and I am now considering drilling another hole on the far side and then hiding the return with some rock work.

I'm looking at building a custom tank that is 84" long x 18" wide x 12" high as part of the divider between my kitchen and the living room. I suppose it'll be a long peninsula. I'm planning on putting a coast to coast overflow by the wall side. What I'm concerned about is water flow. If I put my water returns on the same end as the overflow, will I be able to get sufficient flow to get water to go 7' at the other end of the tank? or do you guys think that I need to put my return at the opposite end of the overflow? If you have experience with long tanks, or any thoughts really, I'd love to hear your ideas. If you are a fluid dynamics engineering type... even better?

I know this was a while ago. Did you decide on a solution? Remember that a skimmer is essentially a dissolved organic compound concentrator that works through foam fractionation. Ever notice how if you clean out your skimmer, it can take up to a few hours to get a good foam going again? When the skimmer is running, the DOCs are captured in the bubbles and kept out of the water because the foam is rising. When you turn the skimmer off the foam, and DOCs, that hasn't made it into the collector cup can essentially dissipate back into your water column, at least to some degree. So you'll be dropping some of the DOC back into your water and then have to skim it back out when you start up the skimmer again which will take some time. In practice, what it really comes down to is how much crap is your system generating? If you aren't feeding a lot and don't have a lot of dirty fish in there, you could be fine turning off the skimmer for 8 hrs as you sleep. If you have a lot of livestock and you find that turning off the skimmer for 8 hours is doing bad things to the water, you could run the skimmer more aggressively (wetter) to get more stuff out while it is running or maybe do more water changes. Maybe you can soundproof your cabinet? :P