TWOLITREmedia's 75g BowFront Reef!

Buy them they said.....you'll be the envy of all your friends they said......

3xAI SOL Blue Units /w Controller! Time for some SPS in the future....




ReefKeeper Elite + extra PC4 and SL1! Woop wooooooop

 

You're out of control TWO!! ok, one more quick question, what is a v dub?

 

LOL VW...as in das auto.....

 

You are good at photography buddy....

 

Haha I may go a little crazy from time to time....spending ALL NIGHT setting up ALLLLL the new equipment from BioPellet Reactors, my AI lighting system, reefkeeper, etc. Long night ahead of me

Das right ;-) VDub is a term coined by Volkswagon automotive enthusiasts.

Haha Thanks man, like I said please judge me by my automotive photography not the stuff I will post of my tank quite yet. Now with the new lights I will need to re-adjust all over again although with the option to independantly control my blue, white, and royal blue bulbs in each puck on the SOL system, I believe I will set myself up a "photography" preset to change it to when I am shooting in order to not effect my white balance so drastically.

Many updates by early morning light!

 

Ok so last night was a long one! I managed to get ALL my new equipment hooked up, and I was going to post this at 5:00am when I finished but FlickR was taking FOREVER for the upload. Here we go.....

Got the 3 AI SOL modules hung!

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr


Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Set up the empty HOB GFO reactor to see the fitment. As you can tell, I could already see a problem because the rim of my tank is extremely thick...


Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

So I was told to just notch it!! Worked great....same for the BioPellet reactor.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

I realize this was extremely dangerous for myself and my fish but there was no other way. I made sure to route the wires, and cut from a point that the only thing that could ever touch the water was the spinning littl dremmel cutter....which it didnt. I used a fish net under where I was cutting to trap any plastic peices although there was a minimal amount and the chunks came off nicely with a snap.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Ok so the bio pellet reactor I grabbed was a Reef Octopus 70 which is not a HOB unit, so with a little help from Don's stock of odds and ends I began fitting a HOB bracket from another reactor to the ReefOctopus.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Moved the bracket out of the way for you to see the holes I needed to align. I only needed 2 or 3 of the holes to work for the bracket to be more than solid. It's a light weight unit even after the water is in it.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

My DISASTER of a studio/basement at about 2:30am :-O

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Checking the reactor for leaks and making sure my pump is going to work properly for it.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Ok so here is the before shot of my under tank area where all my PC4s from my RK Elite system.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Bank to the tank...both notches done

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Getting ready for a wiring madhouse....

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

So I decided to start by running a nice tight and tidy daisy chain from one module to another. Believe it or not, there are three differe plugs in each unit with the matching amount of wires running along with it.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

From behind....you'd never be able to tell

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Next was to essentially set up my "control center"

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Starting to mount and plug things in...

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Ok so next was to rinse my media clear, and load up my GFO reactor. The reactor was customized into a two part reactor for GFO and carbon. Now I had a problem finding out exactly how much to put in both chambers but I basically followed the recommended amount for both media types. GFO chamber I put 3.5" of media at the bottom and left about half inch of space, then in the next chamber I filled the carbon completely as this Two little fishies reactor suggestes when using carbon to fill the entire thing...Let me know if you think this is dumb seems to be working fine though and slowly tumbling the media. Also replaced the dirty lines from before...

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

250ML of BioPellets placed in the reactor filled with RO water.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Everything placed into the tank....a little crowded looking but considering what I now have going on not to bad at all!

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Brutal awkward photo of the back of the tank

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Pre-Ziptie orginization. This was where I left it with all plugged in at about 4:00am

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Little control center, and my new Red Ocean Iodine tester kid as well as my three digital Hannah checker kits I picked up as well!

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Decided to slowly start converting my tank over to H2Ocean salt as I have read great things, and I am not a fan of what I hear about Instant Ocean which is what this tank was established with.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Mmmmmm looks fresh

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

5 Gallon Mixing Bucket (Made 2 Gallons seperate) Left this to mix over "night" or whatever was left of it....

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

So I never shot a photo of how I have my RO setup near my tank. I have a 35 Gallon Brute food safe bin with a constant pump moving around the water. The RO unit is installed under the sink and all I have to do is just ship the boards you see askew over and access the valves. Anyways seems to work great, got my water tested and I have 5ppm TUS which is ideal still.

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

Ok so here is one final over all shot with everything in. Looks great and I couldn't be happier to see my tank at this point already!

Tank Upgrades! by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr


Now oneeeeee question, and I won't lie it's concerning me a bit but I have been reading MANY mixed thoughts on this but mostly they're not the end of the world. So I have been noticing these now that I have seen one, and today there was one on my tank glass so I grabbed a pick. I believe they are Astrea Stars.
People say they are mainly just algea eaters and are normal and non-harmful as long as they are not overpopulated.


I did a thorough check and there are about 10 variously placed in my tank. Should I be pulling these out? Something else I should do?

Hope you enjoyed the updates, thanks!

 

Sorry for double post! haha

 

Longest double post ever!

Excellent update and nice work. Just curious, what have you heard negative about Instant Ocean?

 

Ok so I was ready with an answer for this question as I knew it would come up and here is my theory. The variant of instant ocean that was used in this tank when I got it was not the Reef Crystals (Higher Calcium Count) but just the regular variant which is fairly lowly on the charts in all nutrients. H20 thus far is the highest in calcium on the market here in my town, and my local coral guy holds nothing but H2Ocean in all 8 of his tanks and swears by the increased coral growth and over all water quality. Now I have heard good things about Instant Ocean Reef Crystals but they are not available here in town.

Many would say why be so concerned with calcium numbers? Well I don't plan on making any sort of calcium reactor additions to this tank in the near future so I would prefer to try my best to maintain high calcium numbers ( or atleast appropriate calcium numbers) to sustain SPS coral life along with a variety of other things needing water high in calcium

With all that being said, I am aware that over doing it and having a calcium count that is too high is never a good thing either so I will do my best to find a happy medium. Regardless the conversion will be a slow process taking about 8 weeks most likely to fully have the salt content over to H2Ocean numbers.

We'll see how this does paired with the newly introduce pellet reactor, gfo and carbon, and lights!

Two more weeks till I can put some new live in here, tooooo excited at this point. Going to fiddle with my ReefKeeper a bunch on my computer tonight because I am not a fan of trying to understand the display other than to just change modes and simple settings. I need to rename all my channels to really organize myself with this thing.

 

Great Job!! the stars are nothing to worry about....mine eventually disappeared actually and I kind of liked them...also, what was recommended amount of pellets to start with? You look like you put in quite a few (although it may just be the reactor)....it's usually recommended to start off with 1/4 the amount recommended and gradually work up to the full amount.....You tank looks a lot like mine - I have mostly all hang-on with no sump and a canister for GFO and carbon.....