Neptune Aquatics

badbread (Jay's) 40g breeder

Here we go, finally doing a tank journal for the new tank. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Moving the tank went very poorly. I setup everything, had containers cleaned and ready to go but thanks to a real piece of shit landlord situation (trying to keep my security deposit for no reason $5000+) the corals sat in containers for way longer than I expected. This is really embarrassing and I apologize to all whose DBTC frags perished during the move. I lost a good amount of both my own purchased corals and DBTC corals. I plan on updating the DBTC threads soon as I have a better grasp on what didn't make the move. I'm slowly trying to nurse the bleached corals back to health but only time will tell. A lot of SPS went beyond bleached and lost all their corallites. I still have hope in a few and have kept everything in the tank in hopes they will show some life. Back to the build...

The Fish room area
So in the back hallway of the condo was this ugly area, basically a small computer desk area in the hallway wedged between the bedroom and the bathroom. I ripped up the carpet, put some concrete board down over the poured concrete floor (to raise the floor 1/2", and sticky tiled the whole area.

Before:
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After tiling:
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With the tank installed:
Picture coming soon


The stand
Built the stand with the help of my friends dad. Everything was glued and screwed. Any area that might get wet were made to hold water in case of a disaster with the use of epoxy, silicone bath tub sealant, marine paint, etc...

Inside the painted/epoxied/marine painted stand:
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Behind the stand:
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Faux sand bed

Full post here: http://www.bareefers.org/home/node/7763

Poured sand curing:
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Eggcrate on bottom:
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Sump

So I went through 3 different sump configurations before settling on the current one. The first was a 10g tank with another 10g truvu slightly above it which was going to act as a frag tank.
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The problem with this design was the 10g tank on the left was way to small and nearly overflowed anytime I cut the return pump.
I then tried a single 25'ish gallon tank and it just didn't work out.

I finally settled on a 29 gallon AGA aka Aqueon tank pictured below:
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The green-blue tank on the right is a 6-7 gallon ATO reservoir I picked up at Target a while back. Low profile and holds a good amount of water.
I got 1/4" pieces of acrylic cut PERFECTLY by the guys over a TAP plastics in Fremont and glued them in with a shit ton of Silicone.

Left chamber: Overflow feed, RS-80 skimmer, quadruple bubble trap baffle (thanks to Mario aka "xcaret" for the tips on building a sump), -> center chamber
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Overflow feed:
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Bubble trap trapping bubbles:
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Left side sump top down showing bubble trappage:
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Center Chamber: Return pump(Mag 3), ATO controls, PH probe

Right chamber: Overflow feed, 200w heater, chaeto, LR rubble, dual bubble trap -> center chamber

The tank

Crappy FTS:
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Tank is lit by a single old style icecap 250w MH in a lumenarc mini reflector. (Thanks Doug and Jeremy)
The canopy pictured is just temporary, I think I am going to lower the top level down a bit (the bulb is more than 1' off the surface and the reflector can't cover both ends of the tank with enough light for zoa's. (Zoa's on the end are stretching out for light.
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Left side:
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Center:
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(note the frag graveyard right in the middle there....) :(

Right:
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More to come.
 
Well did you get the security deposit back at least?

Its landlords like that which screw things over for everyone, both tenants and other potential landlords, hell if I ever move I'd like to keep the house but I'm scared as hell to rent it because it seem renters have more power than the people who own the property they're renting.
 
Jay glad it's going better at the new place, did you check on the law about the 2 week before move out? If you haven't got the deposit back you may take the landlord to court and might just give you the money since in cases like that, the landlord has to cover all the legal fees so might not be a wise choice for her.
Back to reefing; I have some purple rim cap from the DBTC I can frag and orange too just pm me and could be done Octobers meeting
 
Thanks guys, the move absolutely sucked and the sh*tty landlord just made a difficult situation even worse. The landlord situation is absolutely unreal. This landlord has been sued over 60 times in small claims court, she has news stories published all over the internet, a news report by KRON 4 and some Vegas news station and is a swindling thief at the lowest of levels. I've reported her to the DA via my lawyers recommendation and if I had the money I would put together a class-action suit to hopefully stop this scum of the earth from f'ing anymore renters. When everything gets settled I'll share the full story. Still waiting to hear from the DA's office and then I'm off to small claims court.
 
Jay as an FYI, if she doesn't return your security deposit within 15 days she has to provide estimates as to why she isn't returning it.
 
At least you're moving forward now, that's a good thing as I understand your frustrations firsthand about having corals in containers too long.


AFA your landlord, if you cannot get the skrill together to get a class actions suit that says to me that more than one person wants to sue correct? If that's the case all of those people should start small case claims about a month apart from each other, it drives landlords batty (and neighbors ;) ) having to go into court several times a month, not to mention it costs them money.
 
Some hardware updates:

Added another 250w halide, using a temporary homemade lumenarc 3 mini copy:
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Finally got my 2-part doser setup:
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Finally got the RS-80 skimming nicely:
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Jay, the new tank and set up looks awsome! The pink cap that you gave me, that I thought died this summer is not dead. It was another cap. If you 'd like a frag back, let me know. :)
 
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