First look at the new setup

[Warren]

Bravo Pies, sell the FNZAS to the max!!

[Caryl]

and I, as editor of the Aquarium World, appreciate the effort pies puts into his regular marine articles. They always attract positive comment and interest.

[dogmatix]

Tank looks awesome as do all the pics

BIG UPS TO THE PIE MAN

Still have to catch up next time your in Auckwacka

Ben

[Pies]

Thanks dogmatix. I will be in Auckland Tue or Wed next week. Will drop in on the way back to the airport, be late afternoon, hope you will be about.

Pie

[Pies]

Well lots new in tank land. Ripped all of the gib out today (thanks Suphew) getting ready to build the sump room in the garage. Am insulating the walls, laying in plumbing, overflows, extraction fans and electricity. Going to take some work and some planing. Also going to be awkward as being build in 2 pieces, so I can reuse my old reef as the sump for the new tank.

Picture of the anemone standing up:

Male mandarin looking good, nice and fat, always nice to see:

White spot plagues my tank. I added a few bits and pieces recently including a small Sohal tang, which had whitespot. It and everything else in my tank, including the small PBT are doing fine, this guy however is looking BAD. Funny thing is its acting normal as could be, eating and swiming without a care, but DAMN look at him! Keeping a close eye, this fish has had whitespot many times before but its never been this bad:

Corals are mostly doing well, looks like my white Xenia has crashed, otherwise everything is going great guns at the moment. Major exitement comes from looking foward to getting the collar on the tank (finish it off for upstairs) and getting the sump room done.

Pie

[chimera]

lookin' sweet as usual bro. i've been lucky with whitespot - or lack of it. think my tang has had it once since i've had him, and that was when he moved from the 4 to 5 footer.

how does your anemone(s) go with all the flow in your tank? has it moved to a "quieter" portion of the tank? mine has gone walkabout since the new closed loop went in. i think he likes the peace and quiet

[Pies]

Cheers, my Anemone is H.Magnifica, hard to keep and famous for its light and current requirements. It lives between 2x 400 watters and has 1 stream pointed directly at it, + one of the Sea Swirls passes accross it, + 1 stram of the other end of the tank pushes it accross. So it gets hammered with light and current.

When I build the rock structure I wanted it exactly were it is, but its walked alot, keeping comming back to that same spot.

Funny watching the clowfish as there is so much current its amaizing to think they can sleep in it, but somehow they do!

Have had the anemone for about 18 months now.

In the photos all the pumps are off and the return pump (sea swirl) is down to about 1/5 normal so I could get my hands in the tank today.

Pie

[Pies]

Lots going on but of major interest to most will be the sump room.

Here is a pic of the existing nightmare sump setup. 2 sumps on top of each other. This is my old setup, for the new setup the bottom 3 foot tank will be replaced with a 6 foot purpose build sump.

Start with the wall. Thats Suphew in the background measuring and re-measuring.

Build the wall on the ground then mount it into space:

Again the wall:

NOTE: I would like add at this point that the wall is awesome. Suphew and I worked damn hard and we couldn't have been any happier with the way it went up and looked. Best damn wall in the city.

Out best buy, the door & jam from a house parts company. Again I would like to say that I challenge anyone to swing a door as well as this, perfectimundo.

We were so eager to get a sheet of gib up we laid in some bats and screwed the sucker up there! AWESOME!

All batted up and looking good. Still electricity to do and a few other improvements to add:

Getting the gib up. Awesome pic of the door

Gibed and plastered:

Gibed and plastered, note expel air unit to remove excessive moisture and help with cooling in summer:

Again expel air, and power including the RCD for the downstairs unit (another RCD is fitted upstairs).

So thats where its at. A quick sand (3rd coat plaster is on and drying as I write this) tommorow and its ready to paint!

Note that the room is missing a wall? The wall comes after the sump is in, as its far to big to fit through the door!

A BIG thanks to Suphew, who has designed and built more than his fair share of this room.

Its all looking great, and hard to belive that in a few short weeks it will be finished and I will be ready to move the sump and finally remove all of this tempory plumbing etc that has been consuming our garage for the past 12 months.

Enjoy

Pies

[chimera]

nice mate! i'm adding an expelair to the main tank room upstairs too as soon as we put in the ensuite (as it's right next to the tank room). however sparky mate recommended i put it on a timer/temperature controller so i can turn it on when the lights come on (evaporation mainly occurs then) and as a safety precaution, if the main tank room gets above a certain temperature it will also trigger the fan to come on... perhaps not as crucial for you considering your tank is in your lounge? although how much aeration does your lounge get?

btw, nice wall. you should enter the nicest wall in nzl competition if you dont get first prize, at least you'll get runner up in the nicest door jam in nzl competition :lol:

[Pies]

During the summer we just open a window during the day. We also have a dehumidifier running in the lounge.

I have measured evaporation and its fairly consistant during the day and night for me. I have a fan running accross my lights during lights on.

Because the tank is in the lounge I would hate to have to put an extractor in as in the winter it would remove all the heat! During summer it wasn't a problem, we have noticed a lot more condensation on the windows throughout the house, but its hard to know if its the tank or if we jusn't don't remember it? Either way its not much of a problem.

Can't wait to get the room finished. Going to be awesome to get the new sump (3 foot tank is 2 small for 2000 litres of water and an IWAKI100 & IWAKI 30, lots of bubbles).

Also the new sump will have an overflow preventing the garage from flooding. Also means I should be able to do water changes from outside and no need to even bring water in! So that should be cool.

And the biggest thing, it should mark the end of ALL spending on the tank outside of running costs and maintenance. Thank god

Go the door.

Go the wall.

Pie

[chimera]

[Pies]

Kapi Mana Fish Club meeting at my place tonight, hope I get a chance to quickly sand the last of the top coat of plaster off before people arrive.

Then its finish the flashings and paint time. woohooo!

Then the sump move, ACK!

[Ira]

And the biggest thing, it should mark the end of ALL spending on the tank outside of running costs and maintenance.

Pbbt, yeah right.

[jetskisteve]

Pbbbt 2x1" seaswirls arrive friday

[Pies]

Pbbbt 2x1" seaswirls arrive friday

Thanks Steve, I was woundering how Jane found out... B U S T E D

Well the room is now 'finished', in that painting will start tommorow. We started today with kickboards, scocia (sp?), skimer shelfs etc. But it took us so much longer than we planed. I hoped to start painting at about 12pm, didn't finished until about 5pm, not even close to painting!

Tommorow is paint day! YAY! So the sump move will happen at some stage during May.

It would be an undestatement to say I am pretty stoked with the way its worked out. 1 f$%k up today that could have been a show stopper, otherwise its gone far too smoothly. Suphew has had a good chance to use all his power tools and if he spends anymore time over here he may as well move in. Thanks for all your help.

Pics tommorow.

Pieman

[jude]

If you start to have a serious problem with condensation I'd recommend the DVS system. Wainui is built on a bog and we used to have dreadful problems - the water would be running off the sills every morning. I haven't had a steamed up window since we put in the DVS 5 years ago. We put a heater in the system to avoid any cold draughts from it.

Cheers

Judy (who isn't a DVS sales rep :lol: :lol: :lol: )

[Ira]

Or buy a couple dehumidifies. Put one next to the sump and one next to the main tank. That should suck up most of the humidity and I doubt the electricity would even be noticed on the power bill compared to...What is it? 2 kilowatts of lighting?

[Pies]

3 kilowatts with the sump...

Thanks, I hope that the Expel Air in the sump-room will be enough, if it works from steam from the shower, it must work on the fishtank, right?

As for upstairs we have a Dehumidifier running 24/7 in our living area anyway.

DVS, good idea. We have had them around to look at our house, but because its a little different (high ceiling for most of upstairs and 2 storied, its going to be difficult for them to do it. Still we are pondering the idea. Do you think the DVS was worth it for you?

Sumproom has had 2 undercoats and is looking, AWESOME.

Pie.

[Pies]

Pictures of the sump room after 2 coats:

Note the 2x 250DE light fixture hanging from the ceiling. The shelf to the left will hold the skimmer and the ballast from the MH pendant. Everything else should make sense.

Final plumbing will see the water from the tank going through the skimmer before hitting the 750 litre refugium then gravity into the sump (300 litre) then back into the main tank.

Pie

[jude]

Hi Pies

Yes, I consider the DVS to be one of the best investments I've ever made. It would be the first thing I'd put in any other house I moved into.

This house used to have huge dampness problems in winter and I've had no mould, no dripping windowsills etc. for 5 yrs or more.

And you don't have to keep emptying them like dehumidifiers

Cheers

Jude

[Ira]

Most dehumidifiers, or at least several I've seen anyway, have a hose fitting on their collection container so you could run a hose to a sink or something.

[Pies]

Most dehumidifiers, or at least several I've seen anyway, have a hose fitting on their collection container so you could run a hose to a sink or something.

Mine has that, hard to run it to a sink though as gravity only goes down.

Pie

[Ira]

Don't be so cheap, you should do things properly and just do it once. Get a tunze antigrav unit to drain the water up the hose into a sink....

Or put it on a shelf.

Heh, yeah, I thought the hose connection seemed a bit useless too. I'm not sure what effect on the dehumidifier's efficiency having them on a shelf above sink height would have since I assume moister air is more dense.

[Pies]

When I was shoping for a dehumidifier the Consumer Mag said 'make sure its got a drain for convienant plumbing'. Which I did, so far seems a pointless exercise, may come in handy 1 day, but hard to imagine it really.

Got the sump ordered today, should have in next week. This is the 3rd to last piece of the puzzle for the sump room project.

Also getting the collar for the display tommorow. Been a long time comming, and am looking forward to having the tanks lights etc hidden from view.

Also got the 1" sea swirls, which I plan to put on tommorow night.

Pieola.

[cookie extreme]

had my aircon installed today. its one of the new version. uses very little power for heating or cooling, constant de humidifing and air freshener, filtering the air to 0.0001 microns.

we have a DVS in the old house, have to admit that it removed the problem of wet windows after less then 4 days!!!!!

but looking at the ceiling it imputted a lot of dust. also it didn't really cool the house down in the summer and was pretty cold in the winter.

so this time around i tried a inverter aircon, its the first night and i am already impressed.

will keep you all updated ( price is $3400 installed (cost approx. $1 a day all year around))