NaH2O
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2004
- Messages
- 8,568
Since it seems everyone has been doing new projects lately, I decided to jump on the band wagon 
. I fell in love with the goby and pistol shrimp in my daughter's 29 gallon, so I decided I really really wanted to be able to have a symbiotic pair of my own. Well, since my 120 lacked a key element (er...sand), I needed to redesign the whole system.
My tank now has about 4 inches of special grade sand, with some black indo-pacific sand mixed in.
I couldn't possibly have left the closed loop on with all that sand - talk about a sand storm! The wealthiest of leather faced women would shy away from a microderm abrasion with it, fearing it would blast the skin right off their face. Also, I have had such good luck with my dolphin pump, that I was afriad the smallest grain of sand would get in a seal causing a leak. Well, I can't have that, either! We all know about my luck with leaks, and water on the floor!
In an effort to maintain some type of flow in my tank, I looked for the help of the Tunze Wavebox. I LOVE it!! I also have a tunze stream on the other side of the tank. On the return, the nozzle came off the seaswirl, and in its place is a Y. This allows me to add some locline on half of it to sweep into dead spots if I ever find any. So far, the wavebox is doing well at keeping everything in suspension. I've watched things in the column eventually make their way up to the top of the tank, and into the overflow.
My life is never boring. During a power outage, it was discovered a separation between the coast to coast and one of my overflow boxes. I gasped when I saw the water had drained down to the bottom of the coast to coast, and upon further investigation, the separation was found. It wasn't a huge gap, just enough for water to seep into the overflow box. My sump is large enough to handle the extra water, but since we're redoing everything - it was the perfect opportunity to address the issue.
The other thing that was changed was my skimmer. I have the old school ER CS8-3, which always skimmed really really dry, no matter how wet I tried to skim. With the help of my buddy Willy, it now has the fancy mesh mod on it. I can tell you, it skims a heck of alot better. Now, I'm looking at a bigger pump. I've heard the Sed 5000 is not big enough for this skimmer? You know how rumors are, though. Anyway, maybe someone can chime in on this.
Being long winded, I shall continue....
I fell in love with another sand loving fish.... the Potter's wrasse. A friend of mind has one, and it is beautiful! Perhaps The Apprentice can chime in to give me some of his secrets to keeping a leopard wrasse. I'm very excited about the possibility of having one of these beauties!
Huge thanks to my workers for the day - Kim aka bttrflygrl, Brian aka btuck (thank for keeping the kids entertained), and Scott aka Willy. Not only did Willy come over and help, but we also convinced him to cut 20 years of long hair! lol I'm not sure he'll ever come over and help again, but he arrived with long hair, and left with short!
Well, you've all been waiting, and here is the unvailing (I'm ducking for cover now and putting on my teflon jacket) :lol::
. I fell in love with the goby and pistol shrimp in my daughter's 29 gallon, so I decided I really really wanted to be able to have a symbiotic pair of my own. Well, since my 120 lacked a key element (er...sand), I needed to redesign the whole system. My tank now has about 4 inches of special grade sand, with some black indo-pacific sand mixed in.
I couldn't possibly have left the closed loop on with all that sand - talk about a sand storm! The wealthiest of leather faced women would shy away from a microderm abrasion with it, fearing it would blast the skin right off their face. Also, I have had such good luck with my dolphin pump, that I was afriad the smallest grain of sand would get in a seal causing a leak. Well, I can't have that, either! We all know about my luck with leaks, and water on the floor!
In an effort to maintain some type of flow in my tank, I looked for the help of the Tunze Wavebox. I LOVE it!! I also have a tunze stream on the other side of the tank. On the return, the nozzle came off the seaswirl, and in its place is a Y. This allows me to add some locline on half of it to sweep into dead spots if I ever find any. So far, the wavebox is doing well at keeping everything in suspension. I've watched things in the column eventually make their way up to the top of the tank, and into the overflow.
My life is never boring. During a power outage, it was discovered a separation between the coast to coast and one of my overflow boxes. I gasped when I saw the water had drained down to the bottom of the coast to coast, and upon further investigation, the separation was found. It wasn't a huge gap, just enough for water to seep into the overflow box. My sump is large enough to handle the extra water, but since we're redoing everything - it was the perfect opportunity to address the issue.
The other thing that was changed was my skimmer. I have the old school ER CS8-3, which always skimmed really really dry, no matter how wet I tried to skim. With the help of my buddy Willy, it now has the fancy mesh mod on it. I can tell you, it skims a heck of alot better. Now, I'm looking at a bigger pump. I've heard the Sed 5000 is not big enough for this skimmer? You know how rumors are, though
. Anyway, maybe someone can chime in on this.Being long winded, I shall continue....
I fell in love with another sand loving fish.... the Potter's wrasse. A friend of mind has one, and it is beautiful! Perhaps The Apprentice can chime in to give me some of his secrets to keeping a leopard wrasse
. I'm very excited about the possibility of having one of these beauties!Huge thanks to my workers for the day - Kim aka bttrflygrl, Brian aka btuck (thank for keeping the kids entertained), and Scott aka Willy. Not only did Willy come over and help, but we also convinced him to cut 20 years of long hair!
lol I'm not sure he'll ever come over and help again, but he arrived with long hair, and left with short!Well, you've all been waiting, and here is the unvailing (I'm ducking for cover now and putting on my teflon jacket) :lol::
