afboundguy's 35 gallon and display fuge build!!!

[afboundguy]

After. I moved the airlines to the rear of the stand and it cleaned it up a lot. I plan to add another shelve or two on top to raise the 3D printers as well but the stand it smaller side to side but deeper.

 

[afboundguy]

Had some time today to redo the shelf that I just redid and lowered the top portion to be level with the stand and put a shelf at the top for the phyto.

 

[afboundguy]

Had an epiphany the other day about "flooring" for the basement instead of just the painted concrete floors. I had some 2'x2' foam tiles I used to use when I would workout in the basement but I couldn't leave them on the ground due to the cats using them as a scratcher.

We lost our other cat several months ago and after cleaning up a bit the other day I put the ones I already had down to see how it would look and liked how it looked and it felt much better standing on foam than the concrete floor!

 

[afboundguy]

Ended up getting 288 square feet for about $200 which is a decent price and I will have extra as I don't plan on going under the stand and train layout. Been working on it the past two days and so far so good. Only major issue is that I realized the tank stand isn't straight and I need to move it out about 2 inches to be straight which will be super fun

 

[afboundguy]

Was planning on possibly going to one of our sponsors tomorrow to grab some things but they're not free so I think I might try and plumb in a 10 gallon rimless tank into my setup and make it a mangrove only tank as the two in the remote refugium I got at last year's Fragsgiving have started to take off and are growing too high!

The ones I bought that have been in a freshwater bucket with some freshwater plant substrate have been growing even faster and think it'll be time for them to get under a real light! I just need to find the spare overflow I have kicking around and drill the holes...

 

[afboundguy]

Oh boy!!!

 

[afboundguy]

The plumbing was a mess and I tackled re-doing that today. When I plumbed in the remote display fuge I thought it would be fine to put the emergency drain in the Eclipse overflow into the main drain and it was a huge mistake as it was never quiet.

The other issue was that the gate valve line was too low and I had to bring the plumbing up to get it into the tank and due to the two lines T'd in and there was a lot of air bubbles going into the new 10 gallon tank

 

[afboundguy]

I redid the plumbing correctly and made separate emergency overflow lines. I did T the two emergency lines together to save space. It's much quieter and no air bubbles. I do have to tweak the line into the new mangrove tank but I didn't glue the last pieces so they can be adjusted.

 

[afboundguy]

Transplanted the two mangroves that were in the display fuge into the new mangrove only tank and zip tied them to suspend them (supposedly if you do that and add flow it encourages the roots to grow faster). Added the lone threadfin cardinal that was getting picked on in the main tank to this tank and threw in a few pieces of rock for cover until next week when I add a lot more mangroves!

 

[afboundguy]

Finally got around to adding the mangroves I was growing out in FW and slowly acclimated to SW. I used egg crate zip tied to clear acrylic rods to let the roots grow out! I hung a 16" Photon V2+ light for the mangrove tank.

Still need to tidy up the desk area though!

 

[FishieBusiness]

Love the mangroves

 

[afboundguy]

Love the mangroves

I had 4 more threadfin cardinals get delivered today and I added them and when I went downstairs for a few seconds before bed I saw all 5 swimming together in the tank with the roots everywhere and it was cool. Naturally I didn't have my phone on me but I plan to take more pictures of the mangrove tank tomorrow!

 

[afboundguy]

Added a second shelf under the phyto shelf to do some 1 gallon food grade jugs with a nozzle. Think it'll look pretty good once I finish it up.

 

[afboundguy]

Also snapped a few more pictures of the mangrove tank with the threadfin cardinal fish schooling a little bit...

 

[afboundguy]

Doubled up my copepod cultures (tripled up on the Parvo cultures) using the one gallon plastic beverage jugs. I ended up putting two airlines in since they were longer than high.

Should make it super easy to harvest by simply opening the valve to pour out! If it works well I will probably replace all the glass jars with them and add another shelf!

 

[afboundguy]

Stopped by @dz6t today as wife got several Starbucks gift cards from her students this year and she doesn't drink Starbucks and Dong loves giving them to his kids!

Picked up a rainbow hammer, rose gold hammer, goldenrod variant acro, duncan, electric Myagi Tort and a pocilopora...

 

[afboundguy]

Also busted out the cell phone camera setup and ended up trying the top down lense as well... They were super quick photos while I sat for a bit and actually watched the tank and relaxed for 5-10 minutes!

 

[afboundguy]

 

[afboundguy]

Goodies came today! I ordered an Icecap K3-160 OVP pump as it was on super sale! Also ordered a backup skimmer pump, three dosing containers that have float switches in them and another testing stirrer that were all on sale!

Unfortunately I never got around to measuring the sump area even though I said I was going to so I need to move around a few things to get it to fit!

 

[afboundguy]

Spent a little time tidying up the desk area and moved the six 1 gallon glass jar pod cultures out from the corner and put the rotifer culture in the corner. I also added some led strip lights under the phyto shelf for ambient lighting.

I also added labels that looks much better than just writing it on the jars and containers.