Rue Plumet

I worked on the PVC plumbing for the new aquarium this afternoon. I cut, deburred, chamfered, sanded and glued 63 PVC joints. Since I’m not necessarily the handiest person around, it took me about five and a half hours. That basically finished all of the small assemblies, like unions glued to gate valves, unions glued to elbows, and things like that. So all I have left is pretty much just a lot of measuring and then cutting longer pieces of pipe to connect all of the assemblies together. That hopefully shouldn’t be too bad. Since I was working with PVC primer and glue in the garage all afternoon (with the garage door open, of course), the smell is really strong. I didn’t really notice it when I was working, but after we got back from going out in the evening, I could definitely tell it was strong, which Joy had been telling all day as she repeatedly checked on me to make sure I was still okay. :-) Anyway, I’m glad to have all of that work done, and maybe next weekend I can work on some of the connecting pieces.

My dad came over this morning to help me with some stuff for the aquarium. Joy was away at a baby shower for a friend and Joy’s mom was watching Charis, so we were really able to get some work done. The space available under the aquarium stand is really pretty limited, so I’ve been playing around with various arrangements of the equipment trying to figure out the best way to position things. Eventually I ended up with something that I was pretty happy with, except I was having trouble getting the UV sterilizer to fit where I needed it to be. The brackets to mount the UV unit to a wall actually space it out pretty far from the wall, which was my problem. If I mounted it to the inside of the stand, the unit extended out pretty far into the stand, limiting the equipment I could fit hear it. Finally I had the idea of attaching the UV unit to the wall behind the tank stand with the brackets sticking through the opening on the back of the stand. That let me position the UV unit itself right against the back side of the stand, with the brackets going out the back of the stand and attaching to the wall. So my dad was over helping me mount a wood brace on the wall to attach the brackets to. We overbuilt the heck out of the thing, but I suppose sturdier is better than the alternative. I least I know it’s not going anywhere, and now everything fits.

The lights for the aquarium arrived yesterday. I ordered one of the new Solaris LED fixtures from PFO, and they are just now being released, so I have one of the first ones. Unfortunately, the one they shipped me did not include the feet or the hanging bolts, so I have no way to position the fixture over the aquarium. So I gave them a call, and they are going to send out the feet and bolts to me tomorrow. So hopefully I will get those soon and then I can post a picture of the light over the tank. On the positive side, however, I plugged everything in and tried it out with the light sitting upside down on the floor, and everything seemed to work just fine. The fixture also seems to run very cool, which is great because lower heat output into the room is one of the advantages of LED that I was really looking for.

The chiller for the reef tank arrived yesterday. Joy was actually out on an errand when FedEx came by to deliver it, so we had to go pick it up at the FedEx office in the evening (but the office wasn’t too far away, so that wasn’t really a big deal). It’s smaller than I thought it might be, and Joy even commented on how much smaller it was than the traditional refrigerant-based chiller we had on our previous aquarium. While small is nice, I really picked this one for the quiet operation and lower energy consumption.

I got a call from Socal Creations this evening saying they had my sumps finished already. Wow! They weren’t supposed to be done until next week, but they finished them early. And Premium Aquatics is supposed to receive the light fixture from PFO either today or tomorrow, so it looks like I’m getting extremely close to finally having all of the pieces in place to actually get some water in the new tank!

I realize I’ve been writing quite a few of these “some-aquarium-device has arrived” posts lately, but that’s because I’m getting very close to having everything in place to actually fill the tank with water.

Anyway, after the stand arrived a week or two ago I was finally able to get an accurate measurement of the space available under the stand, and it turned out that the standard skimmer body would fit, so I went ahead and took a standard body as a replacement for the custom short one that arrived broken. The standard body arrived a couple of days ago, packed very well with lots of bubble wrap and packing peanuts, and it came all in one piece and in perfect condition. The skimmer looks great and I’m excited to actually get it running. Joy commented that the skimmer looks awfully big for the size tank we are setting up. Nothing like a little bit of overkill I always say. :-)

The other thing I was able to do with the stand actually in my house was to finalize the plans for my custom sumps. In order to maximize the space available under the stand, I’m going to use two smaller sumps instead of one larger one. I sent out requests to several places for a quote to build the sumps to my specifications, and after getting all of the information back, I decided to go with SoCal Creations. They offered me a very good price, and they were able to get the sumps done the quickest. They should ship out on September 25, which to me is just amazingly fast for a pair of custom built sumps. I don’t know how long this link will be good for, but SoCal Creations posts “work in progress” photos as they build sumps and tanks, so here’s a link to my sumps in progress (click on the small pictures to see them larger).

Besides the sumps, there are really only two other things I’m waiting for. I have a chiller on order that’s coming from Italy. The shipment should arrive at the distributor any day now, and then it’s just a one day shipment to get to me, so hopefully it will come in later this week. It’s a new chiller on the market that is based on Peltier devices instead of a normal refrigerant system. That allows the chiller to be very small and almost silent. It also means that it can vary its power draw from very low (15 watts) on up to its maximum power based on how much cooling is actually needed. That should save some electricity over a standard chiller because refrigerant chillers are either off or full power with nothing in between. I’m also waiting for the lights to arrive. I was originally going to go with a pair of metal halide bulbs, but I changed my mind and ordered one of the new LED based Solaris fixtures from PFO instead. The Solaris fixtures are brand new and I have one reserved from the initial shipment that Premium Aquatics will receive. So whenever they get their shipment (which should be any time now), it should arrive here a few days later.

My new aquarium and canopy came in at the end of last week, which was definitely good news. Joy went and picked them up for me while I was at work. She had to borrow my mom’s car because it’s quite a bit bigger than either of ours, and then she was still barely able to fit the tank in the back seat. All along we had been planning to put the tank along the far wall in our dining room, but once it got here, we spent a good portion of the weekend trying it out all over the place just to make sure that’s where we really wanted it. Once you fill a tank with water, you really don’t want to have to drain it to move it, so we just wanted to be completely sure we picked the best possible spot. And it looks like we were right all along because in the end, it’s on the far wall in the dining room where we were planning on putting it from the beginning. But at least now we know for sure.

Joy and I went to pick up the stand for the aquarium today. The tank and canopy were also supposed to arrive, but there were some problems with those. The tank was listed as in stock with the distributor, but for some reason they did not send it with the rest of the shipment. The custom order canopy was made incorrectly by the manufacturer, so it had to be reordered for them to make again, hopefully correctly this time. But all that aside, the stand looks great. The customization is exactly what I requested and I’m really happy with it. The local aquarium store talked to the distributor, and the tank is supposed to arrive next week (since it is still listed as in stock), and the canopy will move to the front of the line for the custom shop since they are fixing their mistake, so hopefully that will only take a couple of weeks.

Also, now that I was finally able to measure the actual stand, I discovered that the standard skimmer body will work to replace the broken custom short one, which means I should get the replacement skimmer body next week instead of several months from now. That was really good news.

The calcium reactor for the new reef tank arrived a few days ago, and I finally got around to taking a couple of pictures of it. It seems to be very high quality and I’m looking forward to hooking it up. I have one picture of the calcium reactor here, and then a few more after the jump. I also received news this week that the aquarium and stand are supposed to arrive on Thursday, which would be great. If that happens, there should definitely be more reef news over the next couple of weeks.

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I attended the monthly meeting of the East Tennessee Reef Club today, and I have to say it was pretty cool. I had “met” quite a few of the people online before, and a couple of them in person, but today I got to meet everybody “for real”. The club seems like a great group of people. The host for the meeting today had a beautiful 240 gallon aquarium. We had food and drinks and chatted for a while, then one of the members showed everyone how to make homemade frag plugs for propagating corals. Everyone was really friendly and I had a great time. It’s neat to see that there are so many other reefkeeprs around here, and I’m sure the club will end up being a great resource as I continue to move toward getting my new aquarium set up.