239_skimmer

239_skimmer,
originally uploaded by Hongyee.

OMG ... a dual Beckett injector protein skimmer!! It's totally my dream skimmer ... right now I'm using a lousy single venturi injector Sander skimmer only, and it's not really working very well anyway. Shall post a pic of the one I'm currently using. Too bad I suck so bad working with acrylic, else I'd really love to make one myself. Oh .. but I've hardly any leisure time nowadays. Damn. Yikes .. I'd hate to imagine what kind of pump can run this baby. Most likely an Iwaki pressure-rated pump? Doesn't help that I'm such a poor student eh. But first things first - the skimmer can wait. I need to run some activated carbon in the tank sometime next week, since the level of dissolved organics is really getting out of hand. My tank's become some sort of macroalgae (seaweed) farm, but I love it just as it is! I've got nearly 10 species growing in there now - Chaetomorpha, Caulerpa racemosa, C.serrata, 3 other Caulerpa sp., Ulva sp., Bryopsis sp. (yes, I know - pest algae that's really, really bad news in a tank) and a few other things that sprouted on their own. Actually it's not too bad, the algae's growing on my sandbed mostly, and corals are unaffected.

Seems like I've come quite a long way in this hobby eh. My first marine tank was set up in 1997 I think, it was a small 2-footer soft coral tank running on simply a hang-on sandstone counter-current skimmer, and 2 tubes of flourescent bulbs. Learnt a horrid lesson - never keep anemones and leave the water pump intake uncovered! The silly animal crawled in, and got shredded to bits. Obviously the entire tank crashed. Back then I was a major fan of the Jaubert plenum filtration system. Natural, natural, natural!

The second tank came in 2002 after a long hiatus, and it was a completely DIY project. Everything: sump, overflow (that was a DISASTER!), piping - was DIYed. Upgraded tank to 4 feet, lighting to 4 x 55W compact flourescent tubes, used a lovely double venturi valve skimmer (they don't make these anymore, pity!) and a PC fan to cool the tank via evaporation. It really was a lovely tank. No messing around with plenums, it was good ole Berlin-style filtration using rocks and a huge 4-foot sump. Only thing is, the tank was one of those silly things people keep Luohans in, and these aren't meant to withstand the pressure of saltwater tanks. So the sides ballooned out and was at risk of exploding any moment. Not to mention the fact that my DIY siphon overflow was very roughly constructed out of PVC pipes and had a tendency to malfunction during power cuts. BY RIGHTS, if I had made it correctly, the siphon should re-start after power resumes, but somehow it doesn't. So the pump keeps pumping water from the sump tank below into the main tank above, no water gets siphoned back below, and viola! Overflow .. floods ... mass hysteria ... Ah, good times!

The real breakthrough came somewhere in Oct 2002, where I finally bought a second-hand reef-ready tank (professionally-done overflows, hem-hem) that was designed to hold a tonne of saltwater - 15mm thick glass with Euro bracing. Yum, and it came with a Chengai wood cabinet! My dad helped out a little (for the first time! he usually stands back and gets all the credit for my hard work - "Oh yes, that's my tank!", he'd say to friends when they heaped compliments) by fashioning 2 more vertical support beams for the stand, since the total weight will go up to 1.5 tonnes and that's really no joke if the stand gives way. This time I continued with my love of DIY, but in a different way. Had to re-do the overflow piping that sends water from the main tank above into the sump tank below, but that was peanuts. The real cr*p came in the lighting. I decided to go a step further by DIY'ing 2 sets of metal halide lamps.

Currently the setup is running on 2x 2000L/h return pumps, 2 x 150W 10,000 Kelvins Iwasaki halides, 2 x 36W actinic blue compact flourescents, a lovely 0.5HP Resun chiller (no more messing around with PC fans for cooling, wooot!!) .. but I'm still stuck with a lousy Sander protein skimmer. The tank underwent one single massive change though. She used to be a hard-coral tank, and I'd keep yummy stuff like Acropora sp., Seriatopora sp. and all the rest of it, but after a while the upkeep started to bite at me.

With the medical schedule overturning my nice simple life, coupled by the fact that these babies needed pristine water conditions and high calcium levels, I decided to strip the tank down, restart and keep simpler stuff. So currently it's all soft corals and a few large-polyp stony corals. All's not too bad now, although I really could pay more attention to the tank. Just a few weeks ago, by a whoop of luck and a strange twist of fate, I met an ex-JC-senior and current-medical-senior who just got started on this very same addictive hobby too. Come, all ye reef-crazed lovers, have a piece of the ocean in your home but dig deep into your wallets! Haha .. yes. This is bad. Unnecessary expenditure. I shall post some very lovely comments from other reefers, on how they lie to their spouses about their expenditures. =)