Eric's 400g Marineland Reef Tank Build

This is where I decided to mount all the power supplies for the Radions. I intended to build a storage box around this, but like that it is open on one end of the sump area for air transfer. I think this summer I will install some vents with fans on the opposite end of this to help draw in some cooler air below. It gets hot an humid down there in the summer. I installed a small TV above the power supplies since we don't have a good view of the TV. This turned out to be a great thing because I never really liked the TV on during meals and now we never turn it on. The wires are a bit of mess here since I am in the process of changing up the lights. You can see that only the top 3 power supplies are powered on.
[attachment=2]IMG_20160210_213938.jpg[/attachment]

This is the view from the breakfast nook area where we have most of our meals. It is a bar stool height table and we also sit around it on the weekends if we have friends over. You can see my old wireless IP camera on the far right. Below is the live view I get from that camera when I am not at home. I check it multiple times a day and get caught up watching the fish swim and eat from the veggie clip that goes there.
[attachment=0]IMG_20160210_214144.jpg[/attachment]

Here is the end view as lights are going out. All of the base rocks that sit in the sand are on acrylic rods attached to 3 different 2ft x 2ft acrylic sheets. I had problems in that past with pistol shrimp and jawfish causing rocks to tumble and saw that Marc did this on his 400g. He did a very nice blog on it and I followed it! Greatest thing ever! There are no rocks sitting on bottom glass and they all have plenty of room (3 to 4 inches) under them for critters to play. One lesson learned on this... The dry rock I used is tough to drill! The concrete bits I used would hardly touch them. These rocks are fairly dense and I am not sure if I would use them again because of that. I loved the cost when compared to live rock, but I might try and find some that are not so dense and heavy. Why is the tank so empty when I took these just over a week ago? Next post will get into that.
[attachment=1]IMG_20160210_213953.jpg[/attachment]
 
Now to the fun part... I woke up on Saturday morning January 9th to an odd sound coming from downstairs. As I was walking down the stairs, it appears that the motors are running dry and there isn't the normal ripples at the surface. I get to the bottom of the stairs and turn the corner and see a lot of water pooled on the floor heading down the hallway! My first thought was that something in the sump came disconnected and shot out a bunch of water, no big deal. I quickly shut off all the pumps and was glad to see that the run the sits in the living room was dry. All the water had gone towards the kitchen and hallway. I was too panicked to take any photos (wish I had), but I was quickly trying to find the source of the leak. Water was running rapidly down each leg of the stand and the water appeared to be coming from under the tank! I didn't know if the bottom glass cracked or what. I grabbed the wet vac from the garage and started getting the water up. I made a few phone calls and was able to get someone from a LFS to come help get everything out of the tank. We started pumping out all the water and removing rocks, frags, and fish. Once the water level was at the sand (about 4 inches from the bottom) the leaking stopped. I continued to clean up the water and mess and was able to get the rocks in a Brute circulating with a heater and pump and keep the refugium circulating with heater and a pump. Everything else was removed and dried. It took 10 HomeDepot buckets to get all the sand out. Here is what I found...
[attachment=0]image-20160112_194221.jpg[/attachment]

It appeared that the bottom glass braces were not floated in silicone and got water under them. It looked like this all the way around! What to do??!! I have to stop now, but I will finish this tomorrow.
 
I'm so sorry to see this. This is one of the worst fear for all of us hobbyists! Now, you will have to hire the professional to reseal the entire tank!
 
Thanks guys, it was truly a nightmare!

So here I was 10 months the tank had been wet and I encounter my first leak in this hobby. I held back my tears until after the leak stopped and my fish and frags were on their way to a LFS. All I could think about was how horrible it was going to be to have to tear it all down and start over. I knew it would be months before I got the tank back. I didn't know if it would be covered under warranty, but thought that it might because it had not had water in it until I filled it. It had just been completely re-glued by Marineland before I bought it. I broke down and was ready to throw in the net when to my surprise, there was my lovely wife telling me that I couldn't quit. That I had spent way too much time and money to just give it all up now. Remember how in the beginning I thought she was going to leave me over all of this, and now she is telling me to keep going! The truth is that she had started to love the aquarium. She gets to work from home a few days a week and spends time sitting in front of it while she works (lucky!). She enjoys seeing life in there that we have seen while snorkeling around the world. She even likes showing off her favorite fish when we have guests over. It was hard for her to see all of these great benefits when it was just a big empty space hog turning into a big, bright, and loud space hog. Okay, back to the story...

I contacted Marc who guessed that they would not cover it. He gave me some great advice, which was to see what my homeowners insurance would do. I spoke with a few LFS owners who thought they would cover it and I called Marineland myself. They told me that the warranty transferred from this tank to the new one they built for him. They said they don't even make large custom tanks anymore (probably because they had a hard time making ones that would hold water for over a year).

I ended up contacting Plant Aquariums and speaking with Jerry. He first told me that I would be better off buying a new tank from them. That I would have to deliver the tank to them and it would take a few month to re-glue the tank. The money I would spend in labor would buy me a new tank. This was not what I wanted to hear! I then asked if he thought I would be able to fix it myself without moving it. He then started to break down every step on how I could repair it. I became a little overwhelmed by all the info and asked, "You sound like you know what you are talking about. Can I pay you to come and fix it?" He thought about it for a second and said, "It wouldn't be me, it would be Armando and let me ask him." I sent him an email with my info and he got back to me saying he could do it the coming Saturday for $350 to $400! This seemed like a great deal to me, so I said sign me up. The tank had only been dry for a few days and a week after the leak, it would be glued again!

Armando came to my house Saturday morning with an assistant and was quick to get to work. They removed all the bracing pieces of glass from the bottom, cleaned it all up, and floated new pieces of glass bracing in silicon. As they were removing the glass, he showed me where there wasn't ANY silicon between the top and side glass. He was able to stick a razor blade all the way through between the two pieces of glass! All it took was one little hole in the seal around the bracing to cause a failure. After a few hours, they were done and told me that if I waited 3 days, it would the best. I waited about a week! I was back in business, and I have to say that Armando is a very honest, stand up, guy! I was ready to pay him the $400 after seeing what all they did, but he told me that he didn't know how much I was quoted. I told him $350 to $400 and said, "Make it $360." Wow, right! I know where I will be buying my next tank from!!!

All is getting back to normal when I started to notice that my floors looked very wavy. Luckily I had already called up my insurance (thanks to Marc) and found out that they would cover my floors, but not the tank. They would have covered the tank had someone caused the leak, but not from a failure. No big deal since it didn't cost much to fix, but what about these floors. I spoke with my friend who did the demo and tank install, and he gave me a figure. To my surprise, the company that did the quote came back with a value that was more than double what my friend came up with!!! Luckily it was under the amount that my mortgage company cared about, so I was able to cash the check and do as I pleased. My wife was happy and said that it was about time this thing started paying for itself. We are thinking of doing a floor upgrade once we let the tank sit for a while to ensure it is not going to leak again.
 
I recently added the following:
Achilles Tang
Blonde Naso Tang
Regal Tang
Yellow Tang
Powder Blue Tang
Blue Spot Jawfish
5 x Purple Firefish
Magnificent Foxface (that I had from before the leak, thanks to Al @ Dynamic Reef for holding onto him)
Solar Wrasse (that I also had from before, thanks Al)
Naoko Wrasse
Cleanup Crew
9 of my original frags (Thanks to Russ @ Aquarium Advantage! He was the one who came and helped me break it down on very short notice.)

Everything is fat and eating well. It was nice to be able to redo my fish choices and add a bunch of Tangs all at once. I was surprised that my tank didn't need to cycle again, but I guess that was because I keep the refugium and live rock online while the rest of the tank was down. Some of the sand in the buckets probably had some life in it. It sure smelt like it did! I was amazed at all the fine detritus that came out of the sand when I put it back in the tank with water already in it. The water was NASTY for a few days while it settled. I was then able to use my gravel vac and get it cleaned up.

In the end, I am liking how this leak turned out. It gave me a chance to do changes with the system down that I don't think I would have done otherwise. It is nice that some good can come from all that pain.
 
The weekend was not good to my reef. Strangely the coral frags are doing well this time around (had problems with bleaching before the leak) and I think this is probably due to reducing the number of Radions down to 3 from 6. I came home on Friday to a dying Naoko wrasse. I had noticed that he had not been eating, so who knows what it was. I didn't see any ich on him or anything that didn't look right. Even his color looked good. I woke up Saturday to a missing jawfish. He was eating very well and was making homes under all the rock work. I'm not sure if he couldn't get settled and stressed himself out or what. I hope he turns up alive, but I didn't see him yesterday either and he didn't come out to eat.

I know that something changed in the tank and it might have caused the fish to become stressed. Because I was adding a lot of Tangs at once, I decided to try some Parashield that I had won at a frag raffle. I didn't have any inverts in at the time or coral yet, so I figured I would give it a try. I had nowhere near the amount it called for to treat for the 5 days or so that it called for, so I put in 3/4 of the full dose which was just over half the bottle. The next day I added the rest. When I added the first dose, the skimmer went nuts even turned all the way down. The instructions said to turn off carbon, but didn't say anything about the skimmer. I turned it off because it would have drained the tank to leave it on. All the fish seemed fine. They were all eating and doing well and no signs of ich. I had added some inverts and they were all doing fine as well. I noticed that the crabs were not as active, but I read online last night that it could happen. Over the weekend I decided to turn on the skimmer and get that stuff out. With the skimmer as low as I could get it, it was pumping out a ton of water. I had fresh saltwater mixed up and was replacing it as it went out. I figured this would be like doing a water change. I finally got it all out on Saturday afternoon. I noticed last night the all the tangs and the foxface have ich!!! So was this stuff really working that well or did my pulling it out to quickly cause stress??? IDK, but I know that I hate ich!
 
What a roller coaster. I'm glad the tank was fixed affordably and that your livestock is back in it already. Much quicker than my ordeal.

Hope you can figure out what is going on with the fish, Eric.
 
So it looks like the Achilles and Powder Blue might not make it. They didn't seem to want to eat last night, but we will see. I ran all my water tests and everything looks good. I don't know what else I can do at this point. I guess I need to get that hospital/quarantine tank set up soon!
 
Yes, they are very lumpy with the ich bumps. Most of the other fish have them too, but not as bad or are at least still active and eating. I am thinking about getting a tank and trying hyposalinity. Not sure if there is much of a point since they will end up back in the DT that still with have ich in it. This is all assuming I can even get the fish out.
 
Unfortunately, with ick, you'll have to get all the fish out and let the main tank go fallow for 2 months while treating the fish in hypo. I'm NOT the right person to give advice on ick treatment because I never successfully fought this battle with ick. I just gave up on the Powder Blue instead.
 
Yeah, I would do that if I had a place to put the fish. I have read all about it, but I think I am just going through a pod and ich bloom at the moment. This happened the first time the tank was setup and it got over it. I pulled the Achilles out last night for a nice 5 min fresh water dip and he is doing much better today. I am going to start setting up a hospital tank as soon as I figure out what I am going to get.
 
Eric, you definitely have a nice setup. Seems you are having a patch of bad luck at the moment. The good thing is that you are not throwing in the towel and giving up on the hobby. You also are very lucky to have your wife support you through all of this. It will turn around for you and your system will be amazing.
 
Man that is rough. I saw your build last month and silently ogled over it. Just today I was telling my wife how I'd love to have the opportunity to build a peninsula setup like yours with all the containers under the counter. I hope you continue and have a turn of luck. As for the ick, when I got my vlamingii he was about 1-1.5" and got ick within a week or so. He was the first fish in the tank and I never took him out just fed garlic on everything. Nothing has got ick afterwards. I did add bacteria after each fish for the increase in bio load. Do you think maybe that after the leak it wasn't stable enough for that many fish at once and the flux stressed all the tangs out. They probably just kickstarted it for all the other fish. I'm no professional but I don't know if ick ever really gets eradicated from systems, or so I've been taught.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
@lilyhayes1401 wrote:
Eric said:
Thanks for the kind words. I might be having trouble with fish right now, but all of the coral is doing excellent at the moment. Before the leak it was the other way around! I hope to get everything back on the right track soon.
Click to expand...
 
@Bangemslim wrote:
Man that is rough. I saw your build last month and silently ogled over it. Just today I was telling my wife how I'd love to have the opportunity to build a peninsula setup like yours with all the containers under the counter. I hope you continue and have a turn of luck. As for the ick said:
I am loving the peninsula style setup. I makes it feel like I have twice as much space to place frags. I also like having all of the equipment underneath but I need to vent it a little better for the summer. I got so hot under there last year that I would have to leave a panel open during the heat of the day.

I don't think it was a bio load issue. I was also adding Prodibio and checking parameters regularly. The tank never went through another cycle and I added only a few fish at the start. I was feeding them with Selcon and lots of nori and I think they were stressing each other out. I would see them chasing each other at night.

From what I have read and somewhat observed in my system, the ich population (as well as other critter and pod type populations) can explode in size in the beginning until they overpopulate and die down. I think my tank hit that high mark a week after adding the tangs. I still see a crazy amount of critter life in the tank and it did this the first time around. I put a Mandarin goby in the tank as one of my first fish and he was doing well until the tank leak and I sold him. I have read that if fish no longer get ich in the tank and you go a year without adding fish or seeing ich return, that it can die off. I see and hear so many different things about it that I am not really sure what to believe. I do know that I had trouble with ich before the leak and that I waited for ~4 months to add new fish, and when I added new fish there wasn't any issues. We will see and I think that my QT setup should help.

Thanks for the info and hopefully my luck will turn around... starting now! Check out my next post of what happened this weekend!
Click to expand...
 
Hopefully the final bit of bad luck for a while... I woke up on Friday to a bunch of text messages from my leak detectors and didn't think anything of it. I have had a few false alarms with these things due to salt underneath them. I have one sitting on a paper towel to help and it gets knocked off sometimes by our pet ferret so I assumed it was another false alarm. Next thing I hear is my daughter telling me that she thinks the tank leaked again! She said there is water all over the floor and she stepped in it! I ran down to see more water on the floor than last time, but this time the tank wasn't running dry. I opened up the panel to discover everything was fine with the tank and sump. I knew what it was! I turned off the mixing brute pump and shut of the RO/DI that was still going. I needed to collect more water, so I turned on the RO/DI to collect more in one of the 55g brute cans and apparently my "improvement" turned out to be a disaster waiting to happen. I had added a float to the end of hose so that water would always mix from the bottom to the top and not make lots of noise when the container was almost empty. Problem was that as it filled up to the top, the weight of the hose caused the end to point up and spray water at the lid which was pouring water onto the ground! This should have been saved by the shower liner, but I guess one of the glued corners has a leak. Time to do a little heaving gluing on those seams! Back to wavy wooden floors again. At least it was fresh water this time. The first words out of the wife's mouth this time was, "GET RID OF THAT THING!" which I probably would have had it been the tank again. Glad we didn't put in any new floors yet!

Fish update:
The yellow tang seems to be doing better. I am seeing some weird dark spots on the foxface but they change each day. I have read that it could be from the ich. He has had a few spots since the outbreak started. None of the other fish show any signs of ich which is a start. The Naso is so fat he looks like he might pop and I guess it has been helping him fight it. Out of all the tangs, he has always looked the best.

All of the coral frags are doing amazing well with excellent color and polyp extension. I need to try and take a picture. I look walking around and looking at everything in the evening as the blues are on!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top