A few years ago I made a trip to Chicago and had the good fortune to spend an afternoon at the Shedd Aquarium. This was one of North Americas largest aquariums for quite some time and still has a lot to boast about. There was quite a bit to see here and was well worth the visit. If you are ever in the Chicago area I would highly recomend taking some time to explore this facility.

Well it was high time I installed a skimmer on the Biocube as there is a rather messy carnivore making it his temporary home.  We have a barred morray currently taking up refuge in this tank until the 80 gallon has been completed.  Water changes in this tank are a snap as we just use water from the reef every week or so.

This mod was simple;  cut a hole in the stock biocube lid to allow the Remora skimmer through.

Took about 45 minutes of experiementing with placement and cutting with a dremel to get it where it worked best, check it out;

And here is the view with the top closed.  I had to make a small round notch to fit around the tube for the skimmer inlet but it worked out pretty well.  Next I might try adding an overflow so I can sump this beast.

Well I had some unexpected free time today so I decided to take on one of the projects.

I’ve been planning on making a “tidal” tank to plumb in to the 135 gallon reef. We had so many spare parts laying around I set this up for free, and its living in the sump room so it doesnt have to be pretty. There were a few benefits to this setup though;

• Added water volume to the reef
• Removed rock from the sump so it can hold more water
• Easy spot to mount surge bucket for tidal surges
• Makes the sump room way more sweet (I couldn’t think of another reason and I wan’t to somehow justify its creation)

This tank is set up so it shares the sump (heater, skimmer, zeovite reactor, carbon and Phosban reactor) with the 135 gallon display tank.  The aquarium was previously being used to cook up new salt water but really didn’t see a lot of use that I couldn’t do with a simple rubbermaid. 

Now that the Profilux Network module is working again I can easily start programming my aquarium again. I also added the automatic topoff resevoir tonight so the profilux can start handling my water level.  I know I have a Rio 600 pump in one of my bins so as soon as I find it, i’ll install it as the pump for the ATO system. This should help compensate for the added evaporation from the 120 gallon and some pretty crazy surface agitation.

So here is the setup after a long day of organizing and rewiring.

Here you can see the wiring panel and the future location of the surge bucket (on the top corner of the 120 gallon once a shelf is built)

And last but not least, here is the beginning of an experiment;  The tidal tank.  Currently only has 2 very miserable Mangroves that are experiencing some osmotic shock (rapid salinity swing nearly killed them).  If they do well I will mount them in a way to “dip” the roots into the water with every wave from the surge bucket.  This is why the 120 gallon tank only has about 70-80 gallons of water in it, I needed a little headroom for varying water levels.

You can just see the bottom of the overflow piping on the left side.  There are no creatures in the tank yet so I havent installed a grate over the inlet but will be doing so in the next day or two.

Decided to take a quick video of the reef as it stands tonight.  The colour is a bit skewed as only the 22k bulbs were on so the camera had some white balance issues trying to compensate…  The bulbs are brand new so everything is pretty bright.