Weekend Woe's...

     After the initial shock of what had happened yesterday, everything we had been doing for the past week and absolutely no good nutrition for a week, Chris and I woke up feeling as though a Mack truck had plowed into us and just kept rolling. Chris had a sore throat and thought it was because of siphoning the calcium-filled water from the 90 but, when I stated my throat was sore we determined that we were just sick.  


     Chris had to go off for a tux fitting with his brother for his brother's wedding later on this summer so it was just me and the kids alone with the tank. That pretty much meant at the point that we were all just going to look at it and do nothing else. I could barely move my fingers they were so sore from the holes and gashes in them from those damned tube worms. 


     A few hours later Chris came back home and him and his brother finished gluing all the pipes downstairs so that we no longer had any leaks in the basement. 


     We lost the anthia's for sure. We never really knew where they went after we pulled them from the tank. Our unicorn tang is holding on to it's very last leg which has our youngest daughter very upset. She named him Elvis some time ago and this was her favorite. There are a few other little frags that we definitely lost (I'm unsure of the names) and it's not looking to good for our chalice either...this is not going to be pretty. 


     Sunday morning we woke up feeling a little better.


     Our plans for the day were to go to Chris' father's house to work on his tank so, it was actually kind of nice to get away from ours for a while...away from watching it. We played in Emery's tank and worked on some more rock work and cement :) No disasters with this tank move! Thank goodness!  


     When we arrived home late Sunday night we discovered that Elvis had indeed not made it through the turmoil as well as a few more corals. We lost our green birdsnest (for the second fucking time!) which pisses me off to no end because this was my favorite piece. I'll tell ya, it's going to be another long hard road watching some of these corals go. I just keep telling Chris we'll get them back again. He's very upset about some of them, and I can't blame him. He waited for months for some of these and then babied them just to have them grow a few inches to accidentally burn them during what should have been such a fun adventure for us. But, we overcame a crash that we never truly figured out what happened years ago...so, dammit! We'll get through this too! :)


     That night he started putting up the doors to his top and sorta placed the corals in the tank.

     Like I said before, it's going to be a waiting game. After we wait it out and see what's still left, it will be onto the next adventure of rebuilding our reef. We just have to make the best out of a shitty situation. At least he finally got his dream tank. It's a shame that our babies habitat ended up so horribly disrupted but, he'll fix it. He always does :) 


     Until next time...

Bubbles are Bad...

     Whenever there seemed to be a crisis of some sort with the tank and I needed Chris to respond right away I would just call or text and immediately say, "Bubbles are bad!" In the beginning this usually meant just that...bubbles were bad! The sump ran out of water downstairs for some reason or another and there were bubbles in the main tank upstairs now from nothing but air being let up from the main pump. Later on as the tank became more and more 'advanced' the problems became bigger than just bubbles (which by the way, I was able to fix in just a few seconds without placing a phone call) however, the phone call or text always remained the same, "bubbles are bad!" 


     Upon hearing these words, Chris stops everything he's doing at the moment and asks what happening to the tank (what a good reefer, right?). Usually, the problem requires a shut-down and me picking him up from wherever he may be to come home immediately to fix said problem, big or small. There have been a few panicked calls for those times where he's moved the damned valves or changed all the friggin' wiring so that I have absolutely no clue what in the hell I'm supposed to be shutting down anymore but, we have never really had any major disaster's while he's not been home (yet). Actually, since our move to our new house, there really hasn't been too many at all...or maybe I'm just used to it by now, who knows anymore. 


     So Friday morning rolls around. Chris and I are pretty much exhausted. We haven't eaten properly in nearly a week. I've been on the Atkins diet now for over two months so this limits me on what I can eat. My mother calls me all happy and chipper and asks me what I've had for breakfast? Usually my love makes me these wonderful omelettes or steak and eggs or sausage or something. But for the past friggin' week all I've had is this....

     Do you have any idea how gross these things are after a day let alone a week? So, I tell my mother, "A bar and a shake...that's all I fucking have lately! There's no food in this damned house! If we eat out I have a grilled chicken salad and I swear if I eat another one of those too I'm going to scream!" Then she gets all worried and thinks there is no food for the kids and I have to reassure her that there is actually plenty of food for the family...I just haven't had time to cook anything for myself so all I've been eating are these damned bars and shakes! I take a picture and decide that this is important for the blog. Don't diet while doing a tank build. All you'll eat is bars and shakes, of this I can assure you...

     Getting on with things....Chris' father, Emery dropped off the hood (or most of it seeing how we rushed him) yesterday so, Chris started working on sanding it down and putting it together to fit his lights. So, another huge thank you goes out to Emery for yet another wonderful hood for our tank! Thanks for getting it done in our quick time frame too :) We know you've been really busy with work lately so thanks for squeezing this in for us!!

     Chris and I decide that we are going to work on the rock structures that we want in the new tank today and slowly between today and tomorrow we will finish the switch from the 90 to the 210. This is the plan... 

     We set up a small 10 gallon tank on our table to house a few corals while we pull out some live rock from the tank and let the sand settle. We had also purchased some rock from Kyle that we planned on using as well so for the first two large pieces we only pulled out a few corals and a little bit of rock. We actually had a blast putting together the pieces for our tank! We made one structure specifically for the zoanthids to flow down on the left hand side of the tank.

      
     Everything was going so smoothly...


     We took out a few more rocks to start building our third structure. I had just finished slopping on a shit ton of sand onto the base of it and was going to let it cure for a while before doing anything further to it when Chris comes outside and basically states to me, "Bubbles are bad." These weren't his words but, you get the gist. 


      What Chris refers to what now happens and what keeps us on our toes for the next few hours (and days) is an amateur near fatal mistake that never should have happened to us. But, it did...


     I walk into the living room and our tank is pure white, like milk, and he is pulling things out of it blindly. Someone recently asked me what it was like because Chris was a little freaked out about this transition to begin with and with a disaster like this, she expected him to be hysterical. I told her that I believe at this point everything was almost like it was in slow motion. He was asking (not yelling) for the children to get every towel in the house and to lay them on the dining room floor. Some were already there and he was handing what he pulled out of the tank to my oldest, Emily, and she was separating the corals from the live rock. As we could find fish (that were basically lying on the bottom) we would scoop them out and throw them in the 210. I took over in the 90 and told Chris to get the 210 ready now. We didn't have enough water now and we didn't have the plumbing done. This wasn't supposed to happen today...


     The kalkwasswer reactor had let out too much kalk when we removed the rocks and let the water level go too low. Again, an amateur mistake. Had we not been so excited and entranced by the damned concrete we would have noticed what was happening to our tank! 


     I stood on the step-ladder for I don't know how long pulling everything out of the tank telling Emily whether or not the rock belonged in the coral section or live rock section of the floor. A few of the LPS corals I placed in the 210 and hoped for the best as the water was far colder than the water I was pulling it out of. Chris was coming up and down the whole time asking about the fish that I still couldn't find in the damn white mess of the tank and the ones I did find were just laying on their sides. My hands were starting to bleed in certain areas where those friggin' tube worms kept sticking me over and over again but, I just kept digging through the tank. 


     We certainly didn't have enough clean water to put into the 210 once the skimmer started pulling. We put in a large amount of the contaminated water and then decided enough was enough. We called Chris' brother and asked him for his 10 gallons of RO water to top off what our skimmer was going to pull out. 


     I packed our little 10 gallon as best as possible making sure that none of the corals were touching each other. The larger SPS corals had no choice but to go in the 210. Unfortunately, we knew that most of them had been burned so, it's now a sit and wait game. What's going to make it and what's not? 


     I didn't have it in me to take any photo's of the white tank during the mess. I just wanted to cry. We expected some disruption and a possible loss of a coral or two but this...never in a million years! This is why no one in the hobby should ever think they know everything or that their tank is fool-proof. It never is. Yes, it was a stupid mistake but, even the experienced hobbyist can make it...

     I think the only exciting thing from this moment was when I went searching through the sand for the wrasse (because we all know when they get spooked they dive into the sand) and only two minutes later I actually found the little guy! I couldn't believe it! We all actually cheered...for a moment. 


     That night the pipes leaked because they still weren't glued but, we had no choice. The tank needed to skim and in order to skim it needed to run. The corals in the ten gallon stayed there. The fish that I thought might not make it either started to perk up a bit or stayed laying on the sand bed struggling to breathe. We still  couldn't find any of the anthia's. Chris said he put one in the 210 and I knew I put one in but, we didn't see any swimming or on the sand bed anywhere. We still pretty much couldn't see into the tank either.


     We spent the rest of the night cleaning up the old tank and removing it from the house and because we now had corals in the 210 we had to get the hood on the tank with the lights. Chris had to move our electrical over too. We keep our tank on a separate breaker so that if someone runs the microwave the tank lights don't go out. When we moved the tank we found out that I needed to find the paint we used to paint the living room last year because we had missed some spots that we couldn't reach behind the tank...large spots. I also needed to fix those little ones over by where the tank now was.  This is basically why we didn't want to do everything in one day...too much! 

Emily and Chris dumping the sand from the tank into the tub outside.

Taking out the 90.

Cleaning out four years of collecting things. We even found pictures from when we first started the hobby :)

Notice the white tank? :/

Taking out the old stand.

We also refinished our floor around the old tank...need an area rug now! lol!! There was also about four years of dust I could never properly get to behind this tank.

New hood without poly or stain...or the doors either...

     The kids and I are sitting in the living room while Chris is going back and forth from upstairs to downstairs trying to figure out the breaker and what one turns off a specific outlet. He has wires sticking out and we have two dogs. One is old and doesn't move anymore. One is a puppy and as you know, like plumbing tape. As Chris heads downstairs he looks at us and says, "Don't let the dogs lick the wires." We all look at each other and my middle daughter makes a comment about the strange requests that Chris sometimes makes of us. I agree, like a dog is going to go up and try to lick a wire?! So what does my tape eating dog do? Goes up and tries to lick the wire! Unbelievable! How Chris knew that, I'll never know! 
     
     All in all we got the move done and the major legwork done without having any heart-attacks and no fried doggies both of which are good. Now unfortunately, we have to sit back and see what makes it and what doesn't in the tank. In the meantime, there is still a lot of work to be done so, stay tuned...


     Always remember, bubbles are bad, milk is worse!

The search for cement...

     It's Thursday morning, and bright eyed and bushy tailed is far from what we are. This damned tank build and switch over has us tired and I'm just downright bitchy (more than usual anyway). We have been discussing since the decision to put the tank in how we are going to do the rock-work in the new tank. This is my specialty and actually something I really enjoy and look forward to. Chris wants three main pieces this time and I'm thinking that PVC may be the way to go to accomplish this. He tells me that some folks on Reef Central directed him to look up some sort of cement but to look up the PVC first and see if I get any good idea's.

     I go online and start looking. Don't get me wrong here, I saw some wonderful work and some fantastic tanks but this is most definitely NOT the way I want to go! We want three solid structures, not a mess of PVC and zip ties with a ton of small live rock all over the place. I was looking for more of a base structure with the PVC to just help hold the rocks for me. The cement might be the way to go. However, I know that most cements have some dangerous heavy metals in them which makes them very, very unsafe for the reef! So, I call Chris upstairs and ask him what the people on reef central were talking about. He direct's me to Marco Rocks. They sell a product, E-Marco-400 10 Lb Kit. Of course when I look, it's sold out. Not to mention, I need this stuff now, not later so what to do? What I always do, research...

This is a photo I stole from Marco Rocks. This is the product they sell. Right now it's $29.95 for 10 pounds of the dry mix and two bottles of the polymer and apparently the handy dandy red knife :) 

     In the meantime Chris is downstairs starting the plumbing for the tank. We have a huge array of pieces of PVC fittings all over the table and I do my best to try to be artistic in my photo's :) 

     You can at least ooohh and ahh over my artistic photo's okay? I worked very hard on these...I took a bunch actually and I decided to only post these two. 


     So anyway, Chris is working away...

     Ironically, our mail comes and our C.T.A.R.S membership cards come in. We decided to become members again after some time of not being active for a while. My name is Messier on the card :/ For some reason I have only been referred to as a Messier in C.T.A.R.S (I have a name-tag from a huge meeting we went to at the Sun once that says Messier on it too) and Chris says, "Well, you'll probably be a Messier next year anyway." This folks, is the closest I've ever gotten to a proposal in eight years...figures!

     I go back upstairs and continue my research and Chris comes up and is holding something in his hand. He explains that he was looking for his pipe thread tape that he thought he misplaced as he was working when he looked over and noticed our dog, Bugsey, had instead found it was eating it for him. As he explained this to me and I was laughing and took a picture, Bugsey came up and grabbed it out of his hand again! 

Chris explaining what happened to the tape...

Chris scolding Bugsey for once again taking the tape. Notice his ears? He knows he's been bad! lol!!

Busgey looks trapped...the next photo the two of them both look insane but, I figured it would embarrass my love too much so you get this sweet one instead :)

     Now I'm back to looking for this damned cement and polymer. There is no way I'm going to find this stuff at any pet store. I've never even heard of it until now and Chris and I have been in the hobby for nearly eight years. It's sold out on this Marco Rocks site so I need to do the next best thing and do what every good reefer does...find the chemical compound of it! Pretty easy stuff too because Marco Rocks lists it as BASF Thorite right on their site! I find another site that calls this stuff Emaco R400 (just a bit off from EMarco) and tells you that it's mixed with Acryl 60. Okay? Sounds good. Now, where in the hell do I find this stuff? 

     I start with the most logical and easiest to get to from our house. Cheapo and Lowe's which of course are a huge bust! Then Ace and Agway. No luck. Now what?! I remember that we actually know someone who owns a company that sells rocks for architectural purposes so I tell Chris to give him a ring. He tells us to call Jolley Concrete. Hey, not a bad idea! Wrong! These people are friggin' clueless! Now I'm just getting pissed! So, I go to the BASF web site, pull up their MSDS sheets, find out this damned product comes in about seven different names and I tell Chris to call them and find out who they have sold the product to in the state and we'll just go there. After two phone calls we find a place. Unfortunately it's over an hour and ten minutes away but, what the hell! We need this stuff! So, off we went...

     Anyone who is into reefing knows that when you talk to someone that isn't into the hobby and your going to use their product for the hobby they are one of two things: 

          1. Completely disinterested and couldn't give one 

              damn what the hell your talking about    or

          2. So interested that it takes nearly an hour to leave 

              the store that your at because they have to tell 

              everyone there and or call everyone to tell them 

              what your doing with the product that your 

              buying.

     This guy was awesome and was number two on the list. Thank goodness he was a good guy because I hate it when they are annoying and you can't leave the store! So, we end up leaving the store with about 50 pounds of dry product and a gallon of the polymer for about $85. The funny thing is, this stuff is completely sold out here in Connecticut. I don't know about the rest of the country but here, this was the only place to get it! We had to opt for a darker color as well because of this too. I'll get to that issue later though...

     Later on Chris' brother Nick and his fiancé come over. They were only supposed to stay for a little while but, Nick ended up changing their plans to stay to help Chris finish up the plumbing he started earlier in the day. Sarah and I took the opportunity to talk about wedding stuff which was a nice break from the tank for me. So, another thank you goes out to Nick for the help and to Sarah for giving up her time to hang out at the house instead of going out like she was supposed to! :)

     Later on that night after everyone was gone, Chris and I decided to try the cement with a few little rocks. We didn't like the color at all and decided that tomorrow we would place sand around anything that we did. However, it holds wonderfully once you figure out how not to slop it all over the place. A little fine tuning and this should go great...should...