Acrylic and a Blowtorch

     After a long time of discussing a different location with another member, Chris and this gentleman finally worked out a date for CTARS to hold a meeting at the Wildwood Christian School in Norwich, Connecticut. This school actually houses it's own saltwater aquarium in the room we were in so, it gave everyone something to look at and discuss before and after the meeting too. 

     Meeting topic: Working with Acrylic. This time though, Chris' dad Emery would be doing the presentation.

     Emery had been making some tanks for himself and they came out great (did you see the tank from the FFM? One of his!). The club had originally planned for someone else to come out and do the presentation however, it fell through. Emery stepped up and offered to demonstrate how to build a small frag tank and then raffle it off at the end. Chris wanted the proceeds of the raffle were to go to the Lutz tank though and not the club this time. Done deal...

     The turnout was nice, the room was filled and there was standing room only shortly after the demonstration began. These photo's are actually later on in the meeting (during the raffle ticket sale) but, I figured they made the point either way.

     Emery had made all the cuts prior to the meeting and started first by explaining the costs of a sheet of acrylic, where to buy it in his area, and how to make the cuts. Then, fire....

 

     After that, he began the assembly with Chris' help and answered any questions people had.

     Then he started to seal/bond the acrylic together. 

     While chatting with the President, Kyle.

     In the meantime, raffle tickets were sold for both the tank and for all the other items brought to the meeting. Chris put together some great frag packs and brought a large sps colony and someone else also brought a large soft coral for the raffle. Kyle brought a bunch of frags from his tank too as well as a few others. The raffle table was awesome!! 

     Here's our VP & secretary trying to play name that coral...

     The raffle begins.

     And the happy winner of the tank is Country Bob!

     Successful meeting! Everyone was happy afterwards, even if they didn't win the tank, and the Lutz received a nice donation. 

Until next time, stay fraggin!

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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!

Sifting through the sand...

     Wednesday morning...Chris is up bright and early and begins working immediately on the tank. He gets the pipes out of the overflow (remember, I said he found out that they didn't need to be in there) and begins the tedious task of cleaning all of the coralline algae out of the tank.

Two different kinds of scrubbers, I'd have to say I'm impressed because I'd give up after the long hours it took him to get the years of coralline off of this tank! 

     Once he's done with that he calls me down from my blogging and we take a trip down to the local paint store to find some paint for the back and side of 'The Monster'. 

    Chris had already called and spoke to a woman and explained what he was looking for. Being a painter by trade, he basically knew what kind of chemicals he needed in the paint, he just didn't know which kind of paint he needed. Of course, anyone in the hobby knows that usually when it comes to our requests, no ones really knows anything when it comes to our requests anyway. We have a long conversation with the guy at the shop who began by saying he thought we needed to use spray paint but, Chris insisted that our 90 looked rolled so he wanted something to roll. We go on to finally find a gallon of some paint only to find out it can only be tinted to a pastel blue. We end up leaving with two cans of spray paint. It did have all the proper chemicals we needed and stated it would hold to glass. All of these a plus. We're thinking that it's possible the people who painted the 90 possibly sprayed it on too thick and had to roll it to fix the mistake but, we'll never know. The color does look the same however...

     To get back to the point at hand...we get back home, Chris masks off the tank and then proceeds to spray the back and one of the sides. We decided on the side as well because we are never going to see anything but the wall otherwise and we happen to be quite fond of the blue. 

     Then he sands the stand. The toughest part about the stand is that it's pine (we love pine...we keep re-doing everything in our house in pine) and we had our hood made out of oak because of the heat from the lights so it's going to be hard to match the two when it comes time to stain and poly them. We thought about maybe in the future just covering the stand to match the hood but, we will see...

You ever try to get a photo of someone and every time you go to shoot they stop doing what they were doing? That was Chris every time I went to take a picture of him sanding this damned stand! So, this is it!! :)

     When the kids get home they are immediately put to work sifting through the buckets of sand...not little buckets, these buckets...

     When I come back from my doctors appointment, Chris and Emily are warming their hands up in the house and Brian and Amy are taking their turn in the bin. There is a total of about 30 gallons of sand that they sift through to wash out the ditris and pull out things like snail shells, old plugs and the sort. In the meantime, the patio looks like a bomb has gone off on it. We already had a bunch of shit on it from when we recently re-did our kitchen (anyone need a stove?) and now we have all this stuff for a larger tank to go into the house...Geesh! The neighbors must think we are hoarders, I swear! 

     Chris and the kids also managed to empty out my living room of the television and end table while I was gone. Chris and Emily bring in the tank stand and put it into position and Chris finishes off the area of the living room by taking down my shelves. Of course they leave marks on the wall so, I have to at some point go find the paint in the basement and touch up the wall now. Gotta mark that one on the growing list of things to do...

     Hopefully we will get the doors on the stand soon. Of course it's a tad easier to plumb pipes without doors in the way! 

     After freezing her hands a bit more while Amy relaxed on the tire swing and Chris re-braced the center again we waited for our friends to arrive to help bring the tank in. We didn't wait long...it was already late in the day. We ordered take-out (again) and had dinner with Eric while we waited for Kyle and his son. 

     Once again, a huge thank you goes out to Eric, Kyle and Kyle for taking time out of your schedules to stop by to just pick up a heavy ass fishtank to put it on a stand for us!! You guys are the best! 

     

     That's it for this blog...stay posted though, it's going to get interesting :)