Ok so I will try to continue where I have left off here. I have been working tirelessly to get all this set up and kill as little things as possible. I haven’t posted much because I was waiting to have some good news. Lol sometimes it takes a while.
so the 130g tank is set up with roughly 20g in the sump. Ok 5 rays roughly 7-12” in a 150g set up with media only started about a week ago and a seasoned fx6. I’m sweating bullets at this point when I realized what I have done. These are bloody expensive rays to cycle a tank with. So I am desperately trying to find a bigger tank to run while I am also trying to get everything ready.
I tested my water every single day this month since the addition of the rays. I had a bottle of bacteria in a bottle, which I did not trust but figured I would try it on a long shot that it actually did what it said. Man am I happy I had that. First few days were tense, reading 1 ppm ammonia with rays is not cool. So daily wc running back and forth shutting off the cold water and switching over to hot water because they are both on different hose bibs because I can’t let the temps fluctuate too much, don’t want to stress the rays out.
once I figured out how to get my wc schedule somewhat steady, and the bacteria in a bottle gave me the zero’s on ammonia and nitrite, it was time to do the flooring.
so I have had the floor epoxy for about a month now sitting. Not even registering the product I had was not nearly enough. I asked my paint rep about it and he said it was fine, but with my experience I knew he was wrong, but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. With everything that has gone wrong so far, I was mentally preparing myself for what will go wrong and working through solutions on how to do it all on a shoe String budget. I haven’t worked in 3 months at this point and have had no money coming in but sapping money out into this crazy project. Which keeps adding up.
I got 1/3 of the way done and realized I needed about 3 more gallons of product for the intended finish I wanted. But since I live in a small town, things are limited and they only had 1 or 5 gal option for me. And the 1 gal more was almost $200 so I had to fudge it. I hate fudging things but it ended up looking more like a marbled finish than a faux water finish that I was intending like a previous project I have done.
here is the previous project I did at the tank manufacturing facility I used to work at back home.
so the 130g tank is set up with roughly 20g in the sump. Ok 5 rays roughly 7-12” in a 150g set up with media only started about a week ago and a seasoned fx6. I’m sweating bullets at this point when I realized what I have done. These are bloody expensive rays to cycle a tank with. So I am desperately trying to find a bigger tank to run while I am also trying to get everything ready.
I tested my water every single day this month since the addition of the rays. I had a bottle of bacteria in a bottle, which I did not trust but figured I would try it on a long shot that it actually did what it said. Man am I happy I had that. First few days were tense, reading 1 ppm ammonia with rays is not cool. So daily wc running back and forth shutting off the cold water and switching over to hot water because they are both on different hose bibs because I can’t let the temps fluctuate too much, don’t want to stress the rays out.
once I figured out how to get my wc schedule somewhat steady, and the bacteria in a bottle gave me the zero’s on ammonia and nitrite, it was time to do the flooring.
so I have had the floor epoxy for about a month now sitting. Not even registering the product I had was not nearly enough. I asked my paint rep about it and he said it was fine, but with my experience I knew he was wrong, but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. With everything that has gone wrong so far, I was mentally preparing myself for what will go wrong and working through solutions on how to do it all on a shoe String budget. I haven’t worked in 3 months at this point and have had no money coming in but sapping money out into this crazy project. Which keeps adding up.
I got 1/3 of the way done and realized I needed about 3 more gallons of product for the intended finish I wanted. But since I live in a small town, things are limited and they only had 1 or 5 gal option for me. And the 1 gal more was almost $200 so I had to fudge it. I hate fudging things but it ended up looking more like a marbled finish than a faux water finish that I was intending like a previous project I have done.
here is the previous project I did at the tank manufacturing facility I used to work at back home.
well thank you Amazon at least you guys have what (I think) I need. Delivered at the end of the week- done. Ordered it and realized it’s actually 3 weeks away (2weeks ago). So with that said I still don’t even know if these new parts will work when they arrive next week. I just assume not, so I now have 2 hoses that I run simultaneously to do wc. It makes it faster and less stressful. I tried a splitter, but it didn’t work very well and I didn’t trust it being ray safe.
