My first O. Hummelincki

[skywindsurfer]

Well turns out I didn't get home early enough as I would have liked, so I'm not going to start the change over until tomorrow morning since this is now my weekend.

 

[iAlex]

Don't forget pictures, I'm interested to see how you'll go about this.

 

[skywindsurfer]

Oh don't worry. I'll post pictures of every step start to finish. I'm still pondering over how I'm going to construct everything. I feel like an artist with a blank canvas, cans of paint, and no idea where to start.

 

[skywindsurfer]

Ok so I have pretty much everything up and running. Right now I'm trying to get the siphon to the sump and the valve controlling the return syncronized so that I'm not flooding the tank or breaking the siphon and then flooding the tank. Ii think I've just about got it licked. Most of the rock formation is in place. I wasn't able to fit all of the rocks from the 250 into the main tank and have it still looking nice, so a bunch are in the sump. I'll be placing a few back into the main tank here in a bit to fill in some bare spots. I still have to get all of the sand out of the 250 and into the 55. All I've moved so far are the rocks and enough water to get the system running. Once I have the sand moved over, I'll move Bubbles. Here are a few pictures of the process thus far.

 

[skywindsurfer]

More pictures.

 

[iAlex]

What does the 250 look like during all this?

 

[skywindsurfer]

Murky and barren. Kind of like a mud flat you'd see at the bottom of the ocean with little mollusks scarred about, and one lonely octopus.

 

[iAlex]

Poor little thing. xD Are you going to wait for the 55 to settle before you put her in, because it looked cloudy, or does that not mean anything other than not looking good?

 

[skywindsurfer]

The water in the 250 is extremely low and begining to foul up pretty good so I decided to move her hinto the 55. I've already started adding the sand so the water in the 55 is pretty cloudy, but you can still see her.

 

[skywindsurfer]

Poor little thing. xD Are you going to wait for the 55 to settle before you put her in, because it looked cloudy, or does that not mean anything other than not looking good?

Well it's about the equivelant of standing in a sand storm. It's a little uncomfortable but tolerable. I would've prefered to wait until it had settled more, but with the deteriorating status of the 250 I decided it was best to just move her now.

 

[skywindsurfer]

So everyone is doing fine. I fed Bubbles two shrimp this evening and she even interacted a little bit by touching my fingers. The tank is still pretty cloudy. I have no idea how long it will take to clear up, but I added extra filtration to help clean the water. Hopefully it clears up by morning and I'll be able to even out the sand bed a little more. Right now I'm looking at almost 5" of sand and I still have a 5 gallon bucket full of sand in the bedroom. I'm probably not going to use that one though.

 

[skywindsurfer]

Here are a few pictures of Bubbles enjoying the left side of the rocks. She's come out and explored a little bit, but stays behind the rocks for the most part. I've been dusting off all of the rocks all day today and they are looking rather clean so now I'm just waiting for the last of the silt to settle out and take a "final" picture of the finished project. She's still eating fine. I gave her two shrimp last night before the lights shut off, and just fed her one more right before this post. She takes them out of my hand of course. I am actually rather pleased at how this tank has turned out. I'm still tweeking the return plumbing, trying to get it in sync with the drain but over all the look of it actually looks almost exactly like the Port A Jetties. This was what I was trying to achieve with the 250 gallon tank but I just didn't have enough rock and sand.

 

[skywindsurfer]

As you can see these photos are still a bit hazy due to a small amount of silt still in the water. I hope these are clear enough to see the structure.

 

[iAlex]

That's cool, I wish I could afford to fill a tank with rocks like that. :]

 

[skywindsurfer]

Ya, maybe one day I'll be able to afford to make my 250 gallon tank look like this one. lol Right after I win the lottery.