3 days, a camera and a reef aquarium: Upgrade recorded in stop motion

By Brian Blank on Jul 17, 2012

Setting up or upgrading your reef aquarium is hard work but despite being time consuming and frustrating, it is one of the most rewarding yet sadistically fun parts of the hobby. One hobbyist set up a camera to capture his aquarium upgrade and put together this fun stop motion montage of the three-day process. YouTube user JeF4y posted this video with this description “One shot every 30 seconds over 3 days of work. Running here at 10 frames per second.” Watch as he upgrades from a decent-sized cube into what looks to be more along the lines of a 75 or 90 gallon acrylic system. The entire video makes it appear relatively seamless but we’d love to have access to the audio over the process — we are sure there are probably some profanity-laced nuggets fueled by frustration or the one all of us have uttered knee-deep into a monster project, “#%&$! Off to the hardware store….AGAIN!!!”

http://twitter.com/paul_gallo Paul Gallo

Damn… 3 days!? Nicely done. I just upgraded from my first tank (a 14g biocube) to a 40g w/ sump and it took me a little more than 2 months of planning, building, buying, and waiting. That would have been a much longer, and much less interesting timelapse video
mcallahan

He had a female to help him! Nice move man!
http://www.vdhoven.info/ Gilles van den Hoven

@All and Brian; here is the build thread:
http://www.atlantareefclub.org/forums/showthread.php?t=69501
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.kufalk Jeff Kufalk

haha.. That’s my video =) I went from a Marineland 60 cube (2x2x2) to a tenecor 150 (5x2x2). I picked up the Tenecor used and had to refinish it (acrylic in kinda rough shape). That took me 2 months. Then another ~2 months in gathering stuff to complete the build. Wife & son helped me out with it. It went quite well. We live in a quite small loft (1200 sq-ft), so logistically it was a challenge in making 150 gallons of fresh saltwater, keeping that in a 150 gal stock tank (borrowed) and then moving all the existing livestock and existing & new liverock into yet another 150 gal stock tank (borrowed). In all it turned out great, but there were a few extra trips to home depot =) Like on day 3 where my wife was building an egg-crate stand for the skimmer while I ran to home depot to get a 1″ pvc joint to fix my plumbing that was off by an inch.

Yeah, profanity laced nuggets indeed. Like at the end of night 2 when I could only fill the tank 3/4 full because I effed up my return plumbing in gluing a union joint on without the collar! And on day 3 when I realized that my plumbing was off by an inch. There are always surprises. But in the end it went pretty well!

Glad you guys enjoyed it. -Jeff
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.kufalk Jeff Kufalk

This was +4 months in the making. The 3 days was when I pulled the trigger and did the transfer. Although, in retrospect I should have time-lapsed the tank refinishing. That would have been cool.
Mike

Ok I have to ask though…. what’s with the picture of the guy on the wall?
http://www.marinedepot.com/ MarineDepot.com

Great video, Jeff. Time lapsing the setup makes it look so easy, but based on your comments, it sounds like you ran into a few hiccups. Glad to see you worked them all out! Hopefully we’ll get to see some posts of progress in the future.

Chris R.
http://www.reefbuilders.com Brian Blank

Awesome! My last tank was a year in the making before I got it set up. Was quite exhilarating and fun because before it gets set up, you have the most incredibly behaved fish, no algae, beautiful lush colonies of coral….then you go live and its algae, cheap fish that terrorize your expensive prize fish, RTN, overflows, etc.!
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.kufalk Jeff Kufalk

Too true! My 60 cube had never looked better than the few months before I took it down.
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.kufalk Jeff Kufalk

Jeff Probst. My wife & I are Survivor junkies and really like Jeff Probst, so I got her a cutout some time ago and he ended up on the wall.
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.kufalk Jeff Kufalk

Thanks Chris! Yep, like any setup there’s always a few snags, but that’s part of the fun in doing a build. Overcoming that moment when challenge arises. I’m thinking that I should find a way to do a time-lapse of this growing over a year. I just need to find a good spot to mount the camera permanently.

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