1000 Gallon Build- Here we go- Lots of Pictures

Socaltoaz said:
Project for today. Return pumps and powerheads connected to a remote switch. When I want to feed, I turn off one or both. If I forget to turn back on, 30 minutes later pumps turn on no matter what.

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I wouldn't shut the return off. In fact, I woudn't shut any of the off. I never shut any pumps off and have well over 20,000 GPH flowing through my tank when I feed. The pumps help insure that food is spread and dispersed around the tank for all the fish and corals. Shutting the return off is a sure way to cause a skimmer overflow from the rise in sump level. Even as little as a half inch rise in sump level will cause your skimmer to overflow. Since your skimmer drain is plumbed directly to drain line, you wouldn't even realize it but you would be slowly decreasing your salinity as your ATO will kick in to replace the water that the skimmer drained out of the system.

One other thing. The RD3 pumps should not have power cut off to them regularly like that. If anything, you should use the Apex and the VDM module to control them and shut them down or use the RD3 controllers built in feed mode assuming it's the 230. Those pumps are soft start/soft stop pumps and should be shut down properly instead of just pulling the plug on them when they are running at full speed which is essentially what you are doing when the control 4 cuts the power to the outlet. Think of it like a computer. You want to shut it down or ramp it down before pulling the plug. Just a bit of advice. The Apex will allow you to stop the pump without actually cutting the power to the controller. Once in a blue moon won't hurt anything but doing it daily is asking for trouble where as with the Apex, using the VDM module to stop the flow on the pump is a design feature meant for this exact scenario.
 
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Tank looks great by the way. One more bit of advice. There is no need or benefit to feeding the anemone. BTA's are photosynthetic filter feeders. They normally get their nutrition for filtering nutrients from the water. Feeding them large pieces of food actually stresses them as their digestive systems are well suited for breaking down food the way other Anemones are. It's a common misconception with BTAs. The additional stress often causes them to move and split. Splitting is actually a means of insuring their survival and it's something they do when they get stressed. Normal reproduction is sexual with them. They actually have seperate sexes and typically spawn in the wild.

I've been keeping BTA's for over 20 years and have had my current BTA for over 10 years now. It hasn't moved in many many years and I never ever ever feed it. It's over 2' across and extremely healthy and huge. They will get their any needed nutrition for the nutrients in your water.

This is my BTA. Like I said, I have had it over 10 years and I never feed it. They don't need to be fed and really shouldn't be if your fish are getting fed well.
image_zpswpoyz5xd.jpeg
 
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Socaltoaz said:
Tell Klaus to stop wasting time and get moving! :) Im actually going to be in Koln in March. I was just in Germany for a few days 2 weeks ago. I wish I had time to visit Royal Exclusiv. It would be a blast to visit the factory.
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The building has been bought. The move is set for this summer. Obviously moving all the CNC machines and everything else on their production line for the skimmer and other equipment they produce will be a major project. Hopefully the downtime is minimal. The good news is that the facility is double the size which will give them much better production capabilities. That said, Klaus is a bit of a mad scientist and as Achilles Torben suggested, he has a lot of projects and ideas that he is pursuing right now, The thought of him producing an algae scrubber or algae reactor is a pipe dream for the near term unfortunately. That said, there are a number of great ATS's on the market that could easily be retrofitted to your dream box by modifying a lid. There is however a Dreambox refugium that could be added to a self above your Dreambox and that could gravity feed back into your Dreambox. You could add an ATS to the top of the refugium. The ATS would drain into the refugium and then the refugium would drain into one of the spare ports on the sump. Just food for thought.
 
slief said:
Tank looks great by the way. One more bit of advice. There is no need or benefit to feeding the anemone. BTA's are photosynthetic filter feeders. They normally get their nutrition for filtering nutrients from the water. Feeding them large pieces of food actually stresses them as their digestive systems are well suited for breaking down food the way other Anemones are. It's a common misconception with BTAs. The additional stress often causes them to move and split. Splitting is actually a means of insuring their survival and it's something they do when they get stressed. Normal reproduction is sexual with them. They actually have seperate sexes and typically spawn in the wild.

I've been keeping BTA's for over 20 years and have had my current BTA for over 10 years now. It hasn't moved in many many years and I never ever ever feed it. It's over 2' across and extremely healthy and huge. They will get their any needed nutrition for the nutrients in your water.

This is my BTA. Like I said, I have had it over 10 years and I never feed it. They don't need to be fed and really shouldn't be if your fish are getting fed well.
image_zpswpoyz5xd.jpeg
Click to expand...
Now I know which local to bug about Nem care! :)
 
Wow. Great house, great build. Where in Southern Cal are you? All the desert photos makes me think that you have be out in Palm Desert or similar location...

I wish I had seen this thread a while ago because some of my comments aren't relevant.

(1) Have you thought about earthquakes if you are out east?

(2) When building a big reef tank, I think sometimes people approach the project as thinking it is a small reef tank x10, instead of being a completely different animal altogether. I would look at what people do for large commercial tanks and ponds for ideas. For example, for mechanical filtration of organic waste you might be fine with a filter sock in a small (100 gallon or so) setup. But when you are talking 1000 gallons you should probably consider a centrifugal waste separator or you'll be doing nothing but rinsing socks for the rest of your life. Same thing with basic chores like make-up water mixing; you probably need a minimum of a 500 gallon tank of salt water capacity for an emergency 50% water change, which suggests you might also need 500 gallons of filtered water (given crappy desert water) and some automatic mixing solution. The list goes on and on...

Thank you for sharing your build! It is quite inspirational.
 
slief said:
I wouldn't shut the return off. In fact, I woudn't shut any of the off. I never shut any pumps off and have well over 20,000 GPH flowing through my tank when I feed. The pumps help insure that food is spread and dispersed around the tank for all the fish and corals. Shutting the return off is a sure way to cause a skimmer overflow from the rise in sump level. Even as little as a half inch rise in sump level will cause your skimmer to overflow. Since your skimmer drain is plumbed directly to drain line, you wouldn't even realize it but you would be slowly decreasing your salinity as your ATO will kick in to replace the water that the skimmer drained out of the system.

One other thing. The RD3 pumps should not have power cut off to them regularly like that. If anything, you should use the Apex and the VDM module to control them and shut them down or use the RD3 controllers built in feed mode assuming it's the 230. Those pumps are soft start/soft stop pumps and should be shut down properly instead of just pulling the plug on them when they are running at full speed which is essentially what you are doing when the control 4 cuts the power to the outlet. Think of it like a computer. You want to shut it down or ramp it down before pulling the plug. Just a bit of advice. The Apex will allow you to stop the pump without actually cutting the power to the controller. Once in a blue moon won't hurt anything but doing it daily is asking for trouble where as with the Apex, using the VDM module to stop the flow on the pump is a design feature meant for this exact scenario.
Click to expand...

Ok good points. I still needed the Control 4 for the power heads. I also wanted a remote shut off for the return pumps in case I was out of town. Ill modify it so that I can remotely shut off my skimmer and return pumps in case of emergency- but ill only shut off power heads for feeding- the return pumps will help distribute food.

The goal of reducing flow was to allow target feeding of the corals.

Ive got 2 control 4 units - one for each return pump. Will just plug two return pumps into one control 4 unit and both skimmer pumps into second control 4 unit. Both now have remote emergency shut off.
 
BonsaiNut said:
Wow. Great house, great build. Where in Southern Cal are you? All the desert photos makes me think that you have be out in Palm Desert or similar location...

Im actually in Arizona. Scottsdale. 30+ years in Cali, still have a house there in the Valley- but moved 5 years ago to AZ. Glad to be out of the peoples republic of california. :)


I wish I had seen this thread a while ago because some of my comments aren't relevant.

(1) Have you thought about earthquakes if you are out east?

No earthquakes in Scottsdale. I wouldnt have done this build in Cali.

(2) When building a big reef tank, I think sometimes people approach the project as thinking it is a small reef tank x10, instead of being a completely different animal altogether. I would look at what people do for large commercial tanks and ponds for ideas. For example, for mechanical filtration of organic waste you might be fine with a filter sock in a small (100 gallon or so) setup. But when you are talking 1000 gallons you should probably consider a centrifugal waste separator or you'll be doing nothing but rinsing socks for the rest of your life. Same thing with basic chores like make-up water mixing; you probably need a minimum of a 500 gallon tank of salt water capacity for an emergency 50% water change, which suggests you might also need 500 gallons of filtered water (given crappy desert water) and some automatic mixing solution. The list goes on and on...

Thank you for sharing your build! It is quite inspirational.
Click to expand...

Filter sock maintenance is once a week. Super easy- I have a sink right next to the socks- takes less than 10 minutes. 150 gallon salt water holding tank is more than adequate as I do 4 gallons a day of swap out. Honestly, I put in a few hours a month of maintenance at most on the tank now that its up and running.
 
Socaltoaz said:
Im actually in Arizona. Scottsdale. 30+ years in Cali, still have a house there in the Valley- but moved 5 years ago to AZ. Glad to be out of the peoples republic of california.
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Tell me about it. For what I pay in state income tax, I could buy a house in Nevada and establish out-of-state residency.

Socaltoaz said:
Filter sock maintenance is once a week. Super easy- I have a sink right next to the socks- takes less than 10 minutes. 150 gallon salt water holding tank is more than adequate as I do 4 gallons a day of swap out. Honestly, I put in a few hours a month of maintenance at most on the tank now that its up and running.
Click to expand...

Not right now... in the future. Your maintenance needs go up exponentially as a tank matures. Right now you have 4oz. of fish in there. Wait until you have 40 lbs of fish in there, swimming around and pooping 24/7. I've got a 6000 gallon pond and trust me, it adds up. Your tank is so large it probably won't mature for two years (or more) because corals will be getting established, things will be growing, and your maintenance needs will be slowly creeping up the entire time. Your protein skimmers will go from not needing cleaning for a month, to needing cleaning weekly, etc. Then as your dissolved organics start to creep up, your algae battles or water changing needs will evolve.

I'm sorry if I didn't read every note in this awesome thread. You may be way ahead of me and have 30 years of reef-keeping under your belt and know all of this stuff already :)
 
Im confident that the system we have set up will be scalable in the future to handle current and future filtration needs.

My plan is to add another 10-15 small fish (chromi like schooling fish) and nothing else. Dont want to be a slave to a massive tank but want to keep it moderately stocked to enjoy it.
 
Wow! I have been reading this thread for several months now on and off and I finally made it to the end! This is one spectacular ground up, house around the fish tank, build. The house looks amazing, well designed and beautiful architecture, and an awesome fish tank and set up.

As a recent new resident to the Phoenix area I'd love to see everything if you ever have an open house whenever you decide the time has come to sell.

Again, an amazing project, very well done, and an awesome thread to follow along and enjoy your journey. Keep it up.

- Tim
 
tmm16cbd said:
Wow! I have been reading this thread for several months now on and off and I finally made it to the end! This is one spectacular ground up, house around the fish tank, build. The house looks amazing, well designed and beautiful architecture, and an awesome fish tank and set up.

As a recent new resident to the Phoenix area I'd love to see everything if you ever have an open house whenever you decide the time has come to sell.

Again, an amazing project, very well done, and an awesome thread to follow along and enjoy your journey. Keep it up.

- Tim
Click to expand...

Thanks Tim. Appreciate the kind words. Glad you made it to the end.
 
It's almost comical how you seem to be avoiding the Apex... Most of us know you will eventually go there, but it's just fun to watch the squirming along the way.... :)
We also hope you don't wait for a tragedy to do so.... :)
I'll just place my bet on within 12 months...
(Tongue in cheek. Good fun)
That control 4 sounds cool. I'm going to look into it...
All the best


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Im not avoiding apex. Because my sump is 90 feet away and because I screwed up and didnt run a cable I have to either do a separate apex just for my power heads and a separate one for my return pumps and skimmer- or figure something else out.

Besides, I can hire someone to install the control 4 where as the apex I have to figure out the damn thing myself. I know its not difficult but Im time strapped and in the middle of a couple of projects and just don't have the bandwidth to take on a project like this.

Apex once you figure it out is easy. I just have no desire to figure it out right now. IF there was someone I could hire- different story- Id do it, have them fully automate.

Up until now, Ive managed just fine without apex. Not saying it wouldnt improve what I have but Im happy with how things are running for the time being.
 
I read this thread front to back and am inlove with your home. Unfortunately living in SoCal, having a home and tank like this would cost me my soul.
 
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