150 Gallon Tall In Wall Build

[Ruminari]

Growth updates. I was pretty concerned about the Kessil lights being able to grow coral and get any kind of color on them. I'm happy to report after a fairly short time in a pretty new tank I have some growth going. The slimmer a bit less so on growth, but I'll take what I can get. Also note I had the lights turned down to 45% and have now slowly ramped them back up to 70% over the course of a month or so.

Green Slimmer today - Very little growth but you can tell it's healed up some and has just a very little bit of growth.

Green Slimmer as of 4/9/15

Pink Birdsnest Today - When we got it it was very browned out from the LFS and today you can see obvious growth and the coloration has drastically improved. It has also started to put out numerous new sprouts.

Pink Birdsnest as of 4/9/15

 

[Rob6311]

Honestly I love how you bought frags personally I love frags because you can start off and watch them grow and it's just exciting to see all the new growth

 

[Ruminari]

We have almost always got our corals from frags or aquaculture. The only coral in the tank that isn't reef friendly is the bubble coral. However, this one I will frag and seed the Boise area. I used to frag mine in my last tank regularly. We too really prefer the aqua cultured corals and you also have a better idea of what you are going to end up with.

 

[Ruminari]

I was able to add to the collection this past Saturday. The owner of our LFS had his 35th bday on Saturday and to commemorate he offered 35% off everything alive in his store!!! Tough to beat that kinda deal. We walked out with a nice orange lobo, two nice acros, a good zoa frag, a moon coral frag, a green and red favite frag, and a green hammer frag for $100 bucks. I'll have to get some pics of them uploaded.

 

[Ruminari]

Well the latest update is we've added a few more corals and a nice sized scribbled rabbitfish that was bought from a tank breakdown. We've always liked the scribbled and love their indiscriminate attack of algae.

I've snapped pics of a bunch of the new corals, now I just need time to get them put into the thread. One is extremely pretty and has a nice purple base with neon green polyps.

 

[mistaflicksta]

Did you modify the return pipe? ( change it to a conventional Durso) what type of return pump are you using? Im having problems with noise on my tank. Trying to figure out what others with the same tank have done to fix the nosie issue.

 

[Ruminari]

Erik - Glad to offer up what I've done so far. I've ran the 1-1/2" piping starting about a 6-7' straight drop from the tank down into the crawl space. Then it slowly goes down another 2-3 feet before heading back up to the sump room at about minus 3 feet from the tank drain entry height. As for the pump I'm running a Pan World 50PX-X and all the way open it should be going at about 1000GPH based on my calcs, however I have it balled back slightly, I'm guessing I'm running between 700-800 GPH through my 65 gallon sump.

In terms of the drain entry pipe (Durso), I did end up going with just a straight Durso and then adding side vents to it with ice maker tubing. I'd heard of several ways of adding in the venting, however I ended up drilling the two holes out and then jamming about a 3-4" piece of tubing into each hole to allow air to be sucked into the pipe. This effectively made a silencer and you can't hear the drain itself anymore. However you can hear some of the air in the piping, however with my cabinet closed it's nothing to note. In fact it's quieter than my Kessils by far and even quieter than my two Tunze 6095 pumps which I'm thinking about trading in for the new MP40WQD or the upcoming Apex WAV (if they would ever come out with the stinking thing. )

What really makes the most noise in my system I believe is the pump reverberation in the 40' of tubing. I hear a constant hum from the pump, while not overly loud, it's more pump noise than I'd like. I'm thinking about cutting it apart eventually and putting in some sort of silicone connector to reduce the transfer of vibrations.

I suppose the million dollar question is where is your noise coming from? The pipe entry? The drain line itself? Or where it exits into the sump?

 

[mistaflicksta]

Thanks for your response. I was having problem with the original over flow (@ pipe entry). I have now made id a traditional Durso and I have resolved that problem ( other than the air coming from the hole). I am now having a problem with the outlet into the sump. If I put the outlet under water, then I get a gurgling sound in the sump. If I put the outlet outside of the water, then I can hear the water cascade into the sump. I'm going to play with a couple of configurations and hopefully I can reduce the noise.

As far as the return pump, I am also getting the reverberation on the return plumbing. I was also thinking about cutting back some of the PVC and having more silicone flex tubing between the pump and the pvc.

 

[Ruminari]

Erik - One thing that worked pretty well for my situation was basically making the same Durso design in my sump entry. I have my sump entry T'd off and it goes up slightly and I put the same two holes with some ice maker tubing pushed into them to silence the sound. This drastically reduced the sound of my setup. This basically let's the air escape via gravity out of the holes before it has a chance to bubble and gurgle in the sump. Then my sump entry is a good 10" below the water line; not that it needs to be that deep, but just what I went with in my design.

 

[mistaflicksta]

Erik - One thing that worked pretty well for my situation was basically making the same Durso design in my sump entry. I have my sump entry T'd off and it goes up slightly and I put the same two holes with some ice maker tubing pushed into them to silence the sound. This drastically reduced the sound of my setup. This basically let's the air escape via gravity out of the holes before it has a chance to bubble and gurgle in the sump. Then my sump entry is a good 10" below the water line; not that it needs to be that deep, but just what I went with in my design.

I have reduced the noise drastically since my last post. I am curious as to what the durso you made for the sump. I have done something similar but still get some gurgle from the outlet. I will send you a link to the build thread as soon as I make it.

 

[Ruminari]

Sounds great, I'd be happy to see what you've created. Also I'll snap some pictures of my setup.

 

[Ruminari]

Here's the sump entry setup. I'd have preferred the T to come straight up off of the elbow you can see in the picture, however I didn't feel so inclined to change out those parts as I had the sizing I wanted.

Here's a picture of the assembly. I basically took a cap and a plug. I then drilled two holes originally in it and put in I think it is 3/8" tubing to act just like a muffler on your car. The plug I then ran on my grinding wheel so that it fits inside of the cap and just slide it into the elbow you can see in the first picture. You now see three holes as I've very recently been having some issues with my drain line clearing the air and causing my float switch in my tank to trip. The easiest thing to try was putting more holes here, which of course it turns out I need more holes in the durso line.

 

[Ruminari]

So I thought I'd provide an update. In the last 3-4 weeks when I have been turning off the main pump for the feed cycles or maintenance it fires back up and the overflow had been having difficulties handling the flow. Which is very odd as it had been running just fine for a good 5 months previously. I literally tried everything I could think of to adjust things. More holes in the drain air relief in the sump room, bigger holes in the durso style overflow, running the durso open top. I even tried dialing down the flow from the return pump by ball valving it back. I finally figured it out when I said screw it and dialed the pump back to full throttle. In the last week I have not had a single issue with it. So it turns out with a nice long run like that you really need to select the appropriate size pump and air holes in the durso to make it work effectively.

Then the worst thing to report I ended up with a Typhoid Mary in my tank in the form of a new Scribbled Rabbitfish. The fish was just in from a local's tank that was being broken down and was in in "perfect condition," well I'm shooting myself in the foot for believing a word out of the LFS. We had picked it up from our LFS, which is one of the few fish that we have gotten from any local LFS and looked good in the dimly light store. Turns out he had ich, but didn't see it until we had him home in the display tank. Now we are fighting an ich outbreak in a tank that we cannot get the fish out of, I've thought about buying a fish trap which would be the ONLY way to get them out. Currently our blue tang, rabbitfish, kole tang, and royal gramma all have a bit of ich on them. PITA!!!! I know, I know, my own fault for not QTing him. Let's just say I'm sticking to LiveAquaria for all of my fish moving forward. You simply cannot beat the health an durability of their fish. So for now all of the fish are eating very well. The blue tang is having the worst time with the ich and here's keeping my fingers crossed he pulls out of it. Live and learn I suppose.