20 Gallon Hex Tank I bought from Travis S.

Wildstar1063

Wildstar1063

New member
I got this nice 20 gallon Hex tank from Travis Stevens last night
at the meeting, it has a center tower of his DIY rock, with the
inlet and overflow hidden in the rock.

Here is a link to the thread where he was selling the tanks, and it
shows how the tower was built.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=973477

I got it home last night and cleaned it up, and today I was just going to do a water leak test, which actually resulted in me Kluging it together, and running it.

Here are some pics.

Here is an Overview of the tank, at the moment, it is set up in my
living room next to my main 55g display.

20gOverview.jpg


Here is the top with the water coming in throug the home made
5-way fitting Travis made.

20gOverflow.jpg


For the moment I have replaced the 5-way with this, because the 5-way was splashing too much water. I think I'm going to have to do
some dremel surgury on the rock, to move the 5-way below the water line.

OVerflow2.jpg


Here is my fancy 5 gallon sump, it is the only thing besides the
tank I had to buy, I already had all the PVC and the pump, from
when we upgraded the plumbing on the 55g

Sump_Overview.jpg


Here is another Pic of the sump

Sump2.jpg


At the moment, I need to put a 1 inch valve on the overflow,
to back it up a bit, so it does not sound like a toilet flushing.

Travis feels that it will take about 3 months for the rock to Kure,
before any life can be added, so once I place the tank in it's
permant home and glue the PVC, I will be changing the fresh
water out every day or every other day, for the next 3 months,
and just letting the water run, and circulate around the rock.

Currenttly I have 750gph Little giant pump running the show, it's
one I've had for a while, I bought it at a thrift store for $4.95, and
ran my main tank for several months when my MAG 12 bit the
dust.

Any way, I hope the pics are ok, they were taken with my Treo,
and I did not clean them up in iPhoto.

As I go along, I will update this thread, as to how the tank is doing.
at the moment I'm thinking about a wooden hood of some sort and
what kind of lighting i'm going to use.

At the moment I'm considering something like this for lighting:

http://www.aquaticlight.com/retrofit.html

Any lighting suggestions? Or does any one know what it would cost
to get a wooden cover built for it?

Thanks

Chuck E.
 
Chuck, I'm extremely excited to see it going. I'm even more excited to see it running. The only drawback to the rock that I can think of is that it is one solid piece. If you wanted to get creative, you could drill a couple holes between the drain and the return to give it a little better look as well as a place for fish to hang out.

FWIW, I couldn't figure out what type of lighting, but I was thinking that a 150-175w MH would be perfect to hang in the middle. You'll have to find a way to keep the hood cool, unless you were going to run it with the top open.

Once again, thank you for sharing. I can't wait to see it fully running.
 
Just a thought, but instead of doing all of the work to drill out the rock and move the 5 way below the water line, what about just plumbing loc line into it? That should stop the splashing shouldn't it? Just my $0.02

Very cool tank by the way
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8726701#post8726701 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReeferRyan
Just a thought, but instead of doing all of the work to drill out the rock and move the 5 way below the water line, what about just plumbing loc line into it? That should stop the splashing shouldn't it? Just my $0.02

Very cool tank by the way
Click to expand...

That's what I intended on doing. But to each his own ;) I'm excited to see where this tank goes compared to what I was thinking for my own.

Quite simply, if you don't want to spend the money on Locline, you can grab 8x 90º 3/4" Elbows and some 3/4" PVC and plumb each outlet down, and then to the side with all those elbows.
 
Yeah, I was thinking about using some PVC Elbows, LocLine
was not an option I even thought about, I have never used it,
and don't know where to get it.

Thanks

Chuck E.
 
Chuck if you want some loc-line I could hook you up with a few fittings, nozzle's and tubing. If so let me know. That is a sweet little setup btw. Can't wait to see it running!
 
Russ,

I was thinking I might be able to get a good circular flow in
there , but with the flow entering and exiting at the top, I'm
thinking I might need to add some type of power head at the
bottom to increase the water flow from the bottom to the top
of the tank, otherwise I might be only circulating the water in
the top few inches of the tank.

KPK,

I'd be interested in some of the LocLine and fittings, If you
read this PM me and let me know how much.


Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to get the overflow
to stop making noise, it's sucking air and it's really loud.
I'm going to try to add some valves to the return and overflow
this weekend, and see if I can balance the flow out so it wont
make as much noise.

Chuck E.
 
I might try a stockman standpipe, I built one in the old overflow
box I had, they are not real hard to do, and if you replace the
little hole in the top with an air valve, you can make it almost
totaly silent.

I have had it up and running all week, changing the water out
every day. And today I took my firs PH Reading, to see how it
was doing. I was not expecting much. I took the PH of the
water just before I was about to change it, so it had been
circulating about 24 hours, and I had just calibrated the unit.
I was suprised to see the PH at just 9.51, I was expecting
12.00 or so. an

I Put the Maxijet mod at the bottom of the tank, and it was moving
so much water that it actually raised the water column so that it
almost overflowed out of the tank before I could unplug it. This was
with the MaxiMod all the way at the bottom and horizontal with
the bottom. It really swirled the water around nice though, I might
tray one of those new Hydor ones later.

Chuck E.
 
Below were the instructions I found at that site, It does not say how much sugar he was using per volume of water, or how much yeast
he added. I have yeast for my bread baking machine, and for my
wine making kit, I wonder if the type makes a difference ;-).

Has anyone tried this method of kuring?

Thanks

Chuck E.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2. <<Set up your own brewery in your new tank >>


16) Fill the tank with water, and add sugar and active dry
yeast. You can also add some baking soda to buffer the pH.
Run a pump to keep the water moving around the portland
cement.

Now when you get near the tank it will smell like fresh
baked bread.


17) When fragrant smell of baked bread decreases add more
sugar.


18) Eventually after several days it will begin to smell a
bit less than fresh.

When that happens, empty the tank, and make a few water
changes, and then fill with water and monitor the pH for a
couple days.


19) If the pH is 8.3 or lower, then the tank is ready for
salt water.
 
I used it when i built my cement tank and used 1/2 cup sugar and 1 pkg active dry yeast in a 30 gallon. It took about 5 days if i remember right. It is the same yeast you make bread with.
 
Well, I guess we'll see what happens, I added 1/4 cup of sugar, and
1 level tea spoon of bread yeast (I buy the yeast in a jar).

So I'll let it run for a while and see what happens.

I have read that the active ingreadient here is CO2. I wonder if you
could just put yeast water and sugar in a sealed jar, and glue an airline fitting in the cap of the jar. Then just run an airline from
the jar to the tank and put an air stone on it and just let the CO2
bubble in to the tank. from the jar.

Might be interesting to try that with a calcium reactor, instead of buying bottled CO2

Chuck E.
 
The end goal is to create an acidic water to remove part of the alkaline part of the cement. You would get it done faster using vinegar or even a little muriatic acid. Not too much or you will end up with cement crumbles.
 
Muratic acid will also pull silicates from the cement, so you might want to be careful there. You could end up with a large amount of available silicates in your new tank.

You can bubble CO2 and get the same effect as the yeast and sugar if you have it available, so i guess the airline in the jar idea may work.
 
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