240g Rimless: Silent & Simple

[TJQ]

Any update? The project stoped?

Still going strong, I'll take some pictures and update soon.

 

[TJQ]

Water Exchange System

The water exchange system had the following criteria:

-Deal with the constraints of having no fish room
-Easy to maintain
-Quiet

I ended up running three tubes from my tank/sump in the kitchen, through the floor and across the basement into a small storage room for about 40-50' run.

Top Off
A plumbed RO unit feeds a 75 gallon fresh water tank that has a mechanical float valve. From there a Litermeter ATO unit fills up the sump as needed. The Litermeter has two water level detectors as a fail safe.

New Salt Water
I use a submersible pump and tubing to fill up the salt water storage tank when needed, as a temporary solution. The Salt tank has a 1050GPH powerhead, and heater to mix the salt water up. From the sump a a Litermeter exchanges approximately 2% of tank volume per day (it used to be 1% but I am experimenting)

Draining Old Salter Water
A litermeter drains the appropriate amount of salt water into the basement drain. (It's programmed in sync with the adding new salt water)

This system is fairly hands off, if I am only changing out 1% of the water per day, I can get away with not filling up the Salt Water storage tank for about 33 days.

My only complaint about the system is that the RO system can cause a noticeable vibration because I mounted it to the wall/studs. I'll probably just add some rubber washers or put it on the floor.

 

[TJQ]

Water Management / Filtration

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler."


Vertex Alpha 300
I'm still a skimming newbie, but I believe that if my skimmate is closer to tea than to a thick sludge, the less issues I'm going to have with nutrients.


Libra Dosing Unit & Vessels for Alkalinity, Calcium, and Magnesium

Libra Dosing Unit
This unit looks great, easy to use, and are highly programmable. I got the cheaper motors. The pumps are very loud and noticeable, but you can program when and how long they come on so it has passed the wife test so far.

Libra Dosing Vessels
They look beautiful, they seem solid enough, and they have an adjustable air vent to prevent cavitation. But they have two problems: #1) They don't hold $*@*ing water, they leak. #2) They lose suction, so your pumps will just spin and not dose fluids. In summary you pay a premium price for a product that is capable only of putting fluids on your floor, and none of into your sump -- but hey they look really slick. I fixed the leaking problem with super glue, and the suction problem with teflon tape. But I don't feel I should be doing this on a premium product.

Phosphate Management
Originally I started with about 4 cups of GFO in a media bag, but was still showing up to 0.10 P04 on a Hanna meter and nasty GHA. I believe I was just burning through the GFO quickly due to it being a newer tank and possible leaching from my Marco rocks.

Eventually I got a Vertex Ilumilux light the was designed for Fuges and threw in some Chaeto in the sump. It grew a lot, but ultimately I just didn't like the general nastiness of having slime and other stuff growing in that portion of the sump.

I got rid of the light + chaeto, and then switch to 4 cups of GFO in a Vertex reactor. My P04 is showing as 0.00 but I do get a little bit of film/nastiness on the glass on a daily basis. I've been running this for about a month, I might see if the results are same with a media bag in the next few months.

Nitrate Management
4 cups of BRS Biopellets from the start in a media bag, and my system has never show any Nitrate ever. I'm pretty sure reactors aren't required.

Carbon
2 cups of ROX Carbon in a media bag, appears to work fine. I think I'm fine without a reactor.

Mechanical Filtration
My system is lacking a sock filter which I could add at a later time. I could also add a sponge in one of the baffles.

 

[TJQ]

I had to move my rock work closer to the middle as I was only running a 6' light on on the 8' tank.

There are three frag packs in there now. For the most part what has arrived seems to keep color with the odd exception.

All fish have been QT'd. Here's what's in there now:
-Fox Face
-Yellow Tang x 3
-Black Perc x 2
-Perc x 1
-Fire fish x 3
-Purple firefish
-Azure Damsel x 6
-Pistrol Shrimp + Goby
-Threadfin / Glass Cardinal x 20ish
-Bangai Cardinal x 4

Inverts:
-Cleaner Shrimp x 2
-Blood Shrimp x 2
-RBTA (just hides in the back)

 

[TJQ]

Tank stand closed:

Tank stand panels opened:

I had a local reefer custom build these for me to my design. I wanted something that was easy to take off, and clean looking. There was very little space between the tank stand and a kitchen table, so swinging doors would not work as well as panels. It's basically four pieces of nicely done wood with inset magnets.

 

[TJQ]

Here's my rat's nest of tubing and cables. I'm still iterating my system in terms of filtration and equipment, but once I've got things working great I'll spend some time getting this all cleaned up with hopefully no wires showing. I'd like to get some power switches for each plug as right now I do everything manually.

I might add a controller in the future, but probably when I'm done adding livestock and looking for something to do on my tank.

 

[mtodd001]

Nice clean setup, I'm in for the ride.:thumbsup:

 

[TJQ]

Here's the sump:
Lots of extra rock, sponges for future QT use, Carbon Media bag, Biopellet Media bag, and a GFO reactor.

Blue tubing is new fresh water
Yellow tubing is new salt water
White tubing (ran out of black) is old salt water going to the drain
Red tubing is Alk/Cal/Mag.

In the future I'm considering the following:
-Getting an Innovative Marine MiniMax All-In-One Media Reactor
-Cleaning up the return pump plumbing
-Replacing the rock with cleaner looking ceramic biomedia which in theory would have much more room for bacteria
-Cable & tubing management
-A very small black acrylic frag tank that rests on the existing sump. It would be black to keep the lighting on the frag tank, and out of other areas in the tank.

 

[geckoejon]

any updates on this setup? how do you like the vertex?

 

[dknydiep]

any updates?