Well, lots of good progress has been made. The contractor finished up the drywall and I made sure to paint that wall before the tank was put in place. Then I made sure to paint the wall again, cause the wife did not like the color. :facepalm:
The best news is the stand FINALLY came in and the tank is now in its rightful place, so I can finally start working on it! I have corner protectors on the stand so I don't scratch it while I am working on it. The stand itself is 2"x2" aluminum tubing and I had them do a brushed finish on the outside faces. I will eventually be doing inset doors but I think the brushed finish came out really nice. might be hard to see in the photo.
I need to thank Marine Warehouse Aquarium in Tampa for the stand and tank. It was a great experience from ordering through delivery and now it's finally in the house and level!! Oh, let me also say that once it was in place and level, my wife wanted to move it "a few inches" to the right. And did I mention this thing was heavy? Basically, I had to brace myself against the wall and push it with my legs. It was not fun, I think I blew something out. :lolspin:
Now I am working on mocking up the plumbing. I am dry fitting all my lines, make sure I like it, then I will go back and glue them. I opted to get colored pvc fittings from form-u-fit, with white pipe. I'll remove the marking from the pvc when I glue it up so its a nice clean white pipe.
I started with the 20" synergy reef overflow and 2 1" sea swirls. I think this will be a good position for them, I tried them in the front and did not care for the look. I think I'll get better coverage in this spot than in the back corners but would love to hear some opinions.
Down below, I have the major equipment in place. I shopped quite a bit for sumps, ended up going with the Precision Marine R48 PRO. I was also able to customize the sump, adding the extra 1.5" bulkhead, for a total of 3 1.5" bulkheads, to support the bean animal style overflow. I also went with the matching ATOC 15, 15 gallon top-off container. Even though I ran plumbing to my 95 gallon RO tank, I like the safety of only dosing from the ATO in case of equipment failure.
Skimmer is the NYOS QUANTUM 220 Protein Skimmer, which I researched and was very impressed with. Between this skimmer, the vectra pump and bean animal siphon drain I am excited to see how quiet the system will be.
The overflow plumbing got a little crazy! The layout in the synergy has the siphon and open channel drains on the left and right bulkheads, with the emergency drain in the center. I wanted the siphon and open channel to go through the filter sock chamber and the emergency drain to empty direct into refugium section so it would be noisy. Needless to say, I had to get creative and I am glad I over ordered extra fittings for this reason. I had a few options here but overall, I wanted to eliminate any horizontal runs so that no air can get trapped and can evacuate the line quickly.
Next on my list is the overflow box itself. I made a bit of progress but its tough because I have to work from the top of the tank. Even empty, this tank ain't moving so I cant pull it away from the wall to do the plumbing! I am glad I planned for extra deep stand!
So, once I finish dry fitting the drains, I am going to build and install the spill pan. I am making that from 1/2" plywood lined with oatey shower pan liner (40 mil). It will hold 52 gallons, not including equipment displacement. Eventually I'll add a small sump pump attached to the drain so I can handle anything but the most disastrous of leaks.
