295 gallon sps system! And so it begins!

Reel North

Reel North

New King of Quarantine
I have had it with small spills destroying my floor! I've already replaced my engineered hardwood floor around my tank once, and having a dehumidifier running constantly is getting really annoying.

I have a friend who has been chasing me to sell him my 220 (72 x 30 x 24 tall) and with my wife getting increasingly frustrated with the humidity, the mess and the damage, the timing was perfect.

I sold him my tank, stand and sump, which he is coming to get on Monday if he can get the people.

Once it's out, I can get moving on an in wall build with an actual system behind it.

The tank will be 84 x 30 wide x 27" tall, and will be on a 2x6 wooden stand. I'll paint the stand with pond sealer, and use blue drywall. There is a window in the room, which I can use for a bit of ventilation, until I can get a proper fan in to vent the humid air out - which will be before the system is filled.

I will use my sump from my frag system, which is 60 x 36 as the mechanical filtration, and I will use my 100 gallon stock tank as a refugium/live rock bin. I will ALSO be hooking in my frag tank to the system, which is 60 x 36 x 12.

The plumbing is going to be a bit of a circus to get done, but I have some friends who are absolute wizards when it comes to this aspect of the hobby.

The big advantage to this new layout is that EVERYTHING fish related can be put behind the wall in this room. There are drains, and the water lines are accessible. I can get bigger water drums, and have a better mixing station. If there are spills, it doesn't mattter. I can have a counter for fragging, testing, etc and I can make it how I want it to be.

Where I struggle a little bit is how I would plumb in the bean animal drains and returns to feed both the sump, and the stock tub/ refugium and the frag system.

I'll take some photos of the here and now, and the soon to be.

Any suggestions are absolutely welcome. I like to use the wheel, not reinvent it. :fish2:
 
From another thread I think you are considering an external overflow. I have a coast to coast on my custom 350 with 3 standpipes that drain at the bottom through black ribber 1.5 inch tubing into my sump. Works really well, and is pretty quite as long as the standpipes are not that short so that the water level in the overflow is just a little below your display. My overflow is 4*18*42 inches so it's large enough to use to accliminate (not QT of course) fish and it catches detritus which makes it easy to clean for water changes. I've got strainers on the pipes because I had more than a few fish that find their way over the waterfall before I put eggcrate there. Pictures below from when I first set it up. WHen full of water you can unfortunately see through the side but it's now well encrusted with coralline.





 
I should come by and change that to a bean animal for you. Dead silent.

Thanks for the info on NAFB. I forgot all about them.

What size is your tank?
 
ABout 350G's - 72*42*28. In terms of the noise, it's behind a wall and I barely hear it over the sound of the sequence pump serving as my closed loop. YOu're of course very welcome to come by and take a look, just let me know. Andrew
 
Yeah, I love the width, wish I had gone even bigger. Also not having the overflows in the tank is a big plus. I have 3 T5 fixtures over my tank, 2*4 footers with 18 bulbs total and 1*3 foot with 6 bulbs. It's a lot of light but it's a mostly sps tank and my corals seem to thrive. My nutrients are also high as I've got a lot of fish that I feed well, and I've read that higher intensity lighting is better when your water quality isn't the greatest.

 
Well, if you insist :).





The first is a recent show, the second taken about a year ago before I had some trouble with fluctuating parameters which killed some of my larger colonies. It wasn't all that bad because it gave me the opportunity to get re-aquascape with about 1/3 less rock.
 
That's sick. Period.

Man I really want to go with this 84" tank. I have the space. Just.

Big is best ;)
 
So the fellow who bought my tank just can and took it up the stairs. There is no possible way that a 7 ft tank is going down those stairs. Grrrr.

So in the name of practicality, it's going to be a 270 gallon reef. 72 x 36 wide x 24 tall.

It's so tight at the bottom of the stairs that I can't have the external overflow on it when it goes down across the landing! Saved me building a 2x4 model though!
 
Reel North said:
So the fellow who bought my tank just can and took it up the stairs. There is no possible way that a 7 ft tank is going down those stairs. Grrrr.

So in the name of practicality, it's going to be a 270 gallon reef. 72 x 36 wide x 24 tall.

It's so tight at the bottom of the stairs that I can't have the external overflow on it when it goes down across the landing! Saved me building a 2x4 model though!
Click to expand...

It's such a relief to know what will and won't fit down the stairs. I DID have to build a model so I could rest easy that my tank would actually fit down the stairs (with a 90 deg turn). I could not have fit that tank if it was 1" bigger on any dimension. I don't ever want to haul it back out!!
 
The last few days have been a bit of a struggle.

I sold my old tank, and helped get it out of the house.

I took apart my stand, and the cabinets, and packed my powerheads and equipment away.

I drained and cleaned my old sump, washed out the shop vac, and started mixing saltwater for a wc on my overfilled frag system.

I sat and stared at the thousands of dollars of equipment I own, and felt a little despair come over me.

Looked around the basement, and imagined all the work that was going to go into the new system, the renovation (although small isn't cheap), and wondered if I wanted to move forward.

My wife is on me about the money for a new tank, the cost of the Reno, the water damage on the floors, etc etc.

I guess I'm just frustrated.

Tell me what do to reefers of the world.
 
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