~450G Display (~1000G system) documentary starting

[kwl1763]

Chris, I'm cooking without really intentionally doing it. There is no light down there so I have no choice. I'll guess I'll say I intentionally got the rock this early for that very reason though. It will be in there probably 2 months until the tank gets moved in and set up!

Yep, the Merlin is just RO. I put just a standard coralife add on DI canister after it. Fortunatly my tap water here is pretty darn ood so the DI should last quite a while. I'm getting 1 or 2 TDS out of the Merlin and 0 after the DI. I also put 3 prefilters (standard ones on RODI units) on before it so it's complete now. It's a little goofy because the Merlin uses 3/8" tubing and everything else uses 1/4" so there are quite a bit of reduction and expansion connectors.

The skimmer this morning is starting to foam but nothing major dumping out yet. I'm a little suprised it's taking a while but I'm not worried at all. It seems to be functioning well! I've had it take up to two days with new LR before it realy started taking the nastiness out.

 

[schwaggs]

Keith, I recently setup a 210 display with a total system volume of around 400 gallons here in hotlanta. I just read through your entire thread here and have a comment/questions on the humidity issue. Do you have AC installed in your basement yet? Is it a separate system from the rest of your house? I had to install a separate AC/furnace for my basement becuase the first floor furnace/AC was not big enough to handle both floors. This turns out to be a blessing. The guy that installed the basement system used smaller diameter ducting with a larger blower than needed. This creates a pressure and slower flow in the return ducting that actually "wrings" the moisture out of the air. I was able to keep my system within .5 degrees of my setpoint with just fans! It worked well this summer when the AC was running. I also have a bathroom vent fan in my fishroom that I could use if I needed.

The problem started this fall when the AC doesn't run very much and it isn't cold enough to run the furnace. I have a dehumidifyer that runs anytime the RH gets over 40 or 50%. This fall, it was running constantly but evaporation could no longer keep my system cool due to the higher RH. That's when I determined that this wasn't working, essentually, I was evaporating water into the air (cheap way to cool tank, right?) just to pay to have it removed by the dehumidifyer (just as expensive to run as a chiller!). So this fall, I connected my chiller and disconnected the fans. That worked very well. The evaporation rate was only a couple of gallons a day and if the humidity got too high, the de-humidifyer runs.

This winter, humidity has not been a problem. I set the basement to around 65 degrees and neither the chiller nor the dehumidifyer run. In fact, I need to run 450W of heater to keep the system warm...

For next summer, I was thinking of placing the chiller outside. This way, all the heat extracted by the chiller will be put outside in the first place. Of course, I might just use fans with the AC again.

My advide to you is to get a separatly AC system for your basement if you have not already. If it is tied to your upstairs system, you could check into getting a damper installed that would allow you to set different temps for upstairs and down. Have some furnace ducts installed in your fish room to keep it cool and dry in the summer and warm in the winter, Also, I would install ducting from the hood of your display location into your fish room before finishing the walls just in case you need it some day. Also, install one or more exhause vents in your fish room before finishing any areas that would prevent installation later. You also should see if there is an area in your fish room where you can install a sink and counter for cleaning things, including your hands. This has proven VERY helpful for me. I would plan on getting a de-humidifyer for your fish room as backup for those days when neither the furnace nor AC runs.

 

[melev]

Keith, that rock does look great, and it was good that you chose to dunk and swish it all. It's amazing what comes out of LR.

Schwaggs, interesting points. Thanks for chiming in on this topic, as it is one many of us deal with.

 

[jnarowe]

kwl1763 can't PM you. Your box is full!!

 

[kwl1763]

Sorry about that. I cleaned it out now!

While I was testing the trough water today I decided to test the tap. Since there was only about 16 TDS in it I wanted to see what was in there. Well phosphates are off the charts. At least 5ppm. Nitrates were detetable but less than 1ppm. So even though the water is low TDS I still would never use it with readings like that! Getting some nice junk out of the skimmer now. I'll try to snap some pics tonight.

 

[jnarowe]

the problem with phosphates and nitrates is that they fluctuate so you never know what you are getting, and adding it to an aquarium is sure to cause problems...from personal experience!

 

[kwl1763]

So there was a couple issues I had regarding Phosban Reactors.

The tank is going to be roughly 800G total so I needed at least 3 phosban reactors going. Since the flow is so slow for them I figured I could daisy chain a bunch together. That however would cause an issue since the first reactor media would be used up fastest, etc so I had to figure a way to run them in parallel. It would have been easy enough to get a bunch of 1/2" soft piping and 1/2" T's and done it that way but the major problem was the sides of my sump are to wide for the reactor hanger. I had to do more then widen thaough as they need to be fairly level to work properly. So a few Lowe's trips and an afternoon later here is what I came up with!

The ball valves are strictly to keep water from circulating through the support parts. Here are some other angles.

 

[kwl1763]

I did a 90G water change in the curing troughs before work this morning. This was ~60% of the total. It's weird that do that will only be like 10% in the future and it's almost twice as much as my first tank in total (55G). The water actually looks pretty good. I dunked and swished again and a little cloudy but nothing like the first time and the bottom of the troughs had only a very light coat of detritus which I siphoned out.

Now to the fun stuff. The skimmer is really stating to kick now! My wife thinks I'm crazy getting excited over nasty skimmate but I'm normal right! RIGHT? Come on I need some support here!

Anyway here are some pics of the "dirty bubbles"

 

[NexDog]

Very neat! (on the reactors)

I can understand your excitement on the skimmer. Took a while to get my new deltec dialled in and when it finally started to produce good nog I was well chuffed.

 

[jackson6745]

That's a mean looking skimmer. Do you have a shot of the whole thing in action(since you added the rock)?

 

[jnarowe]

Nice work. That reactor mount is wild. Hard to figure it out until you explain theat the PVC is just for mounting. How are you runninig them so that they are parallel? Can you describe that?

 

[kwl1763]

Sure no problem.

The main issue with a big tank is you need more then 1. 1 reactor is rated for ~300G so I needed 3 of them (I did 4 to run carbon in the fourth)

My first thought was to run the output of one into another, etc. The problem with that is the media in the first reactor would be used up much faster then the other as it is getting the "dirty water". So I had to figure out a way to run them parallel. In other words feed them all dirty water.

If the reactors could sit on the ground or hang on the sump the solution would be very simple as you could just run the input to a 1/2" barbed T. The bottom of the T would go through the provided ball valve and input into the reactor. The other side of the T would continue to another T where the bottom of that second T could then be connected to another, reactor, etc until on the last you could use a 90 elbow instead of a T. This lets the "dirty" water be distributed equally among the reactors meaning that theoretically they will use up the media at the same rate.

Unfortunatly the lip of the troughs is to wide to allow the hangers built in on the reactor to work so I built this to support the reactors and keep them level and run them in parallel.

Hopefully that didn't confuse the issue further. The only PVC with water flow in the picture is the main bar you see with the grey barbs screwed into it. The rest is simply for support. The ball valves just stop the water from flowing through the support structure.

 

[kwl1763]

Richard on p. 5 there is a shot of the full skimmer running in all it's glory.

Schwaggs, sorry for the delay as I just now got a spare minute to read your full post. I am having seperate AC/heat installed in the basement. I will for sure have on of the reurns in the fish room. That way it will create a negative pressure situation and suck "fresh air" in from other parts of the basement. I'm sure I'll put a duct in there blowing also but will probably just shut it so the negative pressure will be more. The key is getting that humidity out of the room! If I just cool it down it will just condensate on the walls contributing to the problem.

I will install a vent fan that will be hooked to a humidistat. I'm actually trying to think of way to be able to run that only when the humidy outside is under x%. I don't want to be venting outside only to suck in high humidity air. Fortunatly it will be sucked from other areas of the basement. Again my focus is going to be on creating these negative pressure situation to actually get the humidity out of there! I'm really hoping I won't need a chiller. I'm not worried about 9 months out of the year as the basement stays pretty cool. It's those hot couple summer months I'm worried about. Hopefully fans will get the job done. If not I'll do as you suggest and just turn off all the fans to reduce evap and put a chiller on.

 

[tang_man_montreal]

I love the phosban reactor manifold... I see one of those in my near future..

 

[jnarowe]

Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense. Could you have just built a larger reactor or used some sort of larger filter to accomodate the media? Are they rated for 300g because of media volume? HWta about flow rate? Can the media be changed while the others are still in use or do you have to shut it down to swap out media?

 

[kwl1763]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6528973#post6528973 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense. Could you have just built a larger reactor or used some sort of larger filter to accomodate the media? Are they rated for 300g because of media volume? HWta about flow rate? Can the media be changed while the others are still in use or do you have to shut it down to swap out media?

Ya but the reactors were $25 so the whole thing cost me less than $120. Find me a huge fluidized filter for that and I'd buy it! These hold almost as much as the big one here.

http://www.myreefcreations.com/newproducts.htm

So I saved like $100

The media volume they hold is 150g which can treat 300G of water.

Flow rate is real slow. just enough to make the top of the media "dance" and the whole thing slowly boil. I have to shut the whole thing down to change media but it's not a big deal. I can remove them independent of each other. It takes literally 2 minutes to change the media.

 

[jnarowe]

Good to know. And the reactors are the Phosban brand? I thought those were more expensive.

 

[melev]

Keith, I thought those reactors were only rated for 150g each. That is why I have two on my tank to phosphate removal.

 

[kwl1763]

No if you read the 150 stands for 150 grams! That according to the directions will treat 300 gallons. You would still need 2 on yours as you have like 350 gallons total. Not only that but I'm sure they are probably a little generous with the rating like anyone else!

The curing vat has suprisingly clean water. There is a trace of nitrite and nothing else. No funky smells and the skimer is still producing but only a very small amount of skimmate. There is a very very small amount of detritus on the bottom and that's it. I'm doing another 90G water change tommorow still!

I'm also thinking about leaving some rock in the tank where the skimmer is runnign now as sort of a cryptic sponge filter. We'll see as we go.

 

[ReefWaters]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6543969#post6543969 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kwl1763 I'm also thinking about leaving some rock in the tank where the skimmer is running now as sort of a cryptic sponge filter. We'll see as we go. [/B]

Are you referring to the Dynamic Ecomorphology method? I really like that idea. Not so much to run the whole system but to supplement it. I plan on adding a cryptic tank to my system in the future, when it gets moved and I have the room for yet another tank to connect to the system. It certainly cant hurt anything and I don't see how it would cause any problems. Remember that they suggest almost no flow through that tank though.

Let me know if that's what your thinking about.