A Customdusty Rimless Build

[customdusty]

So I've had a set-back... Now that I managed to get the tank plumbed up and filled, I discovered a leak on the seal/gasket on the bulkhead of the Glass-Holes overflow.

The problem now being that the tank is hard plumbed through the walls and in place, I had no way to access this bulk head or do anything about the leak short of tearing it all out and having to start over.

Now, the tank has been drained and I have buckets and totes of saltwater all over the house, the plumbing has been cut out, and I have to order all new plumbing materials and will have to re-build about half of the system's plumbing.

I was hoping to have the tank transfer done already and the old tank torn down, but now it's just a total mess. I've had to call the contractors who were scheduled to continue the remodeling in the house and postpone all of it, again.

In hindsight maybe I could have been more precise and thorough when applying silicone inbetween the gasket and tank, but nonetheless, I find a shortcoming in the Glass-Holes product. The manner in which the bulkhead and overflow box is designed requires it to be tightened into place by using your finger tips to try and crank down the big 2.75" nut and compress 2 gaskets to create the seal. With my big bear paws for hands, it proved to be a major problem.

I've been spending my time now trying to design and build some sort of tool that can get down inside the box to tighten the nut. I've made a couple of prototypes and now it is off to the machine shop to fire up a lathe and mill and start making the real deal.

You can imagine how FURIOUS I was to be working against deadlines, being so close to finishing, and then having to tear it all out. I have to say though that despite all of this, I can't hold Glass-Holes or anyone else accountable. I'm pretty happy with their product, it is very small and operates very quietly - as advertised.

This weekend will be a big one for the build (or re-build?), I'll post more then.

 

[drtrash]

Looking at the last picture, Does your 3/4 " return line fit underneath the 1 1/2 drain line?

 

[customdusty]

The return line cuts across beneath the 45° (right in the area where the angle is) and then passes through the wall directly next to it as a 1" line.

The return pipes aren't affected by this problem, I will have to replace the bulkhead all the way through the wall and to the sump for the drain portion.

The new layout I plan to go straight back through the wall first with the drain line, then do one 90 degreee drop down to the sump rather than all of the 45's I have now. This way if I ever have to pull it out again, I can cut in one place pull the tank straight out and then re-connect later.

I'll show pictures later of what I had, and then with the new set-up in a few days.

 

[customdusty]

Well it took a few hours last night but I was able to make a custom steel 3/8" thick 2.75" wrench to get inside the overflow box to torque down the nut.

I just got back from the store buying new fittings and pipes, now it's back to re-building the plumbing.

Pictures will be up a little later once the camera charges up.

 

[SkyPapa]

In hindsight maybe I could have been more precise and thorough when applying silicone inbetween the gasket and tank, but nonetheless, I find a shortcoming in the Glass-Holes product. The manner in which the bulkhead and overflow box is designed requires it to be tightened into place by using your finger tips to try and crank down the big 2.75" nut and compress 2 gaskets to create the seal. With my big bear paws for hands, it proved to be a major problem.

Very nice build.

I have used 3 glass holes so far, a 300, a 700 and a 1500 and I have always been able to tighten the bulkhead by installing the elbow and turning it while holding the nut in place with my fingers or a big channel lock. This before hard plumbing obviously.
It takes a little finagling to get the elbow in the final orientation .

 

[customdusty]

Well everything worked out well over the weekend with the re-plumbing, filling, and then transfer. The only problem I had was with my digital camera, so I don't have all of the pics just yet.

The tool that I made worked out great for tightening up the nut inside the GlassHoles overflow. I used probably an excessive amount of silicone grease this time as well, but with the torque I was able to put on it - no leaks!

I was also able to re-use most of the plumbing and not have to re-build much, which saved several hours in labor and time waiting for PVC cement to dry - which was a nice relief.

From there I re-filled the tank with all saltwater that had been in totes all over my house and got my Apex controller programmed. This thing is just amazing to have, I don't know how I lived without one before. I also spent a bit of time organzing my eletrical layout. I used a switch box for all of my pumps and support equipment which makes the act of turning things on and off a breeze, rather than searching through mess of cables to find and unplug the one you want. Having mounted all of my vortech controllers, ballasts, and power distribution inside the stand, I managed to keep the entire area clear - there is absolutely nothing occupying any space below the tank. I think I might move my Kalk reactor and top off reservoir below the tank in this space, those are the only items I have yet to take off of my 90 and move to the new system. I'll probably do that tonight.

The transfer was a huge project, but everything went just fine. I moved about 2/3 of my LR over, although only a little more than half went into the DT with the rest in my sump and frag tank. The only piece of rock I didn't move was a big piece that I will probably sell to somebody locally. It's a single piece that weighs about 60lbs and takes up too much space for what I was looking to do with the new tank.

All of the fish and corals I moved made the transfer just fine as well. The only fish that I didn't bring over was a diamond goby who likes to burrow and spit sand everywhere. It is really a cool fish to watch and has a interesting personality, but with the massive amount of water movement I have, every time he spits sand (which is pretty much constantly) it causes the entire system to cloud up. I also didn't bring over most of my softies and and the CUC. I want the real estate reserved for new sps, and there just isn't anything there to support the CUC just yet. The last invert I didn't bring over was my "famous" long spine urchin. It has always been my wife's favorite, and the favorite for just all of my friends and family that visit and check out my reef. It will be a tough one to part ways with, but it is a hazard to me, and frankly I don't think it will survive in the low nutrient environment with minimal algae and live rock. Did I mention that it is about the size of a volleyball? We will see how that goes, I have a feeling my wife might veto my decision to get rid of it.

 

[customdusty]

Wow... who would have thought that my digital camera would be holding up my thread?!

Anyways here are some updated shots of my progress. My brain is a bit scattered, so I may have to revisit some events of the build with some more details later.

My electrical layout, the best I felt I could organize it without really going crazy. I figured I might wait for a while to see how things go, what I might need access to when maintenance time rolls around and so on before I really do anything permanent.

Now here is how the everything looked after moving in the top off reservoir and kalk reactor.

 

[customdusty]

I plan on using some small labels to place on the switch box to identify what piece of equipment each switch controls. It will make it incredibly easy then for any time I might need to go out of town and walk my brother, neighbor, or wife through some trouble shooting.

The few new issues I have run into now...

Although my system volume is very comparable to that of my old one, I am having a bit of an issue getting the temp. up to where I want it. Likely because of the increased surface area of water, I'm just not able to heat the tank with a single 200w heater as I have in the past. I'm upgrading to a 250w and will also probably continue to keep another one in there just in case one should fail.

Using a rubbermaid sump for the first time is a bit of a learning process. I love the flexibility of it, I can move it pretty easily, I can bend the sides to run cords around it, and I can beat it up a little bit. Unfortunately, the bottom isn't cmpletely flat so it is difficult to find the a nice level spot for the skimmer. Likewise the lip around the top makes clamping things to it a lot more difficult because the surface is rather weak and it is round. Mounting my float switch for my ATO went from a quick hand tightened screw to getting out tools and ratches and cutting the lip.

Dialing in a new skimmer is always fun too. Although there won't be much bioload for a little while for this big-boy to churn up, I'm still trying to manage the water level to keep it from overflowing. It has liked to do that pretty regularly since I fired it up.

 

[jimmycent]

Some pretty impressive equipment, should be nice once its up and running. Look forward to watching it progress

 

[customdusty]

Here are a couple of quick shots. I still haven't aquascaped and I've got coral and rock in my frag tank and sump still - but slowly but surely it's getting there.

 

[esco]

Looks beautiful!

 

[customdusty]

Thanks for the nice comments everybody. It still has a long way to go, and I could definately use a new camera.

The shots above have only 1 radium on and all T5's off, hence the shadowing effect. I was playing around with the programming of my Apex last night and didn't get around to putting the light settings back, although I have to admit I did like the shadowed look.

I've got a few more fish to get in there and the rest of my frags are being mounted onto some rocks, so hopefully I will have some of that done this weekend.

 

[Taqpol]

Hey custom, after looking to bend pipe to hang lights above a rimless tank I'm making I ended up buying the CurrentUSA arms as well. How did you go about connecting the wires to your light fixture, considering that is not a current brand fixture?

 

[customdusty]

Hey custom, after looking to bend pipe to hang lights above a rimless tank I'm making I ended up buying the CurrentUSA arms as well. How did you go about connecting the wires to your light fixture, considering that is not a current brand fixture?

I didn't use any of the wires or anything that came built into the arms, I basically gutted them and used just the arms themselves. I drilled a hole all the way through the arm where the old wires hung from and put a screw through it that my Giesemann kit connected to.

I'll see if I can get a picture of it, but my camera sucks so I'm not sure how well the close up will work. It may differ slightly for you depending on what your hanging kit is like.

 

[Taqpol]

Oooooh. My fixture dosn't actually come with hanging mounts or a kit, so I'm going to have to modify something.

 

[customdusty]

Well I started aquascaping the tank a little bit now, although I'm not sure how I am going to want to have things long term though. I had wanted to go out and buy another half dozen or so ORA acros, but think I will wait some time and let my bank account recover. I tore down my old 90 gal last week and started parting it out, but I'm stuck with a huge piece of LR that I can't find a buyer for so it is occupying almost my entire sump area. I have a lot of plans for organizing the sump and frag tank, but now everything is in sort of a state of disarray until I can get some of the old stuff cleaned out.

I did however manage to get my new Alpha Kone dialed in, this thing is just ridiculous. I had struggled for about a week with it overflowing constantly but I realized I was just adjusting it too often and not giving it time to settle before I fine tuned it. Now things are going great with it. I'll get some shots of it in action soon, since I am again hindered by a lack of a digital camera.

The latest problem I have run into is that my Geo Kalk reactor keeps backwards siphoning and pulling kalk water back into my fresh water reservoir. I am using a Maxijet 600 for the top off pump that feeds the reactor (previously tried 900 and 1200) and it keeps somehow sucking the top 3 inches or so out of the reactor chamber and pulling into my RO/DI reservoir. I have the pump several inches higher than the output tube inside the reactor, but nonetheless, it keeps happening. I recently now even tried raising the reservoir a few inches, so now the pump inside the reservoir is 6 inches higher than the inlet tube inside the reservoir, but still, I keep somehow siphoning it back. It seems that the check valve that came with the Geo to prevent this from happening is pretty much worthless.

 

[magikfly]

Aren't the twin vortechs overkill? After all, there wont be much of LR in the way if you're going for the minimalist look.

 

[customdusty]

Aren't the twin vortechs overkill? After all, there wont be much of LR in the way if you're going for the minimalist look.

I don't think they are overkill at all, but that might be because I don't typically run them both at full power simultaneously. I have them synched up but operating in opposite mode, so as the power on one side ramps up, the power on the other ramps down. I will usually manually set them on full blast for about a half an hour per day to stir things up and get anything that may have settled anywhere it the tank and get it back up in the water column for my skimmer to get. If I were to leave them at 100% all of the time I believe my fish wouldn't be too happy, they like the current for a while but they soon grow tired of it and seek cover.

 

[magikfly]

Reason I asked is I have an equally sized rimless, and I can't put twin vortechs because I have an overflow on the side.
I'm pretty sure a single vortech would stir things up too much.
I might have to go with tunze's so could direct flow.

 

[Taqpol]

I think two vortechs are perfect on a tank this size (I have two on a 4'x2' footprint tank). To the above poster, you could put one on the far side and one on the back wall. Or maybe have a vortech and the far side and a tunze on the back wall, best of both worlds. Regardless, I am a staunch vortech fan because of the type of flow they produce.