As a bit of background, I kept a reef tank for a number of years about 8 years ago. Then we moved from NY to Florida and I took down the tank and sold everything rather than try to move it across the country. It's taken 8 years, but I have finally given in and set up another tank. Back in NY I had a fish room in my basement with a huge 100G feed trough as a sump and plenty of space for everything else. This time I've got a 20G sump (and everything else) in the stand under the tank and I've quickly realized that I really don't have enough space... I'd like to set up a refugium and a frag tank and have a permanent place for a quarantine and I don't have anywhere for any of that right now.
We have a small walk in storage closet off of our garage that we haven't really been using that I think I'm going to commandeer as a fish room. It's about 3'4" x 5'3" and it's under the stairs, so it has a sloping ceiling that starts at 4'7" and goes up to 8'7". It's a bit smaller than would be ideal, but it's a heck of a lot bigger than my current space, which just consists of the space under my stand. I'd like to get everything, including reservoirs for NSW and RODI water in there, but since it's off of the garage it does give me the option to put the reservoirs in the garage if I just can't get everything in.
The room is directly under and on the other side of a wall from the DT, so it shouldn't be too difficult to run the drain and return down and through the wall. It's about 16 feet straight up from the floor of the fish room to the top of the DT, so I'll need a pretty decent return pump. There's a good chance that at some point I'll be adding at least one more FOWLR display tank, so at the very least I'm going to want to size the plumbing to support another tank and maybe even size the return pump for two tanks as well.
So right now, I think this is what I need to figure out...
What size pipes should I use for the return and the drain? I think my current return pump is moving around 300 - 400 gallons per hour, so maybe a goal of pushing 1000 gph would be good to support two tanks with a bit of capacity to spare. Again, I'm looking at 16 feet pretty much straight up, so there should be very few elbows.
Along the same lines, what might be a good return pump? I'll probably price out something that'll do about 400 gph at 16 feet as well as something that'll do 1000 gph at 16 feet... if it's a big difference I might go for the smaller pump for now and plan to replace it eventually when I get another tank. Right now I have a Jabeo DC3000 and I can control it's speed with my apex. I really like that option, but I'm not sure if anyone makes a speed controlled DC pump that big... particularly one that can be controlled with the apex. Would it be possible to connect two DC12000's in parallel?
Unfortunately there is no power in the room right now. I'm trying to decide if I should run a dedicated circuit for it, or just tap into the circuit for the hallway on the other side of the wall, which would be much easier. I'll have to double check to see what else is on that circuit, but I don't think it's got much of a load right now.
There is also no water supply or drain in the room. I should be able to run some 1/4 tubing for my RODI source and drain to a bathroom, but it would have been nice to have a sink right there. Frankly, though, I'm not sure there's enough room for a sink in there anyway.
I'll also need to figure out how to lay out the room. Right now I'm thinking that I'll put a large sump of some sort down at the end and maybe some short reservoirs for RODI and NSW on the left side where the shelves currently are, then I'll build a shelf above them for a frag tank and refugium. What do you think about doing a 55 gallon tank with a divider and put frags on half and a refugium on the other half? I'll need to figure out where a QT might fit in there as well.
Any suggestions on the above points (or anything else I might have missed) would be greatly appreciated
We have a small walk in storage closet off of our garage that we haven't really been using that I think I'm going to commandeer as a fish room. It's about 3'4" x 5'3" and it's under the stairs, so it has a sloping ceiling that starts at 4'7" and goes up to 8'7". It's a bit smaller than would be ideal, but it's a heck of a lot bigger than my current space, which just consists of the space under my stand. I'd like to get everything, including reservoirs for NSW and RODI water in there, but since it's off of the garage it does give me the option to put the reservoirs in the garage if I just can't get everything in.
The room is directly under and on the other side of a wall from the DT, so it shouldn't be too difficult to run the drain and return down and through the wall. It's about 16 feet straight up from the floor of the fish room to the top of the DT, so I'll need a pretty decent return pump. There's a good chance that at some point I'll be adding at least one more FOWLR display tank, so at the very least I'm going to want to size the plumbing to support another tank and maybe even size the return pump for two tanks as well.
So right now, I think this is what I need to figure out...
What size pipes should I use for the return and the drain? I think my current return pump is moving around 300 - 400 gallons per hour, so maybe a goal of pushing 1000 gph would be good to support two tanks with a bit of capacity to spare. Again, I'm looking at 16 feet pretty much straight up, so there should be very few elbows.
Along the same lines, what might be a good return pump? I'll probably price out something that'll do about 400 gph at 16 feet as well as something that'll do 1000 gph at 16 feet... if it's a big difference I might go for the smaller pump for now and plan to replace it eventually when I get another tank. Right now I have a Jabeo DC3000 and I can control it's speed with my apex. I really like that option, but I'm not sure if anyone makes a speed controlled DC pump that big... particularly one that can be controlled with the apex. Would it be possible to connect two DC12000's in parallel?
Unfortunately there is no power in the room right now. I'm trying to decide if I should run a dedicated circuit for it, or just tap into the circuit for the hallway on the other side of the wall, which would be much easier. I'll have to double check to see what else is on that circuit, but I don't think it's got much of a load right now.
There is also no water supply or drain in the room. I should be able to run some 1/4 tubing for my RODI source and drain to a bathroom, but it would have been nice to have a sink right there. Frankly, though, I'm not sure there's enough room for a sink in there anyway.
I'll also need to figure out how to lay out the room. Right now I'm thinking that I'll put a large sump of some sort down at the end and maybe some short reservoirs for RODI and NSW on the left side where the shelves currently are, then I'll build a shelf above them for a frag tank and refugium. What do you think about doing a 55 gallon tank with a divider and put frags on half and a refugium on the other half? I'll need to figure out where a QT might fit in there as well.
Any suggestions on the above points (or anything else I might have missed) would be greatly appreciated
