edandsandy
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WOW! that's a great fish list!
Building My 375gal Glass Reef
- Thread starter GlassReef
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bbehring
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Man I can't wait to retire and follow in your footsteps! Just a few weeks ago, I was just telling my wife and kids, what I was planning to do with all my spare time when I retired and your living it man! Of course the recent down turn on wall street has dinged my retirement pension plan pretty bad. Oh well what's another decade or two? Great build, fine attention to detail. You're a master! At least I can live (retire) through you Tom! Keep up the fine work. I was meaning to ask you, with your software company, did you write the "How to manuals" Your detailed accounts and documention on this build thread are fabulous, some of the best I've seen. Just my observation. Can't wait to see the rest!
dones20 - thank you ... there will be plenty more pics before I'm through.
bbehring - you Sir, are definitely making me blush. Very kind things you are saying - thank you. As to writing user manuals - I must admit that I wrote a few when the company was young. Wall Street, what can one say? There is one thing I can tell you for sure - if you have 15 or 20 years before you retire - what's going on now will have long ceased to trouble you. Just keep putting a little away on a regular basis and you'll have a fine time.
Oh, I used to live in Hemet when I was a young man. Used to go to Idylwild on the weekends. Must be a totally different place now.
bbehring - you Sir, are definitely making me blush. Very kind things you are saying - thank you. As to writing user manuals - I must admit that I wrote a few when the company was young. Wall Street, what can one say? There is one thing I can tell you for sure - if you have 15 or 20 years before you retire - what's going on now will have long ceased to trouble you. Just keep putting a little away on a regular basis and you'll have a fine time.
Oh, I used to live in Hemet when I was a young man. Used to go to Idylwild on the weekends. Must be a totally different place now.
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Got an email from Randy Cameron at conceptaquarium.com! He was kind enough to send me some pics of the tank he took during construction.
This shows the tank from the front. Euro-bracing and overflow box not yet installed - although the slots (2) for the overflow have been ground and polished:
Here are the slots from the back. Each of the 2 slots is 35" long, giving me a total of 70" of overflow. That should provide excellent surface skimming and minimize turbulence in the OF box. Notice, you can see the difference in the clarity (green shading) between the normal glass in the back and the Starphire in the front:
I thought this was interesting. Randy placed a white piece of styropor in back of the back pane to show the overflow slots - but it also really shows how much green "normal" glass shades what you view through it:
This is the overflow box before being installed:
Here's the tank before the overflow box was installed. The Euro-bracing is in and the 3/16" black acrylic sheet, which covers the back pane has been attached. I had the acrylic added so that the overflow box could not be seen when looking at the display from the front. You'll notice that there are no holes drilled in the sides back or bottom. I had a tank blow out on me a few years back. When we examined what was left of the tank you could see that the damaged started (it was a CSI type investigation) at a hole which had been drilled in the back pane. I know there are 1000s of tanks out there with holes that are just fine - but - I've just got this thing .... Plus, I've decided to depend completely Tunze Streams for the flow, so no holes were really necessary. Will make for for very neat plumbing - I hope. 
Here you can see how the acrylic covers the entire back of the tank.
I'm getting a little excited now. Randy wrote that the tank will be shipped after it has "set" a couple of days! I can't wait - feel like a little kid at Christmas.
This shows the tank from the front. Euro-bracing and overflow box not yet installed - although the slots (2) for the overflow have been ground and polished:
Here are the slots from the back. Each of the 2 slots is 35" long, giving me a total of 70" of overflow. That should provide excellent surface skimming and minimize turbulence in the OF box. Notice, you can see the difference in the clarity (green shading) between the normal glass in the back and the Starphire in the front:
I thought this was interesting. Randy placed a white piece of styropor in back of the back pane to show the overflow slots - but it also really shows how much green "normal" glass shades what you view through it:
This is the overflow box before being installed:
Here's the tank before the overflow box was installed. The Euro-bracing is in and the 3/16" black acrylic sheet, which covers the back pane has been attached. I had the acrylic added so that the overflow box could not be seen when looking at the display from the front. You'll notice that there are no holes drilled in the sides back or bottom. I had a tank blow out on me a few years back. When we examined what was left of the tank you could see that the damaged started (it was a CSI type investigation
) at a hole which had been drilled in the back pane. I know there are 1000s of tanks out there with holes that are just fine - but - I've just got this thing .... Plus, I've decided to depend completely Tunze Streams for the flow, so no holes were really necessary. Will make for for very neat plumbing - I hope.
Here you can see how the acrylic covers the entire back of the tank.
I'm getting a little excited now. Randy wrote that the tank will be shipped after it has "set" a couple of days! I can't wait - feel like a little kid at Christmas.
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Nice looking tank. I second your decision to avoid drilling holes. I had a similar experience years ago. I had an external overflow installed on my 240 display with a 13" weir. The overflow is located at one end of the tank. I only had (2) 60mm couple holes in the end panel since I incorporated 2 waveboxes adjacent to the overflow. I had to do it for the clean look. The panel is 3/4" as well so I feel confident it will be fine. Most blow outs I've seen tend to happen in the bottom panel. Closed loops are just out of the question IMO especially with the availability of Tunze streams and Vortechs.
I also like your black acrylic back panel. Is it permanently attached or removable? Miracles did a nice job with mine by using velcro. The Velcro is not viewable from the front because it's only placed around the perimeter where the top, bottom and side panels obstuct the view. I wanted the flexibility to remove it for viewing.
I also like your black acrylic back panel. Is it permanently attached or removable? Miracles did a nice job with mine by using velcro. The Velcro is not viewable from the front because it's only placed around the perimeter where the top, bottom and side panels obstuct the view. I wanted the flexibility to remove it for viewing.
Thanks! I'll have two Gold Darts servicing the sump - one for the display and one for the fuge and frag tanks, together. I'm figuring on 4800-5000 gals through the sump. Starting to scare me actually. The sump will only be 75 gals. Seems like an awful lot of water going through there.
Thinking maybe I should make the sump a little larger. Any opinions?
I'm tending to agree with you, although if I go for a bigger sump I'll have to make it a double. I have plenty of room - it's just that I have already cut the acrylic for all three tanks = sump/fuge/frag. Nothing left long enough to enlarge the sump. Think 2 sumps connected with, say, three 2" pipes would make sense?<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13568319#post13568319 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by akwtampa
That big of a tank, I'd have about 100-120 gallons in sump.. need room for drainage..
My big tank will have 100 gallons of sump and a 75 gallon 'fuge..I like being able to drain back plenty of water without flooding..
PaulieWalnuts
New member
i love the fish room set up, those big water jugs are a sweet....wish i had a set up like that!
Tom, in general it's best to have 2-5 times your display volume running through your sump per hour, much more than that and you defeat the purpose of the sump since it can't process that much water at one time. What you can do is run eductors on the sump's output line at the display. Eductors cause a lot of back pressure but dramatically increase flow in the display by pulling in surrounding water. The net effect is decreased flow through the sump due to back pressure while increased flow in the display. You will need a pressure rated pump however as the DART is not ideal for use with eductor(s)
you need a large enough sump to handle all the overflow in the event of a power loss and whatever your plans are with regards to water treatment, ie macroalgae, skimmer/probes, LR, etc. If your calculated flow and volume to your sump are high you may need a rather large sump, yes you can plumb several sumps together as I've done, it works quite well and allows different isolated zones.
Elliot - thanks for all the input. Much food for thought. I'm not really looking to produce much flow in the display with the returns, I'm hoping to leave that to the Tunzes. I guess I just ran a little wild with my choice of Darts for both the display and fuge/frag returns. I could throttle them down for a total flow approaching something like 4000gals - but I don't really like the idea.
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13568316#post13568316 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by GlassReef
Thanks Oldtimer! (man, I love being able to say that at my age
:lol: Well, the name is less about my age than about my past history in the hobby.
I agree with Elliot's comments about flow through your sump. You need to slow it down. I only plan to run around 1000 gph through my sump(s). I also intend to use more than one sump. My stand was incorrectly built with more vertical supports in the rear than I requested. Since my setup is located in a fish room, I want to be able to pull the sump out for cleaning and such. The vertical braces prevent me from doing so. In this case, I will use two smaller (approx 60 gal) sumps with separate feeds from the overflow and connected to a single return pump. At approximately 23" wide, each sump will be able to pass between the vertical supports.
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