Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

[davidchmaus]

I have a number of chillers but so far only one dedicated to the main display tank. Without starting a debate if possible and as I begin to plan around various single points of failure..........

How should I place the second chiller:

On the shelf as a ready spare?

In line with the spare passively standing on standby?

Run the two of them together at 50% all the time?

Run the two of them together at 100%?

Before anyone asks brand names etc. I am very interested in the rational for the positioning before we get into discussions about which brands are best. We'll get there but lets deal with the science first. I'm sort of hoping the answer is logical and endorsed as an obvious best practice by most in this community.................but that isn't gonna happen is it?

Peter

My thinking is that you do it like a generator and a computer facility. The second unit would be in line and you would have it tied into your controller. Once a month you would take your main chiller offline to test your controllers ability to have the second unit take over and you would be actually testing the second unit.

On another note. What material are you using on the side of the stand and the rim?

 

[cloakerpoked]

While I know you don't want to get into the specific equipment or not, to give a true answer, we'd need to know what type of lighting you are planning on using, how much lighting, and the type of chiller to determine whether it is reasonable to expect that your chiller could overcome the heat being added by the lights. That having been said:

I could see a reason for doing it either way. As long as you have a plan for where you could put the second chiller in-line if needed, I don't think it strictly needs to be placed there now. That's just one more piece of equipment for you to maintain twice a year. Its not as though you'll have everything in place, and be popping corals in the next day, so you'll have plenty of time to "test run" everything and to see if heat control is too much of an issue or not. One thing you do want to think about, it seems to me that if you did run 2 chillers, it would be advantageous to run them on two separate returns to the two different ends of the tank. This would not only even out the distribution a bit, but would maximize the efficiency of the chillers. Running them in-line right next to each other would seem (to me) to limit the benefits that you get from the 2nd one.

Hadn't thought of the two previous posts to this, and they bring up excellent points about the fail-safe. That would be worth the maintaining to me, so I'd go that way.

That's my 2 pennies.

 

[huskerreef]

Amphetamines Huskerreef, Its hell on fish but incredible on builders. They haven't figured it out yet but as long as they keep asking for more water this thing gets done at light speed(no pun intended).

Thanks by the way, you are too generous as this would NEVER have happened if Chingchai hadn't had the courage to do it in the first place. Something about his build was soooo qualitatively different that it reached out, grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I have never been able to find his peer on this forum or any other.

Peter

Thats what I was getting at, the way both of you tell the story and the sheer awesomeness of the subject matter makes for an entertaining thread to follow. I would agree Chingchai is an inspiration and his build thread is something never seen before with the detail, responses to every question and or comment, pics galore of the process and state of the art equipment, not to mention the finished product is a piece of artwork. Your thread my friend is following closely in his foot steps. Both of you will have an influence and inspire others to follow. Keep up the good work.

 

[dogstar74]

I'd probably run two in line, one set slightly higher temp than the other so it only kicks on when needed, and a third sitting on the shelf to swap out if one needs to go with repairs.

Aaron

 

[nineball]

My thinking is that you do it like a generator and a computer facility. The second unit would be in line and you would have it tied into your controller. Once a month you would take your main chiller offline to test your controllers ability to have the second unit take over and you would be actually testing the second unit.

On another note. What material are you using on the side of the stand and the rim?

I do understand data centers and that was my inclination...........I am also sensing a consensus which is in itself rare and reassuring. Thanks for taking the time to respond so fast.

The top cabinet is hard 'Canadian" maple with a stain to match the cabinetry below and a hard marine grade lacquer to finish. I do not want any toxicity fumes or otherwise to be an issue. The reason for the staining is to carry the visual around the room. That's the architect and my wife's dream castle. I just pay the rent!!!!!

The bottom is a drywall base which can be destroyed easily or quickly in an emergency and easily replaced.

Peter

 

[nineball]

In line with the spare passively standing on standby
Use the controler to kick in as a failsafe.
pending the 1 can cool the tank on a regular basis

O and by the way how did you get in my brain and build my dream house
Cause if I could vision one it would be yours

Thanks Jonny, this looks to be the best practice so that's whats goona happen as far as the chillers go.

As far as living in your head..............

Thanks for the compliment, in some manner I truthfully feel like I'm sitting on the sidelines with you all and enjoying this as much as you appear to be. This is great fun.

Peter

 

[amore169]

Wow there's no words to describe how beautiful this house and tank are going to be!!

 

[Claudio D]

Hi

amazing build


regarding your chiller question

I would use for your size a CHiller barrel with 2 independent titanium coils with individual compressors unit, but only one "water" connection, you could run your compressors units out of your house , avoiding noise and heat, and run them compressors independently.

I personally have my 660 gal sistem In Venezuela, A very hot country with a 2 ton barrel.

Your main concern is maintenance of the compressor units, and your controler will use them alternatively, if there is a malfunction, you will have plenty of time to fix one unit while the other keeps the load

tha is my opinion for such a beautifull set up

regards and thanks for inspiring us


you may check tis link http://www.swwilson.com/cooling_system, I bought mine from them and I think they could custom build a double coil unit

Claudio

Caracas Venezuela

 

[JonnyD91]

Peter is the tank on your main living area. I got thrown off by the kitchen in that room. I was under the assumption that its was in the basement, due to the staircase going up 2 levels.

 

[nineball]

Thats what I was getting at, the way both of you tell the story and the sheer awesomeness of the subject matter makes for an entertaining thread to follow. I would agree Chingchai is an inspiration and his build thread is something never seen before with the detail, responses to every question and or comment, pics galore of the process and state of the art equipment, not to mention the finished product is a piece of artwork. Your thread my friend is following closely in his foot steps. Both of you will have an influence and inspire others to follow. Keep up the good work.

Thanks huskerreef, it makes the decision to follow Ching's discipline seem the right thing to do. I do wish I had the graphic skills he had access to as the visual planning in such detail was like having a 3D set of blueprints to follow. Anyone who followed his thread closely would have been in awe with the phenomenal consistency between the plan and the final product.

Also he broke from the pack in the support systems. Everyone that lives in this community can't help focusing on the brand and the machine. It's part of the culture. What Chingchai did to move the marble further was to make the setting and integration as 'pretty' and engaging as the display tank itself. In fact it took many of us a long time to catch on that his 'softie' tank was in fact part of his support system as an embedded display tank in his 'fish room'. and with all the incredible results he has achieved in a short time span he managed to do it and NOT look like the bottom of the Titanic. In many respects it looks better esthetically than the space station.

So my support environment is going to pursue his standard if its humanly possible.

Peter

 

[nineball]

Wow there's no words to describe how beautiful this house and tank are going to be!!

Thanks amore, I really hope so.

Peter

 

[nineball]

Hi

amazing build


regarding your chiller question

I would use for your size a CHiller barrel with 2 independent titanium coils with individual compressors unit, but only one "water" connection, you could run your compressors units out of your house , avoiding noise and heat, and run them compressors independently.

I personally have my 660 gal sistem In Venezuela, A very hot country with a 2 ton barrel.

Your main concern is maintenance of the compressor units, and your controler will use them alternatively, if there is a malfunction, you will have plenty of time to fix one unit while the other keeps the load

tha is my opinion for such a beautifull set up

regards and thanks for inspiring us


you may check tis link http://www.swwilson.com/cooling_system, I bought mine from them and I think they could custom build a double coil unit

Claudio

Caracas Venezuela

Claudio, excellent resource for this question. Thank you very much. If I keep learning at this rate my head is going to burst!!!!! Thanks also for your support.

Peter

 

[delphinus]

Heh, I'm in software too and something of a fast typer (I would have liked to believe anyhow). Dang it, so THAT's where I've gone wrong!! Ok, from now on, only SLOW typing for me. Well, after this post. I've got a question for you, please and thank you, Peter:

Is the rim lighting on a switch like the room lighting, or a timer, or do you plan to keep it on 24x7?

Many thanks. Cheers!

 

[nineball]

Peter is the tank on your main living area. I got thrown off by the kitchen in that room. I was under the assumption that its was in the basement, due to the staircase going up 2 levels.

The design goal for the entire project was to eliminate the sense of 'basement' as we know it. I had one advantage going into this and it was that the basement, before we started was a walk out.

The 'kitchen' is really a bar. Its for entertaining the aquarium guests!!!! My intention is to house some photography equipment with the correct lenses so that a guest can take their own pictures and even print some with the carefully disguised photo printer(didn't see it did ya) to take with them as a memento. There's nothing worse than running into something like this and all you have is a camera phone........so I fixed that!

Peter

 

[JonnyD91]

The design goal for the entire project was to eliminate the sense of 'basement' as we know it. I had one advantage going into this and it was that the basement, before we started was a walk out.

The 'kitchen' is really a bar. Its for entertaining the aquarium guests!!!! My intention is to house some photography equipment with the correct lenses so that a guest can take their own pictures and even print some with the carefully disguised photo printer(didn't see it did ya) to take with them as a memento. There's nothing worse than running into something like this and all you have is a camera phone........so I fixed that!

Peter

so then you must have something up your sleeve for realtime video feeds too

 

[ezcompany]

Anybody knows how to vote
" Thread of the month " ???

It is already in consideration

 

[plyr58]

Chiller Question

Chiller Question

FWIW, I have some experience in dealing with chillers in large aquariums (>400 gallons). Over the years we have tried several configurations of redundancy in the chiller department for large tanks with intense lighting. The Following were our discoveries:

1. Dual in-line chillers w/ one strictly as a pass through backup.

The problem we ran into in this configuration was accumulation of gunk within the chiller. Over time, some amount of debris built up inside of the chiller andf then we we ran it once every other month or so to ensure its operation in the case of an emergency, the chiller was less effective because of the build up. We eventually abandoned this configuration.

2. Dual chillers running at 50% capacity

The problem here was the increased level of power consumption and maintenance. Two chillers are twice as much to maintain. One more than one occasion we had both chillers fail roughly at the same time, thus defeating the redundancy principle. These types of failures seem to happen at 3AM too, which meant my cell phone was going crazy with controller updates in the middle of the night.

The final solution we settled on was to have a second chiller essentially in standby. We place one chiller inline, with a second identical chiller nearby fed by a mag drive pump placed in the sump. This chiller and pump would only be turned on by the controller in an emergency situation. The controller would alert us of the temperature condition and the activation of the second chiller and we would then go over and swap out the inline chiller with the backup. We would service/ replace the failing chiller and then reinstall it in the backup configuration. Granted, adding a submersible pump to an aquarium adds heat to water you are trying to cool, but the solution was simple and it worked as a stop gap until we could address the situation.

 

[timdam]

builds like these are why i would never post a pic of my tank up here. i would be ashamed of my measely tank.

beautiful house!

 

[nineball]

Heh, I'm in software too and something of a fast typer (I would have liked to believe anyhow). Dang it, so THAT's where I've gone wrong!! Ok, from now on, only SLOW typing for me. Well, after this post. I've got a question for you, please and thank you, Peter:

Is the rim lighting on a switch like the room lighting, or a timer, or do you plan to keep it on 24x7?

Many thanks. Cheers!

Yeah, its the slowest that.......never mind.

The lighting system which is the Phillips high intensity LED is an extremely high end system that has an intelligent controller that talks to intelligent hubs via Ethernet. The wall switch is controlled by POE and has buttons for eight user selectable programs. The system can be controlled by a variety of intelligent devices including a PC or as in my case the lutron radio RA II system so that the various lighting programs will sync to the activity in the room. One clear design goal was to be able to create the colour frequency and intensity of the coral sea on a 24hr basis. I want my coral to feel at home!!!!

Peter

 

[nineball]

so then you must have something up your sleeve for realtime video feeds too

See I'm right, once your attitude is adjusted in the right direction the process is driven by inevitable discovery. Yes there will be two HD web cams, I'm just waiting for James Cameron to get back to me on the state of 3D technology for this purpose. I want everyone here to be able to project this into their living rooms and totally share the enjoyment with me.

Peter