Cove's 220 Gettin under way

[Cove Beach]

Some of you may remember a short thread back in November about getting a new tank. Well its getting close to being more than a sketch in a spiral notebook. I have a bunch of construction photos but i'll start with the view the guys that helped get this project started got.......

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
At this point i decided to go with bins from TSC for my sump and refugium.

[/IMG]
Here are the sump and refugium in place with the frag tank being leak tested.

[/IMG]
The frag tank was a DIY unit to try and save a little cash and get it the way i wanted it. Here are some pics of the construction of the frag tank.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
Once i had the main components in place it was time to get in touch with Savko to get the bulk of my plumbing parts. I decided to go with Spa Flex for 95% of my system one for the sound minimizing and also to cut down on fittings and glue joints. I also went with the Herbie Drain setup. Mike 660r Asked for a build thread so here ya go Mike!

 

[Cove Beach]

Page 2

Page 2

Here are some pics of my Spa flex wonder.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
Well its getting late, hopefully tomorrow i will get the next batch of pictures up which will be the canopy construction and other support equipment.

 

[serpentman]

Very nice. Lotta spa flex, did you have to part with your first born? LOL

 

[MJAnderson]

looks nice. I've always been temped to try and build my own frag tank with acrylic.

I only see one electrical outlet back there. I hope you have more!

 

[Cove Beach]

Yes electricity is not a problem, i've got plenty of wire and boxes. There are three 20amp circuits set at different locations and i have the ability to drop in 2 more if i want to make the guys at Ohio Edison richer!

 

[Cove Beach]

page 3

page 3

Ok now on to canopy construction. I wanted a canopy that was as big as i could get and also as light as i could get. Using plywood that is 1/2" thick was gonna get heavy quick so i opted for a different route. I went with 3/8" aircraft grade plywood for the end caps and maple stringers for the cross bars.

[/IMG]
Since i didn't want the plywood look on the outside, i got some wooden unfinished venetian blind slats and planked the entire outside surface. Also i wanted as much access to the tank as possible. I had seen other canopies with doors that looked awful small for someone my size to reach through especially in a 30" deep tank. Another requirement was the least amount of metal brackets to rust. So there are none! The only exposed metal are 2 small screws that keep the door from sliding to far in the tracks. The tracks i mentioned are routed iinto the maple mouldings on the end caps, which allows to dowels attached to the front panel to slide and pivot allowing me to swing the entire front panel up and then slide back over the top to store it out of the way for complete access.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
The rear panel is a door skin that is 1/8" thick and does not have any decorative wood on it but is painted white. I added some trim moulding to round it out and stained the entire canopy and sealed it with a semi gloss clear.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
Next will be the DIY skimmer!

 

[cbcostanza]

Look great! I can't wait to see how it progresses.

 

[mike660r]

Great Job Mark! You did a real good job at matching the stain color. What type of DIY skimmer are you doing? Are you planning a needle wheel Dart style?

 

[Cove Beach]

Skimmer installment

Skimmer installment

Well Mike to answer your question, yes its a Dart needle wheel pump with the rest being done from flat stock. I borrowed features from a couple different skimmer designs to come up with the monster you will see in the next few pictures. It seems that everyone that is running a Reeflo Orca has decided to upgrade to a larger cup and taller neck. On mine i didn't want the external air intake and i wanted a way to eliminate the overflow problem some are experiencing. I will be using an external waste bucket and i am still tossing a design around for that. But at this point the skimmer is together and waiting for a new feed pump as the one i got for it died an hour into the wet test phase. From the freshwater test i did this thing should be very adjustable. Here are the pics..

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
With most of the fabrication done and some pre-leak testing done i moved on to the plumbing part..Yeahhh more PVC!!

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
As it stands right now i have all the plumbing wet tested and sorted out other than the length of the drains from the refugium. I'm going to wait until i have a complete system test that stabilizes all levels, which should be next Friday. The next set of pics will be the rockwork. Stay tuned!

 

[Cove Beach]

Rock work installment

Rock work installment

One of my prime goals in this tank was to keep the back glass clear and eliminate as much visible clutter of equipment in the tank as possible. So in the head on shots of the tank you won't see any wires or pipes between the two overflows, just the blue background of the wall behind the tank. My last tank had a black back wall and i think it sucks up a ton of light, so i opted for the blue. Another requirement was i did not want a solid rock wall. Mainly because of dead spots and i want places for the fish to be able to hide and swim through. I also wanted no rock to be touching the side glass, and to leave room for a mag float to hit all four sides. The last time i did my aquascaping in the tank with wet armpits.This time i am using Marco Rocks which allowed me to do the creative part before adding water. To make my life easier i took a sheet of drywall and layed out the exact footprint of the inside of the tank with a sharpie marker and then set up a tape measure to the expected depth of the tank so i could gage the altitude of my rocks. I made sure i would have room for corals and fish above the rocks. Borrowing from Itzme(Kevin)'s suggestion i got some reflector rods and drilled the rock work and pinned it in place, both vertically and on the diagonal where needed to make it steady. Below are pics of the chunks i started with along with how it ended up.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]
With all the main rock layed out i still ended up with some odd rocks of decent size and about 20lbs of rubble rock for my refugium.

[/IMG]
Well i hope to have more to show in a few days like maybe finishing a Kalk reactor i started while waiting for Spa Flex to dry, so depending on my wife's honey-do list, i'll see what i can get away with.

 

[mike660r]

Good lord man! That is a beast of a skimmer you have built. I have to ask one question. Why didn't you use a cylindrical riser? I would have to think the first response is the difficulty of working with upper neck being the most limiting factor. The reason I ask is that the entire industry builds their skimmer with tubular stock. Do you anticipate any issues from having square corners?

 

[mike660r]

one more thing, you may want to extend your drain raiser to the heighth of your collection cup lid. I know my euroreef has to run the water up to the neck at times it could bubble over.

 

[Cove Beach]

Well first off, have you priced 14" diameter tubing, cause they only sell it in 6' lengths. As far as the square versus round issue there is a guy that has a much larger square skimmer than mine that is airstone driven and counter current to boot! My guess the reason for everybody else making theres round is because its easier to mass produce. I guessed on the outlet drain size, but i have a coupling and about 8 more feet of 1.5" pipe so i figure i can cross that bridge if it presents a problem. I figured if i made the drain taller it would need a light on it for aircraft!

 

[Cove Beach]

Just a quick update circ pumps are on and the heaters are doin' there thing with a starting temp around 66 degrees. So we will see how long it takes to get things up to speed.

 

[jnarowe]

You are now one of us.

The Few. The Proud. The Square Skimmer Brigade.

Conratulations! I can't wait to see it running and I hope you have video ability.

You really have nads to build the cone section out of flat pieces. Wicked cool work as I know that is extremely difficult to pull off. :thumbsup:

What are "reflector rods"?

BTW, when you post from photobucket, you can just paste into your reply, rather than using th eimage mod in RC's reply box. That's why you are gettin gthe extra image tags "

 

[Cove Beach]

They are the fiberglass rods that are used to mark driveways .

 

[Cove Beach]

Other DIY hardware

Other DIY hardware

Here are a couple things i have DIYd in anticipation of the larger tank. First is a calcium reactor which has been up and running for almost 6 months. The second pic is the bubble counter i made to eliminate the one that comes with the regulator which causes the needle valve and solenoid to corrode.

Also here is my standpipe setup.Hey Kevin did i get it right?

 

[jnarowe]

Nice. I had a hard time with the rubber shet. Got it from Aquatic-Eco and it never really sealed very well. If you have a very flat surface, it might be OK as it seems yours is. I switched to EDPM weather seal.

 

[Cove Beach]

I got my rubber seal from McMaster Carr, its food grade and pretty soft stuff. I used the same stuff to seal my reactor.

 

[jnarowe]

hmmm, must be different stuff then. Looks the same in the pic.

have you seen my bubble counter???