First, I have to apologize to all of those who have been following the thread for not keeping up with it. Things have been a little crazy over here, but I still have made some progress!
Where to start, where to start"¦ How about I tell everyone where I am currently. The tank has completed its cycle around February 6, 2015. I initiated the cycle with one large shrimp in some panty hose (not mine). It took about 2 weeks until it disintegrated. I mean"¦ absolutely nothing was left. Being the first time I have cycled a system it was very surprising to me. So I went through my high ammonia, to high nitrites, to high nitrates. Sitting on those for now.
I currently have two clowns in quarantine which will be moved to the frag tank and I am working on completing my water change station in the garage. Once it is completed I will do a 20% water change, and probably do another water change the following week to hopefully bring down the nitrates.
You all might remember that I was going to do a closed loop system through the rockwork that surrounds the overflow. Well, it was a better idea than anything. Being that I am not an engineer and new to the hobby I expected more out of the pump than it could handle. First it wasn't possible to suck the water up into the pump, and then the size of the pipes didn't make it feasible to push the water throughout the ½" pipes. On top of that"¦ I was using the Jebao DC9000 because I wanted the variable speeds, but I had to reduce the size of input and outputs to ½'" which was just too much. I also tried some other pumps on it and the closest to flow that I got was a little water pushing out of a few holes when using a MaxiJet 1200. Not what I wanted at all, so now I will be using it as a haven for pods. I'll buy a bunch and feed them down the pipe in top and they can come out all of the holes at their will lol"¦
This was my second go around after moving the pump from the floor to the shelving that I put up:
Speaking of the shelving"¦ I got that up not long ago too. It was the shelving that was already in the closet, but I flipped it upside down (had to rig a few things to make this work) so that nothing will slide off. I'm thinking about adding lining to it as well to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
Here is a shot of my water line (from garage water change station) and hose line (ventilation for the skimmer) coming down from the ceiling through the shelves. The water line runs into a 35 gallon barrel (my ATO).
This picture is a little older. I've changed things so many times"¦ maybe that is why I haven't updated this thread. You will see in this pic the Jebao pump on the floor that I tried to use for the closed loop system. I'm currently using the JBJ ATO for top off. It took me a little to figure out how to set it up. I dealt with siphoning of the barrel when the pump shut off. To fix this I added a pipe standing in the sump higher than the barrel. The hose from the ATO goes into the top of the pipe a few inches, but still higher than the barrel. This stops the water from continuous siphoning.
You will also see that I changed the plumbing under the tank a little. I wanted the ability to slow down the turnover of the refugium section in the sump. To do this I brought the drain pipe from the frag tank to the trickle drain of the display tank. Along the way I "œT"d off to the refugium with a gate valve. I wanted to use gate valves throughout but I was sent the wrong size for the main drain, ended up just using a ball valve. Made it work.
The second drain (emergency drain) on the frag tank got shortened and empties out into the sump. Nothing will flow through this pipe unless the frag tank water level rises. I screwed the reactors in the footer that was added to the wall. I can just pull the whole thing off and open it up.
Good luck on the rest of your build, I'll be tagging along.
