CyclistMT
More Idiot Than Savant
For those of you that would rather skip the narrative (you know who you are) and look at the pretty pictures (although their probably not all that pretty since I don't have any pictures of animals yet) please scroll down to skip past these things called words. 
For the rest of you, as soon as everyone has boarded the Yellow Submarine we will begin our tour. Form a single line as you board and only one person per seat please...
Well, I think I'm finally at a point where I can start detailing my build without having an interminable time between updates because my progress is so slow. First a little bit about my history. I had about three variations of a reef tank in the early 90's when the Berlin method was just becoming popular and it was sacrilegious to think about putting any sand on the bottom of a reef tank. (It's kind of interesting to see how long this debate has been around.) I was also scared to death when I finally decided to take my bio balls out of my wet dry for the first time. I think I tested for ammonia and nitrite four times a day for two weeks until I felt comfortable nothing was going to come crashing down. Keep in mind that I was truly on the cutting edge in my area when it came to these things. I was the manager of the most respected LFS in our city and I was conducting these "experiments" so that I could be more knowledgeable when speaking to our customers. I am truly amazed at how far this hobby has come since that time.
I achieved some moderate success with these tanks (all soft corals by the way as SPS was "impossible" to keep at the time.) As life would have it I fell out of the hobby for about a decade due to a growing family and other interests that competed for my attention. But three years ago I started to feel the itch again and began lurking on the Reef Central boards but didn't get real serious until about this time last year when I decided to jump in to the deep end of the lagoon with both feet. Ha, ha deep end of the lagoon, get it? That's a...little reef... humor. Funny, no? No, ok, back to the tour...
Because reef tanks can cost as much as a rap star's tricked out Denali I began to wonder how I was going to pull this off since I'm not very good at busting a rhyme. I decided that the first place I could shave some costs was with the tank itself. I decided to build a plywood and glass tank. I'm not going to go into detail on that process in this thread but the details can be found in this thread on the DIY board.
150g Glass and Plywood Aquarium
And here is a teaser pic to wet your appetite. Wet your appetite, I crack myself up…
I started construction of the tank around March 06 and finished the epoxy coating in July. By August the glass was in and it sat in my garage filled with water for 3 weeks before I deemed it more leak proof then geriatric rock star’s bladder. (I know, the music references are getting a little weak. I’ll try to do better.) During this whole time I was also working on the fish room…err closet. I had holes to cut in drywall, greenboard to hang, tape, mud, paint (These are the three things that I think they make people do for an eternity in hell as punishment. You can tell I really like to tape, mud, and paint can’t you?). I also had to run some wire for electrical before I hung the sheetrock and I tiled the floor to boot. I didn’t take any pictures during construction but if you don’t know what greenboard looks like at this point you should probably put the screw gun down and walk away from the project. Here is a pic of the completed fish closet with the tank in place but prior to plumbing. By the way, the tank is approximately 150 gals and outside dimensions are 48†long x 32†wide x 25.25†high (this gives me 24†internal height).
The tank was installed in its final resting place in late October 06 and then began the process of plumbing. I’m not a stranger to plumbing projects either so this didn’t intimidate me but the end result is a little scary since all of my plumbing enters and exits the tank on one side. I did this because my area to work in is very small behind the tank and I wanted that space to comfortably work in the sump and in the tank on a ladder. Welcome To My Nightmare…
So far I have measured this project by two major hurdles, getting the tank constructed and getting water in the plumbed tank. Everything else was incidental to accomplishing those goals. I am happy to report that I had water flowing through the tank overflow before Christmas 06. Granted this was tap water so I was still a ways from adding salt but it felt very good to have hit this goal.
The first major piece of equipment I needed to purchase was an RO/DI unit. I figured it would probably have to wait a couple of months to get one seeing as it was just after Christmas and all but somehow I managed to get purchase approval from the Woman (AKA my wife and another music reference for those keeping track). I looked at several vendors, everyone one of them recommended by other forum members or sponsors here. I had a few criteria critical to selecting a unit. I wanted a 5 stage unit (1 sediment, 2 carbon stages, RO, DI), Filmtec membrane, pressure gauge, inline TDS meter, and RO flush. Any vendor can get you this set up but I was also looking at price. I didn’t want to spend over $250.00 on a unit. Ultimately I settled on the Ocean Reef +1 from the Filter Guys. It had everything I needed and ended up being just a bit cheaper then their closest competitor. I’ve got to tell you that I’m very impressed with this unit. The clear plastic housings are so thick the look like glass and everything is attached to a sturdy metal bracket. But I was even more impressed with the instructions included and the labels on the unit. As you have probably figured out by now I am not scared off by DIY so I would have had no trouble figuring out how to hook this thing up without any instructions. The only thing I really appreciate about a good product though is not having to struggle with it. Every input was clearly labeled, line water goes here, RO to DI here, wastewater over there, output water there. I’m telling you, it took me longer to find and attach a 2x4 to the wall to mount the unit to then it took to set the unit up. Here’s another picture for ADD crowd.
While I was testing with tap water I discovered a small problem. Water was getting under my sump. At first I thought it was splashing or siphoning over the edge because it was so slow in accumulating. But after reconfiguring my skimmer tray to handle a greater amount of water flow without having the water so close to the top, the water under the sump continued to accumulate. I knew something else was wrong. So I drained the sump and proceeded to figure out what the problem was. My sump is my old 75 gal tank and in the years it was in storage it managed to develop a crack on the bottom around one of the overflow holes. The crack was from the hole to the edge so it’s only about 2 inched long. To remedy this situation I had installed a second bottom inside the tank with ¼†glass. From my experience at the LFS (we custom made all of our own glass aquariums) I knew this wouldn’t be a problem. Don’t try this at home though kids as YMMV. The only problem was a chip on the side of the glass where the crack had developed was big enough that silicone alone did not provide an effective seal at that point. So, a small leak ensued. Luckily this chip was in the area of my bubble tower where the drains run into so there is lots of structural support around this leak area. All I needed to do was silicone another small piece of glass inside on the bottom to cover this flaw. Worked like a charm and I’m now leak free.
In this picture you can see how my sump is configured. Raw tank water is delivered to the skimmers first, dumps into the refugium area goes through baffles to clear bubbles, passes over mechanical and/or carbon filtration and then on to the returns. In the refugium I plan to have live rock rubble for pod production and Cheato for nutrient export. Once the fuge has some maturity I hope to try some sea grasses in there.
Once I had the water purity from the RO unit I felt I could add salt to the system since I would not likely be doing any full drains of the system again. I received my RO unit mid January and I’m happy to report that as of 2/3/07 I have fully recirculating salt water in my system. I know that seems like it took a long time to fill the tank but I only allow the RO to run when I was at home for fear of any mishaps when I wasn’t around. You can see in this picture that I still have some turbidity I’m trying to filter out. I’m sure it’s from the sand in the sump since there aren’t any bacteria to bind that small particulate to the substrate yet. Smoke On The Water anyone?
I still have to have my dedicated electrical lines hooked up to my panel and that is happening yet in February. I plan on two 20 amp circuits and have the wires run. I can install my own outlets and switches but I draw the line at hooking up to the breaker box. I just don’t know enough about electrical work to feel confident about that so I’ve called in an electrician to hook me up.
For the rest of you, as soon as everyone has boarded the Yellow Submarine we will begin our tour. Form a single line as you board and only one person per seat please...
Well, I think I'm finally at a point where I can start detailing my build without having an interminable time between updates because my progress is so slow. First a little bit about my history. I had about three variations of a reef tank in the early 90's when the Berlin method was just becoming popular and it was sacrilegious to think about putting any sand on the bottom of a reef tank. (It's kind of interesting to see how long this debate has been around.) I was also scared to death when I finally decided to take my bio balls out of my wet dry for the first time. I think I tested for ammonia and nitrite four times a day for two weeks until I felt comfortable nothing was going to come crashing down. Keep in mind that I was truly on the cutting edge in my area when it came to these things. I was the manager of the most respected LFS in our city and I was conducting these "experiments" so that I could be more knowledgeable when speaking to our customers. I am truly amazed at how far this hobby has come since that time.
I achieved some moderate success with these tanks (all soft corals by the way as SPS was "impossible" to keep at the time.
) As life would have it I fell out of the hobby for about a decade due to a growing family and other interests that competed for my attention. But three years ago I started to feel the itch again and began lurking on the Reef Central boards but didn't get real serious until about this time last year when I decided to jump in to the deep end of the lagoon with both feet. Ha, ha deep end of the lagoon, get it? That's a...little reef... humor. Funny, no? No, ok, back to the tour...Because reef tanks can cost as much as a rap star's tricked out Denali I began to wonder how I was going to pull this off since I'm not very good at busting a rhyme. I decided that the first place I could shave some costs was with the tank itself. I decided to build a plywood and glass tank. I'm not going to go into detail on that process in this thread but the details can be found in this thread on the DIY board.
150g Glass and Plywood Aquarium
And here is a teaser pic to wet your appetite. Wet your appetite, I crack myself up…
I started construction of the tank around March 06 and finished the epoxy coating in July. By August the glass was in and it sat in my garage filled with water for 3 weeks before I deemed it more leak proof then geriatric rock star’s bladder. (I know, the music references are getting a little weak. I’ll try to do better.) During this whole time I was also working on the fish room…err closet. I had holes to cut in drywall, greenboard to hang, tape, mud, paint (These are the three things that I think they make people do for an eternity in hell as punishment. You can tell I really like to tape, mud, and paint can’t you?). I also had to run some wire for electrical before I hung the sheetrock and I tiled the floor to boot. I didn’t take any pictures during construction but if you don’t know what greenboard looks like at this point you should probably put the screw gun down and walk away from the project. Here is a pic of the completed fish closet with the tank in place but prior to plumbing. By the way, the tank is approximately 150 gals and outside dimensions are 48†long x 32†wide x 25.25†high (this gives me 24†internal height).
The tank was installed in its final resting place in late October 06 and then began the process of plumbing. I’m not a stranger to plumbing projects either so this didn’t intimidate me but the end result is a little scary since all of my plumbing enters and exits the tank on one side. I did this because my area to work in is very small behind the tank and I wanted that space to comfortably work in the sump and in the tank on a ladder. Welcome To My Nightmare…
So far I have measured this project by two major hurdles, getting the tank constructed and getting water in the plumbed tank. Everything else was incidental to accomplishing those goals. I am happy to report that I had water flowing through the tank overflow before Christmas 06. Granted this was tap water so I was still a ways from adding salt but it felt very good to have hit this goal.
The first major piece of equipment I needed to purchase was an RO/DI unit. I figured it would probably have to wait a couple of months to get one seeing as it was just after Christmas and all but somehow I managed to get purchase approval from the Woman (AKA my wife and another music reference for those keeping track). I looked at several vendors, everyone one of them recommended by other forum members or sponsors here. I had a few criteria critical to selecting a unit. I wanted a 5 stage unit (1 sediment, 2 carbon stages, RO, DI), Filmtec membrane, pressure gauge, inline TDS meter, and RO flush. Any vendor can get you this set up but I was also looking at price. I didn’t want to spend over $250.00 on a unit. Ultimately I settled on the Ocean Reef +1 from the Filter Guys. It had everything I needed and ended up being just a bit cheaper then their closest competitor. I’ve got to tell you that I’m very impressed with this unit. The clear plastic housings are so thick the look like glass and everything is attached to a sturdy metal bracket. But I was even more impressed with the instructions included and the labels on the unit. As you have probably figured out by now I am not scared off by DIY so I would have had no trouble figuring out how to hook this thing up without any instructions. The only thing I really appreciate about a good product though is not having to struggle with it. Every input was clearly labeled, line water goes here, RO to DI here, wastewater over there, output water there. I’m telling you, it took me longer to find and attach a 2x4 to the wall to mount the unit to then it took to set the unit up. Here’s another picture for ADD crowd.
While I was testing with tap water I discovered a small problem. Water was getting under my sump. At first I thought it was splashing or siphoning over the edge because it was so slow in accumulating. But after reconfiguring my skimmer tray to handle a greater amount of water flow without having the water so close to the top, the water under the sump continued to accumulate. I knew something else was wrong. So I drained the sump and proceeded to figure out what the problem was. My sump is my old 75 gal tank and in the years it was in storage it managed to develop a crack on the bottom around one of the overflow holes. The crack was from the hole to the edge so it’s only about 2 inched long. To remedy this situation I had installed a second bottom inside the tank with ¼†glass. From my experience at the LFS (we custom made all of our own glass aquariums) I knew this wouldn’t be a problem. Don’t try this at home though kids as YMMV. The only problem was a chip on the side of the glass where the crack had developed was big enough that silicone alone did not provide an effective seal at that point. So, a small leak ensued. Luckily this chip was in the area of my bubble tower where the drains run into so there is lots of structural support around this leak area. All I needed to do was silicone another small piece of glass inside on the bottom to cover this flaw. Worked like a charm and I’m now leak free.
In this picture you can see how my sump is configured. Raw tank water is delivered to the skimmers first, dumps into the refugium area goes through baffles to clear bubbles, passes over mechanical and/or carbon filtration and then on to the returns. In the refugium I plan to have live rock rubble for pod production and Cheato for nutrient export. Once the fuge has some maturity I hope to try some sea grasses in there.
Once I had the water purity from the RO unit I felt I could add salt to the system since I would not likely be doing any full drains of the system again. I received my RO unit mid January and I’m happy to report that as of 2/3/07 I have fully recirculating salt water in my system. I know that seems like it took a long time to fill the tank but I only allow the RO to run when I was at home for fear of any mishaps when I wasn’t around. You can see in this picture that I still have some turbidity I’m trying to filter out. I’m sure it’s from the sand in the sump since there aren’t any bacteria to bind that small particulate to the substrate yet. Smoke On The Water anyone?
I still have to have my dedicated electrical lines hooked up to my panel and that is happening yet in February. I plan on two 20 amp circuits and have the wires run. I can install my own outlets and switches but I draw the line at hooking up to the breaker box. I just don’t know enough about electrical work to feel confident about that so I’ve called in an electrician to hook me up.
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