Fusty's Hack-Ware-ium 120g mixed reef build

[fustilarian]

Hello reefcentral :wavehand:

Photos of the build can be found here and will be periodically updated as things progress.

SO! I suppose an introduction is in order. I am a long time hobbyist had my first freshwater tank when i was 7 or 8 and was on and off basically my entire life and now I'm 33 so, yeah been at this stuff a while. I was way into planted tanks before saltwater and even entered one into a contest with the aqua gardeners association which was a great time and my crowning achievement as far as freshwater tanks go.

Soon after moving to saltwater me and my wife married and had a tank crash while we were on honeymoon and then moved a few times which really was not good for the life in my tank. We had nothing but problems until finally hurricane sandy put the final nail in the coffin. 17 days with no electricity or heat will do that to a reef tank. Oddly enough, a new tank had been started just weeks before that horrible disaster. The old tank was 75g with a 30g sump and 15g refuge. the plumbing was shoddy and leaked, the heaters would regularly electrify my hangnails and the rocks had more hair than corraline. I was able to hack together a DIY led fixture controlled by an arduino. I eventually was able to control my tunze pumps with the arduino as well. It wasn't long before i was researching the equations used to determine sunrise and sunset based on latitude and longitude as well as moon phases and how they affect ocean currents, etc.. I wanted to simulate nature in my tank and make coral spawn but there was too many other problems and so i decided to start over from scratch. Enter the Hackwareium!

As i mentioned, the build process began just before hurricane sandy but the plans began roughly a year before that in 2011. Due to some personal problems, the build process was put on hold and basically progressed at a snails pace up until just a few months ago. During that time, I carefully planned out each part of the tank and as i'm typing this I'm probably about 50% done with the build process. My various notes, outlines spec sheets etc will all be posted up here in this thread for your viewing 'pleasure' (boredom).

At the time of this writing, the aquarium setup features a 120g AGA tank sitting on top of an oversized DIY stand that houses a 75g sump with three 4x14" filter socks, Super Reef Octopus 3000 with an Avast Marine Swabbie installed. Snapper/dart hybrid plumbed to a manifold which feeds Avast Marine reactor for biopellets and two BRS reactors for carbon and GFO. There is also a large refugium section in the sump and two 300w finnex titanium heaters on a ranco controller. In tank flow is currently provided by two Jebao rw-8. My overflow is DIY coast to coast with 'black' (very dark grey) glass and a bean animal silent/failsafe overflow. Also in the stand is a 30 extra high AGA fed off the manifold and gravity feed back into sump as an easy water change tank.

 

[fustilarian]

Before I continue I have to give credit where credit is due. I have learned so much from the members of this forum, I can not give enough thanks. I used to post here occasionally under another name (skeptic_07) and lost the password and the registered email address so i had to register another name. I mostly just lurk here reading posts and have done that since i started with saltwater almost 10 years ago. So! In no particular order; sk8er, Paul_B, der_wille_zur_mact, beananimal, uncleof6, rocket engineer, terahz, drummerreef, cyrusthevirus, randy, snorvich, disc1, bertoni, MUCHO REEF, geoxman, flyyguy, tmz, greenbean and the members of my local club LIRA and many, many more people that i cannot presently remember. Thank you all so much for all of the help through your posts. None of this is possible without you guys. :love2:

My philosophy during this entire process was to make things as simple and fail-safe as possible all while keeping it all contained in a small space in my living room which also means it has to be quiet and nice to look at.

OK! First the construction of the stand. I had a roughly 6' x 3' space to put the aquarium. I had to fit everything in that space including the RO reservoir and the new salt water tank. I wanted the top of the tank to be at eye level for me so i don't have to bend over to see into it all the time. I also didn't want it to be so tall that i couldn't ever reach into it. All the equipment including the water change stuff is going to be inside it and i really needed access everywhere so we don't have a center support. Instead we did 2x6's with joist hangars and 3/4" plywood on top and 1/4" plywood for the back and side all held together with lots of deck screws. I painted all the non-visible parts with rustoleum marine top-side paint to make it water resistant. The exterior of the stand is premium maple plywood from lowes and 1x3 pine which i ran through my router table to make a wainscot type design. Its all stained with minwax dark walnut and finished with helmsman spar-urethane, satin finish. I got some nice appliance door pulls from myknobs.com and some brass locks from the local locksmith to keep little fingers out of my sump. I got some really strong neodymium magnet combos that i embedded into the stand and doors to hold them on when the panels are unlocked. I could not possibly be happier with the way the doors panels turned out and i love being able to just remove them entirely to access under the tank. It makes maintenance very easy.

Next up, plumbing. Below is my outlined ideas for the plumbing of my system. Slight changes were made during assembly but overall principals remain the same.

[B]Basic principals[/B] (order of importance)
1.  efficient 
2.  failsafe
3.  easy maintenance means moar time to enjoy and greater likelihood of success
4.  ability to attach multiple peripheral devices
5.  silent
6.  easy to take apart and expandable (lots of unions)
7.  neat and clean 

[B]Overflow weir[/B]
1.  coast to coast
2.  beananimal style drains
3.  1.5" bulkheads and plumbing

[B]Sump[/B] (75 gallon AGA)
1. 3 4x14" 200 micron filter socks (occasionally run 5 micron for water polishing)
2. skimmer section (super reef octopus 3000 w/ avast marine swabbie and skimmate locker)
3.  avast marine ATO with float valve
4. 2 300w finnex heaters on ranco controller
5.  ~25 gallon refugium (roughly 1/3 of the 75)

[B]Return plumbing[/B]
1.  1.5" return  (reeflo dart hybrid)
2.  1" manifold with 5 x .5" ball valves to run reactors:
  a.  carbon
  b.  GFO
  c.  bio pellets or zeovit
  d.  calcium or kalk 
  e.  ozone 
  f.  feeds the water change system
3.  .5" line off return to hold probes
    a. atlas scientific probes are planned for the distant future
    b.  ball valve then drains into refugium

[B]Water change system[/B]
1.  water changes are done without shutting the system down
2.  utilizes a separate tank (~25 gallons of water volume) which is part of the system under normal operation and is separated via ball valve while new water is mixing 
3.  utilizes two pumps; one to remove old water (eheim 1048) and one to provide circulation for mixing (koralia nano); the eheim leaves ~2-3 gallons in the bottom 
4.  water change process 
  [I]*turn on RO unit to start filling reservoir (the reservoir rarely has enough water for this!)[/I]
  a.  disconnect wc tank from system: close water feed valve to wc tank and wait for the siphon to stop (this level is marked for refilling)
  b.  remove old water: turn on wc pump, wait until it sucks air, turn it off
  c.  make new water: open fill valve from RO storage tank, wait until it hits the mark, close the fill valve, add salt (~11 cups)
  d.  reconnect wc tank to system: open wc tank feed

The water change tank is fantastic. Everyone should setup something like this on their tank. It provides an extra 25 gallons or so of system volume and make water changes so easy that you'll be much more likely to do them. Ease of maintenance is key. There are two small negatives, however, One is when i turn off the feed to the water change tank, it raises the return section of the sump about 3/4" and the other is that when i turn the feed to it off, all the reactors get more flow, but i can adjust them individually if i have to and they are dialed back already anyway, except for the biopellets, which could use more flow through them at times anyway. Neither of these issues have caused any problems yet.