Gabe's Tank Project

[jculver09]

Gabriel hasnt updated in a while, things have been slow over the holidays but we finnally got the tank in place. To do this we had to lift it nearly six feet in the air to clear a piece of molding on the stairway. At this point in time it doesnt seem like there is a lot left to do, but at the same time there is still a lot of work to be done.

The biggest thing will be installing the utility sink and getting all the RO and drainage systems attached to it.

 

[gabrielt]

Here are some updates on our project.

The frag grow tank:

The sump:

Little shelf above the sump, where we will be putting the suplements (calcium/alkalitiny buffer, etc). On top you see the ozone unit.

The drums for the R.O. water and salt mixing:

The display tank after we finally moved it to its place. It was a hell of a job moving it:

On the floor you can see the boxes with the sand.

Below the display tank so far:

We still have to make the water connections and install a utility sink. We've already ordered the rocks, they should be arriving soon.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

 

[gabrielt]

Today I finishing wiring the display tank stand.

The rocks arrived today, so we will be aquascaping the tank this sunday.

 

[gabrielt]

150 Lbs of rock wasn't enough, I am buying more 100 Lbs to finish the aquascaping; I didn't like the way it is right now.

This week I finally bought the utility sink, it was hard to find one in stainless steel at an affordable price. I finally got one at a local store called RESCO, which sells products for restaurants. Now I have to call in a plumber to put everything together. This will be hard because today it snowed 12" here.

 

[gabrielt]

Here is a summary of what we've been doing since my last post.

I bought more 100 Lbs of rock and put inside the tank.

We hired a pumbler to install the utility sink. For our luck the pipe was exactly behind the wall I wanted to install the sink, as suspected, since there is a bathroom behind this wall. The plumber, however, made a "dirty" job: he cut an opening on the wall but said that I would need to hire a handyman to close the wall. Bastard! Justin is really handy and was able to fix this mess. Below you can see below the sink after Justin closed the hole and then after I sanded and painted the patch.

Here is the utility sink installed:

I also installed a new light fixture on the ceiling above the sump and one above the sink, so my fish room is now bright all the times.

After installing the sink we prepared salt water and filled the whole system. This process took around a week. After filling the display tank, the water was completely "milky". After three days it was still like this, so I put some Kent ProClear, installed a "sock" in the sump on the water output from the display tank and next day the water was clear again.

Lesson learned: rinse your sand before putting it in your tank!

We connected the R.O. unit to the water line (from below the sink) and the R.O. waste line to the sewer line (also below the sink). We also connected a pipe to the sewer line for when we want to empty the system or make water changes.

Below you can see some specific details from the system that are already fully functional.

R.O. and auto top-off system:

Justin created a bracket in acrylic for the pH sensors and auto top-off unit, which are placed inside the sump:

Here is the overflow output from the display tank in the sump, notice the sock for cleaning the water and also part of the refugium.

There are still lots of stuff to do. Right now the tank is cycling, Justin suggested me to drop some table shrimp to start bacteria growth, I also bought some bacteria vials to get this going. Electrical part inside the fish room needs to be completed to get the dosing pumps and lights on the frag tank running.

 

[gabrielt]

Last weekend the water was finally fine, showing zero for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. pH is fine at 8.3, salinity is fine at 33 ppm, alkalinity is fine at 9 dKH. The only thing a little bit low at this moment is calcium, at 360 ppm. I increased the timers for the Alkalinity/Calcium dosers by half an hour (they were set to run 1 hour per day every day) and let's see what is going to happen. I also bought some new test kits for all sorts of stuff like iodine, magnesium and silicate -- yeah, I know I went overboard. I will post here the water parameters for all the other stuff as soon as measure everything.

 

[patrick1234]

wow starting to come along nice

 

[gabrielt]

Thanks. Forgot to mention that we are rebuilding the light fixture for the frag tank to add two actinic T5's and also we decided to build a new light fixture for the quarantine tank (my old tank) with a 400 W 20,000 K metal halide and two actinic T5's, this way all tanks (quarantine/frag/display) have the exact same lights. There are also a lot of smaller details that I plan to post as soon as I have more time to do so, I believe the details may help other people...

Gabriel

 

[mastershake93]

wouldnt haveing a 400 watt metal halid be extreme over kill for a 55 gal tank?

 

[gabrielt]

Ops, I made a mistake. 400 W is the one we use on the display tank. On the quarantine and frag tank we use 250 W. Thanks!!!!

 

[gabrielt]

Hi there,

A lot happened this last week. I moved the fish that was in my old tank to the new tank, Justin finished the new light fixtures for the frag and quarantine tanks, and I moved the frags I had to the new frag tank.

Here are some pictures of my new display tank with the lights one and also with the new inhabitants.

Here is the new light fixture for my old tank (which is now the quarantine tank). Maybe these pictures help other people trying to build their own fixtures. It holds one 250 W metal halide and two 24" T5's.

Here is the new light fixture for the frag tank, Justin rebuilt it to add two T5's. It also holds two 250 W metal halides.

Here is my new frag tank with the light fixture finally installed.

Here the frag tank with the lights turned on and my three frags finally moved to their new house.

 

[gabrielt]

Here is my quarantine tank with the new light fixture installed. If you pay attention I changed the landscape of this tank as well, I removed almost all the live rock because it was really hard to catch the fishes to move to the display tank; since this tank will be my quarantine tank I don't think it would make sense to have lots of rock and make my life difficult everytime I need to capture a fish...

The quarantine tank with all lights turned on:

I will clean and organize the room and take some final pictures...

Cheers,
Gabriel.

 

[mseepman]

This is really looking like a nice build. I have a couple of questions and maybe a suggestion or two.

How are you planning to deal with the increased humidity due to all that water? Sorry if you've already indicated this and I've missed it.

Could you outline the plumbing from the RO holding tank, to the salt water holding tanks and over to the tank a little more.

As for your quarantine tank...most people use items other than rocks (PVC pipes, etc) for this as the whole purpose of this tank is having the ability to "treat" the inhabitants if you need to and this would destroy all the life in the Liverock.

 

[gabrielt]

This is really looking like a nice build. I have a couple of questions and maybe a suggestion or two.

How are you planning to deal with the increased humidity due to all that water? Sorry if you've already indicated this and I've missed it.

This is something I am still playing with. The room was really damp and I decided to open the window (the top part of the former garage door was converted into a window). I am leaving this window open for the past 3 days and the humidity is gone inside the room. I don't know what I am going to do when winter comes (it reaches freezing temperatures here in Reno and it can snow a lot -- nothing compared to Canada, of course...).

Could you outline the plumbing from the RO holding tank, to the salt water holding tanks and over to the tank a little more.

Of course. I will take some extra pictures and post them here later.

But basically RO water enters the RO drum, and there is a controller with two sensors inside the drum to turn on or off the RO filter.

Then from the RO drum there is a 1" pipe with a valve that goes down to the bottom two drums. Before this valve there is a 1/4" fitting that feeds the automatic top-off system. A 1/4" tube goes to two separated solenoids that open/close depending on a sensor that is inside the sump and that is inside the quarantine tank. So the system automatically tops off water that was evaporated.

The bottom two drums have a pump connecting them, and a pipe that goes to the sump and to the quarantine tank, with valves, so depending on how the valves are set I can mix salt water or pump salt water to the sump or pump salt water to the quarantine tank.

Then on the main line that goes to the display tank there is a valve that if opened sends water to the sewer line, if I want to drain the sump for water changes on the main system. We didn't do a similar system on the quarantine tank.

I will post detailed pictures of all I've just explained later for you, thanks for asking.

As for your quarantine tank...most people use items other than rocks (PVC pipes, etc) for this as the whole purpose of this tank is having the ability to "treat" the inhabitants if you need to and this would destroy all the life in the Liverock.

Nice suggestion. I will keep this in mind for a future "upgrade". I wanted to keep the rocks because I still have some soft corals that are hard to be removed from the rocks and I don't want to put those rocks inside my new tank. So this tank is also for doing some "experiments", if you will.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

 

[gabrielt]

Mark,

Here is the explanation and pictures you asked.

First an overall look of the drums. Note: see the window I mentioned previously opened.

The top one holds RO water provided by the filter on the left, on the wall. Inside this drum there are two sensors that "feel" that the drum is almost empty and start filling it again. Therefore instead of the filter going on and off frequently, it only works when the drum is almost empty. This was done to improve the membrane's life-span.

The RO filter is seen better below. The black box is where we put the relays that turn on/off the solenoid attached to the blue (input) line. The gray wires are connected to the sensors inside the drum.

The bottom two drums are for mixing salt water. They are connected together at the bottom, with a valve. This valve allows me to run salt water on only one of the drums (the one on the right), if I want to.

Then on the drum on the right we have a pump that works for mixing salt and also to pump salt water to the main system and to the quarantine tank whenever I need to make water changes.

So here is how everything is connected together. From the pump, a pipe goes to the top of the two bottom drums, to the main sump and to the quarantine tank, all with individual valves. The RO drum is also connected to this line. So when I want to move water from the top drum to the bottom drums, I need to turn off the pump and open/close the required valves. From the same connection we have a 1/4" tube that is used on the automatic top off system. You can see this line on the pictures below. On this 1/4" tube I have three divisions, one with a valve for getting RO water whenever I need (e.g. fill the two-part alkalinity/calcium gallons), and two solenoids, that are attached to floating switches that open/close RO to the sump/quarantine tank whenever the water level goes down.

Also notice on the pictures below the big opening I use to insert salt in the drum. The green piece you see is part of the heater that is installed inside the drum. The 1/4" clear tube sitting on top of the drum is not connected to anything, it is used to fill containers whenever I need RO water (more about that below).

A detail of the left drum so you can see its valve:

A detail of the end of the pipe that goes in the sump:

A detail of the end of the pipe that goes in the quarantine tank. In this picture you can also see the floating switch of the automatic top-off system.

I hope this helps other people looking for some ideas on how to build their own systems.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

 

[mseepman]

Excellent documentation. Thanks for clearing up all my questions. It looks like you put a lot of thought into that setup. I'll have to re-examine it more closely to make sure I understand everything you've done but I think it all makes sense.

 

[gabrielt]

Thanks. I plan to keep this thread as a personal blog of the evolution of my system.

Right now I am working to increase calcium, alkalinity and magnesium. I ordered the wrong kind of salt and to return it would cost me a fortune. So the Ca, KH and Mg starting levels were too low. Right now Mg is at 1,100 ppm (from 700 ppm), which is a big improvement. I am still having trouble to raise calcium (still at 320 ppm after two months of daily dosages of two-part buffering solution) but I figured out the problem after reading "The Reef Aquarium Vol. 3", I need to add calcium chloride, I've just ordered it, let's see what happens.

I also added a "cleaning crew" to my system and new macro algae to the refugium.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

 

[SilverGTS]

Looks great! Kinda have a mad scientist look to the fish room

-Chris

 

[wowkingjames]

nice, what type of fish are you planning to put in your tank.

 

[gabrielt]

nice, what type of fish are you planning to put in your tank.

Nice question. I am still deciding, but here are some fishes that I like:

* Anthias: I was thinking about five
* Schooling banner fish (Heniochus): maybe 2 or 3
* Blue powder tang
* Purple tang
* Royal gramma

Suggestions are welcome. I have right now one Banggai Cardinal, one Yellow Tang, one Ocellaris clownfish and one yellow tail damsel.

Thanks,
Gabriel.