(HD720p)S.MAC 600g SPS System/Full MH + Solaris/Surge/Prop/Fuge/Pond Chiller

[REEF SMAC]

Outrageous! Tell us more about the surge.....

Thanks M007..

The surge is just a basic Carlson Surge Device. The skimmer for my tank is located upstairs. (It way to big to fit under my tank) All the water that exits my skimmer drains into my CSD. Its an acrylic 29 gallon tank with an 1.5" bulkhead in the bottom. There is an upside down 1.5" "U" pipe in the surge tank connected to the bulkhead. As the tank fills almost to the top, it begins a siphon up and over the "U" and downstairs to an air separator via 1.5" pipe. I built a DIY air separator out of 4" and 6" PVC pipe that stands between my DT and the wall. It takes out 90% of the air bubbles before the water enters my DT. The water enters my DT through a 2" pipe/bulkhead. As you can see in the video there are still some small micro bubbles that make it into the DT but they are not really large enough to make much of a mess. The salt spray/creep is very minimal. It moves alot of water in my tank- It's like having a wave breaking in my tank. The surge of water easily pushes across the entire length of my DT. (6 feet) The water level rises about an inch in the DT when it dumps. My overflow drain is 3" pipe so it can handle the sudden volumn. Its been really maintenance free and has worked flawlessly for over three years now. With the CSD upstairs in another room I don't have to listen to the siphon break (toilet flush) sound in my living room. I don't have that skimmer smell in my living room either.

 

[scrapz]

very beautiful tank, hate the spectrum of those plasma however lol.

damn kraylen and his FF music. gives me chills everytime because i love the game so much=D

 

[M007]

Thanks M007..

The surge is just a basic Carlson Surge Device. The skimmer for my tank is located upstairs. (It way to big to fit under my tank) All the water that exits my skimmer drains into my CSD. Its an acrylic 29 gallon tank with an 1.5" bulkhead in the bottom. There is an upside down 1.5" "U" pipe in the surge tank connected to the bulkhead. As the tank fills almost to the top, it begins a siphon up and over the "U" and downstairs to an air separator via 1.5" pipe. I built a DIY air separator out of 4" and 6" PVC pipe that stands between my DT and the wall. It takes out 90% of the air bubbles before the water enters my DT. The water enters my DT through a 2" pipe/bulkhead. As you can see in the video there are still some small micro bubbles that make it into the DT but they are not really large enough to make much of a mess. The salt spray/creep is very minimal. It moves alot of water in my tank- It's like having a wave breaking in my tank. The surge of water easily pushes across the entire length of my DT. (6 feet) The water level rises about an inch in the DT when it dumps. My overflow drain is 3" pipe so it can handle the sudden volumn. Its been really maintenance free and has worked flawlessly for over three years now. With the CSD upstairs in another room I don't have to listen to the siphon break (toilet flush) sound in my living room. I don't have that skimmer smell in my living room either.

Brilliant idea! I guess when that thing dumps it really gives all the acros a blast of oxygen rich water and a good cleaning at the same time without stressing everything out with over driven 24/7 water flow.

 

[shutiny]

Wow, Steve! Can't believed it has grown so much, love it! Kraylen is the official photogrpher for M-Bay County

 

[DML08]

Mbrk!..

 

[Reeference]

Thanks M007..

The surge is just a basic Carlson Surge Device. The skimmer for my tank is located upstairs. (It way to big to fit under my tank) All the water that exits my skimmer drains into my CSD. Its an acrylic 29 gallon tank with an 1.5" bulkhead in the bottom. There is an upside down 1.5" "U" pipe in the surge tank connected to the bulkhead. As the tank fills almost to the top, it begins a siphon up and over the "U" and downstairs to an air separator via 1.5" pipe. I built a DIY air separator out of 4" and 6" PVC pipe that stands between my DT and the wall. It takes out 90% of the air bubbles before the water enters my DT. The water enters my DT through a 2" pipe/bulkhead. As you can see in the video there are still some small micro bubbles that make it into the DT but they are not really large enough to make much of a mess. The salt spray/creep is very minimal. It moves alot of water in my tank- It's like having a wave breaking in my tank. The surge of water easily pushes across the entire length of my DT. (6 feet) The water level rises about an inch in the DT when it dumps. My overflow drain is 3" pipe so it can handle the sudden volumn. Its been really maintenance free and has worked flawlessly for over three years now. With the CSD upstairs in another room I don't have to listen to the siphon break (toilet flush) sound in my living room. I don't have that skimmer smell in my living room either.

So that is kinda like what the wavebox does..

 

[REEF SMAC]

very beautiful tank, hate the spectrum of those plasma however lol.=D

You don't like the spectrum at full sunlight at 100% or when they're blue at 70-40%? The spectrum is actually what I like the most. I like the fact that you can change the spectrum just by dimming the lights up and down. Seems alot of people run 10k MH and have actinic T5s for that "color pop". I just use the plasmas for the white 10k look and 20k radiums for the "color pop". I been loving this combination. I think my coral colors have improved greatly with the plasmas. I like that my growth has never been better. With the plasmas on at 100% like sunlight all day and I can still view my tank for hours in the evening with them dimmed down to 70% where they are very blue. Along with the radiums I can still get the whole black light poster tank without having to change any bulbs.

damn kraylen and his FF music. gives me chills everytime because i love the game so much=D

Can't speak for the music. I have know idea where it's from.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Brilliant idea! I guess when that thing dumps it really gives all the acros a blast of oxygen rich water and a good cleaning at the same time without stressing everything out with over driven 24/7 water flow.

Thanks! Works really well, it's a pretty good blast. You definately wouldn't want that much flow blasting 24/7. I don't think the corals would be able to take it. Once every 3 minutes seems to be just fine though.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Wow, Steve! Can't believed it has grown so much, love it! Kraylen is the official photogrpher for M-Bay County

It definately does grow fast-Thanks Shu`Tin.

Kraylen is really good with the camera skills and he just keeps getting better all the time. I guess that's why he has his own YouTube channel.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Mbrk!..

That's right!:beer:

 

[REEF SMAC]

So that is kinda like what the wavebox does..

I think the wavebox is more of a water motion that has a back and forth kind of rhythm. Kind of gets the whole tank swaying in and out of the box. I think my surge is more like dumping a 5 gallon bucket of water into your tank really fast. (Actually more like 5 buckets in 30 seconds.) Then it all overflows and calms down before it does it again 3 minutes later. It's alot more random I think.

 

[jdm1114]

Very nice tank man

 

[Daren]

Awesome tank. What light settings do you have set on your Solaris? I have a 210 with Solaris also. No where as pretty as this but hopefully one day.
Thanks,
Daren

 

[oscar.millan]

Thanks for sharing, those are some massive colonies well done.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Very nice tank man

Thank you jdm1114 -

 

[seashark]

love this tank ,thanks for sharing

 

[REEF SMAC]

Awesome tank. What light settings do you have set on your Solaris? I have a 210 with Solaris also. No where as pretty as this but hopefully one day.
Thanks,
Daren

Thanks Daren for the compliments.
I no longer have the Solaris fixtures on my display tank. I started my LED adventure years ago when the first Solaris version came out. It worked really well for me on a 50g tank that I had at the time. My growth/colors were excellent. I had ran this fixture for a little over a year and at the same time I was working on my current display tank. At the time when I was just getting my new DT tank going the new Solaris I-IV came out. Since I had such good luck with my first model, I decided to get two of the I-IV's for my new DT. I have to say that at first these fixtures were awesome. Side by side with 400w MH I think my SPS grew better and had just as good color under the LEDs. That with the fact that they don't put off hardly and heat made them a great fixture at first. Unfortunately that did not last. As time went on these new fixtures fell apart fast. At first the bulbs started dying, one by one randomly. It started as one a month and six months later it was at least one a week. PFO was excellent with their customer service and would always replace the bulbs. Not quite a year into this, one of the power sources died and again PFO replaced it right away. About a year into it, one of the circuit boards died. I sent the fixture to PFO and they fixed it. By this time I had been through 3 power sources and at least 40 light strips and 2 fans. About this time my original Solaris that was just over two years old now started to have bulb and power source issues as well. So anyway, soon after that PFO just disappeared. They no longer answered their phone. After many many hours of my time retrofitting my own power sources, changing bulbs, fans etc. I gave up on these nightmare LEDs. Spending all your spare time keeping your light fixtures working gets old really fast.:mad2:

I decided to try out the new SeaShine Plasmas to replace the LEDs.That is what you are seeing in the second video by Kraylen here-

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kraylen#grid/uploads

So far so good. I love the light they put out. I'm still waiting to see if they outlast LEDs, and I will let you know how that works out.

I now use one Solaris on my frag/QT. By cannibalizing the other two, I can still make one work. What I have found also, is that over time LEDs don't seem to perform. Yes the bulbs last 50k hours (if you can keep them running) but even though the bulbs are still on and appear bright, they just don't grow coral like they used to. Between my DT, another frag tank running T5s, and this tank running LEDs, any coral I try looks the worst/brownest under these not quite 3 year old LEDs. They all share the same water so that is not it. Things still stay alive and even grow a little, but there is a night and day difference how they performed when they were new. It's like having MH bulbs that haven't been changed in over two years. I'm still holding out hope that LEDs will be better in the future because I think they definately have potential. You can't beat how cool they run, especially on a smaller tank where light heat can be an issue. I hope that with all of the new LED fixtures out there, that everyone has better luck than I did.
I can say that I've burned alot of money in this hobby and LEDs have unfortunately turned out to be for me, the biggest waist of money so far to date.

:sad2:

 

[REEF SMAC]

Thanks for sharing, those are some massive colonies well done.

Thanks oscar.millan- I've started pretty much all of them from small frags. Some I have trimmed many times. Others I have had for years and they are still small frags...?

love this tank ,thanks for sharing

Thank you seashark- Thanks for checking it out.

 

[RobbReef]

Thank you for sharing this beautiful beast. Do you have a video of equipment?

 

[Bax]

Very very nice system!

Can you tell us more about the cooling loop between the reef and koi pond?

How is the heat exchabger connected and fed?

Do you circulate the pond water thru the heat exchnager? ANd, what type of exchanger do you use?

Thanks for sharing this sweet tank!