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

[myzislow]

you sir....are the baller!

HAHA yes+1 to that.

Freaaaaking amazing Steve!!!! Loving the growth man. Pictures do not do this tank justice; it truly looks like a natural chunk of the reef. I need to make another trip over there soon! Maybe we can plan a tank day here in the near future.

You should post the behind the scenes pics and everything from the beginning like you did on that other site. It really gives light on how this great reef has evolved over the years.

 

[fq600]

Amazing work of art my friend. That surge system is truly creative! I do wish I live nearby

+1 for TOTM!

 

[DML08]

HAHA yes+1 to that.

Freaaaaking amazing Steve!!!! Loving the growth man. Pictures do not do this tank justice; it truly looks like a natural chunk of the reef. I need to make another trip over there soon! Maybe we can plan a tank day here in the near future.

You should post the behind the scenes pics and everything from the beginning like you did on that other site. It really gives light on how this great reef has evolved over the years.

+1 and a huge +1 on a 831 Reef day!

 

[REEF SMAC]

you sir....are the baller!

Thanks man, It's tough being a baller with nothing but cell phone pics. lol.

HAHA yes+1 to that.

Freaaaaking amazing Steve!!!! Loving the growth man. Pictures do not do this tank justice; it truly looks like a natural chunk of the reef. I need to make another trip over there soon! Maybe we can plan a tank day here in the near future.

Thanks, you know you are welcome to stop by anytime. Tank day would be great.

Amazing work of art my friend. That surge system is truly creative! I do wish I live nearby

+1 for TOTM!

Thank you for the kind words fq600.

+1 and a huge +1 on a 831 Reef day!

Thanks again D2, gotta do another 831 soon. In fact I need to do a Los Banos day.

 

[REEF SMAC]

You should post the behind the scenes pics and everything from the beginning like you did on that other site. It really gives light on how this great reef has evolved over the years.

Thanks man, great idea.
Here it goes-


Here are some more "history" photos. I'm gonna suddenly turn this into my build thread for ya. Hope you enjoy.

So here is my DT when I first got it in March of 07. It was a used sump from a 3000 gallon public fresh water display. After using literally a gallon of muratic acid to get the 1/8" thick layer of lime deposits of the inside and alot of cleaning, it looked like this. You can see in these pics where all the bulkheads were already installed in this tank (along with millions of scratches). It was a deal, so I figured out a way to incorporate them.

I built myself a stand out of welded 3"x3"x1/4" stainless steel angle and 3"x3"x3/8" fiberglass square tube. I put a 3/4" painted plywood shelf on the bottom supported with 3"x3"x3/8" fiberglass angle. I bought a used acrylic 85g and a 55g off Craigslist for my sumps. The two sumps are connected together with a 3"(low) and a 2"(high) bulkhead. Plumbed my Ocean Motion 4 way, supply piping, and Reeflo Hammerhead supply pump. So by June of '07 it was looking like this.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Then I put two layers of painted 3/4" plywood on top of the stand, and put the DT on top of that. I also by this time, had spent many hours polishing out all the scratches. You can probably see, even in this dark picture, that the acrylic is a lot clearer. You can also see here, where I drilled the hole in the bottom of the tank and the plywood, for my 3" overflow.

I then plumbed in my overflow and my supplys, filled it with water, and by July of '07 it looked like this.

Then I started messing with the supply inlets and the flow. Here is one end's supplys,(the black fittings) coming from two ports of the OM.

 

[REEF SMAC]

The other end of the tank's supplys, which are also the other two ports of the OM, enter here.

Back up a little and it looked like this.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Then after I was happy with the flow, I drained the tank, and dried the inside really well.
I bought 8 cans of this great stuff.

I used this foam to completely cover all my supply inlets, and the overflow pipe, inside my DT. Then it looked like this.

Then I did a little bit of carving on the hardened foam to make it roughly the shape I wanted.
After that I completely covered the foam with a 1/4" layer of POLYGEM. It's this really awesome two part epoxy that you mix together in a 50 - 50 mix. It takes about 2 to 4 hours to "go off ", so you have plenty of time to work with it. It's about the consistancy of peanut butter, when you mix it together, to work with it. You mix it with a "thickener" that POLYGEM sells with it. This thickener is a powder, very similar to flour. You mix the two part epoxy together on a layer of this thickener so it won't stick to the board you are mixing it on. It's like making pie crust on a layer of flour. You wear latex gloves when you work with it, and as long as you keep your gloves wet, by dipping them often in water, the epoxy won't stick to your gloves. After applying the layer of POLYGEM over the hardened sprayfoam, I used a silicone rubber mold of rock texture,(also dipped in water) to imprint a rock texture into the POLYGEM before it hardens. It's actually pretty easy to work with once you get it down. I had to buy two gallons of both part A and B to have enough for my tank. It's an off white color, very similar color to live rock, so it looks pretty real when you are done. It's paintable after it's hard, if you for some reason want to paint it. It cleans up with water as long as it's still soft.
Anyway here's the stuff.

 

[REEF SMAC]

After it's on it looks like this. You can see the blue rubber "rock" imprint mold that I used in the lower left of the second picture.

 

[REEF SMAC]

Here is a top shot of my overflows. I was going for the look of one big rock against the back wall with the overflows sticking out the top of the rock. Each overflow is 6" clear PVC pipe and they are about 10" deep. I hot air welded a PVC bottom and a 3" coupling onto the bottom of each 6" overflow. The drain side of each 3" coupling is glued, The top side of the 3" couplings is where my Durso stand pipes plug in. The Dursos are not glued in, so I can take them out to clean them.

The piping from my supply pump goes up the back wall, above the water line, and then back down and into the supply bulkhead inlets in the side of my DT. The reason for that, is so I don't have to use a checkvalve, to keep my entire tank from siphoning into my sump when the pump shuts off for any reason. Checkvalves get sealife growing inside of them and eventually fail. The two 1/2" ball valves in the middle of this photo are for siphon breaks. The black 3/8" tubing attached to them spray a stream of water into my DT just below the water line when the supply pump is running. When the supply pump shuts off, those 3/8" tubes draw in air, breaking the siphon. There is probably a small amount of flow that I lose, due to friction loss, by running my supply piping up and over like this, but so what, I would rather not have any floods. I also oversized my supply piping to 2" to make up for a lot of that friction loss.
The two other ball valves in this photo are for a locline supply and a OM squirt. Both of these supply water to the top of the DT so even if my other siphon breaks where to fail, because they where for some reason clogged, these will also act as siphon breaks. I've never had the 3/8" tubes clog so far in 4 years, but I like having two siphon breaks on each supply just in case.

 

[REEF SMAC]

So by August '07 I had begun putting in my already precycled live rock. I drilled my rock and used 3/8" fiberglass rods to dowel them together along with a fast setting epoxy, HY150, made by HILTI. This stuff works great for sticking live rock together. I also made all my live rock raised off the bottom about 2", using the same 3/8" rods as legs. All my rock is supported directly on the bottom of my DT.
The sand went in last. My engineer goby can dig all he wants and it won't caused an avalance.

Seemed, at the time, like a pretty minimal amount of rock for the size of this tank. Never would guess that by looking at my tank today.




By mid September '07 my DT had been cyled for about 6 weeks. I put in a few corals and it looked like this.

 

[REEF SMAC]

So at the time I was getting this new tank going, I had three other tanks going.My 50g-

My 60g cube-

My 25g-

So over the month of October '07, I tranfered all the livestock from these three tanks into my new DT.
By November '07 my tank looked like this-

 

[REEF SMAC]

By December '07 it looked like this-

 

[REEF SMAC]

By December '07 I finally recieved my Solaris IVs and installed two more 400MHs. Over several months my POLYGEM fake rocks became covered with coraline algae and look like the rest of my live rock.

By March of '08 it looked like this-

 

[REEF SMAC]

 

[REEF SMAC]

By June of '08 it looked like this-

 

[REEF SMAC]

Now you can fast forward to February 2010 in Kraylen's video at the very beginning of this thread.

:wavehand:

 

[miwoodar]

Awesome - thanks for sharing the history. Very clever plumbing!

 

[chrishayes]

Ok, just read through this thread and realized my mouth was open! You should charge a door fee to enter! Im alllllllmost speechless...INCREDIBLE

 

[Bax]

A well planned start to great system!!!!!