jtarmitage
Active member
This thread has been long overdue, but better late than never. Thanks to the threat from a good friend of mine, that he’d feign sickness when I needed his help to move this beast into the house if I didn’t have a thread going by the end of the day, here it is.
Let me start out by saying that this tank was originally set up 11 months ago, for a total of 2 weeks, before we decided to sell our house and relocate, and, down came the tank. Well, 10 months on the market and we are still here. Maybe we won’t be moving after all. Soooo, the tank is going back up, with a few changes and in a different location however. As plans have changed, I’ve had to rework a few of the details and make a few changes in equipment, and a little poor planning on my part means most of the plumbing that was already done needs to be scrapped.
First, the tank design. I researched for several months before deciding on what I thought the end product should be. After having several tanks with internal overflow boxes and powerheads galore, I really wanted to minimize the equipment that intruded upon my undersea garden. That meant external overflow and a closed loop system. In discussion with Paul from Oceans Motions and James from Envision Acrylics, I designed a dual closed loop system. Thinking I may put an anemone or 2 in the tank, I decided to go with dual 2" drains on each to reduce the velocity of water entering the CL system(serious overkill, I know, I'm like that!)
Each CL would feed 4 1" returns, 4 from the front bottom of the tank on an OM 4 way, and 4 entering low on the back wall. The system return pump will also feed 4 1" returns near the top of the back wall that will be angled down. With the returns pushing down along the back wall, out from the bottom of the back wall, and using 45's from the front bottom, I am essentially creating a gyre effect, rolling the water in the tank.
Here is the sketchup model of what I had in mind:
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Let me start out by saying that this tank was originally set up 11 months ago, for a total of 2 weeks, before we decided to sell our house and relocate, and, down came the tank. Well, 10 months on the market and we are still here. Maybe we won’t be moving after all. Soooo, the tank is going back up, with a few changes and in a different location however. As plans have changed, I’ve had to rework a few of the details and make a few changes in equipment, and a little poor planning on my part means most of the plumbing that was already done needs to be scrapped.
First, the tank design. I researched for several months before deciding on what I thought the end product should be. After having several tanks with internal overflow boxes and powerheads galore, I really wanted to minimize the equipment that intruded upon my undersea garden. That meant external overflow and a closed loop system. In discussion with Paul from Oceans Motions and James from Envision Acrylics, I designed a dual closed loop system. Thinking I may put an anemone or 2 in the tank, I decided to go with dual 2" drains on each to reduce the velocity of water entering the CL system(serious overkill, I know, I'm like that!)
Each CL would feed 4 1" returns, 4 from the front bottom of the tank on an OM 4 way, and 4 entering low on the back wall. The system return pump will also feed 4 1" returns near the top of the back wall that will be angled down. With the returns pushing down along the back wall, out from the bottom of the back wall, and using 45's from the front bottom, I am essentially creating a gyre effect, rolling the water in the tank.Here is the sketchup model of what I had in mind:
