Joining the club... my new 240G build :)

[Spaced Cowboy]

Finishing off the water storage/making area


So, now that the tanks are in-place and ready to go, I had to link up the RO/DI system. As mentioned above, I bought the six-stage Chloramines system from BRS since San Jose uses Chloramines (basically Chlorine bound to Ammonia, yuk!) as part of their sterilization process. I mounted them above the large SW tank, mainly because that's where the tap is

I also added a power line, taken via an armoured cable from the swimming-pool sub-panel, and plumbed in a ball-valve at the base of the mixing tank, so once the NSW reads 1.026 s.g., all I have to do is turn the valve and 70 gallons of NSW gets dumped to the large NSW storage tank...

Both the mixing-tank and the RO/DI tank are fed (via a T) from the same RO/DI system output. There's a shut-off valve located where the RO system is fed, which is activated by the back-pressure from the float-valves in each tank. If either tank is not yet full, that tank will be filled with RO/DI until it reaches the top, at which point the RO/DI will switch to filling the other tank if needed, finally shutting off completely, all completely automatically.

This is rather cool because it means I always have a full 70 gallons of pure RO/DI, and it also means the mixing tank starts to refill as soon as I empty it via the ball-valve to the NSW storage.

One of the things I have noticed is that I do seem to be going through DI resin quite fast - I've ordered more, but I thought I'd get through it slower than this. The resin changes to a brownish colour when it's exhausted, and you can see in the first picture below that it's going brown after only ~210 gallons of water produced (still at 0 tds output though). I was expecting ~800 gallons before exhaustion, not ~300 gallons (estimated).

The middle image is my digital refractometer. Nice little toy, and makes it easier to measure the s.g And finally I laid down some cable-protector so the water-pipes that go from the storage-tanks under the house to the display tank won't get crushed when I step on them

Simon.

 

[TruespeedEM1]

subscribed!

hope my 265 turns out as good as this ones going! Attention to detail is awesome

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Cool! My first-ever subscription

Thanks for the kind words!

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Sump'n's up!

So, a bit of work on the sump-side of things. Glad I'm not crawling around on my belly under the house any more! I painted the inside of the sump (including the doors) with several coats of gloss exterior wood paint. Spilling some water onto the surface resulted in a gratifying beading of the water The white colour will help with seeing what's going on in the sump when the only light down there is a refugium light, as well...

One of the design principles of the tank is for it to be as quiet as possible, so we're running a bean-animal overflow, the skimmer is the quietest good skimmer I could afford, the pump is a quiet one etc..

This is the Warner Marine K2 skimmer I bought a while ago. It fits neatly into the skimmer-section I'll be linking up the nog-drain valve to a suitable closed container which will go over by the pump ... which is the other photo: a reeflo super dart gold. At 5' head, it ought to provide ~3200gph, but given the losses due to plumbing, I'd expect more like ~2000gph being returned to the display. Soon, I'll bolt the pump to the wooden support platform, which rests on top of four sound-dampening pads.

There are true-union ball-valves immediately before and after the pump for easy maintenance, and in fact there are probably too many unions all over the plumbing. I tend to use them in order to make fitting the plumbing easier... If you put an union on a pipe, and then an elbow after it, you can make the other side of the elbow point at any angle - it just means you don't have to get everything spot-on perfect the first time when you're joining the slip-joints with cement.

The pump doesn't just do the return - I've built the below manifold ...

... to give me some flexibility in the future with respect to how the water flows. The nearest and farthest lines are the returns - still got to plumb in the near one. The middle set of valves are for "everything else" The middle set are positioned so that two are above the skimmer section, two are above the return section, and one is above the refugium section, for flexibility in which section to dump water back into. The manifold is supported in the middle at the moment, but I still have to add some more plumbing supports ...

Finally, there's a photo showing how the water-lines from the storage tanks at the other end of the house emerge from the floor. I'll be linking those up to a peristaltic pump (the Litermeter III) and doing both ATO and water-changes with them. I've heard great things about the LM3, so I'm hoping the distance and head-pressure won't be a problem.

One other thing: I was walking back from the garage with the manifold / straight-pipe section under my arm (the mitre saw and cement are in the garage - my 3-months pregnant wife didn't want any "nasty chemicals" in the house. Fair enough ). Picture the above manifold, upside-down for ease of carrying, being held by one of the middle-ish valves, the others resting in the crook of my elbow, and the section of straight pipe sticking out ahead of me. Bear in mind that's about 3.5' long... My wife took one look and labelled it a "terminator-gun" :uzi: :lolspin:

... and there we are... All caught up. From now on the posts will slow down to a more manageable rate, as I actually have to do something before writing about it [grin]

Simon.

 

[Warnock316]

DUDE that Looks awsome! cant wait to see it filled and a year mature. Looks like youre having a blast! and moving rather quickly I might add.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

DUDE that Looks awsome! cant wait to see it filled and a year mature. Looks like youre having a blast! and moving rather quickly I might add.

Cheers

Progress is being made, but it's going to slow down a bit now because I'm in real-time. I was just documenting the things I'd done to-date...

Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Media Frenzy

I'm waiting around for an online order to come in so I can actually finish the plumbing, so I thought I'd put in the media chambers (for carbon and GFO). This is the first use of the manifold

The center-brace just overhangs the sump, so the plan was to mount the media containers on the center-brace, drill a hole through the brace to supply the water for each container, and just drain vertically downwards (through a pipe, of course) into the sump. I hung the media-container-spanner on the vertical, so it'll always be close-to-hand...

The second photo shows the other side, where one of the media-containers is linked up - I have to go to Home Depot for some more Murlok fittings to link up the other one. The piping is so rigid it can't be bent in tight angles, so I'm using the angled connectors to link things up. Once I have everything linked up properly, I'll straighten it all up and make it look pretty It's not obvious from the photo, but there's actually a ball-valve that will go onto each of the supply-pipes to the media-containers. This will allow me to fine-control the gph of water through each container.


Plumbing Porn

Well, maybe not porn - this is a pretty simple setup, so let's call it a '15 certificate'

As mentioned, I'm waiting for some elbows and adapters to finish off the below-sump plumbing, but here's a look at where it stands right now:

If it's not clear, there are 3 horizontal pipes on the left-hand side, the top one will be the open drain, the middle one will be the siphon, and the lower one is the return (out the back of the stand and over the top of the tank). Both the open drain and siphon will drop down vertically from where they currently end, and terminate in the sump. The siphon will go through the gate valve that's resting on the sump at the moment, which is how I'll control the BeanAnimal overflow.

There's about 2mm of gap between each of these horizontal pipes - it wasn't much to aim at, but it fitted [grin]. There's not much space for the turn and drop before we hit the media containers either, but I think it'll all fit

The right-hand side is the manifold for future purposes, and the right-hand side return pipe. The untidy red, blue and black pipe behind are the pipes to the water-storage area, which the LiterMeter will make good use of.

Simon

 

[swflfisher]

oh and tank also. I'm hoping to get a similar size soon.I dont think I can make that stand though.

 

[marrstarr]

bump

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

holly nice stand!

oh and tank also. I'm hoping to get a similar size soon.I dont think I can make that stand though.

Thankyou ... and welcome to the thread, both you and marrstarr

Well, I won't say the stand was easy, because with my level of woodworking skill (i.e. almost nonexistent), it wasn't. There's nothing overly difficult about the technical side of making it, it's just the ability to consistently do accurate work. I wish I had that [grin]. Let me put it this way - there's quite a bit of scrap wood waiting to be turned into charcoal in the garage now

Cheers
Simon

 

[ef200098]

I can't wait for a large tank! looking good so far!

 

[robferrari]

Beautiful work on that stand! Simple and elegant. I like the idea of the wood work to complement the tank. I have built furniture by hand myself so I can relate to building that first piece that will be in your home. Would you mind stating how you applied stain and varnish? Awesome build!

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Beautiful work on that stand! Simple and elegant. I like the idea of the wood work to complement the tank. I have built furniture by hand myself so I can relate to building that first piece that will be in your home.

Thanks And welcome to the thread

Yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking to have to do something you know there's no way back from, and you have to do it, and you've put all this effort into getting to the position you're currently at. I'm really good at prevaricating when that's the situation

Would you mind stating how you applied stain and varnish? Awesome build!

Sure - First thing I did was to test out the strength of the dye by getting a test board and adding dye, diluting by two, doing another section, repeat until bored. I think I did 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8 and 1:16 tests. We liked the 1:4 best, so that's the one we went with.

Next I spent some time sanding the entire stand a couple of times, once with a coarse grit, once with a fine grit. I don't recall the exact numbers, but it was just what Home Depot had in stock at the time. I don't think it's particularly important which one you choose, just that you do the sanding! Then I rubbed it all down with a damp cloth to remove the dust, and let it stand for a day. Probably way overkill, but I wanted to be sure.

Next I started to apply the dye ("LockWood #871 English Brown Oak water-soluble dye") using rags. I'd bought a bag of 50 white rags from Home Depot for this, and I only went through about 10 or so doing the whole thing. I was more concerned about trying to make it look uniform than the specific shade - the dye is pretty dark anyway. Once it was on, I let it dry for a week, basically until it was dry to the touch, and there was no smell left.

Next I used the rags again to apply the stain ("General Finishes Brown Mahogany gel stain"). Here I rubbed it on, worked it into the grain, waited for 10 seconds or so then rubbed it off with the rag again. I repeated this until the white grain of the Red Oak wasn't visible any more.

Then I let it dry until the smell was no longer present again, and applied a varnish ("Tung Oil Varnish") on top. I think I didn't let it sit long enough before applying the varnish though because it took forever to stop being "tacky" afterwards - like about 4 weeks. If I'd let the stain dry for longer, I think the varnish would have dried faster.

And that's it. Here's a shot of the (right hand side, this time) finished product. I tried to show the inlay and the moldings on this one.

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

I can't wait for a large tank! looking good so far!

Thanks for the kind words and welcome to the thread Hope you get as much out of following as I'm getting out of building it...

Simon.

 

[Bax]

very nice work Space Cowboy!

Wish I could place my sump room outside!

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

very nice work Space Cowboy!

Thanks And welcome to the thread

Wish I could place my sump room outside!

Well, the sump is still below the stand - it's just the water-storage that's outside. I'd love to have the space to have a fish-room, a real fish-room, but that's just not going to happen unless we move house... Especially with a baby on the way... I'm going to get less space, not more!

Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Handling restraint...

Ok, so nothing major happening until Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday when the deliveries arrive, but figured I'd clean up some loose ends...

The outlets from the media filters (GFO and Carbon) are from 1/2" RO/DI-type pipe, and have a lot of curve in them due to being shipped in a coil from BRS. I wanted these to dump directly into the sump immediately below the media-filters themselves, so yesterday I cut off some small slivers of 1" piping, and superglued them to the inside of the sump using a coupling as support while the glue hardened. Today I could restrain the pipes natural tendency to bend towards the center of the sump skimmer section as you can see in the first photo...

I'd also bought some handles a while back for the "doors" that just pull off. I noticed it was tough to properly support the (rather large) doors as you lift them off, and having a handle would be better. I didn't want them to look like they pulled off though, so we have the fake-door handles attached as if they pull the door open [grin]. Here's a profile view of the entire stand, with doors in place, and sporting their handles

Pity about the lighting - the iPhone 3GS doesn't have that great a camera and the wood's not that dark, but I think the handles just add that final finishing touch to the doors.

Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

A "DI"rty business

So, for the last week or so, the RO/DI system has been churning out RO/DI water, I've been mixing it with salt in the mixing tank, and then storing it in the NSW tank. So far, I've got ~70 gallons of pure RO/DI water and 290 gallons of NSW water ready to go. That's a total of ~360 gallons, and my RO/DI meter started to say it was reading 1ppm on the output.

Now this is a dual-stage DI-resin system, so there are two, not one, media chambers full of DI resin. I'm thinking that ~360 gallons of purified water is a little low for this system. The input water pressure is ~70psi, and the PPM readings out of the RO side (before DI) are ~20ppm, which seems to be a bit high compared to what others are seeing. I'll be contacting BRS to see if there's anything they can do...

Hopefully BRS will come up with a reason why it's not working as well as it ought to, and I won't be changing resin every couple of months...In any event, I've changed the resin - now that it's registering 1ppm it's done, as far as I'm concerned. You can see the difference between the before/after below...

Note: I do like the refillable canisters that BRS use. It took about 10 minutes to change out both canisters this lunchtime and fill with new resin.

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Rock on!

So the BRS rock arrived today. I can't do too much with it until the weekend, but I've put it outside ready to be seriously powerwashed before I start trying to come up with ideas for aquascaping...

To give an idea of scale, the large flat circular rock with all the protrusions on it towards the upper left is approximately 16" across. It's going to make a wonderful cap to a rock-island in the tank.

This isn't all the rock I'll be using - it's 100 lbs of rock in a 240-gallon tank. I'm going to get some real "live" rock as well - probably about 50 lbs or so, which will still leave me "under" the normal rock quota, but I'm going for a minimalist aquascape, with space for fish to swim. The vision here is a large tank with lots of space, and lots of smaller fish, rather than blowing the 'budget' with a smaller number of tangs. Ok. There may be one (possibly 2) tangs, but only the smaller ones...

I was planning on using aquacon for rock - I liked the way they would specify the size of rock you get, but after reading about their reputation, I'm not considering them any more. Now I'm thinking of using liverocknreef and going for 50 lbs of their Cherry Primo Picked Decorator rock - the photos look amazing.

I've bought some of the "driveway reflectors" from Home Depot, and I'm going to epoxy them into a schedule-40 piping stand, then drill holes in the rock to let me place the rocks on top of each other in islands, and have some stability to boot. I'm thinking 2 main islands, with an arm extending from one of them into the middle of the tank, sort of like an archipelago but underwater

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

RockIn'

Having power-washed the rock, and found about 6 metric tons of stuff-I-didn't-want-in-my-tank deposited on the floor, I started to play around with how the rocks ought to be positioned. The goal is to keep some open swim-space for the fish, to provide some tunnels and allow for line-of-sight to be broken, and to provide plenty of places to put corals.

I also wanted to keep to the minimalist style, although I'm not sure I actually managed that. For 100 lbs of rock, it sure takes up a lot of space in a 240-gallon tank...

I'll probably get a couple more smaller pieces of tonga-branch or similar live-rock to seed the dead rock with, and I'll be adding dead-sand to the bottom, followed by a live-sand layer on top. I'm shooting for 4-5" of sand-bed, and I may end up raising the rocks up a bit so they're not half-buried in sand.

Anyway, this is the design so far. Nothing is set in stone - pun intended - I've yet to apply any epoxy, the rocks are just balanced on each other. Thoughts and comments welcomed

Simon.