Los' 360 reef CAD plans and setup

[Los]

I peaked in to see what it looked like mid-demolition and it wasn't pretty:

At first I didn't have a good barrier between that room and the room with my 90 reef. After they started the demolition I came home to find a not-so-fine layer of dust everywhere, including in the 90, and one of my few sps was RTNing and everything was looking pretty bad. I immediately did a few water changes and added carbon. What was really surprising is that I had been battling hair algae for months. I was picking out cup-fulls every week or so. Anyway, there must have been something in that dust, because in addition to killing that one coral, all the algae died that night and has never come back. I was half tempted to save some of the dust to get analyzed. Anyway, I learned my lesson and I put a solid plastic barrier between the construction area and the rest of my house.

Here's a pic of my beautiful wife who by this point was 8 months pregnant. The room was pretty much gutted by this point.

It was around this time that Nick got the idea to add in a remote fish room. I had a small kitchen downstairs that wasn't being used. We decided to run 5 x 2" pipes between the main display tank and the fish room. Here's the channel in the floor those pipes went through:

And here they are:

One pipe is an emergency drain, which will be connected to the lip we put in earlier under the tank. If there's a leak or a spill the water will collect under the stand and drain out through this 2" pipe. Pipe #2 is for water to go down from the sump to the fish room. Pipe #3 is a backup to pipe #2 - for that redundancy that is sooooo important when dealing with this much water. Pipe #4 is the return from the fish room, which will go directly to the display tank. Pipe #5 is a conduit through which I'm running: i) the RJ-11 (phone jack) cable for my ACIII Pro controller to control the DC8s in the fish room; ii) the mini-din 8 cable for the PX-1000 breakout box in the fish room (also part of the ACIII Pro); and iii) 2 separate RO 1/4" tubing in case I ever need to run RO water to the upstairs sump and for future flexibility to do... I don't know yet. Anyway, the fish room is about 25 feet away and down one floor. Here are the pipes coming down from the roof into the fish room:

And the rest of the room:

It used to be a kitchen, and before that a bathroom, so there's already a sink and plenty of plumbing in place:

To be continued...

 

[Los]

While waiting for the tank to be uncovered, I ordered some more dry rock from Marco Rocks and Bulk Reef Supply. They were both really nice, but the Pukani from Bulk Reef Supply was the nicest. It's $2.69 or less (depending on volume) per lb, but it is extremely light and totally dry, so you really get a lot for your money. I also bought some of the dry Fiji rock:

This stuff was OK, but not nearly as light and porous as the Pukani:

They also have Shelf Rock. Here are a couple of pieces I glued together:

(I'm not sure if you recognize the top piece, but it's the one my wife modeled way back in the thread)

They also have Spaghetti rock. I bought a sample of 10 lbs or so and I don't like it all. Most importantly, I don't think it's calcium carbonate (or whatever coral is made out of). It looks like mud mixed with silicate sand which worms have formed into tubes. It is a different color than the other rock and you can't drill it without it falling apart. Most importantly, I'm not sure what it's made of, so I'm worried it might cause problems in my tank down the road. I may be way off base on this, so definitely research more before taking this off your list of rocks to buy. My vote, hands down, is for the Bulk Reef Supply Pukani rock. It is THAT much nicer than the other stuff.

I decided to drill all my rocks with a 3/16" bit. I am then gluing that stiff airline tubing that you used to use in the pipes coming out of undergravel filters (remember those?) to the bottom of my corals and that way I can position them tightly in tons of different places. If a coral needs more room, I can pull it out of one hole and place it in another an inch or two over. Drilling all these holes now is a huge pain, but will make life much easier over the long run. At first I used a hand held drill. If you only have a few pieces to drill, that will work fine. This drill worked much better though:

Here is a closeup of a piece of Pukani with a ton of holes drilled in it:

Did I mention I love that Punaki rock! Another advantage is that the drill goes through it like butter. I could leave the drill running and then lift the rock into the spinning bit over and over again to get tons of holes:

BTW, they only very rarely chipped off when I drilled and I didn't have one piece fall apart on me. Be sure, btw, to use masonry drill bits:

(the 3/16" bits are for the pegs and the larger 3/8" was for putting rods into the rocks to hold them up)

One of the really nice things about the gnarled Pukani pieces is that they easily fit together and hold in place. Still, to prevent rock slides I wanted some of the taller structures to be firmly attached. I used two methods. The first was to drill 3/8" holes and then run either clear plastic 3/8" smooth acrylic rods from USPlastics or 3/8" threaded nylon rods from Marco Rocks. I like the rods from Marco Rocks much better, because you can then run nylon washers and nuts to hold each piece tightly together. You can get those from Marco Rocks as well. Here are the nuts and washers:

To be continued....

 

[Los]

The second method was using the SpeedGlue from Korralen-zucht (the same guys that make Zeovit). Zeovitusa.com carries it. This is a concrete mix that is really easy to use. You add in 1 part water to 3 parts mix and it forms a putty that looks just like rock. It dries VERY quickly. You have maybe 5 minutes to work it and, supposedly, you can use it underwater in your running reef. I was very impressed with the stuff and bought a couple more bottles. You can see a picture of the bottle two pics above next to the drill bits.

Here you can see some of the Pukani being stacked using first the nylon rod to hold it together and then the SpeedGlue to lock each piece in place (and hide the nylon rod):

My saint-like wife is helping me:

Here is the finished piece:

Some of the pieces from BulkReefSupply were really big, even before being glued. Here's a picture of some of them next to one of my dogs:

And this is what I hope it all looks like when it goes in the tank. The CPVC frame is actual sized:

To be continued...

 

[Los]

One of the bigger headaches with setting up the fish room was figuring out how I was going to control everything. I want to have my ACIII Pro run everything, both for stability and so that I can remotely check on the tank when I'm out of the country. That means I need to have some things controlled by the main display tank (lights, Tunze streams, etc) and others in the fish room (chiller, heaters, calcium reactor, auto-top-off, etc). There are two main problems: 1) the cables that control whether power outlets are on or off can only be 10' long; and 2) the cable that connects the main controller to the PX-1000 expansion box (which I need in order to have separate pH, temp, and sensors in the fish room) can only be 15' long.

Power Control Cable = 10 feet max of telephone wire with RJ-11 jacks on both ends:

Solution: 100 feet of CAT-5 cable with RJ-11 jacks on both ends

I wasn't planning on going 100' long, but I tested it out and it works flawlessly. The idea is that CAT-5 twisted cable can run far longer with less interference compared to regular telephone wire. I bought the cable at Home Depot and the crimping tool from there as well:

I then stripped the wire and attached the wires to the RJ-11 (standard phone) jack. There are instructions online, but something to watch out for is that the wires need to be installed in mirrored order when the two jacks are facing each other (this is not how you wire ethernet, for example). Once I had that figured out, it was a piece of cake and I had no problem controlling the power outlets on the DC8 using the full 100 feet of cable. Whew.

The second problem was extending the mini-din 8 serial cable from 5' to 45', which was way past the 15' recommended max. I researched this a bit online and decided that CAT-5 cable would work as well, but trying to solder 8 wires into those tiny jacks would be too much of a headache. I found a great place on line that makes custom cables called PacificCable.com (do a search for "EX19C" on their website for the exact SKU). You then enter in how long you want the extension cable to be (I put in 40') and in the checkout process in the notes tell them that you want the cable made out of shielded CAT-5 cable. That last step is very important. It cost me $53. I ordered it on Thursday after 5pm EST and it was at my doorstep the very next morning!!! I didn't even pay for overnight delivery, but they managed to get it to me from the other side of the country in less than a day. The cable looked beautiful too:

Most importantly, the cable works like a charm. If you have an AquaController and you need to have an extension cable go longer than the recommended 10', this is the way to do it. You'd be hard pressed to save much money building it yourself and these guys really do a fantastic job.

To be continued...

 

[Los]

For pumps, I bought:

Main sump return: Reeflo Dart Gold = 2700 @ 6'
Closed Loop #1: Reeflo Dart Gold = 3800gph @ 0'
Closed Loop #2: Reeflo Dart Gold = 3800gph @0'
Fish room sump return: Reeflo Barracuda = 1200 gph @17'

What really confused me was when I took a second to look at the box the Dart Gold came in:

That's a picture of the pump. The name is certainly right, but the flow chart is nowhere near what it should be. For example, at zero head is should be 3,800 gph at 132 watts. As you can see in the pic (converted to gph), they claim only 3140gph at 95 watts. SOMETHING IS WRONG. I called up Reeflo and they had no idea what I was talking about. They assured me that what was written on the box must be wrong, but apparently nobody had bothered to call them before me. I struggle with that. Anyway, that was earlier in the week and I'm still waiting for a call back to confirm. Weird.

To be continued...

 

[fefo23]

Looking foward to see the end reasult

 

[erics3000]

WOW great updates..Are you doing any wave makers??

 

[Dudester]

This is great stuff, Los. And a couple marathon posts to boot.

I really like the idea of drilling holes into the rocks for future aquascaping, and I'm anxious to see how this turns out for you. I would think the openings would become partially filled in with coralline algae and if you eventually want to move your corals, you may find that the holes are difficult to access. But I guess you could always just chip away at the coralline, which would be easier than pulling the rocks out and drilling new holes. At any rate, it's an interesting concept. I know others have done it but I haven't heard how it works out long-term.

How will you attach the airline tubing rods to the bottom of your corals?

 

[Acan Lord]

Amazing!!!!!!!! Rock work that is crazy good wish mine tunred out like that. Skimmer is HUGE

 

[Los]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13219861#post13219861 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by erics3000
WOW great updates..Are you doing any wave makers??

Thanks, Erics3000. Two of the Dart Golds are being plumbed via Oceans Motions 4 ways. Those do a great job of alternating the flow. I'll try and get some pics of the plumbing, which is still a work in progress. In addition, I have 5 Tunzes which will be hooked up via the Aquasurf module for the Aquacontroller computer. I love the Tunzes and I'm currently using a couple of them in my 90 with a 7095 multi-controller. That is one sweet piece of equipment.

Cheers

 

[Los]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13220036#post13220036 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Dudester
This is great stuff, Los. And a couple marathon posts to boot.

I really like the idea of drilling holes into the rocks for future aquascaping, and I'm anxious to see how this turns out for you. I would think the openings would become partially filled in with coralline algae and if you eventually want to move your corals, you may find that the holes are difficult to access. But I guess you could always just chip away at the coralline, which would be easier than pulling the rocks out and drilling new holes. At any rate, it's an interesting concept. I know others have done it but I haven't heard how it works out long-term.

How will you attach the airline tubing rods to the bottom of your corals?

Thanks, Dudester. If you find any long term reports on "pegging" corals this way, please let me know. I'd love to take advantage of any lessons-learned. Thinking a bit about your concern regarding the coraline growing over the holes, I wonder if I shouldn't put a small peg in each one which I can then remove when I need to use it. I might try that on some of the holes, just to make sure they stay open.

To attach the airline tubing to the corals, I've been using a liberal amount of super-glue gel and a touch of accelerant to get it to bond immediately. It seems to hold just fine - at least so far.

 

[Ed Reef]

One of the TOTM have great success on coral pegging...

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-05/totm/index.php

 

[Bax]

WOW!

Great updates Los!!!

Great ideas too!

 

[RocketEngineer]

Los,

Great work so far. I love that you got longer cables for the AC3 Pro, that 10' limit would kill my dream system design. But if the CAT5 works just fine over such long distances, that makes my worry null and void. With the AquaSurf, would you mind posting some useful information. The info on the selling sites is seriously lacking. I'm wondering dimensions and cable lengths. The online manual also doesn't explain the split cable and its bugging me. A pic would satisfy the mad engineer in me that needs those pieces of info.

 

[erics3000]

You should be able to go 100-200 feet on cat5 with out a problem. If the run gets too long you can always buy a cheap linkys switch and use it as a repeater.

The exact spec for cat 5 I think was something like 250 feet

 

[stunreefer]

WOW Los, its coming along great now!

One thing to mention on the pegging system, is that even if you place some tubing in the non-used holes, coraline will cover that too. I would leave them open, so if you do go to use them, hopefully you can just chip away some coraline and place the peg in there, rather than trying to pry out a peg thats been coralined over (this is IME).

In terms of pegging in general though, I think it helps and I like the fact that I've utilized it, but over time most of the corals encrust over the bottom and end up encrusting onto the LR, still necessitating breaking off at least some of the base of the coral. It is, however more efficient and easier than breaking off a colony that was glued/epoxied to the LR.

Keep up the great work and keep us updated!


EDIT: I just went back a bit in the tread and didn't realize how much I'd missed! This thing is AWESOME!

First of all.......KILLER car man!!! Holy $hit I love it!!! And a matching high-end skimmer to boot! I love the shot of "your babies" with the BK300 .

Also, I saw a post (I belive it was by you) about the Profilux and "feeding mode," I know you can just hold the ESC button, and it will shut off pumps for a pre-set time, but I dont know if you can set-it to work in unison with a auto-feeder, try the GHL/Profilux forum - those guys know it all!

 

[StripestheEel]

This is one sexy build. Well done!

I'm building a 9'x3'x2.5' no so soonish. As I need to build the house first. So definitely loving this build. SO many holes being drilled without much hassle has given me mo faith too!

Tagging along for the ride.
Matt

 

[Tangwich]

This is such a great build that it's time to get this back up to the top and see if there are any updates on how everything is coming along...

 

[Los]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13321649#post13321649 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tangwich
This is such a great build that it's time to get this back up to the top and see if there are any updates on how everything is coming along...

Thanks, Tangwich (btw, one of the funniest names I've seen on RC )

It is time for an update and thank you for the complement. Honestly, there are soooo many incredible builds on this forum, I have a long way to go.

StripesTheEel, I like the idea of pegging even more than ever. StunReefer and Dudester got me thinking:
"One thing to mention on the pegging system, is that even if you place some tubing in the non-used holes, coraline will cover that too. I would leave them open, so if you do go to use them, hopefully you can just chip away some coraline and place the peg in there, rather than trying to pry out a peg thats been coralined over (this is IME).

In terms of pegging in general though, I think it helps and I like the fact that I've utilized it, but over time most of the corals encrust over the bottom and end up encrusting onto the LR, still necessitating breaking off at least some of the base of the coral. It is, however more efficient and easier than breaking off a colony that was glued/epoxied to the LR."
END QUOTE

I struggled with those concerns and came up with a solution that works GREAT. I'll have to post some pics later (edit: well, I decided to do it now, so here goes...). For now, the solution is to drill the rock as I did before, but with a modification to the pegs. I took a bunch of the stiff airline tubing pieces of approx. 1-1.5" in length...

... and I inserted them into small holes I drilled into a bunch of pieces of live rock rubble I got from Marco Rocks (they sell the rubble at a discount and the pieces are the perfect size).

I glued the tubing into the rocks with a couple drops of crazy glue to hold them in place. That left me with dozens of pieces of live rock chunks with a piece of 3/16" tubing stuck out the bottom.

These pieces ranged in size from an almond to an orange, with most pieces about the size of a walnut. Here's a close up:

As you can see, the edges of the tubing have been rounded a bit using the grinding flat side of my dremel disc. I also used the Dremel discs to cut the rods.

Anyway, I tried test fitting these "pegged" pieces into the holes I drilled in the live rock and they slide right in. Especially with the Pukani rock, they blend in and it's really hard to see which gnarled pieces of rock are natural and which ones are pegged in.

When I'm ready to add a new coral, I'll glue it to one of these pieces of "pegged" rock I've prepared and then slide the coral/pegged rock piece into any of the holes I previously drilled in my rockwork.

And, to prevent the holes from getting clogged with coraline (thanks for the warning, Stunreefer and Dudester) I'll cover up each of the holes with these "pegged" rocks as well. Then, when I'm ready to put in a new piece, or move an old piece, I can pull out the rock that's taking up the spot and replace it with the new one.

A big plus of this is that the coral can encrust the rock it's attached to and it will never be separated from that rock. It also makes it easier to pick up each coral piece, since I can grab onto the rock and treat it roughly while avoiding touching the polyps entirely.

If it hadn't been for the warnings on here, I wouldn't have done this. Now that I have, I'm convinced this is the best way to do it. There are multiple advantages and it really does solve the problems brought up here.

I've ordered some solid 3/16" acrylic rods from USplastics (for only $.09/foot) and I'll see how those work compared to stiff airline tubing. We'll see. In a previous order from the same folks I bought a pre-drilled with 3/16" holes sheet of PVC (Item #42558). I figured I could mount that in my soon-to-be put into action frag tank and use that to hold all my pegged corals. Unfortunately, the 3/16" holes were really tight. Almost too tight, at least for the airline tubing - which is why I'm going to try the 3/16" solid acrylic rods. I'm curious to see if those slide in easier, if they are stronger, or if they have any other advantages vs. the airline tubing I've been using. Here's a pic of a piece I cut out of the larger sheet of pvc sheet:

The holes on the right side have been re-drilled by me using the same drill pictured earlier. It went really fast, but it would have been easier if the holes were a bit bigger to begin with.

REALLY big news to follow

Cheers,

Los

 

[ArizonaReefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13322304#post13322304 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Los


REALLY big news to follow

That's not nice, how can you just leave us hanging with that comment?