Matt's 5000ltr Display

Hi Ad, I hope you're well.

Thats a good question. I hope to be able to juggle things in an effort to spend more time at home. I am waaay understaffed at the moment and have been for 6 months. I am going to try and make the effort to atleast get another two people to help out with workloads. Having said that I wont have the time to even look or interview candidates until we are a little quieter.
I also plan on installing some reasonable equipment at home. i wont be able to use the office render servers but i should be able to manage my time so that i can do certain jobs at home on lesser spec machines.
Like you say the tank's design was geared around time being precious in the hope that what little time I get with the tank too much isnt taken up with maintenance. Only time will tell.
I do plan on installing an underwater video feed for when I am stuck at the office!
 
Over the past month or so I have been able to work on the build, not as much as I would have liked but I have made some progress.

The biggest step was to install the consumer unit that will power the fish tank and sump. I ran an 80amp cable from the meter under the house to feed the consumer unit in the garage. In total I have installed approx 94 plug sockets on 5 32amp circuits.

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It got a bit messy!

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There are several sockets that are driven from fused spurs from under the tank.

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I will be able to control the power to the skimmer, ozone, uv, return pumps and closed loop pumps from beside the display.

I finalised the position of the ro unit and DI pod. Using a series of valves I can direct fresh ro to various areas of the fish room, the QT tank for re-fills, the water change vat, the display tank, the frag tank area for dips and the mangrove tank for misting the leaves.

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I installed the mangrove mister, an automatic misting unit for use in vivariums. This will automatically mist the mangrove leaves for 4 seconds every 8 hours.

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There are two nozzles to direct the mist.

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I also installed the netting over the mangrove tank. This is designed to catch fallen leaves before they contaminate the water column.

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I finaly recieved a saltwater safe solenoid allowing me to finalise the nitrate reactor (*edit, I still need an orp probe)

IMG_6439.jpg


It is set up to be fully automated, dosing vodka/ro mix at a set periods and feeding tank water when the reactor is at -170mv

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I set up the calcium reactor, ph controller, peri pump and co2 cylinder.

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I finalised the p04 reactor with an additional valve to test effluent and run new media through to rinse off fines.

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Placed the kalk reactor in its final position, resting on an egg crate shelf over the fresh ro vat

IMG_6441.jpg


I added the lid to the cryptic/benthic zone vat. I aim to add a rubber sheet curtain to cover the holes

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Finally, I added a screen to the QT tank so I can add known jumpers to QT without fear of them carpet surfing.

IMG_6432.jpg
 
It's great to see some forward momentum on this build, Matt. I'm glad to see work hasn't got you too overwhelmed to keep at it. It's a good thing nineball and chingchai are making videos to keep us all entertained until you finally get this thing up and running.

Dave.M
 
It's great to see some forward momentum on this build, Matt. I'm glad to see work hasn't got you too overwhelmed to keep at it. It's a good thing nineball and chingchai are making videos to keep us all entertained until you finally get this thing up and running.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dave. It their videos that make it hard for me to be stuck at work without progressing too much!
oh my gosh!!!! lot of progress here, uh!!! I'm very pleased for your success Matt! Keep goin' on!
Click to expand...

Thanks Euler. The progress has been a little pathetic really...but some is better than nothing I suppose.

I just read the full thread and I'm astonished with this complex system.

I can't wait to see the tank running.

I wish you all the best.
Click to expand...

Thanks Ricardo. It seems to be getting more and more complex. I dont know if this is good or bad. A simple tank with a standard sump would have been up and running for a year by now!
Thanks for stopping by.
 
Hi Matt,

I didn't follow your thread for quite a while, but I cought up now! You have made fantastic progression on your build, congratulations!

Actually I am setting up a Deltec NFP 509 Nitrate Reductor, the little brother of your 616. I have question regarding the vodka dosage: it is recommanded to use 40ml a day of the methanol-mixture from Deltec. You diluted vodka with RO water. Which dilution did you use? And why?

Best wishes from Berlin
Arne
 
Hi Arne
The deltec nitrate fluid is poor and an additional continued expense. I use/will use a mix of vodka and RO at a mix of 1 part vodka and 3 parts RO. You can fine tune this increasing the vodka ratio if you need to.

From the D-D site:
"For the larger models the rate of consumption of the Nitrate Fluid may become cost prohibitive and for these units it may be more economically viable to use a mixture of Vodka and RO water as a substitute. The Vodka should be mixed with RO water in a ratio of 1 part of Vodka to 3 parts of RO water."

HTH
 
Hi Matt,

thank you for the quick reply. Actually, im dosing pure vodka ( for the reactor, not for me, I prefer on ice :hmm5:), also 4 times a day.

So I'll dilute it as mentioned. After two weeks of setup time, bacteria are allready visibel, but I still have a very low flow(1-2 drops/sec). But the output has significantly lower nitrate levels!
Had a little Nitrite issues, but this seems to work out.

What flow are you planning?


Arne
 
I have a 900lph peri pump with DIN timer to feed to reactor with tank water. It will only feed it when the orp is -170mv so I expect the flow to vary.
I will have to put the vodka in a safe otherwise my wife will drink it!
 
Looking good Matt .
But knowing you even a glass tank wouldnt have been wet yet lol

now to high jack Matts thread :O

derdudeberlin said:
Hi Matt,

I didn't follow your thread for quite a while, but I cought up now! You have made fantastic progression on your build, congratulations!

Actually I am setting up a Deltec NFP 509 Nitrate Reductor, the little brother of your 616. I have question regarding the vodka dosage: it is recommanded to use 40ml a day of the methanol-mixture from Deltec. You diluted vodka with RO water. Which dilution did you use? And why?

Best wishes from Berlin
Arne
Click to expand...

I set up the baby version of nitrate filter using the fluid supplied by deltec and struggled to keep the no3 coming from the reactor any where near Zero . I cleaned the reactor out and started again using neat vodka (in my case 8ml per day start up dose) for the first week then changed the neat vodka to a 50/50 vodka ro mix upping the flow every time i started to smell what can only be described as a rotten egg smell from the reactor. Then leaving a few days and testing to see if i needed to up the vodka/ro dosage up to the point that the reactors running flat out on the max daily dosage for the size of reactor
 
hi Matt
i spent the day reading this and i am sure its been said before, but really well planned and great work keeping it going for so long.

2 things, in post 386 i think it was mentioned that saw dust from your garage might make its way into your fish room, an easy fix is to create a postive air pressure in the room and nothing will really enter it etc
then u mentioned that a simple sump and tank would be running already, but having read this it wouldnt have been as fun! i am starting my large build and thanks to yours i am now looking at fibre glass, just hope here in south africa its affordable

i looked forward to many updates
 
dallasg said:
hi Matt
i spent the day reading this and i am sure its been said before, but really well planned and great work keeping it going for so long.

2 things, in post 386 i think it was mentioned that saw dust from your garage might make its way into your fish room, an easy fix is to create a postive air pressure in the room and nothing will really enter it etc
then u mentioned that a simple sump and tank would be running already, but having read this it wouldnt have been as fun! i am starting my large build and thanks to yours i am now looking at fibre glass, just hope here in south africa its affordable

i looked forward to many updates
Click to expand...

Hi Dallasg

Thanks for stopping by and your compliments.
An easier way to avoid sawdust is to never cut any wood!..when this build is finished I plan on never picking up another tool!
The build has been fun but very time consuming...especially when juggling a heavy workload.
 
An LFS recently had an issue with their heater failing on a Sunday morning. They called me and asked to borrow my 3kw inline heater

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I uncoupled mine and lent it to them. In doing so I realised that my heater was stainless steel and not titanium as I had thought.
I took the opportunity to purchase a new heater ( definitely titanium this time)

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Unfortunately because the new heater is larger I had to abandon the bypass that I had installed with the previous heater.

I finally finished the electrics

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With the heater installed I could get water running through the sump, just fresh RO for now testing for leaks.

I could also add most of my Rock to two of the vats

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This is the flow using 1 of the two return pumps. In normal operation the water height will be much lower.

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I wanted to reduce the height of the weir. The worry was that at normal running height the centre brace would sit in the water. I can increase the surface tension of the water at the weir if need be to adjust the water height.

The old height

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After forever sanding and planing

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I finally got around to making a start on filling and sanding the tank to prepare for fibreglassing

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...and once again employed some cheap labour to help

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