meschaefer's 225g inwall

[erics3000]

I think the color of the mh looks good. It really depends on your bulbs 10k 14k 20k. I think most people add supplement lighting just for extra color. I am using a 14k bulb and it has the perfect blue. It really depends what you like. Start with the mh and then you can add as go is the option I am going with.

 

[meschaefer]

IT IN!!!!

IT IN!!!!

Its been awhile since I uploaded some pics, but there wasn't much to show. BUT OH HAPPY DAY...THE TANK IS IN PLACE!

I had the tank stored in my friend's garage, so I needed to rent a van again to move it. I wasn't able to borrow suction cups again, but moving into the van was a piece of cake. I kept the frame we built last time, it to keep from sliding around the van, and everything fit into the van without a problem. Piece of cake.

The hard part was when we got it to my place, as it needed to be brought around the side of my house and through a gate which is a very tight space. The suction cups would have been great from this point forward, but we muscled and made out ok. We kind of passed it through the gate and onto a furniture dolly and then rolled it through the gate while my wife placed another dolly underneath it.

We rolled it down the side of my house to a side door leading into the basement. In order to get it though the door, we had to tip it up on its side, rotate it around and then tip it through the door as there was no room to turn the tank. (did that make sense) These pictures where taken from a balcony over where we were working.

Shortly after this point my designated photographer (my wife's friend) had to leave so we don't have too may pictures from this point. After it was through the door, it went back onto the furniture dollies, and over to the the stand. The tank was picked up and passed through the hole in the wall and swiveled into place.

I then went upstairs and made dinner for everybody. When my wife went downstairs later, it hadn't taken long for the cat to hop in for a nap.

Anyway here is a pic of the tank in-wall, and a slightly blurry pic of the tank from behind.

 

[pmjfuture]

nice tank. good luck.

 

[meschaefer]

Thanks,

The stand is not quite ready for water yet. I need to add some diagonal supports, and the center leg needs to be painted and installed with a T bracket. It will be removable so that I can pull the sump out if necessary.

 

[meschaefer]

Getting the tank in place has put some wind in my sails. I spent the better part of my evening organizing and gowing though my equipment. The RO/DI is in place, but I need a visit to HD before it can start filling my tank. Tomorrow I will stop ny the glass place near me to pick up glass for baffles. I orderd silcone, which came the other day and I am still awaiting dimond hole saws to cut the holes for the bulkheads. They should come tomorrow, I woud hope. (I ordered them the beggining of last week)

I just put in an order with Savko. After an hour of drawing out my plumbing (in mind numbing detail), it took me another half hour before I finished entering in my order. The final order had 57 individual items and came to $180.49 and that is before shipping. I won't get a shipping quote until the pack it. That's alot of PVC fittings and stuff.

 

[meschaefer]

Here is the plumbing diagram I drew out so I could figure out what I needed to oder. The second pic is a diagram I previously posted in order to show the general lay out of the plumbing, it may help decipher the first pic. Remember nothing in either one of these diagrams is to scale, or even consistent from one peice to the next. In the upper left hand corner are the durso stand pipes, and the piping running from the overflow is in the upper right hand corner. The plumbing running from the sump, to the sequence dart, and then the plumbing manifold is in the lower left hand corner.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[meschaefer]

ooh...the small annoyances of life.

I picked up the three glass panes to make baffles for my sump this morning. I brought them home and fit test them, and it turns out that two of the baffles are a tad bit long, the third is just a bit shorter than the other two and fits into place. I measure them and the two that are two long are 1/8 bigger than I asked for. So I bring them back to my glass guy who remeasures them, and they are dead on. Either my ruler or his, has a 1/8 margin of error (probably mine). Either way, the glass is to big so he cuts them down and regrinds the edges for me. He doesn't want to take any extra money, but I insist that I give him a few dollars more for his work.

I then check my e-mail and my Savko order will be here tomorrow. Unfortunately, they where out of stock on the 1" and 1.5" unions. They will be shipped separately, and I am not sure when they will arrive. The good news is that those pieces are not over important when it comes to getting everything set up. They can be the last thing done, and if need be the whole system could be up and running without them. They can be easily inserted into the system afterwards.

 

[meschaefer]

It was a big day for deliveries. Although I was out of my office all day, the wireless Vortech I ordered as allegedly delivered and signed for by the receptionist. It kind of makes me wish I had went in, but it will be waiting for me tomorrow and there is nothing I can do with it anyway. The other delivery was my order from Savko. As I mentioned earlier, the unions I need where out of stock and they will be delivered seperately. The first pic is the box right after I opened it.

I took everything out and laid it out on the floor in the general order that they need to be put together. By doing this I figured out that I screwed up my order a bit. Nothing major, and nothing that can't be easily picked up at home depot. That's what I get for placing my order late at night when I was a bit weary. The other problem I have is that when Savko shows you what you ordered to confirm, the site shows you a list of their product numbers and how many you ordered. Although I tried to go through it, I obviously couldn't handle the situation and as a result missed a few pieces and ordered a few pieces I didn't need.

 

[meschaefer]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had a three pieces of glass cut to size to make baffles. Each piece was 23 x 17, made from 1/4 inch glass with the edges ground down. My sump is a standard size 120 gallon tank, it was reef ready and I cut the overflow out of it. I used pieces from the overflow to patch over the holes for the overflow, and to "even" out the bottom of the tank caused by bracing.

I used a square to line up each of the baffles before sealing them into place with GE 1200 Construction Silicone which was recommended to me as being "reef safe" and which is allegedly used by a major custom tank manufacture. A little bit of painters tape held the baffle in place while I used a caulking gun to apply the silicone.

The center baffle was the toughest, as it needed to be raised up into place. Each baffle is spaced 2 inches apart, and the center baffle is raised two inches off the bottom of the tank. I used a piece of pink insulation as a spacer and a place for the baffle to rest while the silicone dried overnight. In order to silicone the side between the center and outside baffle, I put silicone on the baffle and then used a spoon attached to a stick to smear it into place.

I then put the third baffle into place. Tomorrow I will cut the holes for the bulkheads.

 

[meschaefer]

I was able to cut the holes for the bulkheads in my sump. I needed to cut two holes, one for a 2 inch bulkhead and the other for a 1.5 inch bulkhead. After allot of research on how to make the cuts, I decided to make a dam so that the hole could be cut in some water which will help keep the saw and glass cool.

I had wanted to make a dam out of clay but I forgot to pick it up when I was out of the house, so I took some flour and water and made some dough. The dough worked pretty good, but for the second cut I just made a dam out of some flour which believe it or not worked allot better.

This is the bit I used to cut the hole for the 1.5 inch bulkhead, it was fairly inexpensive running me about $5. It was shipped straight from Hong Kong.

The problem with getting the hole started is that the bit wants to "walk". I used two clamps to act as guides while I got the hole started.

I went real slow, and didn't let my drill pick up too much speed. Each hole took me at least 10 minutes to cut.

After that was done I screwed on the bulkheads and put the sump into place. This is the finished product. Look at a that starphire...it really makes a difference.

I was able to make allot of progress this weekend. I sheetrocked the area behind the sump, finished of the wall and got two coats of paint on it. I got the sump into place, reinforced the stand a bit and I am starting to fill the display tank with water. I figure it will take almost 4 days to get the sump and display tank filled with RO/DI water. Once it is full, I will add salt and get all the pumps moving to mix it up. Now I just need to finish off the plumbing.

 

[mrpet]

hey matt where did you get those blue tubs for water storage?
and how much h20 to they hold...looking good well thought out.
scott

 

[meschaefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10972960#post10972960 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mrpet
hey matt where did you get those blue tubs for water storage?
and how much h20 to they hold...looking good well thought out.
scott

You would need to ask jknecht, that is a picture of his setup.

 

[meschaefer]

Hooray... I am done with plumbing.

The first pic is a full tank shot from behind. You can see that I used a combination of SpaFlex and PVC.

The next pic shows the return pump. That is a Reeflo Dart that has a true union coming from a 2" bulkhead on the sump. On the out side of the pump, is a 1.5" true union that exits to 1.5" Spaflex on its way to a plumbing manifold.

The next two pics show the manifold. It is made from 5 x 1.5" "T"s. The first one has a 3/4" ball valve that is reserved for future use. The next two ball valves return water back to the tank. They are 1" ball valves and I used Spaflex for the run to the returns ,with unions on either end. The last two are 3/4" ball valves connected to 1/2" hose barbs. These are to run a Phosban reactor and a Carbon reactor.

You can see I have an external overflow which takes two 1.5" bulkheads. Each of these then goes to a union. The right side bulkhead goes directly to the sump, while the left side is "t"d off with one side reduced to 1/2" with another ball valve and then a 3/4" hose barb. This allows me to gravity feed the skimmer.

I must say that I put alot of thought about this and was worried that I was making it more complicated then it had to be. I planned it out, and was nervous to turn the pump on. When I did everything worked as planned. Now I just need to make final adjustments to my salinity and I should get my rock in tomorrow.

 

[jknecht]

The blue barrels are from usplastics.com. They hold 55 gallons. One of them holds fresh RO/DI water and the other holds saltwater.

I checked their site and it doesn't look like they still carry the same version I have (I bought mine in '05). I looked up my order and here is the info. However they have others to choose from.

SKU # 74216 55 Gallon Open Head Drum for Liquids 22.5" x 35.375" UN# 1H2/Y1.2/100

 

[meschaefer]

I did all of my rock work yesterday, and I will try and get pics up tonight. My wife was on my computer last night and I couldn't upload them.

When I put the new Marco Rock in the tank, I only rinsed them somewhat cursorily. This morning I could smell the tank from the first floor of my house (tank is in the basement). When I went down to take a look, the bubbles in the first chamber of the sump had turned the sump into a protein skimmer. The amount of skimate floating on top of my sump would put the best beckett skimmer to shame. I didn't have time to take a picture, assuming it looks the same if not worse, when I get home I will take a pic and post it.

Good thing I wasn't planning on adding any livestock for a couple of weeks. I need to pick up ammonia and nitrite test kits, so I can follow the cycle. I haven't owned an ammonia test kit in about six years.

 

[meschaefer]

You beckett guys need to get a "real" skimmer, introducing my Glass Cages 120. What you see is a little bit more than 24 hours worth of skimming. Look at that foam, your beckett or needle wheel can't compete.

 

[meschaefer]

I did all of my aquascaping yesterday. I was working with about 88lbs of Marco Rock and probably around a 100lbs Fiji that I had from my prior tank. I started by spreading all of my rock out on the floor so that I could see what I had to work with. ( Actually this wasn't all of the rock, I had a number of smaller pieces laid out in another part of the basement, but I didn't use them)

The last thing I wanted to do was start putting in rock, only to have to pull it out again or move it around inside of the tank because I didn't like the way it looked. So I decided to build my rock structures outside of the tank. I started by taping out the footprint of my tank on the floor, and built the structure within the foot print.

I wanted allot of swimming room, because I plan on allot of fish in this tank, my previous tanks had very little fish as I was always afraid that I didn't have any room. I decided to use PVC rods to help support the structure. This allowed me to build taller column like structures, without the need of a very big base. I choose some of my bigger rocks to acts as bases and strategically drilled holes in them to hold the PVC rods. I then drill a hole straight through the next rock and stacked them over the PVC rods. This took a little playing around, but I eventually ended up with a structure that I found aesthetically pleasing.

Once I was done with the structures, I carefully took them apart making note of how they went back together and rebuilt them in the tank. This is what I ended up with.

 

[SVTour]

Nice, I like the shelves you have created with the rock work and I'm a big fan of the canyon look too :thumbsup:

Have you decided anything for the front of the tank yet (molding, etc?)

 

[meschaefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11029264#post11029264 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SVTour
Nice, I like the shelves you have created with the rock work and I'm a big fan of the canyon look too :thumbsup:

Have you decided anything for the front of the tank yet (molding, etc?)

What you don't like what i have done with the front?

I need to do a little work to patch up the Sheetrock and then some big thick, heavy molding. I have to admit that it is not a priority at the moment, as the basement is somewhat empty, but my wife has been shopping for couches to put in front of the tank. Once those are on the way, molding will climb up the priority ladder.

 

[meschaefer]

OK... a little over 24 hours after the rock went in I did my first set of water tests. They where limited, I only tested ammonia, nitrate and phosphate.

Ammonia - 1.0 (that should get the cycle going)
Nitrite - 0.0
Phosphate .71 -

I also got my skimmer up and running, and tomorrow I am going to try and get my phosban reactor running.