My 400G Through-wall "deceptively deep" tank
- Thread starter Spaced Cowboy
- Start date
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
Fill 'er up
Fill 'er up
So the water arrived today. I'm using water that's drawn from deep within the bay at Half Moon Bay, then filtered and processed a bit to get rid of undesirables, then shipped to the door in a big tank. It means we filled the tank today in about 30 minutes
Here's the start of the fill, from the front of the tank (note, this one is a link to the movie as well, but the movie is ~24MB, so I thought it'd be friendlier to link to that [grin])
... and from the back of the tank ...
... here you can see the fill-rate. It's a bit different to the typical 'drip,drip,drip' that we get from the RODI filter systems...
... and then, finally, the overflow, overflowing:
This morning, I hadn't yet done the drilling of the end-cap for the BA overflow, so it was loud as ... well, a very loud thing. This evening I drilled the overflow, and had a little trouble dialing in the overflow - I think this was for two reasons,
I'm sure the BA drain will start to get easier once the pipes aren't crystal clean, I doubt that helps, and there probably is a *bit* of slack either way for it to work, but hopefully the gap that it "just works" in will widen over time as the pipes slime up.
It is, however, quiet. Gloriously, wonderfully, beautifully quiet. The loudest sound in the fish room is the pump, and the Reeflo darts are pretty quiet pumps. If you're within about 12" of the glass on the living room side, you can just hear a "rushing" sound of the water draining. Farther away than that, and all you can hear is the low vibration of the pump. This is *way* quieter than the previous system I had. I love it.
Simon.
Fill 'er up
So the water arrived today. I'm using water that's drawn from deep within the bay at Half Moon Bay, then filtered and processed a bit to get rid of undesirables, then shipped to the door in a big tank. It means we filled the tank today in about 30 minutes
Here's the start of the fill, from the front of the tank (note, this one is a link to the movie as well, but the movie is ~24MB, so I thought it'd be friendlier to link to that [grin])
... and from the back of the tank ...
... here you can see the fill-rate. It's a bit different to the typical 'drip,drip,drip' that we get from the RODI filter systems...
... and then, finally, the overflow, overflowing:
This morning, I hadn't yet done the drilling of the end-cap for the BA overflow, so it was loud as ... well, a very loud thing. This evening I drilled the overflow, and had a little trouble dialing in the overflow - I think this was for two reasons,
- I had the full-siphon drain set too low in the sump, so it wasn't getting the chance to form the full siphon in a timely way
- My overflow is only 7" deep. That gives me less room to play with in terms of what level the 3 standpipes pull water from. A bit too much with the gate valve, and it didn't ever form the siphon, a bit too little, and it oscillated between full-siphon and loss-of-siphon. Eventually I found a "just-right" position, but it wasn't as easy as I was thinking it would be.
I'm sure the BA drain will start to get easier once the pipes aren't crystal clean, I doubt that helps, and there probably is a *bit* of slack either way for it to work, but hopefully the gap that it "just works" in will widen over time as the pipes slime up.
It is, however, quiet. Gloriously, wonderfully, beautifully quiet. The loudest sound in the fish room is the pump, and the Reeflo darts are pretty quiet pumps. If you're within about 12" of the glass on the living room side, you can just hear a "rushing" sound of the water draining. Farther away than that, and all you can hear is the low vibration of the pump. This is *way* quieter than the previous system I had. I love it.
Simon.
tripdad
Frustrated Stick Gardener
Hello, nice build. I have had the same problem with bean animal siphon dial in until I put a small 3/16 ths hole just above waterline at the bottom so the air could escape reliably. This also helped drastically reduce re-start time when turning off return for feeding/ maint.. Maybe you have these already, hard to tell from photo's. Anyway really nice work.
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
Let there be light!
Let there be light!
So tonight, when I got home from work, I put together the "light-rack". I have 3 old AI Sols that I'm going to upgrade to Hydra-52's and I already have 2 Hydra-52's. I figure that (along with the solar tubes) that'll be a good light-level to start with. For now I just put the AI's along with the Hydras on there so I can see how it fits.
The "light-rack" is a single piece of 80/20, 8' long. Hey! No-one said it had to be complicated! [grin]. I found a place that sold the slot-in hanging-holes and just linked it up with the winches that are in the ceiling...
The winches can support 50 lbs, which is way more than I need, although I was surprised how heavy the "rack" was when 5 of the lighting fixtures were on it. They're both controlled by a single remote...
... which operates both at the same time (I press '1' then up or down), so they stay in sync. To get the string-lengths the same you just unpower one of them, and operate the other until the string dangling from unit A is the same length as the string dangling from unit B.
I checked each of the units powers on, but I haven't wired them up yet (there's little point wiring the Sols and I don't have the support in place for the PSUs yet anyway). I did place a cable-guide along the top of the 80/20 beam to make sure none of the trailing wires drop into the water.
Onwards and upwards
Simon.
Let there be light!
So tonight, when I got home from work, I put together the "light-rack". I have 3 old AI Sols that I'm going to upgrade to Hydra-52's and I already have 2 Hydra-52's. I figure that (along with the solar tubes) that'll be a good light-level to start with. For now I just put the AI's along with the Hydras on there so I can see how it fits.
The "light-rack" is a single piece of 80/20, 8' long. Hey! No-one said it had to be complicated! [grin]. I found a place that sold the slot-in hanging-holes and just linked it up with the winches that are in the ceiling...
The winches can support 50 lbs, which is way more than I need, although I was surprised how heavy the "rack" was when 5 of the lighting fixtures were on it. They're both controlled by a single remote...
... which operates both at the same time (I press '1' then up or down), so they stay in sync. To get the string-lengths the same you just unpower one of them, and operate the other until the string dangling from unit A is the same length as the string dangling from unit B.
I checked each of the units powers on, but I haven't wired them up yet (there's little point wiring the Sols and I don't have the support in place for the PSUs yet anyway). I did place a cable-guide along the top of the 80/20 beam to make sure none of the trailing wires drop into the water.
Onwards and upwards
Simon.
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
In order of priority:
1) Get the UV filter up and running. The tank has a definite shade of green already, presumably because I have oxygenated water cycling around and sunlight shining in... Unfortunately the UV filter seal is leaking, so it's isolated from the return right now. I'm ordering more parts from Emperor Aquatics today.
2) Get the lift-platform in place so I can more easily reach into the tank. At the moment it's a bit difficult to get in because even on a ladder, I feel a bit precarious leaning over and reaching in. I bought a 'doggy grooming platform' that *just* fits into the 24.5" I have behind the tank (the top platform is 24" wide). Currently the controls for the platform are on the floor, but I'll move them to the top of the table so I can reach them when I'm 52" off the ground... I'll probably build a custom top for it in 80/20 to make it a bit more amenable. This means digging out the power tools (table saw etc.) from the garage, which is currently ... buried ... under boxes of stuff.
3) Get some sand into the tank, as a prerequisite for moving the live rock out of the bin in the garage where it's currently in a holding bin with a couple of pumps on it.
4) Get the skimmer up and running. It's sitting in the garage waiting for me to get it all installed.
5) Get the electrical panel built and tidy up all the wiring. By the time I've done 1-4 above, there'll be a rats nest of wires everywhere in the room. Given that I've got a small space, I want it neat and tidy.
6) Get the water-change system and top-off system up and running. I've got the Genesis Reef Systems Renew/Storm to install. The standpipes have water in them, so it's just a matter of installing, plumbing and wiring everything up
Ideally I'd like to get all of the above done by the end of next weekend. That's going to be a tough job due to family obligations but certainly I'd like to get 1-4 done by end of Sunday.
Once they're all done I'll start thinking about the screens and aquascaping. it starts to get a bit more relaxed then, but I think I'm still in the 'sprint' mode right now.
Congrats on water going in
Thank you sir
Cheers
Simon
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
Well, the tank is definitely turning green, so the order was re-ordered
The UV parts have been rush-ordered with 1-day delivery, and in the meantime I'm running carbon and I installed the skimmer...
I have to say I'm not overly impressed with the documentation that comes with the skimmer - there's no "this part goes here" picture, and what pictures they have got actually apply to a different skimmer! The "manual" is nicely printed, but its information content is sorely lacking. I'm still not sure what a few of the pipes and so on are supposed to do - I think they're if I link up 2 of the red-dragon pumps, but I'm only basing that on a small picture of the various skimmers the manual supposedly tells you about, on the front cover.
Anyway, once I'd figured out what goes where, the skimmer actually did start to work nicely - the image above is after about 10 seconds of tuning it, and I'm supposed to leave the collection cup off for a few hours until it's run for a bit.
I'm also running carbon in the water-return enclosure to help kill off the algae, you can see the bag behind the skimmer. Hopefully a combination of the two will stave off any further algae bloom until the UV is installed, at which point it ought to be game over, algae.
Simon.
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
You raise me up, so I can stand on moouuuuuntains
You raise me up, so I can stand on moouuuuuntains
So this evening I tackled the lift table. I'd always wanted the clean look in the living room - it's a blank wall with precisely nothing to distract away from the tank poking out of it. If you're looking in that direction, there is literally nothing else to look at, so the eye is naturally drawn to the tank.
Now this poses issues - without a front-panel for access, it makes it difficult to reach into the front of the tank - especially when space behind my tank is pretty small (24.5" to be exact). My solution to this was to get a lift-table, which would lift me up in the air, I could kneel down on the table, lean over the tank and brace myself with one hand against the wall (I actually plan to put in a rail), and I'll have the full length of my arm to reach into the water. It's still not perfect. The water is 32" deep, and there's the angle of back-to-front to consider. I was willing to accept those as limitations to get the look I want, which of course will affect the aquascaping, but we'll get to that later.
So I started looking around at lift-tables, and they're really industrial devices, starting at $2.5k or so. Ouch. Then I had an epiphany, and thought of those tables that dog-groomers use to lift up Great Danes and similar breeds to a more accessible height...
Here's the table in the down position:
... it's about 12" off the floor, which is an easy step up/down. It also means the clearance is sufficient not to impact the sockets on the wall...
... which was very fortunate. If I raise the platform all the way, it looks like:
... which is just enough to not make me hit my head on the ceiling
Extra bonus points:
The width of the table is ~23.5" - which *just* fits into my ~24.5" space. The length is about 40", but that's not so important given that its on castors.
Overall I'm really happy with this. I need to take a bit of care when lowering/raising, but apart from that it worked out really well.
Simon.
You raise me up, so I can stand on moouuuuuntains
So this evening I tackled the lift table. I'd always wanted the clean look in the living room - it's a blank wall with precisely nothing to distract away from the tank poking out of it. If you're looking in that direction, there is literally nothing else to look at, so the eye is naturally drawn to the tank.
Now this poses issues - without a front-panel for access, it makes it difficult to reach into the front of the tank - especially when space behind my tank is pretty small (24.5" to be exact). My solution to this was to get a lift-table, which would lift me up in the air, I could kneel down on the table, lean over the tank and brace myself with one hand against the wall (I actually plan to put in a rail), and I'll have the full length of my arm to reach into the water. It's still not perfect. The water is 32" deep, and there's the angle of back-to-front to consider. I was willing to accept those as limitations to get the look I want, which of course will affect the aquascaping, but we'll get to that later.
So I started looking around at lift-tables, and they're really industrial devices, starting at $2.5k or so. Ouch. Then I had an epiphany, and thought of those tables that dog-groomers use to lift up Great Danes and similar breeds to a more accessible height...
Here's the table in the down position:
... it's about 12" off the floor, which is an easy step up/down. It also means the clearance is sufficient not to impact the sockets on the wall...
... which was very fortunate. If I raise the platform all the way, it looks like:
... which is just enough to not make me hit my head on the ceiling
Extra bonus points:
- The platform is on castors, so I can move it to where I want it to be, lock the castors, and raise myself up.
- It also came with two foot-pedals (supposed to be attached one per side) but the cool thing is that they could be detached from the pedal assembly, and they were on coiled cables, so I can just place the up/down switch on the table and easily lower myself when I'm up in the air.
- The table is slightly padded, so it's not hard on my knees (hey, I'm getting old)
- It can handle up to 320 lbs. Plenty and more besides
The width of the table is ~23.5" - which *just* fits into my ~24.5" space. The length is about 40", but that's not so important given that its on castors.
Overall I'm really happy with this. I need to take a bit of care when lowering/raising, but apart from that it worked out really well.
Simon.
maxxII
Super Housemonkey!
I see what you did there...LOL
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
Baby steps
Baby steps
So, I had some rock curing in the garage which was starting to need to get into the tank, which meant I had to start thinking about how it would all go together.
The plan has always been to have some pillars to hide the corners, a "fallen pillar" to provide some structure on the front left, and a standing pillar on the front-right. Total should be about 250 lbs of rock, which is less than most tanks this size, but I don't intend to have a huge bioload for this tank.
I started by putting some egg-crate down on the tank base and building some 1" PCV pipe pillar supports, then I started by putting in 240 lbs of "live sand" from Caribsea. I have another 60 lbs or so waiting to patch the problem spots where it needs more. That resulted in...
Now the purpose of all this was to get the rock in, so with visibility down to essentially zero, I started piling rocks on stands and putting them in place. By 7am this morning, the sand had settled a bit, and it looked like (with just the solar-tubes for light)...
Which didn't look at all bad for a blind first attempt. I'm not actually happy with how it looks as yet, but it was a good start. I've got more rock to go in (dry, this time) as you could guess from the empty support structure, but that wasn't on a schedule (it's been sitting in the sun for about 6 months, it'll wait
The main goal for the pillars is to cover the boundaries where the LED TV screen borders will show through, so there has to be 1 in the middle at the rear, and 1 at each end. Then the rule-of-thirds comes into play for the foreground pillars. The one on the right will be significantly taller than the "fallen" pillar on the left, to add more variety.
I also noted that I'm not going to be able to run the XF150 gyres at full tilt - there's one at each end of the tank, and the one on the left (just this one) was left on full last night. It's wiped out the sand on the right hand side as the water flows along the top, down the right side and back along the bottom of the tank. This was in single-flow mode, so I'll have to experiment with the pulsed modes to see how those work.
All told, I'm reasonably happy with this as a start. As an aquascape it still needs a lot of work, but it's a good start
Simon
Baby steps
So, I had some rock curing in the garage which was starting to need to get into the tank, which meant I had to start thinking about how it would all go together.
The plan has always been to have some pillars to hide the corners, a "fallen pillar" to provide some structure on the front left, and a standing pillar on the front-right. Total should be about 250 lbs of rock, which is less than most tanks this size, but I don't intend to have a huge bioload for this tank.
I started by putting some egg-crate down on the tank base and building some 1" PCV pipe pillar supports, then I started by putting in 240 lbs of "live sand" from Caribsea. I have another 60 lbs or so waiting to patch the problem spots where it needs more. That resulted in...
Now the purpose of all this was to get the rock in, so with visibility down to essentially zero, I started piling rocks on stands and putting them in place. By 7am this morning, the sand had settled a bit, and it looked like (with just the solar-tubes for light)...
Which didn't look at all bad for a blind first attempt. I'm not actually happy with how it looks as yet, but it was a good start. I've got more rock to go in (dry, this time) as you could guess from the empty support structure, but that wasn't on a schedule (it's been sitting in the sun for about 6 months, it'll wait
The main goal for the pillars is to cover the boundaries where the LED TV screen borders will show through, so there has to be 1 in the middle at the rear, and 1 at each end. Then the rule-of-thirds comes into play for the foreground pillars. The one on the right will be significantly taller than the "fallen" pillar on the left, to add more variety.
I also noted that I'm not going to be able to run the XF150 gyres at full tilt - there's one at each end of the tank, and the one on the left (just this one) was left on full last night. It's wiped out the sand on the right hand side as the water flows along the top, down the right side and back along the bottom of the tank. This was in single-flow mode, so I'll have to experiment with the pulsed modes to see how those work.
All told, I'm reasonably happy with this as a start. As an aquascape it still needs a lot of work, but it's a good start
Simon
Swope2bc
New member
Very exciting Simon! Baby steps are sometimes more fun than giant ones. It gives us time to ponder each pice and decide on minor adjustments that no one else ever sees but makes all the difference to us lol. It may not make any difference, but I found that my wave makers pushed a lot of sand at the beginning but once all the rock was in and they were on alternating pulse they don't move a thing... I could only run them at 30% to begin with and they are full power now. This may have no bearing whatsoever on yours but thought I would mention it anyway.
Mike de Leon
New member
any updates on this amazing build?
Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
There will be, it's just been sitting there staring at me, saying "give me your attention" for the last couple of months for a variety of reasons, making me feel guilty. I just have too many draws on my time right now, mainly because I work at Apple, and sometimes it just gets like this. We've also had a big scare in the family 
There is however light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hoping it's not an oncoming train (!), but it's just possible I'll have some time in evenings and weekends again in a few weeks to a month or so, when I go back to working a 5-day week. I'm still (slowly) working on getting things set up, and I'll start reporting progress again when there's something to say
CoralNerd:
Wires for the LEDs aren't a huge deal for me because my distance of travel is pretty small. I wired all the LEDs to go to the center of the beam, allocated enough cable that the maximum "drop" was ok, and then I just let them coil when I raise the lights. I think I could work out something more sophisticated, but given there's no fish in there yet, I'm not really worried about it yet
Cheers
Simon.
There is however light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hoping it's not an oncoming train (!), but it's just possible I'll have some time in evenings and weekends again in a few weeks to a month or so, when I go back to working a 5-day week. I'm still (slowly) working on getting things set up, and I'll start reporting progress again when there's something to say
CoralNerd:
Wires for the LEDs aren't a huge deal for me because my distance of travel is pretty small. I wired all the LEDs to go to the center of the beam, allocated enough cable that the maximum "drop" was ok, and then I just let them coil when I raise the lights. I think I could work out something more sophisticated, but given there's no fish in there yet, I'm not really worried about it yet
Cheers
Simon.
