My 400G Through-wall "deceptively deep" tank

[Spaced Cowboy]

Power cut

Power cut

Last night we had a power cut.

I live in the Bay Area, CA - "Silicon Valley", if you will. The location of some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. I work for one of these companies... Unfortunately, PG&E is not one of these companies. PG&E is however:

• Hidebound to last-century's technology
• Sufficiently capitalistic to do the maths of "is (cost to keep on replacing old crappy hardware) < (cost to replace with stuff that doesn't break in a rainstorm + cost of ignoring customer complaints)
• A local monopoly.

So, in this nexus of high technology and groundbreaking research, we have an electrical distribution system that's 50 years old if it's a day, and almost totally unmaintained (seriously, there's a rusting can suspended from the pole in my neighbours back yard that is sealed from the weather with a bin-bag).

The end result is all too predictable: When the area gets its annual rainstorms (around this time of the year) there's a 50% chance per rainstorm (which may be rain for a few days at a time) that we'll get a power cut. This was the second such storm, so in all fairness to PG&E we were due a power cut. [/s]

____________________________​

But last night was a good night.

When we were speccing out the tank, the room, the works, I wanted a backup system for power. I went as far as looking at installing a standby generator for the house, but by the time you've got one configured for the house-size, bought, delivered, and installed, you're looking at ~$12k or so. That was outside the budget. Instead I went for an old favourite - a UPS. I bought the largest one I could afford with a few criteria in mind

• It had to support aquaria. There are several manufacturers that specify in their manuals that you can't use the UPS to back up an aquarium without voiding the warranty
• It had to be expandable in case it turned out that one UPS wasn't enough. You can't cascade UPS's in general, they have to be designed to expand their own batteries
• Ideally I wanted monitoring built into it, so I could get advance warning of anything going wrong
• Of course, it had to last as long as possible.
• I wanted a known manufacturer that would be around in a decade if I needed new batteries for it
• Bonus: This one has network monitoring and humidity monitoring add-ons. Yes please.

It worked. Flawlessly.

The UPS is connected to two things only

• The Reeflo SuperDart Gold which is the return pump nominally running at ~3000gph
• A low-power (100W) heater that is set to only come on at 78F (2 degrees lower than the normal tank temperature)

Power went out at about 3:45pm, the UPS kicked in immediately, and the return pump kept oxygenating the tank without a hitch. According to the UPS, I was drawing ~180W (which seems about right based on the reeflo website - that's about what you'd get if you scale up the quoted figures for the base Dart pump, at 6' head). I checked a few times, and the current draw was pretty constantly 6%, so I doubt the heater was ever actually switched on.

The UPS supplied power for just under 4 hours before sounding the "I'm about to die" alarm. At 4 hours and 15 minutes, the power was restored, which is actually slightly long for PG&E - our outages are annoyingly frequent, but normally sorted out in 2-3 hours.

So, I got to play hide and seek in the dark with my 4-year-old, got to introduce him to "candle-light" and generally had a relaxing time, confident that the UPS was handling everything.

____________________________​

So, new year, new budget... next task: Buy another battery pack.

According to this chart near the bottom, the line that says 'SMX3000RMLV2UNC + (1)SMX120RMBP2U', I would end up with ~12 hours of coverage, which is mind-boggling. I could probably run most of the fish room (no lights...) and still get ~8 hours coverage... Yes, it's another $750, but after yesterday it seems cheap at twice the price.

Simon. (relaxed)

 

[saf1]

Spaced - welcome to California and our political ineptness. I live outside Sacramento and this is what caused my 100 gallon tank to crash during the 2001 power crisis (all imaginary thanks to Enron)...

They may seem expensive, and they can be, but it probably is one of the most important things to own has your system grows. Especially if you travel for work, go on vacation, or have a window whereas no one can get to the house within a safe window. In my case it was a family reunion cruise so everyone who could have helped was at the same place - lol.

Anyway - for others ebay is actually a great place to look for UPS's because of the IT churn. Do similar math and verify battery replacement and you are set.

 

[reeksreef]

I remember you saying you have gyre powerheads, why not get the icecap battery backups? The would last for 35 hours and if you daisy chain 3 of them you get 70 hours. I have 2 on my tank now due to a gfci tripping when I was out of town and entire tank crashed. They they are running the ecotech pumps.

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[Spaced Cowboy]

I remember you saying you have gyre powerheads, why not get the icecap battery backups? The would last for 35 hours and if you daisy chain 3 of them you get 70 hours. I have 2 on my tank now due to a gfci tripping when I was out of town and entire tank crashed. They they are running the ecotech pumps.

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The Gyre powerheads produce a lot (an almost excessive amount in fact) of flow in the tank, but I'm not *sure* how much oxygenation they provide. My Gyre is below the surface of the water, and I can see the ripples on the top of the water, but there's little to no splashing, which is AFAIK the best way to get Oxygen into the water. The flow seems very laminar to me, not turbulent.

In contrast, the return pump forces water over the back weir (small fall/splash), and then down a Bean Animal return (1 full-flow, 1 half-flow pipe) into a deliberately-small tumble-zone which is always effervescent. This quickly overflows into a filter-sock area, which again lets the water fall down into the collection zone ready for filtration and final return.

I'm pretty sure the fall into and circulation around the sump is where most of the oxygen is mixed into the water. If the Gyre's produce sufficient though, perhaps that's a good way to do it. Of course, I don't have heating in the tank, it's in the sump, so I'd have to figure something out there. Still eminently do-able though...

Simon

 

[reeksreef]

The Gyre powerheads produce a lot (an almost excessive amount in fact) of flow in the tank, but I'm not *sure* how much oxygenation they provide. My Gyre is below the surface of the water, and I can see the ripples on the top of the water, but there's little to no splashing, which is AFAIK the best way to get Oxygen into the water. The flow seems very laminar to me, not turbulent.

In contrast, the return pump forces water over the back weir (small fall/splash), and then down a Bean Animal return (1 full-flow, 1 half-flow pipe) into a deliberately-small tumble-zone which is always effervescent. This quickly overflows into a filter-sock area, which again lets the water fall down into the collection zone ready for filtration and final return.

I'm pretty sure the fall into and circulation around the sump is where most of the oxygen is mixed into the water. If the Gyre's produce sufficient though, perhaps that's a good way to do it. Of course, I don't have heating in the tank, it's in the sump, so I'd have to figure something out there. Still eminently do-able though...

Simon

Yeah heating still would be an issue, just was saying you can use that $750 and that's 7 battery backups for your powerheads. I test mines out and it has a small rippling affect on the surface, thought as long as its some water movement on the surface you're getting oxygen exchange.

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[RoRietow]

So after some to-ing and fro-ing on the Bean Animal thread over in the DIY section, and after lots of good advice from 'Uncle of 6', I changed around the return design to be more in line with the original design ideals...

Advantages of the newer design are:

• There's far less overhang of the return pipes - previously they came out the back of overflow. This configuration makes it far less likely I'll knock one and break the return system.
• It still leaves me the 4" I need to put the outdoor TVs behind the back panel, by extending out the rear shelf by a few inches
• All the returns are the same length, by intelligent positioning of the emergency drain. This doesn't need an elbow, so by using a symmetric layout we can make sure they all match in length
• There are no horizontal runs of pipe any more. One of the issues with a drain system is that it's a gravity feed system, and without any drop in elevation, there ain't no gravitational effects to speak of Then, you're depending on inertia, and that has caused some folks problems

So overall I'm happier with this layout - it preserves my design criteria of allowing for the 'deeper than it really is' visual effect, and makes for a more reliable and better-designed drain. The only drawback was that I had to lose an inch of space in the skimmer section of the sump. It's still 15" by 20" so it ought to be ok.

Simon.

Hey! I was wondering if you are interested in helping me draw out the schematics of my personal tank setup. I am more than willing to pay for your time if you are interested. Thanks!

 

[Mishri]

i don't have any aeration in my current tanks other than a gyre, as reeksreef stated, rippling water at the surface is sufficient. it's pretty much all I've ever used. (No sumps, my 300 gallon will be my first tank with a sump)

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

How quickly a thread can fall by the wayside.

Anyway, the UPS woke me via my 5-year-old this morning, beeping its little heart out saying something was wrong. Went into the fish room and I could smell something had burnt. Turns out the tank has sprung a leak

There's a (small, but insistent) leak at the bottom rear of the tank, somewhat over to the right-hand side. It's just a 'drip,,, drip,,, drip' at the moment, but I really don't want it to get any worse.

The obvious next step is to get all that wiring cleaned up - it's been on the list for, well months now, so it looks as though I'm going to be doing it today. I just have to make sure I don't kill myself - leaking saltwater and mains power don't mix well...

As far as the tank goes, I've never been in this situation before - I've emailed Miracles (I really hope their warranty is more than 2 years, the tank is *just* over 2 years old), but they're unlikely to be open on a Sunday. Anyone got any advice ?

Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

So Miracles replied early this morning my time, which in all fairness is pretty damn good considering I noticed the leak on a Sunday. They asked me to lower the water level temporarily while they assess the photo I took.

Funnily enough the leak appears to have stopped (or the dehumidifier fan is keeping up). The wooden shelf at the back looks dry this morning. I'd guess there was about 4 gallons of water on the floor from it yesterday - enough for a 7' long puddle to collect on the waterproof floor, even with the dehumidifier fan dehumidifying its little heart out.

It didn't help that in the middle of all this, we had a power cut, but hey, that's what the UPS is there for... Worked like a champ The main pump is let to go off and a small circulation pump and heater is kept on in the tank which keeps the water aerated and the correct temperature. These are both low wattage items, so I can go for ~12 hours without power these days.

I await the decision from Miracles...

Simon.

 

[BZOFIQ]

Woa, that sucks! Prepping for a big build myself I am reading too many threads with a leaker.

Scary!

Hope they come through

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

So to follow up...

Miracles were pretty responsive, they got back to me on the Monday morning, and we went back and forth a bit. The thing is that the leak has stopped. I'm still not 100% convinced this is "great" news, because there was definitely water coming out of the bottom of the tank, so I'm a bit confused as to why there's no longer water coming out the bottom of the tank... All I can think of is that there was a miniscule leak, and a grain of sand or something was pushed into the channel where the leak was, plugging it.

That doesn't fill me with the warm fuzzies, but it does mean there's not a lot Miracles can do in the meantime - the tank is holding water after all. It's hard to fix something that isn't broken...

Anyway, that's where we are. On the plus side, there was sufficient incentive to get all the wires tidied up, so it now looks nice and clean down there

 

[MrsReefK]

Wow! Glad it stopped but you are right, what's to come, why did it stop, etc. Is Miracles doing anything with it at all?


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[Spaced Cowboy]

Now that it's not leaking, they didn't reply to my last email. I guess I'm just sort of hoping it doesn't come back.

To be fair, about all they could do is have me drain the tank, then fly someone down and silicone in another internal brace all along the inside of the back of the tank. Then I'd have to start from scratch again with the tank, so none of the options are really appealing

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

[Apologies, this is a bit of a rant. I'm not very happy right now]

So, I'm looking into getting a whole-house backup generator. We've had 2 power cuts in the last 2 weeks, the last one being about 25 hours long, which meant that even the 3000W UPS couldn't keep things ticking over and gave up after ~22 hours.

I went out and bought (after queuing up at Home Depot because everyone wanted one) a portable generator, and that saw us through, but the temperature was 110 (so everyone had their a/c on, which is why the power cut in the first place), and it wasn't pleasant. So. Backup generator.

Prices start at ~$15k locally, not including permits, for an installation - that's the lowest of the 3 quotes I've got. Then there's the special-use permit, that's another $4k, then there's the variance for noise (San Jose has ridiculously low requirements for noise limits) which I may not even get, but application for it is $2k. Then there's the other permits (plumbing for the NG supply, and electrical of course). That runs to another $1k between them.

So far we're up to $22k and about a 3 month process, and that's barring any unforeseen stuff. In projects like this, there's *always* unforeseen stuff [sigh].

All this because the technological hub of one of the most technologically-advanced countries on the planet can't even keep the bloody power on reliably.

[rant over]

And breathe.

 

[MarylandTang]

Any tank updates?

 

[AddictReef]

Update please?

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Battling a bit of a cyano outbreak at the moment. I don't feed too much (a couple of pinches per day of pellets, and a small piece of Rogger's reef food, the water is changed automatically (10 gallons per day on a ~400g total system), and the lights are LED, so my main suspect is the crap at the bottom of the sump. I'm going to shop-vac the sump this weekend, and hopefully things will improve...

I'm also going to run some phosguard to make sure my phosphates are low. I need to buy new test-kits because my current ones are somewhat old.

So, no pics because it wouldn't be pretty I'll get back to y'all when things are recovered back to normal.

On the larger issue. I've not yet put in the LCD screens along the back/side of the tank. The main reason for this is that I've yet to figure out a good way to make them removable for cleaning the glass once they've been installed. To be fair, I haven't put *too* much effort into this yet, my kid's just starting kindergarten, and things have been ... busy
Having said that, things are always busy, so I'm going to have to pull my finger out sooner or later...

Simon