My 400G Through-wall "deceptively deep" tank

[Spaced Cowboy]

Framing begins

Framing begins

So, we needed to take down the old drywall and replace with greenboard, also add insulation etc. since code has changed since this house was built ~60 years ago. We also need to start building the frame out for the non-structural internal wall. Both of these are potentially messy operations, so the work area was prepared...

Here's a close-up of how they protected the tank - it was really well done, considering they are tearing it off today to start the framing. First they wrapped it in RAMboard, then covered that with plastic...

Anyway, now we are going to start on the framing, although there's a (hopefully) minor hiccup with the new external door position. Hopefully we can sort that out easily..

Simon

 

[nuxx]

Really clean looking!

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Really clean looking!

Thanks

There's a long way to go, but it's at least starting out well I realize from most people's perspectives, this is all just happening recently, but it's been in planning for almost 9 months now. "I love it when a plan comes together"

On the door front, it looks like they sorted out the issue (we have to move the door header across by 6"), so at least there ought to be no holdups. We were concerned about space restrictions outside, and impacting into a brick planter that's on the side of the house. All sorted

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Ive been framed!

Ive been framed!

So, more "renovation" than "reefing", but the framing is now done, for the tank surround, the new door out to the back garden, and the wall adjacent to that door.

There's no need for framing underneath the tank because the stand has 6 2x6's screwed to it, isolated using anti-vibration washers, which will act as the support for the greenboard later.

As I left for work this morning, they were jack-hammering out the old door base (60 something years old cement) presumably ready for the new door to go in. For some reason they like installing the door before they stain them, but hey, they're the experts

Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Wired up

Wired up

So the wiring is pretty much complete now. I had them put in a 4-gang (so 8 sockets in all) socket on the left-hand wall, which is where I'm going to put most of the electrical devices for the room...

... and on the other side of the room there is a 2-gang (so, 4 sockets) which will mainly be for the support tanks (quarantine, hospital, etc.) ...

... I also had them put in the extractor fan, which is controlled by a humidistat (yet to be installed, you can see it on top of the tank here). This will help me keep the humidity under control given that I have a large tank in a small fish-room...

You can also see the lights that were installed behind the tank - 4 LED pot-lights in total, which ought to give adequate light. They'll be on a dimmer switch in case they're too bright

When installing the sockets, I had them placed ~6' up the wall. No water dripping down wires for me! There are a total of 3 (2 new, 1 existing) 20A circuits in the room (providing a total of 16 sockets), which ought to be enough for going on with

Simon

 

[Swope2bc]

Loving the detailed updates Simon! Keep them coming

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Loving the detailed updates Simon! Keep them coming

Thanks - I intend to [grin].

They're pretty much done on the internals before the first city inspection now, though, so we'll have to wait until Monday before anything significant happens inside the house. To avoid wasting time, they're going to start on some of the repair tasks to the stucco etc. Basically cleaning up the outside of the house.

Things always seem to go slower than you want them to, unless it's something you don't want to happen. Those things can happen *real* fast!

Simon

 

[Swope2bc]

Lol, yeah no kidding! Waiting on city inspectors also takes more time than one would desire... I guess there is something to be said about a tank project that requires an inspection though lol.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Ok, so we passed inspection, with the sole proviso that we have to replace the glass in a window next to the new door with tempered glass. Fairy nuff. We have until the final inspection to do that, so no problem.

Once the inspector had left we got down to drywalling ...

and we got it almost all done for the walls around the room. Still got one side to go and then the new wall across the tank...

So, definite progress today (which is a relief after sitting around for a few days with nothing to do but wait for the inspector). Hopefully we're on the home stretch regarding the renovation now.

On a different note, ever since I heard about it, I've been wanting to get the Genesis Renew water change system, but they have had supplier issues. A bit of email correspondence with Kevin @ Genesis and he tells me my timing is pretty good because they've moved to new premises (while resolving the supplier issue) and hope to start shipping again in August. Perfect

And, I was looking at making a scissor lift from 80/20, because standard lift platforms are pretty darn expensive ($3k+) when I had an epiphany. People who groom dogs need to lift those Great Danes / Irish Wolfhounds up, and those ain't small dogs. So a bit of googling, and I found a grooming table which gets excellent reviews for solidity and performance, and "only" costs $690. Yes, that's expensive, but a DIY version with linear actuators in 80/20 would probably cost more. It's a luxury, no doubt - I could have just a ladder back there, but it's going to be pretty cool to have the platform to work with at the height I want to be, in order to kneel on the platform, lean over the tank bracing against the opposite wall with one hand, and reach vertically down with the other. It'll solve any problem of getting to the front of the tank when I only have rear-access.

Simon.

 

[RyanChase]

Incredible man. Cant wait to see the finished product. Once my wife and i buy our home a very large aquarium is high on the priority list.

 

[Swope2bc]

Awesome to hear about the progress forward!! Why do they want a tempered window though? For some reason I can't see your pictures this time... Keep it coming though!! What is your "get wet" date looking like? I finally began adding water to my build yesterday.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Incredible man. Cant wait to see the finished product. Once my wife and i buy our home a very large aquarium is high on the priority list.

Thanks

This is about as big a tank as I could possibly get away with, without tearing down the house and starting over There are a fair number of compromises I had to make even now, just to get that depth which is what I was really after - the "fish room" really could do with a lot more room, for example

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Awesome to hear about the progress forward!! Why do they want a tempered window though? For some reason I can't see your pictures this time... Keep it coming though!! What is your "get wet" date looking like? I finally began adding water to my build yesterday.

I'm not sure why they want a tempered window [aside: my wife emailed me at work and said the inspector wants a temple window next to the door. I love the bones of her, but that made me chuckle, I had visions of a stained glass window next to the door being required by code...]. There *was* a door there before, although it was a sliding glass door. Perhaps there's more impact with a normal open/close door, so the glass needs to be tougher ? I don't really care, it's just a bit more expense [sigh].

Hopefully you can see the pictures next time you look - they seem ok at this end... As for "get wet", realistically, that's not happening until the end of August. The reno is scheduled until mid August and then there's all the plumbing and wiring etc. (which I intend to do "properly" this time [grin]).

One thing, though, when it does get wet, it's gonna flood! I live on the West Coast, and there's a pipe that goes out to sea for several miles or so as some sort of research thing for Stanford. Anyone can pull up and pump seawater from miles out to sea into their own tanks for personal use. There's a guy who has a professional licence to do it, and he then UV-filters it, runs it through various sand bed filters etc., then supplies it to the local pet shops and people in the business. I've managed to get a part of this, so he'll turn up and pump in about 1000 gallons of this seawater into my system in one fell swoop! I have 550 gallons in the tanks outside, 400 gallons in the display, and the sump (obviously not to be filled completely) is 100 gallons.

Changing 10% per week, I expect to use ~160-200 gallons per 4 weeks via the Genesis system, so he'll just come by and top me up every month or so. Since the tanks are outside, he doesn't even need to ring the doorbell, just toss the hose over the fence, walk around the side of the house and pump. This means the only thing I need the RO/DI for is for top-off water. Given the genesis will automate things, I literally have to do nothing to keep the water being changed. This is a good thing [grin].

I don't *know* if there's going to be a benefit in using real sea water over mixing it from salt, but if there is, I intend to get that benefit [grin]

Simon

 

[Swope2bc]

Lol, that's awesome!! And August is just around the corner so... I love the idea of the genesis, I've been working on building my own auto waterchange setup for my tank. It will not be nearly as sophisticated as the Genesis but I hope it will do the trick!

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Lol, that's awesome!! And August is just around the corner so... I love the idea of the genesis, I've been working on building my own auto waterchange setup for my tank. It will not be nearly as sophisticated as the Genesis but I hope it will do the trick!

Yeah, I used to use a Litermeter on my old tank, but I found it lost its calibration (or the pump varied too much perhaps), so my salinity would slowly rise or fall - I never could get it dialed in perfectly. Doesn't sound so bad, but it could get quite out of range within a month or so, and I'm sometimes away for that length of time...

I'm hoping the Genesis will do better because it fills a bucket to the point of overflow (at which point the overflowing water goes back to its source), and both buckets are the same size. I think that's a good way of making sure the exact same amount of water is being exchanged.

Simon.

 

[Swope2bc]

Yeah, I used to use a Litermeter on my old tank, but I found it lost its calibration (or the pump varied too much perhaps), so my salinity would slowly rise or fall - I never could get it dialed in perfectly. Doesn't sound so bad, but it could get quite out of range within a month or so, and I'm sometimes away for that length of time...



I'm hoping the Genesis will do better because it fills a bucket to the point of overflow (at which point the overflowing water goes back to its source), and both buckets are the same size. I think that's a good way of making sure the exact same amount of water is being exchanged.



Simon.

Well, my plan is to use float switches for each pump. One to determine how much to remove and one to fill... Thoughts on my plan?

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Well, my plan is to use float switches for each pump. One to determine how much to remove and one to fill... Thoughts on my plan?

I think that's the normal approach to be honest. Most people who do it tend to use float switches. The problem with float switches is that sometimes they stick. The general solution seems to be to use 2 switches, one slightly higher than the other, then have the second (higher) one do the same job as the lower, but also email/text/contact you to say "clean/replace the damn float switches". Based on the maths that 2 failures are less likely to happen at the same time, this gives you a bit more security.

If you can do it, though, a pressure sensor is a better way to go IMHO. It's a small plastic tube, sealed at one end with the pressure sensor there, you place it in the tank, and as the water rises past the open end, the pressure starts to build up. The pressure sensor chip sends a signal when the pressure gets to X, or you need to keep reading the pressure until X is indicated. Then you stop adding water/whatever it is you were doing. The pressure sensors have no moving parts, so they're a lot less likely to fail - in fact the Litermeter pumps use them in their water-transfer module, I've been using 2 of them for several years, and never had a malfunction in that time.

Just my $0.02

Simon.

 

[Swope2bc]

I think that's the normal approach to be honest. Most people who do it tend to use float switches. The problem with float switches is that sometimes they stick. The general solution seems to be to use 2 switches, one slightly higher than the other, then have the second (higher) one do the same job as the lower, but also email/text/contact you to say "clean/replace the damn float switches". Based on the maths that 2 failures are less likely to happen at the same time, this gives you a bit more security.



If you can do it, though, a pressure sensor is a better way to go IMHO. It's a small plastic tube, sealed at one end with the pressure sensor there, you place it in the tank, and as the water rises past the open end, the pressure starts to build up. The pressure sensor chip sends a signal when the pressure gets to X, or you need to keep reading the pressure until X is indicated. Then you stop adding water/whatever it is you were doing. The pressure sensors have no moving parts, so they're a lot less likely to fail - in fact the Litermeter pumps use them in their water-transfer module, I've been using 2 of them for several years, and never had a malfunction in that time.



Just my $0.02



Simon.

Hmm, sounds like a foolproof idea, I'll look into that! Thanks

 

[Swope2bc]

I'm having trouble finding the recommended pressure switch. Could you recommend a link?

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

I'm having trouble finding the recommended pressure switch. Could you recommend a link?

I don't think they come as ready-to-go units, or at least I don't know of anyone selling them. The best I can find is https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11824 which would need an arduino or other small micro to talk to it using I2C.

Cheers
Simon