New 600 Gallon Aggressive

[paulfromero]

hey Capt. and Hawaiian boy,

I was very fortunate to get a Palani tang a couple of weeks ago. I had seen your posts and photo, and although I didnt make the connection when I purchased it, the Palani is really great, just like your photo shows!

Since my trip to Hawaii about a month ago, I always wanted a native Hawaii fish!

Paul

 

[bassman57]

any updates??

 

[chicken]

We finally made some progress. The weather has been bad and it has stopped us from working in the back yard as everything has turned to mud. It finally dried out enough for us to finish off the plumbing for the tank and to get ready to pour the concrete for the fish room shed. I'll work on getting some pictures after work today. Hopefully have the slab poured by next week and then we can start to frame up the shed.

 

[paulfromero]

Hi Chick,

I am really in awe about the underground heat exchange system your doing. Thats alot of work to save kilowatts!. I have a 300 gal that after one year, is reduced to: MH lights, LR, PC lights, two fluval 404s, a semi-big pump with 4 outlets, and no sump/skimmer. I put in 4 replacement Chemi-pures every two months in the fluvals, clean the acrylic, pour in replacment water. The livestock has never been more healthy, i think.

Paul

 

[BermyBoi]

any updates on this great project?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? :rollface:

 

[dynamixone]

taggin along, well thought out! cheers!

 

[chicken]

Unfortunatly I cannot seem to find my digital camera I'll try looking again tomorrow. As for updates, the weather finally started to cooperate a little. The concrete guys were able to work between the storms and have finished off the forms, gravel bed and rebar for the shed foundation. They are planning on pouring Saturday, so hopefully within a few weeks I can start working on building the shed. The problem is it looks like I am going to be gone for almost 25 days in June mostly due to work, so I think progress is going to be pretty slow. Hopefully be able to get a lot done quick, but I am not holding my breath. On a side note, I was able to pretty much finish the woodshop up, so I am ready to start building the cabinet for the tank.

 

[OldmillXxX]

I love the idea of the drain pipe for the eel. Great idea! I look forward to seeing him in there.

 

[chicken]

Ok, finally found the digital camera and card reader. That was not fun Anyways, here are a few updates. I'll try getting some more details up soon.

Here is the pad where the filtration shed is going

Here are the 2 x 2" drains, 2" primary pump return, 1 1/4 secondary pump return and spare 1 1/4 pipe for future use.

Close up of some of the plumbing for the shed

New 400g water container to mix up salt water in

The produce bin with 400#s of left over live rock. I am going to use some of this to redo my current 200g tank

One of the two 300g rubbermaid containers for the sump and fuge

New 200g cold water storage tank for the geothermal cooling system

 

[qwuintus]

now thats what iim talking about..

shots of the house and spot of the tank?

 

[reefboy1]

WOW!!! Awesome!!!

Very nice work and very well thought out. I can't wait to see it in person.

How do you plan to implement that cold water geothermal vat?

Art

 

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

I wouldnt use that copper on the tank for many reasons. It will corrode so fast I doubt it will last more than a year with saltwater running through it. The idea of 'never being able to convert to a reef' is also true, but it will also cause problems with what you want right now. The LR and LS will have a large amount of their bacteria killed off, and long-term exposure to copper has its own side-effects that hurt a fish's immune system (how would you like to take tylenol all the time even when you dont need it?). If anything, I have a buddy that does the same thing with thin wall flexible hose...about 100'...works fine. That copper will most likely end up spreading your tank's water into the yard when it corrodes through. You would be shocked if you watched how fast copper corrodes in saltwater...its why they use it as 'sacfiricial anodes' on ships...copper's conductivity contributes to its quick corrosion. Cast Iron would last longer. Or, you could simply bury a large poly tank in the ground and run water back&forth. A large tank will keep things cool pretty well.

Or, if the day ever comes where you want to sell anything from your setup...skimmer...pump...LR...you wont be able too without disclosing its copper exposure.

 

[chicken]

If you look earlier in the thread I plan on using a Titanium heat exchanger so I will only have fresh water running in the copper pipes. The problem I see with most all these geothermal setups people have been doing is that they keep using PVC or other plastic pipes that suck on transfering heat. Copper is a great conductor compared to plastic so I expect I will get many times the cooling capacity that a similar PVC setup would.
Thanks

 

[chicken]

Here is how I am currently working on setting up the Geothermal cooling system. I have about 250' of 1" copper tubing buried in the ground. This will be run by a pump that will be connected to a thermostat to control when the pump kicks on and off. It will circulate water from a 200g water storage container that will house a reservoir of cold water. From there I will have two additional loops of water on their own thermostat controlled pumps. One will feed to a titanium heat exchanger that is on my 600g fish system (total of 1200g of water) and the other will feed to a titanium heat exchange that is on my 200g Reef tank (total of 350g of water).

I suspect I am not going to have to cool the 600g system to much as the drains and pump returns are run underground to the filter shed and I am only going to have 3 x 175MH on the tank for light. So hopefully between water capacity and minimal amount of heat being added to the tank by the lights I should not have to cool this system that much. On the other hand my 200g system has 2x400MH and 2x250MH bulbs on it and constantly has the chiller running. This is the system I hope on helping out the most, thus cutting my power bill. See the drawing below for more details.

 

[Bryan89]

Based on everything you will need to do to make the geothermal closed loop for the two tanks, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper in the long run to use a chiller? 250' of copper plus fitting is not cheap. Also, even with wefreshwater flowing through it, for optimal heat transfer you will have to add chemicals to the freshwater loop to minimize/prevent copper corrosion. Finally, bare copper in the ground will corrode rather quickly. I'm not trying to minimize your idea, just wanted to give my .02 on your rather ambitious project. Looks like a great setup overall.

Bryan

 

[chicken]

Out here in California it costs about 25 cents per KW/H after 300% over baseline which is very low. I estimate I pay at least $75 a month in electricity to just run the chiller on my 200g tank during the summer months. So I will have a ROI of around a year if my estimates are correct and that does not even take the 600g tank into consideration. On top of this I am being environmentally friendly by saving electricity.

As for corroding of the copper pipe, I am not sure what you are talking about. Pretty much everywhere in at least California uses copper pipes to feed water from the utility into the house. This is the exact same stuff I am using and it is buried in the ground just like the utility is doing. So I am not sure what you are thinking hereââ"šÂ¬Ã‚¦ Yes, the copper will get a nice green color to it pretty quickly, but thatââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s it. It will last for many decades buried with out any problem.

 

[Achilles1882]

Great looking plan and tank so far, sweet idea with the geothermal cooling.... can't wait to see more pics as this project continues... don't want to sound like an echo but some people keep asking and I included would like to know where those lucky individuals got their Dussemeiri Tangs ( eyestripe or palani ) ?

 

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

I was going to mention an idea like what you have as well...but I automatically dismissed it because I figured..."whats the point of having a relay because then you are defeating the purpose of the copper piping and making the relay res the weakest link". Which is true. If you make this cooling system a relay, then to be effective, you would have to have a similar amount of copper running exposed inside the relay tub. But that would expose copper directly to saltwater on the outside then...no big change. Or, are you talking running the relay section in a safer pipe...like plastic or titanium? You would need very long amounts to make it effective. I suppose what I am trying to say is...it came across my mind but I dismissed it and didnt say it cuz I didnt want to come off dumb...if you are not going to pump the saltwater through the round directly...but use a relay tub...that becomes your weakest link. And sure, you will be using chillers to keep it cool...but now youve removed direct cooling from the tank...In my head it just doesnt add up. My background is in EE with a focus on thermaldynamics...I just dont see an advantage here...in fact I see a couple disadvantages as now you have to cool a tub as well...and the pumps to run the extra loops as well.

 

[chicken]

Herbert, Not sure where the confusion is here... What I am trying to do is build a reservoir of cool water so that during the day I will have more capacity to cool the fish tanks. I figured that during the day the geothermal loop might not be able to keep up with the cooling demands that I need. So I figured at night when cooling demands are minimal I would be able to cool that reservoir back down so it will be able to handle the heat load the following day. As for the two additional loops all those are going to be is pumps hooked to the reservoir to pump cool water though a titanium heat exchanger that has the salt water from the tank going through the other side of the exchanger, thus cooling the tank. There will be no salt water ever getting near copper or the water that touches copper will never get into any of the tanks due to the heat exchangers.

Thanks

 

[chicken]

FYI, I am also still going to have chillers on both systems as backups (just set at a higher temperature) just incase of a failure in the geothermal setup as there are many pumps and thermostats that could fail or that the heat demand is so high that the geothermal system cannot keep up with the demand.