aquarius77
In Memoriam
Awesome build!
Im pretty much speachless.
Im pretty much speachless.
New Aquarium for St Jude Children's Hospital (800+G)
- Thread starter bshumake
- Start date
HPD Turbo
New member
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11023701#post11023701 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
You did a great job posting pictures with descriptions! :thumbsup:
I love how it is all coming together.
That tank is sick! with such thick acrylic. Man o man.
Why is there a bunch of putty on the two bulkheads inside the tank?
I belief that is for hiding it
HPD Turbo
New member
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11023701#post11023701 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
You did a great job posting pictures with descriptions! :thumbsup:
I love how it is all coming together.
That tank is sick! with such thick acrylic. Man o man.
Why is there a bunch of putty on the two bulkheads inside the tank?
I belief that is for hiding it.
Congrats on the great job for the kids, it is really amazing.
Kids will remember this tank for the rest of their lives.
tattooreef
New member
wow spazz you really did think of pretty much everything with this. it looks absolutely amazing and i cant wait to see video of that surge running. damn now i want an 850!!!!!!
tattooreef
New member
ok spazz stop giving me ideas! because the sound of that seems perfect for me. lol but i do think i will stick with this one for a while, and then when im ready to go bigger ill just use the 11 footer for one hell of a fuge!!!! lol
spazz
New member
right now the system is going through its cycle peroid so things are slow to update. the tank has to be ready for mid november when there will be a party to kick off the opening of the new building. barrott plans to have some fish and corals in the system for that event. i will be down there for a couple of days just before the event to make sure everything is runnng smooth and the system is ready for the bio load that will be placed in it. it will be exciting to see the first fish and corals going in there.
Rickyrooz1
Acropora Nut
spazz, how come St. Jude Children's Hospital went with an acrylic tank? Won't it have a lot of scratches since it will be in an area where a lot of people will be looking at and touching the tank?
spazz
New member
the hight of the tank had alot to due with the choice of materials. the tank is 4 ft tall. to build a tank that tall we would have had to use laminated starfire glass. that would have reduced the clarity of the viewing pannels. for every layer of lamination you have, the glass is a little less clear. so we decide to use acrylic to insure the visibility of the tank. sure there may end up being scratches on the exterior of the tank. theses are easy to remove with a buffer. most of the scratches would be from rings and such. if the tank need to be buffed out once a year its not that big of a deal. the 2 viewing pannels can be buffed out in a couple of hours. now if you scratch glass you can forget buffing the scratches out. they are there for the life of the tank. also you have to consider the surge tank fittings and the external overflow design. they would have been dificult to make into a glass tank of that size. then there is the biggest part of it. barrott has to lay on top of the tank to maintaince it. this is why the top of the tank is made with 2" thick acrylic. the bracing has to support the pressure from the water in the tank plus the weight of the person maintaing the tank. it cant be weak or the tank will burst. we factored all those things into the design of the tank when we decide what the tank size would be.
there is a big reason for tha tank being 4 ft tall. alot of the pacients are under 4 ft tall. then thereis there family members which would be taller than the pacient. so you can have the shorter people in front of the tank and the taller ones behind thenm and they can both have a good view of the inhabitants inside the tank. the bottom of the tank is 30" off the follr. your average 7 year old child is about 4 ft tall. the ones that are younger are about 36" tall. this will give everyone a good viewing point of the tank. we wanted everyone to be able to see inside the tank. we also had to consider anyone who might be in a wheel chair. thereis alot of elderly grandparents that will be there to visit and may want to see the tank. if they are in a wheel chair we want them to have a good view inside the tank. in the end the only problem we had with the design is the sump. because i didnt want make the tank nay higher we had tu use a sump that was smaller than i would have wanted. so the sump is a limitation in some ways. we have to be carefull that we dont overflow the sump if we have both surge tank dump at the same time. we can prevent that by reducing the dump time on the surge tanks. there is an adjustment on the surge valves that will alow us to reduce the amount of water being dumped. this would reduce the amount of water going into the sump and would prevent any flooding problems. it was a ballancing act to get everything to work smoothly and try to make everything work to the advantage of the people viewing the tank.
i hope that helps explain things better.
there is a big reason for tha tank being 4 ft tall. alot of the pacients are under 4 ft tall. then thereis there family members which would be taller than the pacient. so you can have the shorter people in front of the tank and the taller ones behind thenm and they can both have a good view of the inhabitants inside the tank. the bottom of the tank is 30" off the follr. your average 7 year old child is about 4 ft tall. the ones that are younger are about 36" tall. this will give everyone a good viewing point of the tank. we wanted everyone to be able to see inside the tank. we also had to consider anyone who might be in a wheel chair. thereis alot of elderly grandparents that will be there to visit and may want to see the tank. if they are in a wheel chair we want them to have a good view inside the tank. in the end the only problem we had with the design is the sump. because i didnt want make the tank nay higher we had tu use a sump that was smaller than i would have wanted. so the sump is a limitation in some ways. we have to be carefull that we dont overflow the sump if we have both surge tank dump at the same time. we can prevent that by reducing the dump time on the surge tanks. there is an adjustment on the surge valves that will alow us to reduce the amount of water being dumped. this would reduce the amount of water going into the sump and would prevent any flooding problems. it was a ballancing act to get everything to work smoothly and try to make everything work to the advantage of the people viewing the tank.
i hope that helps explain things better.
Rickyrooz1
Acropora Nut
spazz, Thanks! Is acrylic more clear than starphire glass? If it depends on the thickness how about using 3/4" thick acrylic or starphire glass for an example. Which one is more clear?
spazz
New member
to give you a better idea of just how clear acrylic really is i will give you an example and then try to get Barrott to take a picture of what I'm talking about. on the side of the tank there is a 3" bulkhead 2 feet from the edge of the tank. you can see it perfectly clear through 2 feet of acrylic. if you were to put a coke can on one end of the tank near the seam and went to the other side of the tank (8 feet away) you could read the lettering on the coke can through 8 feet of acrylic. if that was glass you wouldn't be able to read the lettering on a coke can past 12 inches. even starfire glass is not as clear as acrylic. don't get me wrong each type of material has its place. there are some times where i would rather use glass than acrylic just because its easier to maintain than acrylic. the biggest thing that scratches an acrylic tank is, putting animals that can scratch acrylic in the tank, and cleaning the front viewing panel with a magnet and getting too close to the sand bed which gets sand caught in the magnet. some of the nicest tanks in the world are glass. but when you get to the larger tanks that have special requirements acrylic can be a better choice of materials.
Spazz,
I've built a few valved surges too and LOVE them for their lack of noise and air entrainment.
I built a large Pneumatic valved surge system for a touch tank, with 2 head tanks. Very similar to what you have there. My touch pool could handle both tanks emtying all the way (500g total), but just barely. It was brimmed!
I set my dump timers with one slightly longer than the other. This would keep them offset for the most part, but when they caught up to each other and fired at the same time, look out
This is a point you may want to check into with your sump. If both surges fire at the same time, can it handle it? You may have to set both timers the same to keep them offset from each other. Even then you will never balance the flow exatly to each head tank, and at some point they will fire together.
You could have one timer relay override the next so that they electrically cannot fire at the same time, or put a float switch at the high level of the sump (& tank if the overflow cant keep up) to shut the surge valves.
Barring that, youd have to standpipe the valve fittings in the tank so you never surge that much water.
I'm sure you guys are all over this, just putting in my $0.02 and past experience.
Can I ask why you dont close the valves before they suck air? Thats my favorite part about valved surges- no air!
You all have done a great job there. LOVE the plumbing.
Heres the big surge I did:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=9910446#post9910446
I've built a few valved surges too and LOVE them for their lack of noise and air entrainment.
I built a large Pneumatic valved surge system for a touch tank, with 2 head tanks. Very similar to what you have there. My touch pool could handle both tanks emtying all the way (500g total), but just barely. It was brimmed!
I set my dump timers with one slightly longer than the other. This would keep them offset for the most part, but when they caught up to each other and fired at the same time, look out
This is a point you may want to check into with your sump. If both surges fire at the same time, can it handle it? You may have to set both timers the same to keep them offset from each other. Even then you will never balance the flow exatly to each head tank, and at some point they will fire together.
You could have one timer relay override the next so that they electrically cannot fire at the same time, or put a float switch at the high level of the sump (& tank if the overflow cant keep up) to shut the surge valves.
Barring that, youd have to standpipe the valve fittings in the tank so you never surge that much water.
I'm sure you guys are all over this, just putting in my $0.02 and past experience.
Can I ask why you dont close the valves before they suck air? Thats my favorite part about valved surges- no air!
You all have done a great job there. LOVE the plumbing.
Heres the big surge I did:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=9910446#post9910446
spazz
New member
yes we did this already with full surge tanks. the sump holds all the water with a fair amount of room to spare. but if there was a freak power outage and both surge tanks drained and the main tank drained down. there would be about 1" of excess space left in the sump. this is whay i was concerned about the sump. i dont like that but it cant be helped. there is no more space for another sump.
