plumbing remodel

[cloakerpoked]

Will be adding a chiller to my system soon, and the whole thing is just a mess. My basic options were to try to tap somehow into a line somewhere that's already there, or add a whole new line all-together with a new pump and just drop it in the sump, or to redo the plumbing under the tank. The thing is an absolute mess.

So I decided for option 3. Drew the whole system out on a piece of graph paper to decide what I wanted this to look like when I'm done. Another problem I've been having with my tank is that my returns are blasting 600 gph each at very finite points in the tank. Coming from a lock-line nozzle, this gets very concentrated, and is adversely effecting the growth of a few of my SPS. Overall, the tank is doing great, but I'd really like to eliminate the dead zones where my returns plow through everything and anything in their path. So I came up with a solution. I am going to add a spray-bar to the front and sides of the display to get a more dispersed flow to more areas of the tank.

I've also decided to build a manifold, which is going to run the chiller, 2 return lines, 2 spray bar lines, and a frag tank line. It will also have 2 extra lines in case I add anything like a calcium reactor or who knows what else at some point. My UV sterilizer will be run directly in a drain line from the frag tank to the sump. The manifold is going to be run by a Mag18 and a Little Giant 4-MDQX-SC.

painted black...

Fortunately I have a very understanding wife who, upon seeing her kitchen table covered in PVC fittings, simply stated that it was a good thing we cleaned it off the other day

 

[cloakerpoked]

As you can see from the pic above...one of the biggest challenges with painting PVC is making sure it doesn't chip or flake off. I'll be putting another layer of paint on the manifold to get rid of most of the white. A lot of it is the tops of the double union ball valves at the union part of it. It is an easy fix, and won't take too long to get right, and I won't be able to paint it once its under the stand.

 

[cloakerpoked]

Side View....

And the Front

I got careless while sliding my sump back into the stand, and whacked the bulkhead right off the support of the stand...of course breaking it. My goal for tomorrow is to get my electrical cleaned up, right now it looks like crap. I got everything all in the same place, so that my electrical is not spread out like it used to be. I'm also staggering my light cycles (fuge 10p-7a, frag tank 7a-3p, display 3p-10p) for a few reasons. The first is to help stabilize my pH and also my heat. The other reason is to reduce the draw on current on the circuit. I'm not sure what it can hold, but I'd rather not find out by continually tripping the breaker.

My first challenge in updating everything was obviously breaking the sump. A little bit of caution when dealing with such things goes a long way. The second challenge was the livestock. I don't think I lost anything, although one acro frag really browned out on me and my RBTA really seemed like he was going to die last night. He was spewing brown crap all over my tank, to the point where it was making the water foggy. I removed him, put his rock in a 5 gallon bucket with water and a MJ1200. He seemed sticky again this morning, and his water was clear, so I figured I'd give him another try. Today he seemed to be doing much better, so hopefully that crisis is averted. My skimmer, which seldom pulls much out of the tank due to a relatively low bioload went absolutely nuts today. About a 2 week's worth of skimmate in less than 10 hours. I think that this is mostly due a drastic drop in pH, from 8.5 to 8.1. Part of that I think has to do with the lights being left off for about 40 hours, disrupting the normal cycle and causing the tank to stay in "night mode" with a much lower pH. Either way, I'm happier with it lower than higher since I dose kalk, but definitely wouldn't do things this way if I had a choice. The whole project took the better part of 2 days, but so far I'm very happy with the results. I've added roughly 1000 gallons per hour of flow over what I was running, split the 2 returns into 5 and a spraybar, and plumbed the frag tank, UV, and chiller all through the manifold.

 

[Misled]

Dude, I'm tired!!!!!!