Restarting an old 280 build

[Northside Reef]

Give you an idea of the size of the pump

I need to figure out how to get the vibration down, it actually reverberates through the entire house via the plumbing. a real low rumble but once my wife pointed it out it is annoying. And you can see it is sitting on a vibration pad. So that's not helping.

 

[Northside Reef]

lol thought I would show you a picture of this dinosaur.

It's a MR-4 My Reefs Creation Beckett style skimmer it is rated for 900 gallons.
I will be using this until I can afford an upgrade. I bought it 8 years ago, and have had it in storage ever since.

 

[TropTrea]

Wow your running a bigger Ro system than I did when I had my store and was pushing 94 tanks with over 3,000 gallons. I had a primary 60 gallon a day system with a back up 35 gallon per day system. As long as I keept changing my pre filters they would stay right in that range of production. Bu my 5 micron prefilter needed changing roughly every other week. That was on city water that extremly high iron content.

 

[Northside Reef]

once I make all the water I need for the system I won't need this much, but my pressure was pretty low anyhow and it was taking for ever just to fill that 325 (where I plan to mix the first few batches of salt). so for now I need it, later it will be a luxury.

Higher pressure does make better use of you RO membrane though so there are pluses to the pump even after the fact. at least according to the guys over at Bulk Reef.

 

[Northside Reef]

I want to give a HUGE Thank YOU!! to Chris over at Ace hardware in Chanhassen. He fixed my vibration problem.

He recommended one of these:

Put it line like this:

And there is no longer any noise in the house pipes.

By this weekend the 280 will be cycling!

 

[TropTrea]

hopefully the COPPER water handle arrestor is located before the RO/DI system. I would hate to see after all this investment in time that you get an eventural high copper content in your reef. Some corals have an extrem hatred for copper.

 

[dahenley]

hopefully the COPPER water handle arrestor is located before the RO/DI system. I would hate to see after all this investment in time that you get an eventural high copper content in your reef. Some corals have an extrem hatred for copper.

i didnt think copper was bad on the fershwater side. i thought it was just bad in saltwater since the salt would corrode it. i doubt freshwater will cause problems.

also, those are usually filled with air to act as a cushion.
maybe someone else can chime in haha.

 

[Northside Reef]

hopefully the COPPER water handle arrestor is located before the RO/DI system. I would hate to see after all this investment in time that you get an eventural high copper content in your reef. Some corals have an extrem hatred for copper.

It is right before the T out to the RO unit.

 

[TropTrea]

i didnt think copper was bad on the fershwater side. i thought it was just bad in saltwater since the salt would corrode it. i doubt freshwater will cause problems.

also, those are usually filled with air to act as a cushion.
maybe someone else can chime in haha.

Yes copper is good for fresh water but aome corals are extremly sensative to even minute quantities of copper. This is why some people run special hospital tanks. Most medications are copper based for fish and the level of copper in them would cause almost instant death to many corals.

for my hospital tank I simply put in a 3" piece of copper pipe and withoin a few days the copper level is enough to cure most fish ailments. Unfortunatly when my ROI system went out and needed a new membrane I noticed it on my corals. A copper test showed my levels were up which came from my copper piping in the couse that the RO system was not removing. Answer for me was a new RO membrane followed by 10% water changes every other day for 2 weeks. Yupe that came out to be three buckets of salt mix.

Im not sure how much that little unit will effect your copper levels. But I would monitor your copper level every month and if it starts rising you know where to look.

 

[Northside Reef]

well since all of the plumbing in my house is copper I would say not at all since so are most homes. the silencer is as I said, before the T going to the RO unit.

 

[TropTrea]

Ah sorry I mis understood. Yes the RO unit will then pull all the copper out of your reef water. Well anywhere between 97% and 99.2% dependent on the type of membrane. If you have a DI filter afeter that it will take out another 99%.

Yes copper piping is not exactly reef friendly but for the last 30 or 50 years that is all they used for house piping. But when you look at the iron pipes they used before that it was great for iron rich fresh water plants and salt water algea but nothing else as well. The RO systems were probably the one biggest invention for reef tank.

Note I have a new 75 gpd unit on order right now for myself. I needed an replacement mebgbraine and since I putting up some FW tanks thought I might as well go effecient.

 

[Northside Reef]

I tell ya now that the home plumbing isn't making that low reverberation noise I could not be any happier with the upgrade. Kudos to Bulk Reef and to the guys from Ace.

 

[TropTrea]

Noise is something I'm plagued with as well. But it is completly a different type of noise. The only solution for my noise issue is to completly rework the drain system from tank. But with a side drilled tank if would probably mean going with a new tank. My noise basicly sound like a constant water fall. If I reduce flow it actualy increases as the pipes are acting like an echeo chamber. Increasing the flow for me puts me on the edge of a water overflow. Unfortunatly my overflow is not not large enough for me to run a muffler system in it. Right now I'm running about 5 water changes per hour in my main display tank. Input to my tank also gives me some additional noise as it is picking up air bubbles.

If I were doing mine from the start again I would start wirh different tanks that were predrilled completly different. As it is the tempered glass will not allow much in modifications now. Pump noise itself is not an issue for me mainly because my pumps are in the basement, with the main tank directly above them.

 

[Northside Reef]

Ok this is from yesterday I have a few things to do this morning then I can start filling the tank.

The temp of the water is now 67 it took all night to warm it up. The reservoir pump has been on so the water has been well mixed and up to temp so after 3 more batches everything but the 92 cube and 45 cube will be on line.

 

[TropTrea]

With the shed is the cold weather (near 0 temps) effecting your ability to get thing warm? How many watts of heaters do you have going to keep your system going? Are you using flow through heating modules?

I knw an all guidline used to be 1 Watt per degree temp difference from room temperature per 10 gallons of water to simply maintain the temperature. But heaters are more effecient today so I'm not sure that still stands.

I know in my situation I'm pushing about 350 gallons total and have about 1,200 watts of heaters. Do to the insilation of my basement filter room the temp in there is usualy between 76 and 78 degrees. But the room with the main 120 and 40 Display tanks is between 68 and 71 degrees.

 

[Northside Reef]

The filtershed is heated and insulated and I keep it at 60 degrees in there. I have 600 watts worth of heaters in the reservoir atm but those plus another 900 watts will be in the return sump when everything is up and running. so total will be 1500 watts of heaters in the return sump. Everything in the fishroom is room temp so about 68 in there right now.

This will be one of the things I won't know until I have it all up and running. I am hoping to be able to maintain 78 degrees on the main system. Does that mean I need to bring the room temp up in the filtershed? I do not know yet. But I did get that 325 reservoir up from 47 to 67 in about 15 hours so I know I am on the right path.

I am hoping that the water cools in the 3 100 gallon refugiums and 325 reservoir on its own so the chiller for the sea horse tank can maintain 74 degrees. heating the water only in the return sump keeps me from heating water in one place only to have to cool it in another

 

[Northside Reef]

So an update. It has been 10 days of pure hell. there was a moment there I was starting to wonder if maybe it was time to walk away for a bit.

I started filling the tank on Feb 3. I added some water. stopped went and checked things out. decided it was good to go. started filling the tank to the top. I got about this far when I noticed the tank is leaking from the bottom.
(I actually took this pic when I was filling the tank about 30 seconds before I noticed the leak).

The new sump was a pretty tight fit going in and I must have pushed too hard on the bulkhead fitting for the closed loop coming from the bottom of the tank when I slid it under. It was enough to put side load on the fitting and allow sand under the rubber washer.

This pipe on the left:

.


Not much I can do at this point that fitting is on the bottom of the tank. I was hoping maybe I could tighten the fitting enough to slow the leak down so I could empty the tank and fix it. Nope... that was a mistake. I made it worse and it poured out even faster onto the floor and into the sump below. I grabbed chunk of cardboard and tried to divert as much a I could into the sump.

Just a pic of the sump but you get the idea.

.

So I'm off to a great start.

Took out a bunch of rock and all of the sand to get to the fitting.

I replaced the bulkhead fitting with a new one. and used Spa Flex on the drop down from the fitting. The sump still pushes a bit on the pipe but the spa flex does not put any side pressure on the bulkhead fitting. This all took a few days since I did not have a bulkhead fitting and the 3rd was a Sunday.

 

[Northside Reef]

That was all just act 1.

Act 2 was even funner. Everything is back together and I am ready to fill the tank again. I start out slow, looks good. I fill it the rest of the way. It looks great. The tank is full. Time to start up the closed loop and get this baby cycling.

Well that was the plan anyhow. But one problem the Ocean Motion makes a couple of revolutions and then stops. It is stuck and I do not know why, but I figure I will take it apart and figure it out. That's why I put all of those ball valves with unions on right?.

I take the top apart all is good. I close the ball valve on the intake and take it off.......WOOOOOOSHHHHHHH!!!!!!!.

There is nothing in that valve that holds the ball in place if you take the union off. Do not ask me why I did not notice this when I put it on. My only answer is I am dumb *** and didn't. For the life of me I cannot figure out what value this bleeping valve has if you cannot turn it off and take it apart. But that's not the biggest problem I have right now. I have about 140 gallons of water blasting out of a valve and onto the floor at high speed.

My only saving grace is it is pointed right at the house sump and I still have the damn squeegee next to the tank from the last time I sent a bunch of mixed saltwater onto the floor. Which was just three bleeping days ago!
There is nothing I can do but watch, and try not to look at my wife while she looks at me like "that is not happening right?" I guide as much as I can into the sump and wait for the water to get below the intakes in the tank.
The best part is I have four of these damn things on the system. So that's going to be cheap to replace.

 

[Northside Reef]

So now we have these on everything.

and it's time to try again.

Let me just say I am a very lucky man and I love my wife, because she smiled and did not once say what she was thinking.... But we all know.

 

[Northside Reef]

The ocean Motion still does not work. I have been in contact with Paul over at OM and we're working on it. I can get it to work off the system, and it worked great when I leak tested with tap water but now if sticks almost as soon as I fire it up on the tank. ATM I have the drum pulled out and I am just using it as a manifold to send water through all 8 outlets at once while the wave making is being done with a pair of Vortech MP40's.

Those are awesome but incredibly finicky pumps. at first when I got them hooked up one kept faulting out. I could not figure it out. I have 3/4" tank panels I read all of the directions I knew to pull the spacer completely off. I did everything with the one that worked as the one that did not. It would start for a second then fault out.

I am pretty fed up at this point and I am certain the Big Guy is trying to tell me something. The only thing I notice is the one that works I have the cable run over the top of the tank from the right side. All the way over to the unit on the left that does not work. The unit the does not work I just have the pump cable sort of dangling off to the side. It can't be as dumb as that can it?

Yup, it can. I tie the cable from the pump that is not working power up and try again.
It has been running ever since.