Spcaeheater's 30 gallon parallel fuge build

[Space heater]

I'll try to post more details later this evening on the construction. I wasn't getting much action on this thread so I didn't take too many pictures while I was building, though. I should be able to get some better shots of the final product.

On a side note the Sicce 1.5 return pump is not very quiet. It has a loud enough hum to be heard over the TV at normal volume. I origianlly had it suction cupped to the bottom of the pump compartment, and all of the plumbing is 3/4 ID Tygon vinyl tubing. Yesterday I cut the section between the pump and bulkhead elbow about 1" shorter and pulled the pump off the bottom glass so it's just hanging in the water column about 1/2" above the bottom. This helped a little with the noise, but it's still rather loud. It's definitely not touching the sides.

The only thing I've been able to do to significantly quiet the pump is to pull on the power cord pretty hard, which is obviously not a solution. In fact I discovered it by accident when I dropped a suction cup in the bottom of the chamber and was trying to fish it out with my hand.

I'm open to any other suggestions people might have on fixing this.

 

[Space heater]

So here's how I did it. I started out with a 40 gallon long (Deep Blue) tank. I drilled two holes in the back for the return plumbing on opposite ends. Other than this the entire thing is self contained. Once the holes were drilled I painted the back panel with flat black Rustoleum. Once the tank prep was done I cleaned everything really well.

I then cut the main divider that separates the sump and fuge from the display. This was 1/4" cell-cast black acylic. I planned on the sump area being 5 1/2" wide, giving me 6 3/8" for the fuge. I cut teeth 1" deep into the top of the divider across the entire sump portion (5 1/2"), and 1/2 way across the fuge portion ~ 3".



As you can see the teeth on the fuge portion are much wider than those on the sump. This was due to poor craftsmanship on my part, I started with the larger teeth and then realized that they were too big, so switched to a smaller dremel bit for the sump to keep snails out.

Once I had that divider done I moved on to the fuge/sump divider. This was 1/8" black acrylic as well. I had the sump dividers pre-cut to 5 1/2" from TAP plastics. I knew that I needed 4 1/2" for the skimmer, and 4" for the pump, so I also ordered the pieces for the media rack pre-cut to 3 1/4". I proceeded to cut the teeth in the sump/fuge divider across the last 4" to 1" depth so that the water level in the fuge and display would be the same. Once this was done I used acrylic weld to bond the sump dividers to the sump/fuge divider (with much measuring and clamping. After an hour I welded the display/sump divider to the sump/fuge divider. I let this dry for a couple hours then put it in the tank (this wasn't easy, as the tank rim sticks out quite a ways, but the acrylic can bend a bit).



I should mention here that the two dividers in the sump section are 1" shorter than the main dividers. The one for the skimmer compartment sits on the bottom of the tank, while the one that separates the media and pump compartments sits 1" above the bottom of the tank so that water is forced over the top of the skimmer compartment onto the top of the media rack, down through the media and out the bottom to the pump compartment.

After the acrylic assembly was in place I ran a bead of aquarium silicone along everywhere the acrylic touched the glass. This was bottom and sides of the display divider, bottom and end of the sump/fuge divider, bottom and side of the skimmer divider and along the side of the media divider. While I waited for the silicone to dry I made the cutouts in the media supports and welded them to the ends of the media rack.



Once everything was done I plumbed in the return and pump then filled with RODI.

Again, sorry about the lack of progress pictures. I didn't think anyone was really interested. Hopefully this helps.

 

[Space heater]

All of that being said, the tank looks great now. Here's the first real FTS with the rockwork all in place:



And here's an end on shot, like you see coming through the door:



I've tried to preserve as much open space as I can on the sandbed while creating lots of shelves and caves in the rocks. I may add a couple more small pieces of pukani rock, but if I do they'll be more ledges than rock wall type.

Here's a shot of the pump/heater compartment:



I might go back and paint over this to prevent algae growth, although I have left it open for now so that I can monitor water levels easily. Also, this is near the corner of the room so only a little bit of indirect light hits it. It's probably easier to just scrape algae if it happens.

I also got around to making the cover for the sump tonight. I cut it from 1/8" black acrylic to fit around the skimmer and electrical. I also made a 4 1/2" x 2 1/2" cutout for the fuge light.



The two strips are to hold the light fixture in place. I made a box to hold the fixture that is about 3 1/2" tall and has a 1/8" piece of clear acrylic mounted 3/4" down. I will bolt the fuge heatsink to this clear acrylic, with the black sides covering the edges of the heatsink to control stray light.



Finally, here's the fuge light I'll be re-using from the Spec:



I have a total of 4 warm white LEDs. I am now thinking that I'll put 2 on the fuge and 2 on the very ends of the display fixture. The ones on the display I'll try as a sunrise/sunset effect to try to add some orangeish shadows (I know, totally unnecessary, but I think it'd be cool). The two on the fuge should hopefully only illuminate the fuge and I'll play with the schedule, but I'm leaning toward either reverse schedule. I would do 24/7 but I remember hearing that pods need some night time to reproduce or something like that.

 

[Space heater]

Tonight I made the mesh covers for the display portion of the tank. Pretty simple and there's plenty of DIY guides out there. Basically it's an unfinished aluminum window screen kit from Lowes for the frame, then added the clear netting from BRS. I had to buy a couple packs os extra corners and trim the ones for the corner power cord cutout so that the frame could be installed backward from the usual orientation. The one thing I learned is that the BRS netting stretches a lot, but if you stretch it too far it'll pull out. I ended up compromising, so they aren't as perfectly tight/flat as I'd like, but I don't think anyone besides me will ever notice.



Also my skimmer is now broken in and starting to produce skimmate.



The tank is now eating about 1 ppm ammonia per day. I've been feeding formula 2 once a day and dosed Ace Hardware ammonia after filling. Right now it's at 2.5 ppm, but the last couple morning I've been adding more ammonia to keep it at 2.5. I'll give it a couple more days then probably stop and just feed.

I don't think that cycling the first load of dry rock in the buckets did much. Maybe it helped, but if they were all infestered I would've expected the tank to be eating a lot more ammonia than it is. I did add about 5 lbs of LR to the fuge this weekend from a very well established tank and a small scoop of sand from one of my 5 gallons, so hopefully that kickstarts it a bit.

 

[1987]

Pretty cool it's like a rectangular biocube

 

[Space heater]

Pretty cool it's like a rectangular biocube

Thanks! I took my inspiration from my 2 Fluval Spec V's. I went back and forth on cutting the dividers out of the stand from the backside and adding a true sump, but I didn't want to risk and overflow or leak. I live on the top floor of my building.

Yesterday and today I've had about 0.25 ppm Nitrite and Nitrates are climbing. They're about 7.5 ppm, closer to 10. The ammonia is still high, though. It seems to have stabilized around 2.0 ppm even after I quit adding a few days ago after my last post.

I guess this means that the cycle is moving along, I'm just surprised to have ammonia at this point with nitrites showing up and nitrates climbing. It's probably just rotting pellets that I've been adding. I'm not in a hurry to add wildlife to the tank, since I figure it'll take me 2 days to transfer everything and build the new light fixture. I'm going to make sure it can handle my two gobies and clown before I move anything in.

Off topic, how many posts do I have to have before I can edit posts?

 

[Space heater]

The cycle is coming along. It's a little weird as I mentioned before in that nitrates are climbing while ammonia leveled off. I am definitely seeing an up tick in nitrites, though, which I'm going to ride out before calling it over. Here's a plot of the levels.



Tonight I hung the heatsink that will become my light fixture. It's near the front of the tank and I'm going to angle it slightly back to more evenly illuminate the rocks. It'll also keep the LEDs from glaring on the TV.



The reason for the extra tall conduit hanger is so that I can raise the fixture for cleaning. With the spring loaded cable grips it should be easy to go up and down for maintenance.

 

[BioCubeGuy]

Great thread.. Awesome tank and build! Keep up posted on live stock etc... :thumbsup:

 

[Space heater]

Great thread.. Awesome tank and build! Keep up posted on live stock etc... :thumbsup:

Thank you! And I will.

I take back what I said about pre-cycling the rock in buckets. Ammonia has been 0 for two days, nitrites are nearly gone and nitrates are around 30 ppm. It looks like the cycle is nearing completion. I'll be slowly adding CUC over the next week or two. I'm also going to put a small ball of chaeto in the fuge and start lighting that as soon as I have time to finish the fixture. Hopefully that'll be tomorrow night. In the meantime I'm going to point a few CFL bulbs at the display from a floor lamp and try to start the inevitable diatom/algae bloom.

As far as CUC I've already got 5 astrea snails in there (I know, for shame!) and 5 red-leg hermits. I'm going to try to make it to the LFS this weekend to get more reef crystals, some purigen, and a bag of CPE. While I'm there I'm thinking I'll get 2 or 3 nassarius, a few nerites, and maybe a fighting conch or two. I'll keep feeding formula 2 until the algae takes over. Eventually I'm hoping that the system will bring the hermit population down to 0, at which point I'll add a couple halloween hermits for looks.

What I'd really like as far as inverts is a couple pom-poms and a couple sexy shrimp, then the requisite snails, including the stomatellas in my current tanks because they are the best algae cleaners I've found. I'll also transfer my 2 turbos and 2 bumblebees into the new digs.

 

[Space heater]

Water test as of tonight:



It's a little tough to tell in the picture, but it's absolutely 0 amm. 0 nitrite, ~30 nitrate! regarding my previous post I think that pre-cycling the rocks did help, it was the shock of moving them into the new tank plus the dead stuff in the "live" sand that caused a mini-cycle. This was just way too quick to have happened without some help. I'm just glad that it went so smoothly.

I installed the fuge light tonight. It's two Cree XP-G2 warm white LEDs running at 1 A. With the way that the fixture is configured they light the bottom 2/3 of the fuge really well, however the edges of the top are pretty dark. I love the look, I just hope that this will grow chaeto and pods. After putting the light on I threw in a ball of chaeto, and the powerhead instantly tumbled it all over the place. In the process it created a blizzard of pods which are now circulating throughout the fuge and display. I'm going to put the two stock lights from my Specs on the display to start the inevitable algae bloom, which hopefully will feed the pods and get a nice population established before any wildlife goes in.

 

[Space heater]

Disaster strikes!

As I was turning off the lights to go to bed I noticed something odd behind the tank. It's a salt trail leading down from the bulkheads!

I leak tested and watched those fittings like a hawk for the first week. Not a drop. Now it appears that both are leaking, but very very slowly. They are both leaking from where the barbed street els thread into the bulkheads. I wrapped the els in teflon tape and screwed them down firmly, but not tight. I was confident that those wouldn't leak, I was worried about the bulkheads if anything.

The good news is that now that things have settled parameter wise I was planning on doing a big w/c. When I do I'll drain down below the bulkheads and re-do the fittings. This time I'm thinking I'll double up the teflon (I did the standard 3 wraps last time), however in my brewing and plumbing experience I've always found there's a sweet spot on the tape. Too little or too much both cause leaks.

I'm also thinking maybe I'll just put a little daub of silicone on the threads instead of tape. I've never tried this before, but I have used liquid gasket on fuel line fittings and it worked great. If anyone has tried this let me know, good bad, whatever your results were.

 

[wetWolger]

I'm also thinking maybe I'll just put a little daub of silicone on the threads instead of tape. I've never tried this before, but I have used liquid gasket on fuel line fittings and it worked great. If anyone has tried this let me know, good bad, whatever your results were.

I have always done a little of both. I put tape on the first 3/4 of the threads, and put silicone on just the last little bit of threading.

It is ugly as sin, but I have never had any leaks from it.

You of course can not tighten it at all, or it breaks up the silicone, so you have to make sure you have the tightness down perfect. Any time you take the bulkhead off you have a mess to clean up (getting the silicone out of the threads is not super fun, but not crazy hard either).

As long as you don't care about the looks, and you don't care about the pain if you have to undo the bulkhead. I think it helps. I have never had any leaks, and I feel like it helps ensure that the bulkhead does not loosen too easily.

 

[Space heater]

Due to a couple of semi-disasters I have to start moving fish and corals to the new tank. I wanted to wait at least another week, preferably 2, but that isn't a possibility now.

I did a 12 gallon w/c last night, and while I was at it I re-did the teflon tape on all 4 fittings. This evening they look perfect. Not even any salt creep (which I know could pop up later, but if it does I'll deal with it then.

Right now ammonia and nitrites are at zero even after re-arranging the rocks last night and stirring up the sand bed, and nitrates are around 10 ppm. I've also been feeding much heavier during the cycling process than I normally would to bulk up the bacteria, so hopefully things will stay in line after adding the livestock.

With the water change last night I matched salinity perfectly to my 2 current tanks, and Ca and hardness are almost exactly the same. Right now I'm in the process of matching the temperatures. This was one of the reasons that I have to move things now. One of my heaters thermostats failed in the closed position, luckily I caught it before it boiled the tank. I broke the other one doing the water change last night, so now neither of my 5 gals has a heater and apparently the heat in my building is out.

I came home to both tanks at ~64 F, so now I'm alternating the heater that works between the two slowly bringing them up to 77 F, where I've got the new tank at.

I'm going to add CPE and purigen to the new tank this evening, so hopefully that'll keep params in line.

 

[Space heater]

Quick update with just a few terrible pictures.

The transfer went swimmingly :facepalm:. Everything was really smooth, and the stocking list is now:

1 davinci clown grade "B"
1 orange spot goby w/ pistol shrimp
1 yellow clown goby
1 red scooter dragonette (she eats mysis like a champ, but she's now bulking up on pods)
2 turbo snails
2 star astrea snails
1 nassarius snail
2 bumblebee snails
5 astrea snails
5 red leg hermits
3 blue leg hermits
5-10 stomatella snails

As far as corals I have:
green cat's paw
5 frags of green tipped birds nest (was one, tried to frag it into 2 and wound up with 5 :hmm5
4 head hammer
glaxea
2 small green trumpets
a couple of zoas
a couple of green mushrooms
a few small rics
a blue/green acro
a pipe organ frag
a purple/green brain frag
a sun frag

Since the move all of the coral except the hammer have fully opened and seem to be doing well. I have the tank on a 8 hour daylight at about 1/2 brightness for acclimation. I'll increase intensity over then next week or two. The hammer is in a very high flow area, so I may move him into a corner and see if that makes him happier.

The fish all look fantastic. The orange spot and clown have a hilarious dynamic. The clown sticks his nose in the goby/shrimp hole and the goby chases him out then perches on a rock and puffs up for a bit while the clown zips around the top of the tank. The clown goby watches all this in a very dignified manner from the nearby mushroom. Meanwhile my dragonette is picking over the rocks like mad. She is completely ignoring the mysis at feeding, which is very unusual, but I expect it's because she's full from the massive pod outbreak that's going on right now.

Parameters are excellent, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and >10 ppm nitrate (nitrates are falling, probably from the purigen and chaeto). Ca is about 400 and hardness at 8 dKH. I haven't tested phosphates, but I will really soon.

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[Space heater]

Forgot to mention:

Right now the lights are being driven on a sunrise > daylight > sunset > night lights > off program on an Arduino Mega (had one lying around, figured I'd put it to use). Also the fuge light comes on in the evening and off in the morning for reverse lighting cycle. I don't know if this really works, but I'll find out I guess

I'm working on the ATO now, going to be an air driven system with a resistive liquid level sensor. I plan on adding temp control (heater and fan), return and wave control (replace the hydor smart wave), storm effects (just for fun), autofeeders, salinity, ph, and maybe ORP probes. For the most part I'll hand feed etc, but I like building stuff and I like electronics so I figured automating the whole thing would be a fun project, and it'll take care of stuff when I have to leave for a long weekend. Although I'm using the Arduino in the interim I plan on migrating to a dedicated uc implementation with wifi for data logging and alerts, touchscreen controls and put it all on a single, clean board to eliminate the wiring bird's nest.

I know that I could just buy a controller and be done, but I enjoy this stuff, and from what I've seen of the current options they're pretty overpriced and the only one that I'm really attracted to is the reef angel. If I had tons of money and no time I'd probably buy one of those and the expansions, but that's close to a kilobuck for something I can build for $300 and a bunch of beer on a breadboard.

 

[sageblade24]

Really cool idea.

 

[Space heater]

Really cool idea.

Thank you!

If anyone is interested I'm selling my two 5 gallon setups.

I've got the pumps running and lights off to keep the sand and rock alive.

Also I'd much rather trade frags for them than cash.

 

[Space heater]

I re-tested the water today. I'm at 0 amm, 0 nitrite, 7.5 ppm nitrate (FALLING!!! YAY), 0 phosphate, 410 ppm Ca (was 430, ignore the previous post), and 9 dKH.

Everything looks fantastic. I didn't move the hammer but he's starting to open up even in the high/turbulent flow he's in now. Also all of the birdsnest is opening and seems to be doing well despite my attempts to kill it. The dragonette is still ignoring the mysis at feeding, but she's zipping around the rocks looking fat and happy eating pods constantly. I'll keep my eye on her, but she's honestly more active than ever and no signs of a sunken belly.

The chaeto in the fuge is visibly larger than when it went in. It's growing a light green fuzzy algae, but only on the old part. The new growth is bright green and stringy. There are pods coating the glass and rocks in the fuge, and all over the rocks in the DT. I considered adding a couple bottles of live pods but it seems like there are plenty in there now, hopefully they establish a nice balance and are able to supplement the fish diets.

Still no signs of algae in the DT, but it's really only been up for 5 days with the lights. I'm expecting the obligatory diatom and HA blooms. With all the corals in there I'm hunkering down for a tough battle.

 

[Space heater]

This morning I noticed the green coming back in the tips of my green-tipped bird's nest. It had gone mostly white to a faint green (polyps, the skeleton is a great orange color). I think it must be the lower lower light levels over the last 1.5 weeks. This makes me think it may make a good "canary in the coal mine" for adjusting my lights intensity.

I started working on the ATO last night, the code is all done but I'm having problems with the airline tubing. It just won' seal well to the bucket lid and the silicone I used to try and seal it pulled off instantly this morning. I'm going to switch to a heavier walled tygon tubing.

 

[Space heater]

My water test results tonight:
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
~5 ppm nitrate
0 phosphate
400 ppm Ca
8.5 dKH
1170 Mg

Nitrate is slowly falling, and I haven't done a waterchange since adding the livestock and corals. Ca and hardness were falling, but have leveled off in the last couple days. A diatom bloom started yesterday, and I've been blowing the rocks off gently. I'm not sure if this is related to the Ca and hardness levels, but I'm trying not to overthink things. This is still a very young tank. I plan on doing a waterchange this weekend and will see how things look. I would like to raise Ca to ~440 and Mg to ~1300, but I'm going to rely on w/c for a little while until the tank matures past the diatom/algae stages.

In other news the green tips on the bird's nest are really popping now. The other corals all look great as well. I may not up the lighting at all at this rate.

I also added a snowflake clown. Went to the LFS to get a few odds and ends and they had a tank full of them and I couldn't resist (but I know I should have). It's getting along great with the picasso, and the two of them have sort of made their home in the largest cave. Eventually I'd like to add a RBTA to the tank, but we'll see about that with the SPS and all.

FTS, sorry about the white balance issues, night lights are on and iPhone sucks

New addition:

Red scooter, she loves the new digs