Surge tank?

[thorsen]

About a year ago I had a 120 gallon reef tank that was moderately successful. I have moved and gotten my first job and now want to build a new and better tank. I read in "The Reef Aquarium" by Delbeek and Sprung about surge tanks and the benefits these provide. I have also noticed many posts about creatures such as Sea Apples, Flame Scallops and so forth, doing poorly since not many tanks provide them with enough flowing nutrients to adequately filter feed. I would like to build a surge tank/nutrient grow tank above my main tank. The surge tank would be partitioned into small tanks where pods and plankton and such things could be grown slowly and trickled into the surge chamber which would then flush into the main tank every half hour or so. Sprung mentions that surge tanks only really work on large systems and as my display tank will only be 220 gallons I think the main benefits I would end up with is more of an above the tank refugium than a surge effect. Also my surge tank will only be about 12 inches above my display tank so I would have very little force generated by gravity to create a true surge, but still I can't help but think such an addition may be very beneficial.

Today I took my plans to a local welder to get a quote. Before I tell him to go ahead I thought I better get some advice. Is the surge tank in my plans worthless and little more than a redundant refugium or will it actually be of value? Does anyone have a similar system?

I know the plans are poor, but the tank stand is 72x 24 (length and width) with a total height of 94 inches. The section housing the surge tank at the top is 20.5 inches in height, and sits just above where the lights would be housed.

Thanks kindly, Thorsen

 

[nyvp]

problem with surge tanks is the sounds and airbubles they make

 

[Elliott]

I'm not really understanding your setup. How will the water flow into the display below? How will it be regulated? How much flow are we talking about, gph and total volume? The surge tanks I've seen at public aquariums go from one side of the tank to the other like a wave with great speed, force and white water. Then slowly drains and repeats again. If you don't have enough volume and flow you're probably better off with a closed loop/wavebox setup.

 

[zoebeaglezoe]

I have a couple pics in my gallery of my old setup with a refusurge
nyvp is right about the noise but the are bubbles aren't a issue at l lest in my case and a few other setups I've seen in the past.

check with this website http://www.rods-reef.com/general.php?pg=diy

a very knowledgeable guy on surge setups give him a call.

 

[spazz]

there is one way to build a surge tan k and not have any noise or bubbles. its not cheap though. here is the way you would need to design the system to work well and not produce bubbles. first you need to have a good sized chamber to use as a surge device. then you will need an electric acuated ball valve of high quality so it dont burn out very fast on you. then you need a storng pump to pump the water from the sump tothe surge tank. the way this system is designed goes like this. the water is pumped up to the bottom of the tank into a tee fitting in the bottom of the tank. the tank fills up and trips a flaot switch in the top of the tank. this causes the valve to open and flush or surge the water into the tank. there is a device called a delayed break relay you can set anywhere from 3 seconds to 60 seconds that will hold the electricity to the electric valve flowing until the delayed relay reaches its set time and the nthe circuit is broken. this closes the valve and the process starts all over again. you set the delayed relay so the surge tank does not completly epmty out. there will still be a couple of inches of water in the bottom of the surge tank. once the pump fills the tank up again the cycle repeats itself. here is some pics of a large surge system on an 850 gallon reef tank. the plumbing is 3" and the valve is air operated. the pump is a hammerhead pump to fill eack one of the 2 surge tanks. each tank will fill up in 88 seconds and dump in 10-15 seconds. this sytem is designed to be a tidal surge system. it will run on th computer system for aprox 4 hrs in the morning and 4 hrs in the evening simulating the tides of the oceans.

 

[thorsen]

Thanks for the input so far, the surge system with the delayed relay is certainly excellent. I may consider going that high tech, but first I just want some assurance that my basic layout is not flawed. I gave very poor information in my first post so let me add a little more info.

First the picture of the stand. The levels are:
1. The surge tank and nutrient tanks
2. The housing for the lights
3. The display tank
4. The sump tank and the overflow tank to hold the surge

The second and third picture are diagrams of the sump tank with an overflow section for the surge, as well as the surge tank with joined nutrient tanks. The display tank is not included in either of these diagrams. My basic idea is that I will have a surge that regularly supplies the display tank with a small amount of phytoplanktons etc., which are grown in the nutrient tanks that trickle into the surge tank. My display tank is 225 gallons and my surge tank is 65 gallons.

The fourth picture is of the sump and the overflow section. I do not want the water level to rise and fall in my main sump so I decided to have a section where extra water from each surge could overflow into while the main sump level stayed steady. This is of course a very simplistic diagram and the actual overflow would be set up so that it wouldn't splash into it each time.

Up to this point I had thought the type of surge method I would use would be the Modified Carolson Surge Devise (CSD) diagramed in "The Reef Aquarium" on page 429. I realize that bubbles and sound may be an issue.

A couple questions that come to mind at the moment are....
1. What about the ratio of my surge tank size to my display tank size (65:225)? Would I be better of to enlarge or shrink my surge tank?

2. Is my surge tank at 12" high enough above my display tank to generate any surge?

I would also be curious as to whether anyone thinks the nutrient tank idea is good. I have seen plenty of people growing nutrient supplements such as diatoms or rotifers and so forth, but I have never seen a system where the tank receives a regular wash of these "cultures" and I can't help but think the coral and everything else would love it. The nutrient tanks would almost be completely separate since they would only drip into the rest of the system (although the rate of flow through each of these three tanks could be adjusted independently by adjusting the flow into them), so the water within could be heated to independent temperatures and various additives could be put in the tanks without any danger of them contaminating the system to any substantial degree.

 

[Napervegas]

My surges are 30 inches higer than the display, i dont think 12 inche is going to give you much flow.

 

[spazz]

this is a very good stwart to a uneque system design. with a little tweaking this could be a very good system. a do agree with te other post that you need more head hight. the sureg tank in the pics i posted is over 4 ft above the tank top. and withthe 3" dima plumbing it pushes a surge of water all the way across the tank. your systme just needs a little more hight if possable. can you do that? isthere anywhere else you can install the surge system? what size pump do you plan to use to pump up to the surge tank? dont give up on your design. its very solid.

 

[Elliott]

Thorsen,
I really like your design, it should work well. However I have the following issues:

1. If your display's volume will be fluctuating due to the surge, how will you control the overflow and sump levels?

2. I'm not sure if a 65g surge volume can significantly displace 225g (or 225-65= 160). The surge tanks I've seen pump out around 2/3's of the display volume and it all comes back from one side of the tank. You may just want a smaller surge, which is fine. I would definitely raise your surge tank as already been suggested.

3. What is the reason for 3 nutrient tanks instead of one?

4. How will you control the overflow from the nutrient tanks?

5. Are you sure the live nutrients will effectively mix with the incoming water and be "dosed" out with the outgoing water? I think the nutrient critters may be completely washed out of there, jmo.

just an idea: have the nutrient tank above with a simple gravity fed drip system that can be controlled

 

[thorsen]

Thanks for the input Elliot,
There are a couple things I may not have made clear.

1. The surge will cause a fluctuation in the water level and I do not want the level of my sump to go up and down so if you look at picture four of the sump you can see it is divided into two sections. The first and larger section is the main sump, which will be full to the level of the divider. When the surge flows into the sump it will raise the water level, which will then spill over the divider and fill the second section where it will then be pumped back up to the surge tank to repeat the cycle, while all the while the main sump level remains unchanged.

2. Point number two is good to know - will increase size of surge.

3, 4, and 5. I don't believe I made this clear enough. The three nutrient tanks are essentially the gravity fed drip systems you recommend. The water is piped into the surge tank, which will never fill to the level of the nutrient tanks, because it will trigger a surge before it reaches that level. The pipe bringing in the water crosses the three nutrient tanks before emptying into the surge tank and when it crosses there will be faucets or nozzles that come off the pipe and can be adjusted to allow a different drip rate into the nutrient tank. The nutrient tanks will then slowly fill until they run over through the V's in the diagram into the surge tank, whose water level will always be lower than that of the nutrient tanks. It is a pain in the butt to draw it in more detail so hopefully my explanation is clear enough.

The reason for three nutrient tanks is that I thought I could then grow different nutrients in different environments. Each tank could have it's own temperature and its own additives and would not mix with the others.

As far as raising the height of the surge tank, I'm afraid I'm going to have to abandon the idea instead. Another two inches and I hit the ceiling

 

[thorsen]

Oh, and spazz, thanks for your input too. That was good information, thanks.

 

[Elliott]

Thorsen

Sounds good. Couple more questions:

1. How will the display overflow be controlled? If it overflows intermittently with each surge it will be quite noisy. In addition, surface skimming would probably not be very effective since the water column may be too turbulent to allow organics at the surface interface to overflow. I don't know if you have much of a choice here, I would not want it being pumped out or draining from below, a recipe for disaster :lol:

2. What will prevent the nutrient tanks to be completely washed out with time? Would it not be better to have them drip into the system from above?

 

[Elliott]

fyi: another surge system being built :

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1196137&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[meschaefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10674191#post10674191 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Elliott
fyi: another surge system being built :

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1196137&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

Spazz, who I beleive is invovled to some extent that build posted some pictures of thier surge system up above.

 

[thorsen]

1. I'm not sure I one hundred percent understand your first point. The overflow chamber is in the sump not the display tank. The display tank will have water pumped back into it from the sump in a regular fashion (like a normal tank) so there is continuous cycling and a continuous overflow. Intermittently the surge, which is a separate system, will simply increase the amount of overflow in the display, which will be translated into increase water level in the sump, which will then spills into the sump overflow. I have some ideas that I would probably have to diagram about controlling noise as it spills into the sump overflow chamber. The water wouldn't have to spill or splash over a divider it could be piped in a quieter fashion I am sure. Surface skimming may indeed be messed up by the surge, but a surge is only intermittent (maybe every half hour) and only lasts for a relatively short time and the rest of the time the water surface would have no more turbulence than any other tank.

2. The nutrient tanks could completely washed out with time, but because I can control the rate of inflow I can control the outflow, which I would try to match to the rate of growth of the nutrients in the given chamber. There would be advantages to a drip, but the benefit of my system is that theoretically it would be a self sustaining nutrient source I would never have to mess with. Drip systems need to be changed out when they are emptied. My system is essentially a drip system that never runs out. I like the thought of a tank being as naturally self-sustainable as possible like nature is.



__________________

 

[Elliott]

ok, now I'm understanding it better, makes sense

 

[thorsen]

So do you think that if I increase the size of my surge tank and elevated it it would be something worth while? It will cost me a good bit to incorporate the extra parts for the surge system and since my reef experience is limited and since I haven't seen a similar system I would sure like the blessings of those more knowledgeable before I start emptying my bank account constructing the thing.

 

[Elliott]

I personally have no experience with surge systems, maybe someone here who has one can post his experiences. I would contact Spazz (Scott) through the thread I linked to above for his opinion, he seems quite knowledgeable. Lastly, have you given any consideration to building a small test model?