Triple-S Fish Ranch - 1700gal 164” x 48” x 56” SPS peninsula build

[pmrogers]

Tagging along to live vicariously.... I'm in the wrong profession

tagging along

Awesome build

And I thought I was going nuts waiting a whole month to start my 58 gallon! I think I'm more excited to see your tank now! LOL Can't wait to see when your addition is done and you can finally put some water in this beast of a project! I may join the Austin club just so I can see the tank when its up and running! haha

Thanks for joining the thread, Monkeyfish, Surf&Turf, zaiereguy, and FsuNole!

Half way joking:

Do you have a copepod ladder too? Like a fish ladder?

Serious part:
How do you keep them in check and out of the socks?

The copepod ladder is me and a half gallon pale . Actually, I'm hoping the Abyzz pumps turn out to be as gentle as the Sequence pumps from the 750. A surprising number of pods seemed to survive the journey through the 5200gph sequence return pump on the 750. At least, when I added a pod pack to the refugium that was located below the tank, huge numbers popped up in the display over the next few weeks.

As for keeping the pods in check, I don't expect I will be able to. And not looking forward to cleaning the socks. I had only 2 socks on the 750 and would try to pick off the pods to put back in the tank before washing. With 9 socks on this system that isn't going to scale, so it will be wholesale murder when I swap the socks twice a week

 

[pmrogers]

End of July Update

End of July Update

A little late with my July update due to work travel.

July was also almost entirely about construction. Hoping to be able to start serious plumbing and fish room setup work in about 3 weeks.

Fish Room Layout
More fish room layout planning. 1 square == 6".

Fish Room Progress
Removed the 90gal from fish room, started flooring, and started tear out of the temporary wall between phase 1 and phase 2. Opening will be further widened to match the 8' width of the phase 2 room.

Fish Room Extension
Looking into the 22' x 8' phase 2 portion of the fish room. Sump, skimmer, fresh and salt water reservoirs, reactors, controllers, and 2-part dosing station will all go in this section.

Wood Flooring
Wood flooring laid and finished in the media room adjacent to the aquarium room.

Aquarium Room Flooring
Stone tile for the aquarium room.

Equipment Building Slab
22'x12' equipment building slab was poured in a driving rain. I didn't know it was possible to do concrete work in a monsoon. Just learned that getting the generator onto this slab will require an even bigger crane than the 90-ton used for the aquarium. Not because of weight but because of the 160' reach to hit the slab.

Yet More Scaffolding
Another month of restricted driveway access due to the stucco crew's scaffolding.

Stucco Completed
Aquarium addition is starting to look like like part of the house now. Stone work for the next 3 weeks, and the outside will be done.

Fish Room
Long and skinny fish room under the display tank as viewed from the driveway side.

Skimmer Ordered
Decided to go ahead and order the skimmer rather than have to swap out the RK2 later. New skimmer is an MRC IS-2492-W: 24" diameter reaction chamber, 92" tall, 1/3 horsepower Reeflo needle wheel for recirc.

 

[Robb in Austin]

Looks awesome Paul!

 

[MBC2012]

amazing. tagging along.nothing to add as this is way out of my league

 

[ksed]

Good choice on the skimmer. I hear great thing about those MTC Pin Wheel skimmers.

 

[siliconinja]

This is inspiring. Thank you for sharing!

 

[theReefKing]

Thanks, ReefKing! Just about all of the details on the sump are in post #10. This sump is far from the end-all-be-all of design but I do hope it will address all of the frustration points from my previous systems. Main design points were:

• Bulkheads for everything-- no loose pipes, tubes, or wires
• Single purpose as central water return point-- all filtration other than filter socks takes place externally
• Fully accessible, in particular, trivially easy filter sock exchanges
• Ability to drain completely-- no need to shopvac out tons of water in order to give it a deep cleaning
• Complete set of covers to minimize salt creep

On to your questions:

Only one main flow path. Display tank drains to turbulence chamber, then over a lip into the main filter sock area, which in turn has an overflow lip in case all 6 filter socks ever clog. Next up is a middle chamber for plumbing in the returns from external reactors and support tanks. Some of these also flow through an additional set of filter socks, while others return directly to the main water column.

Refugium will be separate, if I run one.

There is a drain point for each chamber: turbulence chamber, filter socks chamber, reactor returns chamber, bubble trap/return pumps chamber. If you're particularly attentive you'll see that there is a 5th drain bulkhead on the side. This isn't strictly a fifth chamber, just a by-product of some internal bracing that makes a 3" wall across the bottom of the reactor returns chamber.

For access points, everything will be accessible since nothing will be above the sump.

Absolute must haves in the design of my sump. I am going to beg Bud Carlson to help me with the design of my sump, have you ever seen some of his acrylic work? Incredible!!!

I am loving the face that every return is plumed into the sump so there will be no insane criss cross of hoses and tubes all over the place.

Now all that is left for me to figure out is the name of the sump. I am thinking either "the Roge" or "the Jolly Rogers" but open to better ideas.

 

[Sps Dream]

Subscribed

 

[FsuNole]

Gorgeous house! Judging by the angles of the pictures I bet you have an amazing view.

 

[worm5406]

Gorgeous house! Judging by the angles of the pictures I bet you have an amazing view.

I think he put some up before. You may have to look past the crane.

I would like to see those shots too.

 

[SPS_77493]

Awesome crib...forget the tank.

 

[Mark...]

Absolute must haves in the design of my sump. I am going to beg Bud Carlson to help me with the design of my sump, have you ever seen some of his acrylic work? Incredible!!!

I am loving the face that every return is plumed into the sump so there will be no insane criss cross of hoses and tubes all over the place.

Now all that is left for me to figure out is the name of the sump. I am thinking either "the Roge" or "the Jolly Rogers" but open to better ideas.

"Scum Bag"... :rollface: Thats the name I'd go with...:lmao:

 

[aquaenthusiast]

Awesome crib...forget the tank.

That's what I was saying to myself ha. Awesome build !

 

[pmrogers]

Looks awesome Paul!

Thanks, Robb! It is nice to see work happening in the aquarium areas again.

Good choice on the skimmer. I hear great thing about those MTC Pin Wheel skimmers.

Thanks, ksed. If it is as well executed as the sump I will be very pleased. I'm still a bit old school in my thinking and place a lot of value on contact time. With this skimmer's 150gal chamber I can push up to 75gpm through it and still get a full 2 minutes dwell time.

amazing. tagging along.nothing to add as this is way out of my league

Subscribed

Thanks for joining the thread, MBC2012 and Sps Dream!

Gorgeous house! Judging by the angles of the pictures I bet you have an amazing view.

ditto

Awesome crib...forget the tank.

That's what I was saying to myself ha. Awesome build !

Thanks, FsuNole, LuchoTocado, SPS-77493, and aquaenthusiast. We do love the house and feel very fortunate to be in it. We had given up after spending 2 years looking, decided to remodel our old house for retirement. After getting all the plans and contractors lined up at the old place we took one last weekend to look and found this place less than a mile from our old house. You can see most of the view through the tank in the last photo of the first post in this thread. There are are a lot of nice views in Austin

 

[pmrogers]

Absolute must haves in the design of my sump. I am going to beg Bud Carlson to help me with the design of my sump, have you ever seen some of his acrylic work? Incredible!!!

I am loving the face that every return is plumed into the sump so there will be no insane criss cross of hoses and tubes all over the place.

Now all that is left for me to figure out is the name of the sump. I am thinking either "the Roge" or "the Jolly Rogers" but open to better ideas.

I bet Bud will do an amazing job. I would recommend against the super tall aspect of my design. This was a necessity due to the room dimensions, but is going to make maintenance more painful. The only other change I'd make (so far, not having run it yet), is to have 3 float switches built into the sump.

"Scum Bag"... :rollface: Thats the name I'd go with...:lmao:

Lol, I didn't necessarily love "the Jolly Rogers" as an option, but if this is the other choice. . .

 

[pmrogers]

Flow Planning

Flow Planning

Flow will be handled primarily by Tunze streams, with supplementation from a small closed loop and possibly sea swirls. Objectives and constraints are:

• Minimize visible pipes and equipment, no visible wires
• All power heads on overflow side of tank
• Strong top to bottom flow. Oxygenation is a concern with the water column being taller than it is wide
• 70,000+gph in tank flow capability
• At least 2 'banks' or channels of primary flow. Related to the preceding, I shouldn't need every powerhead running full bore at the same time to deliver sufficient flow for the corals. Half, or one channel, of powerheads should be able to provide enough flow for the entire tank in one pattern; the other channel provides a second pattern; and both at the same time create a third.

A few elements of the tank design make it extra challenging to meet these requirements, some of which are unavoidable given the room and aesthetic goals, a few of which I would change in hindsight:

1. Only 2 bottom bulkheads for the closed loop. I' wasn't willing to incorporate bottom or side bulkheads on the previous tank due to a fear of leaks, and instead ran my closed loop up and over on the 750, with siphon breaks on both output and intake lines. I waffled on this decision until late in the tank design, finally deciding at the last minute to add 2 bottom bulkheads so I'd have the option. This was pretty much the worst decision possible: I should have either committed to a proper closed loop with 4+ bulkheads, or stuck to my original principal of 'no holes in the main body of the tank'.
2. With minimalist aquascaping and only a 1/2" cosmetic sand bed, pipes for a large closed loop would be visible between the pillars and atolls.
3. 14' length could make it problematic to get adequate flow with powerheads only on one end.
4. No dry boxes or integrated powerhead hiding places. The see-through peninsula design in conjunction with a relatively small overflow didn't leave a great place to incorporate a dry box or wet box hiding spot for powerheads or a propeller pump. In retrospect, I wish I'd had a few Tunze portholes drilled in the side of the overflow box to allow mounting of the Streams in the overflow.
5. The 21db noise floor requirement for the surrounding room means I probably can't use a truly high output pump for the closed loop. The cabinet will have 6.5" thick walls, and 4" thick solid core doors for soundproofing, but even with this in place I doubt I could get away with running a 3hp Iwaki or similar under the tank. The CL pump could go in the filtration room below, but I don't even want to contemplate the power requirements for a pump able to deliver 200gpm into 20+ feet of head pressure.

Went through a number of design iterations, finally settling on two final candidates.

Flow Planning Final Candidates
Both options feature two vertical banks of 4 or 5 streams on the overflow wall, sump return outlets at the surface on the opposite end of the tank, with the difference being in the closed loop.
Option 1 - Full closed loop with outputs throughout the tank, intake on the far side from the overflow
Option 2 - Small 18" set of outputs on far side, intake near overflow

Option 2, Side View

I'm leaning toward option 2 as of now. With only 4 or 5 outputs I can still get decent flow out of each nozzle using a 4800gph Abyzz. The smaller quantity of in-tank piping can be fully hidden in a rock formation. More flow out of the individual nozzles also gives me higher confidence that with a couple of them aimed upward I can drive a good exchange of bottom and top water.

For the powerheads on the right side, still deciding between using vertical stacks of 6255s, or two 6508 Masterstreams. The smaller visual footprint of the 6255s is appealing, but this would make 10 powerheads to maintain vs. 2, and they might not have enough oomph for a 14' throw. I really wish Tunze would come out with a successor to the 6305.

The left side opposite the overflow will have the two surface 1.5" returns from the sump. May or may not go with Sea Swirls for these.

 

[mpsti05]

I really like option 2. Man I can't wait to see this monster wet!

 

[Stylo328]

I would reconsider the closed loop pump downstairs. If in fact you go with a true closed loop, the downward pressure of the water from the drain will negate the head pressure to that height on the return. Given that you said the drains would be on the bottom of re tank, you would only have to contend with the head pressure above that point, which should only be a few feet.

I hope that helps.

 

[canyousee]

I like the flow options for diagram 1 closed loop,would be harder to disguise plumbing. Maybe cover pipes with epoxy then sand so it sticks to pipe, it would then blend in. Diagram 2 would be easier to hide,could be under an island of rock. I do like the sea swirls for return with pendactors to kick the flow up. I would put the closed loop pump under the tank,with the width of the stand walls it should be quiet especially with DC pumps. Thanks for including us in the build..Mike

 

[o2manyfish]

Call Justin at Avast Marine. He is working on a prop pump that might work for this application. Not as large as the master stream. And on/off control only.

Also there is a guy in England that just installed the Hydro-wizard on one end of a 20' long tank and he has had to turn the output down on the pump. Not sure if they have a US dealer.

Dave B