Woo Hoo! It's happening now!

[scolley]

I'm having one SERIOUS good time planning on my first reef! As I've mentioned in club meetings, it's gonna be a good year - at least - before I'll be willing to convert my f/w 180g display tank to reef. But that is the plan. But in the interim, I've got to cut my teeth on something, and I'm in the process of converting my 29g.

There's much that I'm uncertain about, but I've already ordered or built most everything I need to start a reef. The thing that has got me cranking at the moment is that I'm having a custom sump built for my incredibly tight stand.

While sumps are apparently not the standard practice for nanos. I figured it would give me good practice as I planned for the conversion of my 180.

About the only thing I don't have - other than the obvious livestock - is my final set of lights. I'm looking to see what I can salvage from my freshwater planted tank lighting inventory, and I don't have any high-quality live rock or live sand to seed my inert rock and sand.

But it's an EXCITING place to be, and wanted to share! Many of you have already been a GREAT help. Thank you! And meeting members of the club has been a real boon to my newbie efforts!

Cheers!

 

[RTMA]

sweet sump, can't wait to see the actual pics. Some times I find my self staring longer into my fuge then into the display. Once you get that up and running, I'll give you a few months before that 180 is salty . This hobby has a pretty addicting bite. I went from a 7 minibow to my 29 in no time. And now a 65 is on the horizon....good luck.

 

[tank o tang]

Can't wait to see some pics when shes all set up.

 

[LISound]

explain how the sump works for us. hard to tell for the diagram.

thanks

 

[scolley]

Won't have pics for a few weeks. So... down at the bottom I've posted my diagrams I gave to the vendor. They might help (though they do have a couple of minor inaccuracies). So I'll try to explain.

It’s a pretty small sump. Particularly in the vertical plane â€"œ only 10” high. Inside my stand the footprint of available space is a little over 2” wide by 1” deep. The challenge is that there is only 17” of vertical space. And there was no procuring a bigger stand â€"œ the wife likes this one. So I’m working with the space that allows.
My REAL challenge was not the sump, but finding a decent â€"œ but not too powerful â€"œ skimmer to fit under the stand. And any decision of “fit” has to include the vertical space needed to remove and replace the cup. That turns a lot of 17” skimmers into 22” skimmers real fast. So I settled on an in-tank skimmer, the Tunze 9002. But more on that in a minute…

The sump has 5 sections. The main flow of water will come into the bubble tower on the back left, and exit that tower through the teeth at the bottom, into the skimmer section. The bubble tower can hold live rock, GFO, GAC, filter socks, whatever. The skimmer section obviously holds the 9002. Water exits the skimmer section into the return section (back right) through an adjustable height bubble trap. The middle pane of the trap can be raised or lowered, controlling the height of the water in the skimmer section. This is needed because the skimmer cannot be raised more than an inch or so, and still have its cup be able to be removed. So the middle pane of the bubble trap controls water height to tune the skimmer, rather than moving the skimmer up and down. Notice that the leftmost pane of the bubble trap does not have its gap at the base of the sump, but instead an inch up from that. That’s just to keep any heavy particulates in there trapped for easy removal.

The return section is pretty typical, sized to hold an Eheim 1250. I REALLY wanted an external pump to reduce heat transference to the water. But I learned that ALL submersible pumps transfer their heat to the water, even when externally run. And there were no quite, non-submersible pumps that I could find with flow low enough for my application (I’m targeting about 150 gph, which I should get once I slap a SCWD on the return line).

The fifth section is the fuge, seen in front. Water will come in off a “T” from the main drain line coming into the bubble tower. I assume I’ll drop the water in to the far left in the picture, allowing it to flow across the width of the fuge and spill into the return by way of the teeth in the upper right. Its 2” width should make it easy to light with a 40 watt, dual T8 aquarium light that I’ve already got. The back wall of the fuge, which separates it from the rest of the sump, will be black acrylic, to cut down on light spillover, and hopefully reduce algae growth in other parts of the sump.

And there are a few other items worth noting. The 1x1/2” brace is in the middle of the front fuge section â€"œ necessary to keep the 2’ wide fuge from bowing. At the bottom of the rightmost baffle of the bubble trap, and on the top of the leftmost baffle, are two probe holders. There is also a line holder in the top, back right of the return section for attaching things like 2-part solution pump tubing, and ATO and auto w/c lines. And also, the round hole is in the back, is cut for an IceProbe. Yes, I know they are reputed to be of little value, but I’ve decided to try one anyway. Long story.
The fuge will hold 5.2 gallons, or about 18% of the DT size. The total sump overall, could go as low as 8.8g, but should normally operate at around 9.5g, or 33% of DT size. At its highest normal operational level, there should still be another 1.8g of space unfilled. I’m estimating my back flow in drain and return lines, and return siphon of tank water (with returns 1” under the DT water surface) to be approximately 1.3 gallons. That gives me a slim ½ gallon room for error.

I think that should about cover it. Thanks for asking! ‘Tis exciting stuff!

 

[dipan]

Steve! I have been just behind you all this time while we were into freshwater/Discus (Kahuna, SOK), and now reefs! I love your automation ideas and you always end up teaching me some new stuff. I look forward to your build thread!

Right now I've started a little 20 gallon reef just to get an idea of what reef chemistry is like, but my first serious build will be in the coming months with a dedicated fish room. Are you going to keep a Discus setup also? I was so very sad when we moved and I chose to dismantle mine and give away all the fish ...

 

[scolley]

dipan! Hi! Thanks for the shout out.

It looks like I'm gonna be learning from you! 'Cuz you've already got a reef, with plans for bigger things. Same here - starting with a 29g, and tearing down Kanuna's Revenge. Sorry to hear about your fish, but I'm sure you'll feel much better once you get the fish room cranking! Too cool!

No fish rooms for me I'm afraid, but the forthcoming 29 - or "Kahuna's Kid" - will be lots of fun. And after I get my feet wet I'll convert the 180, so it'll be... "Salty Kahuna". How korny, huh?

And the build thread is coming... this is just warmin' up!

 

[scolley]

Wow. No feedback... did I make the post too long? Was it too much to weed through?

If so, my apologies. 'Cuz believe me, I've never done this, so your feedback is MOST welcome.

Thanks.

 

[tank o tang]

Looks almost the same as I'm going to design the 75gal I'll be using. Will that center brace hinder your skimmer collection cup. By looks of it, she will hold 15 +/- gal of water total. Using a thicker piece of black acrylic should eliminate the need for the brace, especially when the wall from the bubble tower and return will also be supporting it in place. Main reason I am going to design the sump like that is I want to keep open the center of the stand and have my fuge show under the tank.

 

[scolley]

Tank o tang - No. The 3D design is from the vendor, and leaves a bit to be desired in terms of understanding what's really going on. That said... the vendor is STELLAR and that's what they use, and it works for them.

That said... the center brace runs between the middle acrylic pane (separating the tower, sump, and drain sections from the fuge), and the fuge. It only crosses the fuge, or the front half of the sump. The back half of the sump (tower, skimmer, and drain sections) has no bracing, but is braced by the bubble trap cross pieces.

And while a thicker center piece may help reduce the need for the brace, the threat of bowing is not in the center piece... it's in the front. And while I do hold myself a very well informed party for the construction of braceless glass tanks (ask me about that some time!), I don't know squat about acrylic. And that cross brace is the ONLY thing in the specs that is not my original design. That's the recommendation of the fabricators, and I'm going to trust the experts.

You have indeed picked up on a benefit of the design (if not a secondary goal), and that's to have the fuge section being maximized across the front, creating maximum visible exposure of that fascinating environment.

And while I WISH it would hold 15g of water, truth be told the total is somewhat less than 13g - not terrible for a 20g tank - but pretty good when you consider that I can't let the vertical height exceed 10" and still get that silly skimmer cup out!

PS - If you are thinking about doing something similar, you should PM me so I can tell you what this costs from KritterTanks. You'll be shocked, but only in the most positive way!

 

[tank o tang]

Being strapped for height, what will you light the fuge with. A 6500k T-5 might do the job nice. Sorry, the brace looked like it was across the back.

 

[tank o tang]

Nevermind, I need to learn to read twice.

 

[scolley]

No prob! I appreciate the help.

I'm hoping that 40w light will be sufficient, since it will be just a couple of inches from the surface of the water, not more than 12" from anything the bottom (though i expect there's be a few inches of sand, making the bottom even closer.) From a WPG perspective, it's almost than 8 watt per gallon of fuge, which I thought would be pretty much appropriate, assuming I'm not trying to grow SPS frags.

 

[tank o tang]

Any word on the sump? Are you starting to cure the rock? I would toss it into a rubbermaid with some sw, an air stone, heater and powerhead. Also toss in an uncooked freash shrimp to get the cycle started.

 

[scolley]

Man! I'm chompin' the bit, but not movin' too fast. The fabricator is slow moving on the sump, though to his defense, I told him I was in no rush. I expect to have it by sometime next week.

The live rock is slow too. That vendor said the good stuff was still curing, and gave me the option to wait for it. So once again I told a vendor I was happy to wait for a good result, and what am I doing? Waiting.

So I'm trying to plan out where this whole thing is going while I wait. And it looks like it's gonna take a LONG time before this little nano is even a reef! This is the plan I've come up with. I don't think it's unreasonable, but WOW, does it take a long time to set a reef up right (as far as I can tell). Look for yourself, and tell me what you think...

 

[RTMA]

rofl, you broke out MS Project! This by far is the most comprehensive planning I have ever seen. Awesome job.

 

[scolley]

Yeah... thanks. I personally can't stand proceeding without a plan. And I'm not even PMP certified.

I've still got to spend some time reviewing it. This is still a draft, and I'm not CERTAIN that it's all right. But it should be in the ballpark for a very conservative establishment of a reef tank from scratch. I hope.

LOL - I see typo too. Right at the top! "Determine tack specifications" should obviously be "tank" specs. Definitely a draft.

 

[tank o tang]

All I can say is WOW. You have an amazing talent for planning and detail.

 

[scolley]

Well tank o tang, I think in the club meeting in Derby - when we met - I said it would take me a year of planning before I was ready to convert my 180g. This plan is just to set up the 29g. But it's also how I'll know if the plan for the 180g works... the 29g is the trial run.

At least you understand why I'm delaying anyway.

And BTW! I sold the first breeding pair of discus today! That's money for the reef. And it means I can tear down the 29g they were in, and start getting it ready to be my first reef tank. Yaaa Hooo!

 

[scolley]

Yaaa Hooo!!! It's REALLY coming together now...

Today I got confirmation that my sump is on the way. My lights are arriving Monday. And BEST of all my hopefully AWESOME live rock is flying overnite to arrive tomorrow. Too cool!

So I've set up a facility for a "mini-cure" of the rock, which means - among other things - that I'm in the process of mixing the very first batch of salt mix! I know that's old hat to anyone that reads this. But I've never even used a hygrometer (except to calibrate it), and I'm diggin' it the most!