New Light Mount Mounted the lights over the tank this past weekend. Much better than just having them sit on the glass -- eliminated some spot lighting effects. I used the 80/20 line of aluminum extrusions and made some brackets out of aluminum angle. I cut all of the stuff to length on my table saw using a fairly standard carbide blade for wood. In the closeup you can see the sliding glass tops on the tank. This keeps the jumpers in and really minimizes evaporation. This tank seems to evaporate maybe 20% of my open top 180 gallon tank. Also in the photos you can see a small valve above the tank. This isn't finished with a barb yet but it is for a blow-off wand so I can clean off all the rocks before changing the water. I'm also considering to put a valve and barb below the tank for hooking up a gravel vacuum that would drain to the filter socks in the sump.
Finished Acrylic Sump Hi everybody -- got around to putting the sump together. Here it is under construction. Made out of clear and white cell cast acrylic. Some finished pics... I removed the suction cups from the factory heater brackets and glued the brackets into acrylic blocks mounted on the back wall using Momentive silicone adhesive. Sump holds two 7" sock filters. The top lids are recessed into the top. This groove and filter rabbets were machined via CNC machine. For a system that will have almost 400 gallons I like that the display tank and sump have lids to keep the evaporation down. Currently the system is evaporating less than 2 gallons per week.
Sump Details Assembled Sump... several inputs / outputs to sump. Three 1-1/2" inlets are from bean-animal overflow on display tank. One 1-1/2" outlet is an emergency going to sewer. The 1-1/2" inlet on the top is from the active 80 gallon reservoir. There will be two pumps in the sump with 1" lines. Will also add two more 3/4" bulkheads in the top for drains from a macro algae / frag tank above the sump. Sump dimensions: 47-1/2" x 20" x 17" high. The nominal size is around 62 gallons but will typically have 36 gallons in it. Sump has magnetic low level and high level sensors. Float valve for auto-top-off. Side view.
Fish Room Update I've done lots of work in the Fish Room: - Hooked up 80 gal active reservoir and 80 gallon mixing reservoir. - 3-way valve for quick water change is in place now. (I'm liking this a lot and will describe system further in future post) - Hooked up sump and got skimmer going finally; sump has about 36 gallons of water volume. - Built stand for 40 gallon macroalgae tank and frag tank combo. Tank not hooked up yet. - Have activated carbon and GFO reactor installed. - Installed level switches and floats in both reservoirs and the sump tank for automated fill. - Installed solenoid valves before and after RODI system for automated fills.
GFO and activated carbon are run by the main return line to the display tank. This avoids having an additional pump. Pump output lines with Puratek flow switches installed. These are connected to Apex Controller. If the controller sees that the pump power is turned on but there is no flow then the Apex will send a text message of the failure. Apex will also shut down UV Sterilizer to prevent overheating the bulb. You can also see the float switch I installed in skimmer. This is to turn off the pump when the skimmer is full and send a notification via text. Solenoid valves for RODI system (lower left) and control system. This is for turning on and off water to the Auto-Top-Off system and also to fill the mixing reservoirs. There are several fail-safes including: 1) valves fail to OFF state when power is lost, 2) redundant valves before and after RODI unit, 3) manual float valve will also shut off water in high state, 4) fills have maximum time limit via Apex Controller, 5) Apex Controller will also stop fill in the event of salinity drop, 6) text message notifications.
Way too neat! J/K I'm jealous of how you organized everything so well. Plumbing is very nice too! How do you have so many empty sockets in your EB8's? I have a little smaller tank and all of my available sockets are in use.
Thanks gents. I spent a lot of time planning it out before installing anything. Huntindoc, I originally thought I would max out the EB8's too. One thing that helped is that I don't have any lights or powerheads plugged into the EB8's. The five lights, gyre and a jebao powerhead are plugged into a typical powerstrip on GFCI (not EB8). The lights are then controlled by Apex VDM module serial cable. The gyre and jebao powerhead are controlled by 0-10 volt outputs from Apex Controller. This frees up a good bit of space.
Now that you mention it I have no idea why I have my lights plugged in to an E8 since I control them via Director. Thanks for the prompt. Keep this thread updated...please!
Under the Hood Additions On the left near the power strip you will see a battery operated air pump (Penn-Plax Silent Air B11). In the event of a power failure the air pump will come on. From personal experience I know that these can run more than 24 hrs on two D Cell batteries. (and they are one of the only cheap things you can buy in this hoby!) There is a check valve installed in the air line -- just in case. To the right of the air pump you can see the interface modules to the Neptune Apex Controller for both the Jebao powerhead and the Maxspect Gyre. The both of them create wave actions. During the day, these units ramp with 60-100% power. They are constantly ramping up to 100% power over 10 seconds and then down to 60% over 9 seconds. The lengthy interval is to help push the stream of water across the 8 foot tank via high velocity. At night the intensity is reduced to 35-60% power range. On the right you can see a large battery for the Gyre. In the event of a power failure the Gyre will run constantly at a low speed for 24 hours or more. Just below the Gyre backup battery you can see the Apex autofeeder. All fish in the tank are eating dried food now. Feedings are mixed between dry food and several frozen varieties.
Macro Algae and Frag Tank Combo I plumbed in the macro algae and frag tank combo. This is a 40 gallon tank that I custom built with a divider in the center. The idea is to have the left compartment for macro algae and the right side is for coral frags. Flow is from right to left and the tank is plumbed into the same sump as the 230 gallon display tank. Also adding a Jebao RW15 powerhead to push water around. Right now there is only a lonesome little ball of chaeto in the macro side. I'll be getting additional macro algae soon. I'm debating whether or not to add some sand on the left or leave it bare bottom. Using an AI SOL Blue over the tank since I already had it -- will see how the algae grows with this. If this doesn't seem to get it done I'll go to some sort of standard flourescent or LED grow light from Lowes. I think the RED MEGA BLOCKS are cool under the light but I'll probably build a wall mount instead (wink). I'll be building a frag rack to fit the tank this weekend. Here's a closeup of a laser cut logo I designed for this system.