100G: Rebuild

adhd_nerd · Oct 20, 2016

This is a rebuild of my ~100Gallon Display. This tank originally housed my son's puffer fish which I purchased for his B-day. He has long since lost interest, but the puffer is what got me started in the hobby. Unfortunately, the puffer recently passed due to ich along with many of the other fish in the tank. I managed to save 3 in the quarantine tank.

Instead of fighting all the issues with the way I setup the tank previously (plus the accumulation of pests in the tank), I decided to tear down and do a complete rebuild of the sump and the way equipment was installed. I've been working on this for a month now it is nearly complete.

I am not usually good a documenting as I go along, but did want to share the setup since it has some unique features.

Tank Dimension: 30 x 24 x 30T.
Sump: 21 x 30 x 12T (Custom 5.5mm thick acrylic)
Equipment:
Apex Controller
Apex WAVmaker
Radion XR30W G2 x 2
Deltec SC2060 Skimmer
CADLight BR-1 Reactor
Turbo Aquatics ATS L2 (Planned)
GHL Doser
Vectra M1 Return

This tank is on the main floor of my house. I had previously built a custom stand for the tank. What is unique about the stand is that it is on casters and you can move it about. This has been a life saver when it comes to working on the 'back' of the aquarium. This also gave me some options when building the sump.

Here's a picture of it away from the wall (full of water); followed by it pushed back against the wall.

As you can see the side panels are removable and held into place by magnets. Again to facilitate maintenance of the tank. The real challenge here is to cram all that equipment into a sump area that is approximately 30 x 30; lots of custom work here to make it happen.

Next post is the electronics

adhd_nerd · Oct 20, 2016

When I built the stand I had intended of making the side panels removable. However, I decide 'hard' attached previously and mounted the electronics on the inside of the side panels. This was OK. However, it was a bear to work on anything underneath the tank when it came to the wiring.

This time around, I went ahead and made the side panels removable. On the right side of the stand, I put the majority of the electronics. The exceptions are the two power supplies for the Radions and a couple Avast marine pressure switches. I did not have room, so I put those underneath in the sump area.

These cable raceways are the way to go. In the past I would just tie wrap everything but that eventually got out of hand. In order to mount the electronics, I used of 3/4" melamine backed against the sump with some appropriately placed holes for running cables into the sump. The power bricks are sitting on the bottom of this troft (1 for Vectra, 1 for WAV pumps and 1 for GHL; I still need one for the ATS. I also have a pumpalarm for detecting power failure or water leakage and it will text me using SMS service.

Since this is outward facing, it is a breeze to work on.

From the front. The PS for the Radions are mounted in the upper left corner. Melamine on the right side has a hole in middle and top for a raceway to get cabling across the sump area.

One thing I'll point out in the above picture are the holes in the sump baffles for running cables and hoses through. I am really glad I put those in as some cables were too short to run through raceways. Many of the acrylic sumps have baffles from bottom-to-top and I would have to go over the top lip if I didn't have those holes. For example, I run the output for the biopellet reactor back to the skimmer section through the holes.