320 gallon display with equipment shed

[Gumbies R Us]

I have been finding my shed is getting crowded with equipment. Things were getting placed on the floor. I had my kalkwasser reactor on a small stand that had a container for the apex Trident waste.
I also wanted to add my "chaetomorpha reactor" that I had made on my old tank back east. In reality, it's just a 5 gallon bucket plumbed into the tank. I found the Chaetomorpha grows a better in the bucket.

All of these made me want to an update the space. So I went through the stuff in the little cupboard and got rid of the junk I could do without. Then took the whole thing out, I built a shelf and moved the calcium reactor.
It looks cleaner so I'm happy
Old

Post clean up

Here's the bucket

Looking great! Looks like you have more room to move around in there to, haha

 

[cilyjr]

Looking great! Looks like you have more room to move around in there to, haha

Barely. But at least I can open up both the doors and get to the sump. It was starting to be a problem.
I have a bad habit of saving reef related things, like pieces of pumps or lengths of vinyl tubing, Thinking maybe I'll need this

 

[cilyjr]

Unfortunately the rock wall covering the overflow started to crumble. People told me that the hydraulic cement can do that, but, being stubborn I chose not to listen. A couple of large pieces fell out of it and I decided to take the entire thing out rather than risk it falling over and crushing something important.

I still want something to cover the overflow. I saw someone either on this forum or reefcentral had covered the inside of there tank using cut stone veneer.
It was a large tank somewhere around 400 gallons. I wish I could find the post but I have been on successful.

From my memory of that I have decided to make a new cover out of stone veneer. I bought a couple of packages that had been broken at a discount from Lowe's and am piecing them together to build a surround for the overflow.

I soaked them for a while to be sure they wouldn't leach anything that would affect pH or alkalinity. As the ones I bought are just quartzite stone. I wasn't expecting any thing. Anyway. They do glue these in panels so I have to separate it and remove the glue. But that's not as hard as I thought it would be.

And because the tank is full, I have to build this in sections and then stack them in the tank. I'm hoping super glue will be enough to hold the stacks together.

Meanwhile, the stacked pieces are being held together with silicone. I'm using rtv 108

I expect it will be strong enough to hold the veneer together. Time will tell.

 

[cilyjr]

I know the veneer will not look natural. I'm okay with that. It will look manufactured for sure. But as I said before I saw somebody else doing this and liked the look.

 

[cilyjr]

It's done. I am quite happy with it. It will eventually cover in Coraline algae. The point of it is that I like to scrape the back but this tank is 3 ft from front to back and 3 ft from either side so it is difficult to scrape the overflow. What I would have ended up having was Coraline algae covering a plastic box while the backs were nice and clean.
Though the stone veneer cover looks very man-made when it covers in Coraline algae, it will look more intentional.

I ended up primarily using super glue and accelerator to build it. The silicone held it but a few times it would come loose.

Here are two photos with different lenses on the camera.

 

[cilyjr]

I wish I had the patience to to keep my equipment area organized instead of this mess.

 

[Jimbo327]

That looks pretty organized to me. You even have a sink in there! Looks very functional and easy to maintain, and that's really the most important. My wife tells me I'm a hoarder of useless reef junk, but I don't know how many times I've repurposed a hose or fitting or reactor. My shed will make your shed look very organized.

 

[cilyjr]

That looks pretty organized to me. You even have a sink in there! Looks very functional and easy to maintain, and that's really the most important. My wife tells me I'm a hoarder of useless reef junk, but I don't know how many times I've repurposed a hose or fitting or reactor. My shed will make your shed look very organized.

I keep a lot of crap too. Things that I am pretty sure I'll never use. Like all of the extra fittings from a return pump that come in the box. And all the extra crap with maxi jets just in a drawer in my house. Okay, maybe many drawers.

 

[drcrook]

Once I got settled in to our home here, I got to setting up again. I realized that I didn't have a place for an equipment room where I wanted the tank, I decided to build a shed to house everything.
It is heavily insulated though winter nights rarely get below 45 degrees and summer days are rarely above 80.
We had the house painted shortly after install.
I suppose I will mention that the house had been a rental for about 15 years before we bought it so it needed a good deal of TLC.
It seems like there had been multiple projects going from 2020 until now.

Im building a new house with plans on a highly automated 400g-ish system. Im moving to a place with winters and freezing temperatures from the tropics. I would love to learn about insulating and heating your shed and lines.

 

[cilyjr]

Im building a new house with plans on a highly automated 400g-ish system. Im moving to a place with winters and freezing temperatures from the tropics. I would love to learn about insulating and heating your shed and lines.

We don't have winter here on the central California coast. So, unfortunately I would not do this if I were say back in Rhode Island.

I don't heat the shed. The drain and return only run outside about 3 feet. I wrapped them and sprayed them all with insulation foam.

The shed is insulated with r tech foam board on the walls (r8 I think) the ceiling was r32 rolls with plastic sheeting.

 

[drcrook]

Yeah im moving from tropics to mountains and not sure how the cold will impact system there. Where im moving from is perfect for salt aquariums

 

[cilyjr]

Yeah im moving from tropics to mountains and not sure how the cold will impact system there. Where im moving from is perfect for salt aquariums

I would not set up a shed like this in a place where it regularly drops below freezing. I am in hardiness zone 10. It rarely gets below 45 here or above 80 here.

 

[drcrook]

I would not set up a shed like this in a place where it regularly drops below freezing. I am in hardiness zone 10. It rarely gets below 45 here or above 80 here.

Ah, thats like where im moving from. Im thinking setting up stuff in garage but perhaps I’ll convert a small unused office space or heat and enclose a small office space and run plumbing through ceiling instead of flooring

 

[cilyjr]

Ah, thats like where im moving from. Im thinking setting up stuff in garage but perhaps I’ll convert a small unused office space or heat and enclose a small office space and run plumbing through ceiling instead of flooring

Most people when they do that in their garage in the cold will actually build a wall and partition it off. One of my friends here actually set up stuff in his garage and because it's uninsulated he was spending like 600 bucks a month in electricity and that's with our relatively mild climate. That said, electricity is very expensive here, and there are many houses that have been built that are completely uninsulated. No joke. Mine was I had to have a drill and filled done.

 

[jhadaway]

Can you share how you spread out those 8 hydras? I'm planning a 66x36x25 and I've got a billion layouts done and I'm not happy with any just yet.

Thankks,
JOe

 

[Katrina71]

Made a really half hearted equipment board and popped that back in as well. It's not super pretty but this is why I built an entire shed to store me equipment.
I've never been good at hiding all the guts of a system but I also don't want to see any cables on the display. Which I'll get to later.

I put my Apex in a cable opb box. I've never understood why they didn't make the Apex a little more water resistant. I get that waterproof would be pretty impossible but jeez. The older style was really bad.

Love the upcycle

 

[Katrina71]

You may have said, and I overlooked it, but what sand did you use?

 

[cilyjr]

You may have said, and I overlooked it, but what sand did you use?

It's a feldspar sand that I've only ever seen in 1 place. A beach about a mile from my house.
It is a course sand with about 2.5 to 3.5 mm particles.

This is what it looks like.

 

[Katrina71]

I really like it!

 

[cilyjr]

I really like it!

Thank you. I have been using it for years.