400 gallon plywood aquarium. 600+ gallon system

[Devaji]

wow! what an epic journey I love reading about plywood tanks. not sure I have the balls or skills to do it tho...maybe some day i'll grow a pair...haha

love the surge device I really hope it works out well. that is what I do in my head when I dream of large tanks I think there cool and hopefully cost effective.

 

[Mr_Stian]

It's been a while since my last update. Just back from summer vacation, and did not want to do any big changes just before leaving for 2 weeks. So hopefully it will go faster now.

Did some tests yesterday and the salt was at 1.024, so i will increase this just a bit. Phosphate and nitrate was both at 0 so today i will go out and get something living for my tank. Mostly hermit crabs and snails. Maybe a fish or two. Will also start adding some of my corals from my other displaytank.

 

[Mr_Stian]

Got the first livestock for the tank yesterday. A green Wrasse, Yellow candy Hogfish, cleaner shrimp and 5 dwarf hermit crabs. So far soo good. Later today i will be adding a few of the smaller pilars from my other tank that has some corals on them. More pictures will follow.

 

[rskarvan]

What a fantastic build thread. Would love to see the livestock progression. Also, your English is very good!

Any update on the surge tank and actuated valve?

 

[Mr_Stian]

Thanks for your kind words!

No update on the surge device yet. It is further down on my to-do list. I am now concentrating on moving all livestock from my current display to this one. Hopefully this will be done this week.

When everything has been moved from the old to the new tank i will start to disassemble the old sump in technical room. I will reuse two of the tanks from this setup on the new setup (one tank for waterchange and the refugium).

Once this is done i have some electrical stuff to complete and then i can start to think of the surge tank. As i said earlier i just got two new Maxpect Gyre 350 pumps so it is not so critical to have the surge tank anymore. But i will still get this up and running

 

[Mr_Stian]

1 week with a few livestock in the tank. It looks like the algea has started to bloom again. I was hoping to start add stuff from my other tank this week. Nitrate has gone up to 1 and phosphate is now 0.03. Not the biggest readings but i did not think adding these few items in this big system would have this big of an effect.

I should also mention that i was away from thursday to sunday and that during this period i had an automatic feeder on the tank. This might have given much more food than the fish managed to eat.

Since I am leaving this weekend as well I think I will wait with introducing the rest of the livestock and let it settle until adding more.

 

[Mr_Stian]

Finally some progress that shows off the final result.

A couple of days ago i transferred most of my LR with corals and all of my fish to their new home. I still have some corals in the old display as i have to fill the bottom with sand. As of today i have only about 20kg of sand in it. It should have about 20kgs more.

The fish has been in the tank for 2 days now and all of them seem to be much more happy now. Almost all of them are visible at all time. Which was not the case in the old, as most of the smaller fish were hiding until feeding.

Hopefully the 3 tangs that i have will stop fighting so much now. I have a yellow and a sailfin tang that was starting to get way too big for the old display. The fins on top started to split, which i think is because of limited space in the old rock and fighting between the two.

Today i completely disassembled the old sump. This took all day! Cleaning of equipment, cleaning of the tanks, removing all of the electronics, disassembly of the table and removal of the bolts from the concrete! Two of the tanks (the two on the left, on top of each other, picture below) will be reused with the new sump. I will use a separate pump to supply these once everything is up. I will reuse half of the table as a support for the refugium, and the brackets for the top tank. This will be used for water changes only (top one).

The next step will be to clean up the old sump room, build the support for the two tanks and connect these. Once this is done, i have to connect all of the apex to the new system. In the old setup i had a separat cabinet for this. I do not think i have room for this once everything is up. So i will have to figure something out for this. Other things on my to-do list is to get the surge system up and running!

And a few pictures:

Old sump room being disassembled. Going to miss the space!

Full front image:

This column is from the old dispaly

The GSP has yet to come out after i removed alot from that column before putting it in...

 

[Mr_Stian]

Some progress has been made, but it has been slow as i have been out traveling again.
I had a bloom of bacteria in the tank a few weeks ago. The water was cloudy and algea would grow on the glass within hours. I still had not connected the refugium to the new system. So when i saw the bacteria i rushed to get this system up and running. A few issues with bulkheads that would not seal. So i had to silicone them to get them to seal. Not the best solution, but it works very well. So now i have the 200 liter water change tank and the 180 liter refugium up and running. This is fed with a pump from the sump and then it drains back down. Same principle of the display. after some fine tuning this works very well. If the pump shuts down the water flowing into the sump is minimal, so for now i have plenty of space in the sump for a power blackout. The bacteria went away within 1 day and the water is crystal clear again.
I have also got the technical cabinet back up that houses my apex and some of the electrics. This is still not connected but this is on my to-do list for this weekend. I will also glue a holder for the gyre pump inside the tank which means that i need to drain it a few inches.

And a picture of the refugium. You can barley see the plumbing for the return line to the water change tank. And yes, i know i need to clean the electrics...

As another issue i am having is that the room gets quite hot if i close the door. As you can see it is not very big. So when it gets hot it affects the temperature in the tank as well. So i need some feedback from you guys.

I have two vents going outside in the room next door. I was thinking of using ventilation pipes to extend these two into this room and use a fan to either pull cold air from outside into the room or suck hot air out of this room.

So what is the best way to have this fan? Sucking air from the outside or from inside?

 

[JDnKY]

I would suck the air from the inside vented to the outside. I live in the country and would hate to pull skunk smell from the outside into my fish room. I’m sure there are their smells in the city I wouldn’t want in my house as well, not to mention the excessive heat/cold.

 

[Jeff Jarry reef]

Very nice that's what I call building from scratch !!!!!!

 

[Mr_Stian]

I would suck the air from the inside vented to the outside. I live in the country and would hate to pull skunk smell from the outside into my fish room. I’m sure there are their smells in the city I wouldn’t want in my house as well, not to mention the excessive heat/cold.

This is what i am leaning against as well. The fan will be operated by my smart house system so that it doesen't get to hot or cold…

 

[lavoisier]

That sounds like a plan. Also, if you do not already have a grilled vent in your door, you could install one to help with air flow for both temp and O2.

 

[Mr_Stian]

It looks like the light i have today is not up to the task! So i am looking for info on building a new light.

Check this thread if you know anything about building a DIY LED light: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/need-advice-on-new-diy-led-for-a-400g-tank.653130/

 

[CC13]

Today I received the actuated valve for the surge tank system. I had to change the valve from "normally closed" to "normally open" as it did not operate just as I thought it would. But not a big issue.
Just hoping that the system will work as good as I hope it does!

That’s awesome. Where did you get that and how are you going to use it??

 

[Mr_Stian]

This was bought on ebay. I think there is a link in one of my posts. This will be the valve for my surge system. Not operational yet, but there is a link to a video where i test the idea. Not sure when i will have the time to install this but hopefully soon. Looking forward to test this system!

 

[Wolf89]

Any updates @Mr_Stian ?

 

[Mr_Stian]

It might be good with an update here yes. I have been busy with both the house, boat and work, so the aquarium has not got the full attention lately. But i have some plans for this weekend for some adjustments to the tank. I have learnt that having plumbing going almost horizontal from one tank to the other is not very ideal. The flow through the pipe is higher when there is no air going through it. So I have had some issues with water level in my sump going up and down. So i am going to do some adjustments to this. Mainly drill some new holes in the sumps so that i can have a pipe connecting the two that is submerged. This will hopefully work better.

I also have to glue a support for my Gyre pump on one of the sides as the thickness here is to big for the magnet to get through. I have not descided if this is the route i am going. Another option is to remove some plywood just were the magnet is supposed to be. But i am leaning on gluing to the inside. Only problem here is that i have to drain quite alot of water to be able to do this. But this seems to be the easiest way to go.

I have also purchased some new lamps. The DIY lamp that i have is just not enough. This draws about 200watts on full blast. And this is too little. So i have ordered 6 chinese black boxes. These are rated at 165 watts, but they are really only just over 100 watts. 2 arrived today and the rest will arrive tomorrow. I have to make some kind of arrangement to hang them from. Most likely i will connect all together and hang them as one unit. These are Wifi controlable so i can have sunset and sunrise. Not a big deal, but i like the effect. This will most likely be up and running over the weekend.

The manifold for my reactors are also completed. I have not connected the pump yet but everything is ready. I am waiting for a few more reactors to add to this.

Pictures will follow in a few days!

 

[lavoisier]

I would recommend removing/thinning some plywood. I used a router to reduce the thickness of a panel for my MP60s. Of course I practiced first on a scrape piece but it worked well and did not take long. I've attached a couple of pics. When I added a 4th MP60 the tank was up and running and I routed the vertical surface.

 

[Mr_Stian]

I have no issues using a router. I even just purchased a new battery router. So this is not an issue. The issue is that there is very limited space to work on the side that I need to work on. So I will have problems collecting all the dust coming from it. And there can be alot of dust from this! I also need to remove some plumbing before doing this.

 

[lavoisier]

That's true! I wonder if a dremel tool might work? Another thought might be to attach a sealed magnet to the inside of the tank and then your pump to that.