420G Airlift powered AIO Reef Aquarium (Worlds first?)

[14crazychris]

Hey Everyone,

So purely from the title of this thread you may be questioning not just one thing about this tank! But a few things? Airlift? AIO? How? Never been done? (If an airlift marine tank has been done before then feel free to point it out as I’d love to see how they got theirs setup)

Well let me start of this thread by introducing myself, I’m Chris from the U.K. and I run the Fancy goldfish fanatics brand (Facebook, YouTube and Instagram etc) All of this tanks progress will be documented on my YT channel so feel free to check that out for full in depth updates https ://youtube.com/c/FancyGoldfishFanatics

Although on this thread you will also get the sneak peaks before the videos are released

So this isn’t my first time keeping reef aquariums but it’s actually my third tank, although I said I would never get one again! and ha! How wrong I was.

Here was my first evolution aqua 24” cube

After that I decided a big tank was too much work so I opted for a nano!

And then I decided I’d never keep marine again becuase they were too much work and stress. Ohh how I was wrong Lol


So now that brings me onto the new tank! The new tank was custom built for me being 8ft long, 3ft wide and 2.5ft tall giving me approximately 420 gallons. Now I don’t like sticking to the rule book generally and before I go any further, if anyone tells me this idea won’t work or it is stupid then please don’t comment in this thread. If my design and ideas don’t work, I’d like to find out for myself and try again. I’ve never seen an AIO tank on this scale and I’ve also never seen one built with an airlift system, especially not a marine tank! (I’m sure there’s a reason why lol)

so back onto the tank! Here’s a picture of said tank, as you can see it’s on the floor, no stand or sump so already very different from the majority of most tanks. It’s got a black background, black silicone and three glass lid sections. I will be building my own internal sump/filter into the back right hand corner to create a self contained unit. The video of bringing the tank in will be out on YT soon but it took 12 people and a lot of help to get it inside my living room!

So that’s it for my first post and introduction! More updates to come and I will explain more about the system, and stocking as I go. All questions welcome

Cheers,
chris

 

[scottkoji]

following along! cant wait to see how it turns out. what role will the airlift play in this build?

 

[EagleEye121]

Following!

 

[exnisstech]

I'm sure there will be many cool factors to this build but having a top down view is going to be awesome. Ever since I had all of my fish in a stock tank on the floor being treated for illness I have wanted to set up a tank on the floor. It was just so cool looking down and seeing all the colors normally not seen and having them turn sidways to look up when I was viewing.

 

[14crazychris]

So now onto the filter which is a big element in this build. i wanted the whole aquarium to be one self contained unit. A sump would of been best but I had no room for a huge stand, especially one to hold this size of tank and I thought about an overhead sump but it wouldn’t work and would be too heavy. Canister filters would have been ugly, annoying to clean and also too bulky so I decided to build my own internal filter. Although taking up vital space in the aquarium, the tank was plenty big enough to loose a bit of volume to a filter. The filter needed to look professional and also work as I wanted it to so I decided to use gloss black acrylic to blend into the background of the tank.

Here you can see the black acrylic panels being held in place whilst the silicone sets. I used black underwater aquarium grade silicone. Now although people say acrylic doesn’t bond well to acrylic this structure isn’t load bearing and is purely creating a physical barrier between the inside of the filter and the rest of the tank. I’ve also had a freind make a similar filter and after two years he couldn’t pull the filter apart without cracking the silicone!

so now for the Inside! As I am planning to have a huge amount of rock “Berlin method” the filter will be solely mechanical and also a big refugium! I want a large natural method to help deal with nutrient issues. Although some rectors would have been good I will just have a large bag of carbon and rowa phos in the bottom to assist with water quality.

Heres a side shot of the filter. There’s 5kg of biohome media to help with the nitrogen cycle in the bottom and then a piece of removable egg crate which rests on some small shelves made from the spare acrylic. The rest of the void will be used for the macro algae refugium. You’ll also notice the large hole in the bracing at the back of the aquarium which will play an important role later on

For the weir I debated about cutting into the acrylic, however I managed to find some plastic weir combs that would slot onto my acrylic sheet and they also gave it a nice finish. The top down shot shows the piece of foam that will be covered in filter fleece to capture any fine particles in the water. The filter holds around 110 litres of water and will be lit on the outside by a grow light attached to the glass

Now finally the part you’ve all been waiting for! How on earth will I return the water back into the main display! Well here comes in the Airlift! now for those who don’t know, an airlift is where water is returned with an airpump rather than a mechanical water pump. Air is driven down a tube or pipe which rises up pulling the water with it. Now the airlift will have many positives and a few negatives I could think of.
Positives-
increased O2
decreased Co2
Power saving
Reduced moving parts inside the aquarium
External pump, easy to service and maintain
No moving parts- significantly lower maintence and low risk of blockage in comparison to normal pumps

AND THE BIG ONE! It can double up as a DIY protein skimmer!

Negatives-
salt creep
no directional flow
Potential low flow

The airlift will be powered by a 25L per minute pond air pump which uses around 25w of electricity. This power should theoretically provide my skimmer and return pump in one. The airlift will be constructed out of 1.5 inch PVC pipe. Now from my experience using a larger diameter pipe gives more flow but as a reduced current or pressure. As I plan to use wave pumps like most and I am not bothered about a huge flow through the filter a stronger directional current was more important than a weak current and slightly higher flow. Now generally wooden air stones are used in saltwater aquarium but I decided to try some high quality Japanese ceramic ones. These provide larger bubbles and more surface area for air displacement. Below are some pictures, very cheap to build system and it looks very rough and basic but it will be hidden out of sight. I created a clear version to show how it essentially works. Although the outlet will be at water level so the flow will be much greater. The proper design will use the black pvc to reduce algae build up inside the pipe. Hopefully the video works?

That’s all for now until next update. Once we have water in the system the airlift can be tested and hopefully the protein skimmer part of it works too.

cheers,
chris

 

[14crazychris]

I'm sure there will be many cool factors to this build but having a top down view is going to be awesome. Ever since I had all of my fish in a stock tank on the floor being treated for illness I have wanted to set up a tank on the floor. It was just so cool looking down and seeing all the colors normally not seen and having them turn sidways to look up when I was viewing.

The top down view is very important to me! My first tank was too tall for a top down view so I needed a chair to stand on. My old nano tank was the perfect height to view top down and this one is also perfect. I also will ensure the system has low surface movement so the top down is still great to look at even with all the pumps on. The air pump will provide a good way to de gas and re-gas the water which ordinarily would be done through surface agitation. As you may see in my YouTube channel I also love fancy goldfish and I have had two systems setup on the floor for them, viewing is much nicer and also maintenance is far far more easy to do as well!

Cheers

 

[14crazychris]

following along! cant wait to see how it turns out. what role will the airlift play in this build?

Thanks! The airlift will be the return from the filter

 

[i cant think]

Hey Everyone,

So purely from the title of this thread you may be questioning not just one thing about this tank! But a few things? Airlift? AIO? How? Never been done? (If an airlift marine tank has been done before then feel free to point it out as I’d love to see how they got theirs setup)

Well let me start of this thread by introducing myself, I’m Chris from the U.K. and I run the Fancy goldfish fanatics brand (Facebook, YouTube and Instagram etc) All of this tanks progress will be documented on my YT channel so feel free to check that out for full in depth updates https ://youtube.com/c/FancyGoldfishFanatics

Although on this thread you will also get the sneak peaks before the videos are released

So this isn’t my first time keeping reef aquariums but it’s actually my third tank, although I said I would never get one again! and ha! How wrong I was.

Here was my first evolution aqua 24” cube

After that I decided a big tank was too much work so I opted for a nano!

And then I decided I’d never keep marine again becuase they were too much work and stress. Ohh how I was wrong Lol


So now that brings me onto the new tank! The new tank was custom built for me being 8ft long, 3ft wide and 2.5ft tall giving me approximately 420 gallons. Now I don’t like sticking to the rule book generally and before I go any further, if anyone tells me this idea won’t work or it is stupid then please don’t comment in this thread. If my design and ideas don’t work, I’d like to find out for myself and try again. I’ve never seen an AIO tank on this scale and I’ve also never seen one built with an airlift system, especially not a marine tank! (I’m sure there’s a reason why lol)

so back onto the tank! Here’s a picture of said tank, as you can see it’s on the floor, no stand or sump so already very different from the majority of most tanks. It’s got a black background, black silicone and three glass lid sections. I will be building my own internal sump/filter into the back right hand corner to create a self contained unit. The video of bringing the tank in will be out on YT soon but it took 12 people and a lot of help to get it inside my living room!

So that’s it for my first post and introduction! More updates to come and I will explain more about the system, and stocking as I go. All questions welcome

Cheers,
chris

Definitely following along for those wrasses

 

[14crazychris]

So another update on the aquarium!

Now the exciting part has started, the aquascape! I thought I’d need around 100-150kg of rock for this tank and how wrong was I. I ended up using around 175 kg of rock which still didn’t take up a huge amount of room, but I am happy with the overall scape. Although the scape looks to fill the tank there is around 1 foot behind each island! I could easily have fit another 50kg in but I like the openness and it allows for plenty of flow around the aquarium. Also provides the future corals with lots of places to grow out on.

Now that the rock is in and stable it’s time for sand. You’ll notice how I used the rock to cover the filter and it’s done a great job. From sitting on the sofa you’d never even know the filter or any equipment was in the tank!

Now I’ve done a lot of things different on this tank already so why stop now? Generally a white sand is the go to but I wanted black. I thought with all the black elements to the tank, the black sand would really help make any corals and fish pop out colour wise! Black sand was very difficult to find but I ended up going with a black tropical sand and it seems to work very well with the black background. Now I did do my research on black sand and have heard lots of stories about metals and contaminants in the sand but I just had to bite the bullet and risk it! Now there Won’t be any LPS or SPS in the tank so hopefully the soft corals should deal well with any swings in parameters etc. I ended up using 80kg of sand which was just the perfect amount!

 

[DIYreefer]

This is definitely going to be an interesting build, you certainly have my attention! I've always kicked around the idea of doing a large AIO, with a stand that is very short (having a tank sitting directly on the floor makes my anxiety run off the charts) to take advantage of top-down viewing similar to what you'vedone. It's almost like a reef pond, moreso than a reef tank... if that makes sense. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one with unorthodox ideas/approach to the hobby. This is really cool and I hope it works out for you!

 

[14crazychris]

This is definitely going to be an interesting build, you certainly have my attention! I've always kicked around the idea of doing a large AIO, with a stand that is very short (having a tank sitting directly on the floor makes my anxiety run off the charts) to take advantage of top-down viewing similar to what you'vedone. It's almost like a reef pond, moreso than a reef tank... if that makes sense. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one with unorthodox ideas/approach to the hobby. This is really cool and I hope it works out for you!

Really appreciate your reply! Yes it's almost like a reef pond haha. I really like to think outside the box on all my projects. If it's doesn't work out then I'll have to try something else but I'd rather try it and fail rather than never knowing and kicking myself for not trying it. The house is a new build so the floor is very level, there'd only a 3/4mm drop from one end to the other, plus I have some high density polystyrene underneath to take out any imperfections. It should have less movement than any stand etc.

The tank has been slowly filling up with water and I estimate it will use around 2 buckets of red sea coral pro salt. I'll try get some updated pictures over the weekend. The plan is to seed the dry rock with a few bits of live rock and then start to add corals after a week or two. Will keep the updates coming

 

[14crazychris]

So apologies for the lack of updates! The tank is now full and running, I left the RO filter running over multiple nights to get the tank full quicker, let’s just say I did not sleep well, but luckily there was no disasters lol. I’ve temporarily got my Hydra 26HD light over the tank to see what it looks like. I am going to opt for two of these and get black ones to match in with the black theme of the tank. I think ideally this tank needs 4 of these lights but as my plan is to keep soft corals and Im Aiming to keep this tank on a budget, energy consumption wise I will stick to two and see how it goes. Here’s a few pics of the tank currently

You may also notice A few soft corals in there! Turned out a freind was cutting some back so I had to give them a try rather than ending up in the trash! I’ve also added 4 bits of small live rock and a few shells from an established tank to help move the cycle on. So far the corals seem okay and opening To my surprise. Once I have both lights up and running in a week or so they should have a better chance. Aiming to pick up some clean up crew in around 3 weeks and then add a few fish.

 

[14crazychris]

So onto filtration! The airlift filter system is working well. Currently I have filter fleece as the prefilter which will need changing weekly and then a medium Sponge below it to help hold it in position. The protein skimmer part of the airlift seems to be doing a good job even though there’s nothing really living in the aquarium yet! Amazing to see what’s comes off all the rocks etc. This was 3 days worth of skimming

I assume to skimmer will need some adjustments in height etc once the tank is fairly well stocked but that’s all going to be trial and error.

now onto the refugium section, I have two 20w LED grow lights on the outside of the aquarium. The whole main section of the AIO filter will be used as the refugium. Currently I have chaeto and caulerpa but I will end up adding many different varieties in there which I may consider eventually adding onto empty sections of the rock work. Here’s some pictures before the tank was filled

you can see the 5kg of biohome in the bottom and then the big void that will hopefully house all of the macro algae, I will also place a course foam pad over the biohome to separate it from the algae. And here’s some pictures with algae!

I also have a bag of carbon which I will aim to change every 4 weeks and a bag of rowa phos. I’m aiming for the phosphate media to not be used over the long term depending how well the refugium performs as I know it won’t work very well in a bag anyway.

finally for heating i am using a 600w titanium heater coupled with a WiFi inkbird controller. This seems to be holding the tank steady and I hardly see it come on at the moment, will have to see what it’s like in the middle of winter though. the heater sits nicely in the AIO which is out of sight along with the temperature probe.

 

[14crazychris]

So another update! The tank has actually been full for two weeks now! I’ve just been rubbish with updates! The first corals seemed to do well so I have just been continually adding more and more lol. So far maintence has been practically non existent but I know it’s coming. Diatoms are slowly starting to form and I’m scared to dreaded hair algae will follow! My refugium is definitely slowly working though so I’m hoping if I take the nutrient load slowly then I can attempt to keep algae levels to a minimum (Hopefully)

You can see I have both hydras mounted now, although I have heavy shading on the front left and front right I think it will be okay for soft corals. The plan is to keep the aquarium as low power and maintenance as possible so forgoing a third light or even fourth will have to be the case. The skimmer is still working well albeit slowed down in skimate production, potentially this needs tinkering. One thing I’m suprised about is the lack of micro bubbles. Essentially the bubbles are being pumped straight into the display but they seem to be popping quickly and rising to the surface, the angle of the tank is also nice as from a seated position you cannot see the bubbles on the surface of the water around the filter area.

 

[Troylee]

What are you doing for flow in that thing? Also looks like the entire lid is sealed for the most part! That will hurt with oxygenating the water column.. I love what you’re doing but see things that are gonna cause you some issues down the road..

 

[14crazychris]

What are you doing for flow in that thing? Also looks like the entire lid is sealed for the most part! That will hurt with oxygenating the water column.. I love what you’re doing but see things that are gonna cause you some issues down the road..

I have a really large tunze power head, and a variable speed Jacod pump but I plan to add two large Jacod pumps in the future, the flow is surprisingly good and will be fine for my soft corals. The airlift also provides additional flow too.

Yes the tank is completly covered and this would normally cause problems, however I’m pumping 30 litres of ambient air into the system every minute. Around 1800 volumetric litres of air every hour. it will be interesting to see how the tank copes once full of life but I think looking at the amount of air pumping into the airlift and out through the display fills me with hope. Tha large refugium should also help assist with carbon removal and adding pure oxygen back into the system. The tank is an experiment overall so maybe some things will need changing as I go. Thank you

 

[atoll]

Interesting project,can't fault you trying something different. A man after my own heart.
How about adding a few gyre type surface pumps?

 

[14crazychris]

Interesting project,can't fault you trying something different. A man after my own heart.
How about adding a few gyre type surface pumps?

Thank you, yeah that could work, I'll try get some pictures of the surface movement and agitation the air lift creates. The tank now has lots more corals in it so I will update the thread tomorrow. Will be adding the first fish and clean up crew next week.

 

[atoll]

Thank you, yeah that could work, I'll try get some pictures of the surface movement and agitation the air lift creates. The tank now has lots more corals in it so I will update the thread tomorrow. Will be adding the first fish and clean up crew next week.

Only downside I can think of not that I am looking for downsides, one of noise either from the pump itself or the bubbles breakng the surface.

 

[14crazychris]

Only downside I can think of not that I am looking for downsides, one of noise either from the pump itself or the bubbles breakng the surface.

Critique is good! It’s how we get better and yes this was a concern too, I opted for a super silent pump and its very quiet. Bubbles arnt loud but if you have the lids open you can definitely hear them. So far the system is running better than expected but I guess time will tell.