530 Gallons of Colorado Sanity

[Monkeytank]

I have a 350 Gallon display tank with a 180 sump underneath. I made rock walls out of hydraulic cement that has started completely crumbling after just over a year. The tank is getting a while new redesign to remove the walls and start over. I'll have to do it with all the corals and fish still in the tank, so it will be a huge PITA.

Some historical shots:

The walls had to be modified to make room for the stand to make it through the hall. The stand is 124 inches long, 41 inches high, and 36 wide. The hallway wasn't big enough. The night before my in-laws arrived my wife heard me telling my youngest son "It's going in tonight. Get the saw". Probably not what she wanted to hear. Not the best timing I've ever done.


The open wall space to the left will be turned into built in shelving for storage of all my junk. A door will be added to the far end of the hall to block off my office/ fish room/ man cave.


Added a sink and rerouted some plumbing to make access easier. Thanks Levi and GreaseballPaul for the help! The 55 Gal barrels will go under the stand when I get some 1/4 inch line long enough to route it over from the RO/DI filter on the wall above the sink.


Side view.


I had help from some of the church youth getting the tank onto the stand. About 800lbs lifted about 42 inches high. It took everything we had to keep it straight and get it onto the stand.


The tank finally on the stand. For reference, the sump under the stand is a 72" long 150 gallon tank I modified. The red liner is tape I put on the edges of the 3/4" foam under the tank.


I also put foam under the sump and put a layer of shower pan liner (40 mil PVC) to keep it all contained.


I used quickrete construction adhesive to stick it to the floor and edges of the stand. I wanted to create a pan to catch water and keep the bottom of the stand dry. I ran the shower pan liner up the side wall where the stand butts against another room.


I added a line that goes straight from the sump to the main drain so any build up of water will go right out. If it ever sees use, something has gone pretty bad wrong.


I have the sand and water in the DT. It's cycling while I complete the plumbing. I put some larger rubble pieces at the bottom of the sand on the right side so jawfish and maybe garden eels would have a spot good for burrows. I covered this with another couple of inches of sand.


I ran plumbing from the tank to the drain in the floor. I have my RO wastewater line, a 1.25 line for water change dumping, and a 1/2" line for sump leak drainage (hopefully never used). I painted my drain lines red, return lines blue, and I'll be putting in a closed loop of sorts that will have black plumbing.



The drain end.


I covered the plumbing with a wooden platform. It's useful for getting up on the stand as well as protecting the pipes running across the floor.


Water changes will be done by leaving the pumps on and turning the valve from one of the drains shown here on the right. I'll watch the sump level and close the valve when I've drained enough. Even though I recently made some comments about not liking flex PVC, I used some I had laying around. There were a couple of areas where a little flexibility was a good idea. Beside the 55 gallon barrels where I might bump the pipes if I drag them out for cleaning and another spot where my return and drain lines needed to be in just about the same space and I wanted to route around them with some weird angles.


I'm going to run two Jaebo DC1200 pumps internal for the returns. I have it set so I can open the valve in the middle and let one pump feed both return lines if I need to. The pipe that will be submerged is not painted.


Here is a shot of it installed. The valve on the right is to the UV sterilizer. The black handled valve on the left runs over to feed media reactors.


Here is the other side where I split the line for two media reactor hookups. The red plumbing to the right is two feeds for the refugium. I can control the amount going from one return into two sides of one end of the refugium. I split that off further to have a manifold for an algae turf scrubber or other things down the road.



I made a couple of durso drains for the overflows.


I have just enough room for a mini fridge/freezer to hold food right by the tank.

 

[Monkeytank]

Here is some of the stuff I'll be moving over into the DT within the next week. The elegance coral is doing really well and so is the gonipora to the right.




I've planned out the rock walls on paper and have an idea of how I want my rock structure set up. Now I just have to get busy making it. I have some ideas that are a bit different for the overall look. It could be great or it could be cheesy. It will probably be up to individual preference, if I execute it well. We'll see.



Started adding sand today!





I put in 50 gals of salt water I had mixed up. That let me move the empty barrel to its new home under the stand. Then I moved water from the fresh barrel into the salt barrel, put the RO/DI barrel in its new home too. The valve on the side of the RO barrel is for gravity filling jugs when needed - like getting water for my CPAP machine. The wooden box on the floor covers my plumbing from the tank to the drain, and water lines. The platform helps me get up on the stand too. I left 10 inches of space behind the tank to have a platform to stand on to do maintenance.





A shot from the other side. I'm surprised how little the sump looks from this angle. It's 72" long.

 

[Monkeytank]

I have two 800 watt Finnex heaters controlled by the Apex. They seem to be working very well.


I'm making my rock wall and am experimenting with coating some styrofoam pieces and encasing them in to build dimension without a ton of weight. I have the bottom pieces soaking to see how they stand up.


Until I get the wall in, everything is just sitting in temp places on the sand. Once the walls go in, I'll aquascape and get some vertical stacking going. I don't have the overflows covered at all yet. I plan to make the overflow protector into the rock wall piece. I'm using gutter guard for the top where the teeth normally are.

What's working well - The Jaebo pumps and the split design for two pumps to feed the system. If I want to back flush a pump to clean it out, I can turn it off and open the valve to let the other pump flush it. I lowered my return lock line tops and eliminated some bubbles I was getting in the display. Pods everywhere.

What's not done that I really want done now- Lights aren't mounted. Plumbing from RO into salt mixing barrel isn't competed. ATO isn't set up yet. Wiring isn't where I want it yet. Lots of stuff.

 

[Monkeytank]

I finally decided what I want to do with my rock wall. I'm going with a hybrid hydraulic cement, live rock, and Great Stuff pond foam version. I think the strength and weight of the cement will balance the buoyancy and flexibility of the foam. This way it won't be too light and not to heavy, the look should be good overall and it is very customizable for the irregular areas like the caves I'm hiding powerheads in. Because I'm adding this to an existing tank and can't silicone the wall to the back at the bottom, the cement is the base to keep it heavy down there and I will put sand up against it to help stabilize it.

I made a scale model of my overflow areas.

I put the egg crate over the mold, zip tied it, and put hydraulic cement on the base and main vertical joints.

[video=youtube_share;PuUtLnHYaPM]
I don't know how everyone else cuts their egg crate down to the size they want, but this is how I do it. I use scissors, screwdriver, or whatever I have nearby to smash up and down on the area I want the cut. This knocks the pieces out the way and breaks them off right on the smooth side without trying to cut through them one by one.

For my side wall, I made a cave for the powerhead and started by boxing it off with egg crate. I left a channel in the top for the power cord. When I want to clean it, I'll pull it straight out the front and the cord will slide through the slot. The cord will be hidden from the side by a piece of the foam wall.

I stuck it onto the wall. The shape will be covered in foam.

The top piece will be a place to hide the power cord from the side. I'll update after I complete additional steps.

I re-did my RO and Salt barrels by cutting off the top and inverting it. This makes it a lot easier to access and clean.

Added some switches for my RO transfer pump, and salt transfer pump. With the Apex breakout box, I'll also add a switch for my salt water mix pump and heater. I'll do other switches for some sump lights, feed mode, cleaning mode, whatever.

I used some spare acrylic to make a hanger for my frag rack in the sump. I took a heat gun and bent it with a curve to fit over the baffle, and then curved it back out at the bottom. This way the egg crate just rests on the bottom curve. With one on each side, I can lift out the egg crate easily, and pull the the side panels easily for cleaning or whatever.

I made a probe holder the same way.

I mounted a Maxspect Razor 1600k over the frag section of the sump.


I'm making some progress now and will keep the momentum going to knock out the rock wall and get my aquascaping settled, and get the Apex, switches, probes, ATO, and dosers set up. Then I'll get into the rebuilding of the room, stand skin, and flooring done. There has been so much to do with so little time lately, I just stalled out in a pattern of indecision, and fatigue. It's time to get this set up right.

 

[Monkeytank]

Making progress on the rock wall parts. I have a mix of hydraulic cement for sinking weight and rigidity with pond foam for lighter total weight and ease of design for things like a cave for the powerheads. I have two pieces to hide the overflows and the one side wall I will cover. I'm still not sure about my design for the remaining back wall. I want to be able to view it from the back when I'm in the maintenance side, but not see through the tank into the maintenance side. Ritmar, if you could let me know what you used for your back wall, I'd like to know.

I made caves for the powerheads and used PVC to keep tunnels open to feed the inflow.

Here you can see some foam and hydraulic cement used together.

I put some strips of cement in the middle for vertical strength.

One part filling in. It's huge, but I want the surface area for frags.

I made some bigger globs of foam and hollowed them out. I have multiple shelf spaces I made by cutting the top of the foam off flat on the top in several long stretches. I have about 7 tunnels using sections of PVC zip tied to the egg crate and covered with foam. I liked the way adding rows of the foam left some area between the ridges to cut out. It might be hard to see in the pics, but I have a lot of open space and places for flow into the caves. I also have a lot of little spaces pods and mysid shrimp will probably use. I poked through the spots with tweezers and pulled the foam parts back out. For larger holes, I found using my finger to scrape big chunks of foam out worked the best, and tweezers stuck in to grab the remnants cleaned it up.

I made a fake barnacle cluster to hide one of the inflow pipes for the powerhead. I made foam bubbles and melted holes in them with a wood burning tool.

I used some plastic gutter guard for the strainer top. I didn't go with an acrylic piece on the overflow when I ordered the tank. I had this in mind and saved some money. Two part epoxy has been applied and sand thrown on it.

The two overflow hiders. Almost completely finished. Just need some more epoxy and sand in spots.

The side piece. I have pvc tunnels covered in cement and some covered in foam.

Here are some thoughts so far on this blended technique of cement and foam. It seems to work best with some vertical cement and not just a base of heavy cement at the bottom and light foam on the top. The whole piece tends to bend at the transition point without it - maybe not an issue with short pieces, but these are 28 inch tall panels. The foam is easier to work with than the cement, but it makes a mess. There wasn't one time I used it without getting it on my skin or clothes. There are some solvents you can buy to use to remove the foam gunk, but I just rip the skin off it's attached to. The skin grows back and it's free! I dropped some crushed coral on the foam on the first piece I made, but when I wanted to trim it into shapes, the coral pieces made it a pain in the rear. I liked adding the sand after the design was carved out and the epoxy was applied. I liked adding more hardener to the epoxy than recommend because it sets up the foam harder like a rock. Worked best to do the epoxy in smaller sections rather than trying to do a big piece. I cut or drilled holes into the foam for frag plugs, but when I added the epoxy and sand, most of them filled in to make it tight for the plug. It might have been better to make the whole thing and let the epoxy harden, then drill the frag holes. Overall, I pulled out a lot of foam and made a huge mess, but it was the only way to get the negative space, holes, and tunnels I wanted.

I'm waiting for some characteristic warm dry summer weather to finish the cure so I can dunk the parts and see how the buoyancy is. I expect them to sink and stay in place. Since I'm adding these after the tank is already up and running, I can't silicone them in place to ensure they do. I will have a bead at the very top above the waterline because I extended the wall up very close to the top of the tank, but I'm expecting the tight fit, sand, and some live rock pieces at the base to keep them steady.

 

[Monkeytank]

Rock wall part 1 and 2 are installed. The foam had expanded them bigger than the original design so I had to trim them down some.

One of the overflow covers ready to go.

Cave for a powerhead.

Side Wall.

Side wall power head cave.

Side wall and one overflow in place.

I got the two pieces in last night and it was a pain in the **** doing this after the tank is up and running. I had to move rocks and coral, move a lot of sand, put the pieces in one access hole in the top of the tank between bracing and move it over to the side. Getting the side piece in required breaking the top right corner off and using a shop vac to pull up sand from behind it as I wedged it in. I'm going to like the shelf space I created and like the way the pieces look so far. The other overflow cover will go in tonight. I'll be making other pieces to go in the middle back between the overflow pieces. I have a pretty crazy idea I'm going to try for the back wall.

Lessons learned include - the foam is crazy buoyant. The pieces float, but that holds them in place rock steady - along with sand at the base. Build rock walls into your tank before filling it. That's a no brainer, but it would have been soooo much easier if I was able to time it like that.

I added a switch for my salt mixing. From right to left, Blue is RO water pump(Jebao DC6000), Red is salt mix powerhead (Koralia something) and heater combined, and the carbon fiber is mixed saltwater pump (Jebao DC6000). All switches run into the Apex. I'm digging having the switches right there by the barrels. I spaced the mix and salt pump ones closer together to pair them up a little off from the RO one.

 

[Monkeytank]

Rock wall part 1 and 2 are installed. The foam had expanded them bigger than the original design so I had to trim them down some.

One of the overflow covers ready to go.

Cave for a powerhead.

Side Wall.

Side wall power head cave.

Side wall and one overflow in place.

I got the two pieces in last night and it was a pain in the **** doing this after the tank is up and running. I had to move rocks and coral, move a lot of sand, put the pieces in one access hole in the top of the tank between bracing and move it over to the side. Getting the side piece in required breaking the top right corner off and using a shop vac to pull up sand from behind it as I wedged it in. I'm going to like the shelf space I created and like the way the pieces look so far. The other overflow cover will go in tonight. I'll be making other pieces to go in the middle back between the overflow pieces. I have a pretty crazy idea I'm going to try for the back wall.

Lessons learned include - the foam is crazy buoyant. The pieces float, but that holds them in place rock steady - along with sand at the base. Build rock walls into your tank before filling it. That's a no brainer, but it would have been soooo much easier if I was able to time it like that.

I added a switch for my salt mixing. From right to left, Blue is RO water pump(Jebao DC6000), Red is salt mix powerhead (Koralia something) and heater combined, and the carbon fiber is mixed saltwater pump (Jebao DC6000). All switches run into the Apex. I'm digging having the switches right there by the barrels. I spaced the mix and salt pump ones closer together to pair them up a little off from the RO one.

 

[Monkeytank]

Some progress.

Walls and doors in.

Floor is tiled.

I have installed another piece of rock wall and I really like it. Now I'll start on the left side piece which will be similar in shape. It will breakup the vertical line on the left, curve in like the right to make the center a little more like a window. Then I'm going to make a backdrop or piece for installation outside the back of the tank to give it the illusion of more depth, yet still be removable so I can see in from the back when I want.

Here are some shots from the build to installation:

Egg crate laid out, marked and then cut to the rough shape. PVC tunnels were zip tied on. I ran some tubing down the right side and made it have two openings at the back of each shelf. I'm connecting a MJ1200 pump in the overflow to run water to flush out the gunk that will collect on the shelves.

I mixed and applied hydraulic cement to cover most of the egg crate. My last piece was more buoyant than I wanted, so I went with more cement.

I used Great Stuff pond foam to create the rest of the shape I wanted. I just poked paper towels into the pipes to keep them from filling. After it dried, I used a knife to cut some of the tops off to flatten the shelves, and cut holes, pulled off pieces of the foam to get the pockmarked look of live rock.

I brushed on epoxy over all the foam and sprinkled sand on it. I sed a pretty good bit of epoxy because I wanted it to firm up the foam. It's pretty hard with the sand dried on it.

A little better view from the left side.

It was a lot easier to get this piece in than the previous ones. I dug out some sand and covered the base. I was hoping I designed it to flow into the existing piece and I think it turned out very well. The corals I stuck on there are not in their final positions. I just wanted to get some up there to see about how much space I have. The color of this piece will darken to match the others.

This is almost a full tank shot. I can't back up far enough to get a FTS from directly in front. This is the view from my desk, but I can actually see the whole thing in person.

Here is a full tank shot from the side. The water is a little cloudy from moving everything around and I dumped in some more finer sand at the base of the new piece.

I finally mounted my automatic feeder for the Apex. I took some scrap metal and made a mount up near the lights. It drops the food a little to the left of center.

Overall, it's starting to come together more like the vision I had for the design. I still have a long way to go. I'm going to move some more live rock in and get more height off the sand bed for some corals. I'm going to get the right side of the tank the way I want it from about center over, then after I get the left rock wall piece in, I can see how I want the remaining half to be. I'm going to adjust the placement of the lights and add some to the center back section. I plan on having a chalice section, and have more SPS mounted up high in the tank. I'm going to get some of my monti's to meld like I saw Static Reef doing today. I'm making some small pieces on frag plugs, some bigger ones on some rocks, and I might build some out to sell or trade too. SPS seems to do really well in the tank and the montis are growing like crazy. I see no reason not to go with the flow and grow them out.

 

[Monkeytank]

Here are some livestock shots from today.

GSP

I like the green center of this torch

My monti meld is starting to grow.

This thing is becoming a beast! The width is about 16.5 inches.

[video]http://vid1359.photobucket.com/albums/q785/SCMASJoe/IMG_4011_zpsfaxr8gzg.mp4[/video]
I'm so glad the jawfish picked the front and center of the tank for his burrow.

 

[Monkeytank]

I mixed up 5 gallons of Magnesium today using Randy's recipe, and 3 gallons of Alk. I have method that makes it pretty quick and easy. I dump the contents into a 5 gallon bucket, I drilled a hole through a lid and use a paint mixer poked up through the lid and into my drill. No splashing and the missing is done in a minute. Then I strain it through a 53 micron filter before pouring the mixture into 6 gallon containers hooked up to my dosing pumps.

This is what was left after filtering the magnesium. There is a fair amount of brown gunk I keep out of my tank this way. I've used the recipe without filtering with no harmful effects, but I feel better knowing I'm keeping whatever this is out.

I temporarily mounted the Maxpect Gyre 150 to the left side of the tank and let it run most of the day. It stirred up a ton of stuff my two WP60's and one WP40 let settle. This one skinny powerhead beats the other three combined. I wish I had it when I designed my rock wall. I would have saved a lot of space hiding the other powerheads. The gyre only stirred up the sand too much if I pointed it down. Leaving it pointed all the way across the tank, either horizontally or vertically, it works great on full power for my sand. After a few hours of continuous flow, the detritus has gone through the overflow and into the filter socks.

 

[Monkeytank]

Somebody split last night. I'm loving the colors of these guys.

Check out the 6 inch fungia. It's not even a heliofungia, but it likes to hang it all out.

An then there are the jawfish. They are setting up homes close enough to each other, maybe they will become a mated pair.
[video=youtube;AamBtkhTJ9I]

 

[Monkeytank]

O broken big screen TV, is there anything you can't do....besides work as a TV? I took the middle plastic screen part out of the big screen TV I took the fresnel lens from to make the solar death ray, and I cut it down to use as my aquarium backdrop. I velcroed it in place so I can can easily remove it for viewing from the back. I love how it turned out. It kind of gives an illusion of depth where the water darkens going off into the distance. It's diffuse, so it doesn't look like it's just stuck to the back of the tank.

This is going to change my picture taking. These are iPhone shots. No more views of the hot water heater in the background!!

From the back. Just stuck right on there.

An overview from the front. The white thing as a reflection is my computer, when I cover the top of the tank and hide the lights, I think I'll get rid of most of the reflection.

A tighter shot using one of the orange plastic filters. No Water heater baby!

A view of the right side of the rock wall, with no filter, just overpowering the iPhone with UV and blue.

With the orange filter.

I have some ideas for a couple of tweaks to increase the realism of depth. I am really happy with the way this is looking so far.

 

[Monkeytank]

I changed things around and cleaned up this area of the fish room. I got an Emperor Aquatics 80 watt UV Sterilizer and it's huge.

Moving some stuff around and making a zoa/paly garden.

 

[Monkeytank]

So this brings me to the wall failure and the rebuild. What does it look like when you follow several threads about how to build a rock wall and use the materials they did? When your rock wall starts expanding and cracking the egg crate? It looks like this:

And this is what falls down from it. And yes, that's a baby diaseris plate coral that fell down through a crack that formed in the wall.

 

[Monkeytank]

Here are some shots of some of my tank inhabitants. One is my male banggai brooding. Unfortunately I had to be out of town during the release so I couldn't catch and try to raise them. The other picture is my acan rock next to my Acanthastrea echinata rock. I'm going with sections of some things clumped together. Some other shots included.

 

[Monkeytank]

Some more updates. I added this shallow reef and plumbed it in with the 350 tank and 180 gal sump.

 

[MoKan Reefer]

Looks great so far. Honestly mind blown that noone else has commented to this point! Definitely interested in seeing how the tough stuff and your diy structures hold up over the years. I've known tons to use it with freshwater but not many if any with saltwater. Not sure if you stated (too busy looking at pics lol) but what lighting are you using on the main display, frag area of your sump, and frag tank you added. Colors look great

 

[Dystinction]

Wow...beast of a tank and it looks fantastic!
Some pretty cool ingenuity and creativeness going on here.

.....just don't tell me where you're at, or I'll be by for frags!

 

[Monkeytank]

Looks great so far. Honestly mind blown that noone else has commented to this point! Definitely interested in seeing how the tough stuff and your diy structures hold up over the years. I've known tons to use it with freshwater but not many if any with saltwater. Not sure if you stated (too busy looking at pics lol) but what lighting are you using on the main display, frag area of your sump, and frag tank you added. Colors look great

I'm using Reefbreeder Photon V2 over my display. The shallow reef is using older Reefbreeder Photons. In the frag area of the sump I was using a Maxspect Razor, but I have removed that section of the sump and have all my frags in the smaller tank and on a rack in my display. I really need to to update this thread with the changes.

 

[Monkeytank]

All of the crumbling wall was removed, and I put in some DIY shelves I made similarly, but using just the foam, egg crate, PVC filled with sand for weight, and the same epoxy coating with sand on it. They seem to be doing very well.