80G Cube of Doom

[Onebaldman]

I used to do mechanical design, so I decided to do a basic model of my stand so that I wouldn't waste wood:



I decided to make the stand 4 inches taller than the last stand to allow for a better viewing height. I also wanted it to look like a piece of furniture when someone saw it. I ran all of this past my wife for approval. She said she liked that idea better than what I had.

 

[4sided cube]

Looks good. Starting over can be a positive.

 

[Onebaldman]

Since you can only edit posts during a 30 minute window. I forgot to show some of the teardown:

My little frag helping me tear the tank down:


After the tank was removed and we were about to take down the stand:


The fish and coral in their temporary homes:

 

[Onebaldman]

Getting an idea of what the tank would look like with one side cutout:


New floor in the area (You can make out the water storage containers in the background):

 

[Onebaldman]

With the floor in place, I could start building the rest of the stand:

 

[Onebaldman]

With the basic idea in place, I started to trim out the front of the cabinet. In this area will be where my Apex (and all of it's stuff), dosing pump and DJ switch will be. I plan on it to be like a drawer that can pull out to get to any cables.

 

[Onebaldman]

On the sump side, I painted the inside with an exterior paint and increased the hole size for wires and plumbing:

 

[Onebaldman]

Getting an idea of what the sump will look like. I am upgrading my 20L to a 40b. My brother tore his tank down a while back so I recycled it. The overflow on the left side will be an emergency drain and the return on the right will be where my tank drains into:

 

[Onebaldman]

It's always nice to have various diamond hole cutters:

 

[Onebaldman]

Now we are caught up to yesterday. I was able to place the tank back on the stand for the first time to check things out.


Since things were looking good, I then started a water test on the first chamber of the sump. I went with a dual filter sock setup:


The hole in the right will be an exhaust port. The those are 1/8" slits cut into the post to allow for the air to go out without looking too bad on the outside.

 

[Onebaldman]

Picture of the sump:


As mentioned before, the water will come into the right side through the old return into the two filter socks, that will feed the protein skimmer and then fall over into the fuge. The fuge has a drain in the middle, about 2" above the bottom. This will be where I pull water from for my water change. From there the water goes through the bubble trap and to the return pump. I set this up so that no pane was taller than the emergency drain. That way if there is every a problem, the drain WILL drain the water off.

Lighting the sump area is a LED bar from Ikea:


It will be wired into door switches so that it will come on when I open the sump doors and turn off when I close them.

 

[Onebaldman]

Cable management to and from the Radions/Vortechs is handle by a hole I drilled behind the post:

 

[gcrawford]

Following along to see how this goes...looks like a work in progress with much promise!

 

[Onebaldman]

Today was the day for buying fittings for the plumbing. Even though my FIL is a plumber, I had to go to Lowe's to pick up a lot of my odd fittings. $70 later, I had various fittings and valves:

Plumbed in drain from the tank to the sump. The top solenoid is my ATO and the capped, bottom, one will be for the drain on my seahorse tank that will be plumbed into this system.


First active water test through the chambers:
[video=youtube;a98H2HChBcI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a98H2HChBcI&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[akitareefer]

lookin good, cant wait to see it up and running again

 

[Onebaldman]

lookin good, cant wait to see it up and running again

Thanks, the teardown has really helped me rethink the way my tank should be done (mechanically). First time I over engineered the tank, now I am over engineering the mechanics Eventually I will go through enough revs that neither is over engineered.

 

[Onebaldman]

Today I wound up plumbing in the return to the tank. I mocked it up several times because I knew I wanted at least two T's on the return for different reactors (I only run a carbon reactor so the other is for the future). If you actually look at the picture, you will see two taps on top and one tap on bottom. The one on the bottom will feed the seahorse tank beside my desk.



I am also doing something different by adding in a normally closed valve. I know this over complicates the return, but I wanted water to not back feed into the sump from the tank. On the previous version of the tank, I did the traditional hole in the return to break the siphon when the return pump turned off.

Things are coming along. I ran out of water in my 30 gallon reserve tank, so I'm not completely fully in the display tank. When I wake up in the morning, I will turn the water back on and allow it to finally fill the display tank to capacity and start fully cycling water through the sump.

 

[Onebaldman]

After filling up the tank today, I stirred up the new sand to get the finer particles out of it and I figured it would be a good way to test out the dual filter socks. How I installed the filter socks worked like I wanted them to. The plan was to allow for the water to run over the edge when the socks were clogged:



I'd say that worked rather well.

 

[Onebaldman]

The post keep coming, maybe someone will learn from all of this:

Day two of the tank running. I left it off last night because I had noticed the water was still filling up for some reason. Something had got into the ATO valve and wouldn’t let it shut all the way. Scares me now… Currently I have it T into the return to the sump, but I think I’m going to buy a Y and an adapter to thread it into it. That way there is no way something can possibly back wash into the valve.


Current salinity: 1.005

New bucket of salt was ordered this past weekend and will be here today. I <3 Amazon Prime.

Other goodies: 1/2" bulkhead for my water change setup that will top off the fuge and two magnetic switches for the future doors to turn the under cabinet lighting off (when I finish the doors).

 

[kevantheman35]

Looks like a great setup. I'm setting up a 60 cube as we speak. I'll be following along