Building Clown's Forever Home: 29G Cube

[Caswal]

Hi all,

I have had a reef tank since about August '17. A Boyu TL-450H AIO 65L/16G system to get my feet wet. CFLs in the lid, 4 chambers, with a simple protein skimmer, heater, return pump.

The stand was poop, so built it a cabinet, and over time I have removed the CFL hood and replaced it with an AI Prime HD. Added a DIY Arduino controlled ATO (basically has Tunze Osmalotor features). A Peltier & Fan cooler system, LED lights for a tiny fuge in the inflow chamber. With various 3D printed parts to make them fit. Some Pictures:

Excuse the mess,

ATO Stuff:



Tiny Fuge Light:



The tank is stocked with 2 Ocellaris Clowns, 2 Dwarf Hermits, 1 Astraea Snail, 1 Small Blonde BTA.

Corals: Some Zoas, Frogspawn, Candy Cane. A lonely hitch hiking mushroom, and some encrusting anthelia like thing.

This will basically be the same stocking in the new tank, with a few more hermits and snails. I live in New Zealand, and you do not want to know how expensive livestock is here, or anything in the hobby. My other tank is a 90G/300L freshwater, but the cost of making that a reef is just too eye watering.

Volume being a strange creature, I realised I could squeeze in a 50cm/24" ish tank, and it basically not take up any more floorspace, but get almost double the water volume. Also add a sump to get more swim space back, and more water volume again.

So browsing trademe (New Zealand's ebay, autotrader, real estate, jobs market website). Someone was selling some old 50cm cube discuss breeder tanks, and a couple of other tanks. In all due to damage to one of them I got them for $90 NZD ($65 USD).

The damaged cube I would break down into the sump and overflow box. Reseal the tanks while I am at it. My spouse had a beast of an old computer desk from the CRT days to cannibalise into making a cabinet.

Into Fusion 360 I went to design up what I wanted:

I think I am just about there. The sump contains, a skimmer, media reactor, return pump, heater, a front ATO reservoir. Above it squeezing in my peltier tank cooler and dosing pumps and containers. My current tank just eats alk, so would be nice to get that dosing automatically.

My progress in the physical world so far.

DT Tank, with coast to coast overflow:

Cabinet with 2 coats of primer:

Sump tank glass cut (stand for a river tank creeping into shot).

Probably more reading than anyone can bear with reading. So I will fill in when I make some more progress. I am going to take my time with this to both spread the cost, and do it neat and nice.

 

[Chrisfish]

Welcome to R2R, we’re glad your here and looking forward to seeing more

 

[Jason mack]

Welcome to R2R , looks like you’ve got everything well planned out !!

 

[Caswal]

Welcome to R2R, we’re glad your here and looking forward to seeing more

Welcome to R2R , looks like you’ve got everything well planned out !!

Thanks. Still trying to work out sump layout. I want a skimmer, small media reactor, some fuge space, and an ATO resevoir inside the sump/stand space, or on the tank.

For the fuge, I had thought about extending the hang on back overflow to something like this:

With the drain pipes partitioned off. And some 3D printed adjusted feet widgets to support and overflow box on the half-wall behind it. The total system water volume would be about 160L(38G). With about 8L in the fuge. But I think it looks aesthetically ugly, and is a bit awkward in design.

So with some quiet tight rearrangement, this is what I am currently at:

With the fuge as the middle compartment. 155L total capacity, about 10L in the fuge.

 

[Caswal]

Ordered myself the return pump, a Jebao DCS-2000. LocLine return, throttle valve for the main drain. All of the baffle glass is now cut. Need to finish cutting and drilling the overflow glass. Then silicone and reseal everything. Let it cure and do some flow testing.

What do people think of my chances of getting away with not having a bubble trap?

 

[Caswal]

Slow but steady progress, mostly on Saturday.

DT with overflow box:

The sump, a slight change in design. I did all of the cutting of the 10mm plate glass last weekend. All recovered from the chipped other 50cm cube tank. I also cut up a 4ft shallow river tank (too shallow to be of use) to get glass for all of the baffles.

Saturday afternoon, do prep, slip and crack a chip the main partition for the ATO reservoir, with no spare. Putting me in a foul mood. I love New Zealand, but the whole country is like a small country town. In Wellington there are no glass shops open on the weekend, our 'Home Depot' equivalents do not have glass sheet. Not that I have ever seen in person in the stores, and the websites agreed with my observation.

So after having a consolidatory beer and thinking on it a bit more. Turning my lemons into lemonade, I dropped into Fusion and worked out, I could expand the chamber that will be the fuge into a bigger section, running the full width if the sump. Still giving me about 9L for the ATO.

The final sump, not happy with the silicone job, is a bit messy:

All set on the stand for test fitting:

Next thing on the cards, is getting some 4.5mm matt black acrylic laser cut for the back and to act as a comb for the overflow. As well as finishing up the pipe work. I cannot for the life of me, find a 3/4" to 1" PVC Gate valve in NZ. So probably will have to use a ball valve. The one I have has a removable handle. So I am very temped to design and print a geared handle to give some fine adjustment control to it.

 

[Caswal]

I can't decide whether I want to go with a comb or not. I think the no comb looks better, but obviously the comb is better to help stop the critters going over into the overflow. Tempted bu no comb, as I could always 3D print a comb section if needed. Opinions?

 

[Caswal]

Laser cut black acrylic done and installed. Cabinet finished painting. Plumbing done with custom 3D printed saddles to hold the pipe work:

Matt black acrylic backing, resealed the edges of the tank at the same time:

Front shot of the tank (see my ugly bald head). Testing in my bathroom I am taking a break from renovating, has a drain in the floor, so convenient if anything goes wrong:

Shot of the plumbing in the cabinet. The majority of the fittings are Anka pipe fittings. They are pretty cool, the blue collars have a tapered thread that bites into polythene pipe (also works with any hose) to seal it up, and can be happily popped apart. Right angles, couplers etc are all available. Pipe sizing from 1/2" to 2". This is all 3/4" fittings and pipe. All BSPT thread.

Rear Plumbing, in black flexi Vinyl:

Filled with water for leak testing:

Old tank, with inhabitants patiently waiting:

 

[Caswal]

Turning the pump off/feed mode, has proved my calculations are correct. The sump still has almost 2 inches of spare headroom.

I am a bit grumped at how loud the pump is though. Is a Jecod DCS-2000 and has a pretty audible whine to it. A bit disappointing. See if it wears in after a week of leak testing the setup.

 

[Caswal]

After a bit of experimentation that pump itself is not really that loud. My return chamber is just a bit too small, and the baffle is acting like a membrane for the pump noise. Like placing a music box on a table. There is not really any difference in loudness from about 5mm from the baffle to touching the baffle itself. Water is doing its thing of being incompressible and transferring the vibration similar to a solid.

If I put the pump into the larger equipment chamber, it is nice and quiet. As I move it closer to the return chamber baffle, to a distance similar to how it is placed in the return chamber, it is just as loud.

So I guess I am going to have to cut that baffle out, and move it by around 3/4"/2cm or so. The noise drops off exponentially to distance, which makes sense. As talking this over with m physicist friend, it should be dropping off at the 2nd power.

Interesting for those that complain about pump noise. The system is more complicated than it looks. And why you get such differing opinions on pump noise for the same pump.

 

[Caswal]

Wow almost a month from my last update. Have spent a lot of time helping a friend sort out his car project, rather than working on the tank.

On the forever home front, I got a RODI, as I was just buying distilled water in 10L containers for my 16G. But this just isn't cost effective going forwards to a 36G total system.

I cut out and moved the baffle to hopefully fix the noise issue. Have yet to refill the system and give it a test. I have moved it to where it is going to live and moved the current 16G across the room.

To try to alleviate the issue of not having a gate valve. I designed and 3D printed a gear reduction and handle to the ball valve to try and give myself a bit more control, here are the pictures:

I had hoped to do something stupidly techy. Using 2 flow meters on the master drain and the pump return, with then an Arduino controlling the ball valve automatically to guarantee a silent setup. Or something similar with some water level sensor in the overflow section. But the ball valve sticks too much for that to work. Maybe I will give it a go in the future if I do get my hands on a gate valve.

 

[Caswal]

Well slowly getting closer.

I could not find any plastic egg crate locally, so 3D Print some of my own:

 

[Caswal]

So I transferred everything across on Saturday. To adapt my ATO, I printed a couple of things:

Both pieces clip on the glass baffles/dividers:

The floss is just in there to filter out the dust from moving some sand across.

Rockwork and tank, with ATO controller not screwed to the back of the stand yet.

Now time to keep a close eye on all the parameters. But after a day everything seems to be doing well.