29 gallon sumped build

[Slim64684]

Not the prettiest but new ato container since my 5 gallon bucket wont fit anymore. It's only temporarily hooked up just so it will continue to run while I work on getting the 29 in.

I also figured out my sump will hold roughly 10 gallons of water when its running. That leaves me 5+ gallons of room for a power outage. In my tests I only back flowed roughly 2.5 gallons. Should be good to go.

 

[Slim64684]

Small scale problems. How to mix 32 gallons of new saltwater when you only have a 5 gallon bucket to mix in.

Multiple 4 gallon mixes.

Use old water jugs to store after you fill the sump up.

Old ato container and small transfer pump almost doubled mixing capacity, but will only comfortably hold 3 gallons of water and takes a whole lot longer to completely mix. So I mix 3 gallons with just over half the salt needed then when white bucket is mixed, pump that water into jugs, dump green bucket into white bucket, add 1 gallon of water and remaining salt to finish mixing.

I should have 32 gallons mixed and ready by the time I go to bed tonight. So 1 step closer to the move.

 

[Slim64684]

Big day today. Moving day. At 11:30 am CST I took the last full tank shot of the 20 long reef.

At 3:20 pm CST I present the first full tank shot of the new sumped 29 reef.

Sorry its s blue. Gonna have to work on my picture taking abilities.

I documented some of the progress of changing everything out. I'll fill in the steps once I get my mess cleaned up and get it all tidied up.

 

[Slim64684]

I started off by mixing all of the water I was going to need,estimating 32 gallon capacity of the running system.

Next I picked up a bag of new sand on Wednesday.

And we dont want any of the fines and crap to make the tank cloudy only to be filtered out later so rinsing was in order.
First fill:

An hour of rinsing later, no idea how many it actually was:

Crystal clear.

 

[Slim64684]

Once I took my last fts of the 20, I started siphoning water into buckets to put my rocks, coral, fish, and inverts into. Sorry no pics. I was in go mode. Once everything was safely out of the tank I drained the rest of the water out until I only had about 1 or 2 inches left in the tank, and moved the tank out of the way.

In came the 29. I did have to shift my stand away from the wall to accommodate the plumbing or I needed to relevel everything. Once all the plumbing was done, I mounted my lights, added the sand, and started filling double checking level at about 2/3 full.

Pretty clear.

 

[Slim64684]

Next the rocks, coral, fish, and inverts went in and I finished filling.

I made 32 gallons of new water for this, but ended up being 1 gallon short so I did have to add 1 gallon of old water.

All that's left is to fine tune my drain, mount the power bricks for the lights and find the rest of my snails in the 20. (That's why I left some water in it.) Gonna toss a little food in and let them come out of the sand.

 

[Slim64684]

Small update. Finally got my ato set back up after 2 days of manual top offs, more than enough for me. Also my poker star Monti did not like the change. Started to bleach and stn after the tank change.

It is currently sitting in the sand to hopefully recover.

Other than that everything else is looking pretty good.

Did a small aqua scape change today also. Added a little more height to the right structure and a little more top to the left side.

I know one rock is bright white it was extra from when I set up the 20.

Did a full set of tests today and realized my salinity was a little high at 36 ppt. Drained a gallon of water out of the tank and added distilled back in until I hit 35 ppt.

PO4: .03
NO3: .5 (gonna feed some reef roids then test again in am to see if I need to dos3).
Ca, mg, alk all high thanks to reef crystals.

 

[Slim64684]

Now for the photo dump.

And if anyone cares or is interested

My lights at full intensity. 8 hours with a 30 min ramp up/down the 5% blues for 3 hours after ramp down finishes.

 

[Slim64684]

Got some goodies in the mail today.

50 pounds of salt. Had my wife bring it inside as I was at work. Didn't tell her it was almost 60 pounds shipping weight.

And my buying water days are over.

6 stage ro/di cuz chloramines. But only 150 tds tap water.

My temporary setup just to test.
150 tap
10 tds after ro
0 tds after di.
Approx 20 mins to make 2 gallons of 0 tds rodi water. I'll take it.

 

[btmedic04]

woohoo! congrats on the upgrade. You are going to find that sumps are amazing!

 

[Slim64684]

woohoo! congrats on the upgrade. You are going to find that sumps are amazing!

Thanks so far its working out good. Hopefully it continues to.

 

[joshyross70]

Slowly getting stuff done. Tank cleaned and a 24 hour leak test completed, now just draining it back out.

And got some goodies in to start getting everything plumbed.

First attempt at drilling a tank. Fingers crossed.

What size return did you go with? Where did you get that drill bit for the return and bulkhead?

 

[Slim64684]

What size return did you go with? Where did you get that drill bit for the return and bulkhead?

I went with a 1/2 inch return. The drill bit for the return came from brs, a 30mm bit. I got the bulkhead from marinedepot

 

[Slim64684]

Updates cuz I'm slow and I got called into work last weekend, and I helped my brother in law build a deck Friday night and all day Saturday. But I finally found a place to mount my rodi filter.

Cleaned the shelf off first though.

Next I had to lower it a little bit and found a scrap piece of 3/4" plywood to mount to.

12- 2.5" screws into studs hold the plywood onto the wall. The filters are each mounted with 2 joist hanger screws, I'm a fan of overkill.

I still need to cut a 3/4" piece of plywood to support my brute storage container rodi bin.

Now for the fails. The plan for the outlet of the storage bin was to use a 1" uniseal i had laying around. Looked up the size hole i needed, drilled it, uniseal in, pvc in, leak test, fail. Now plan b.

Pull the pvc and uniseal out, break out te silicone, run a nice thick bead under where the uniseal will sit and put it all back together and wait.

I did install a t with a shutoff between the ro membrane and the di so i can check for tds, also I plan to put a t with dual shutoffs on the waste line so instead of dumping it all down the drain i can use it for my planted tank or watering flowers.