Time to rock it... I drained the original tank into a bucket with an airstone and heater and put the livestock and corals (they're mostly glued to rubble rock, not the primary rock) in there. I removed all rock work and carefully scrubbed off the rampant algae. I placed the rock I cut flat for base rocks, moved the sand into the new tank, arranged the big rocks the way I wanted. I know typically people keep the rock work off the glass, particularly in the back, but I wanted to play around with that since it's similar to what I do with fw tank rock and wood work to build into the depth of the tank and create a visual depth effect as well. I moved rocks around several times after this.
Time to set up the sump... A few years ago, I cut glass and built a 3 gallon sump for a fw project. I ran it with a two chamber, one level sump setup for a couple years on a small cichlid tank. For this setup, I wanted to have one chamber with a steady level to keep the heater always submerged as well as to pile rubble rock and k1 media that would always be submerged to create a cryptic zone. I played around with the baffle placement on some wet tests. I thought it would be nice to have a slope back toward the crypt to both keep particulates more trapped in that area and gentle the fall of the water into the filter foam/refugium area; however, I quickly learned that is a terrible idea. The super gentle flow meant poor aeration and a protein scum surface (I ran the tests with old tank water to have it be the most realistic).
Out came the baffle after some serious scraping. Turns out I cut the baffle rather tight to fit, ended up having to use fishing line to cut thru the silicone. Reaffixed it and tested the flow. Sooo much better, I get turbulent flow and circulation thru out the fuge area. I am grateful it's still quiet in that area. I got this algae from a friend who said it was chaeto, but when I showed my fave lfs they said it's not chaeto, but couldn't identify specifically what strain it is. Some kind of seaweed. At any rate, it grows nicely under the cheapie blue white light I have stuffed in there on a 12 hour night timer. Who wants to help me identify the algae?
You can see in the above Pic the return pump chamber as well. The water flows from the crypt, over the tile baffle (to block light from the crypt), into the fuge, then down through the coarse filter foam and under into a 1/2 gap that's loosely filled with some ceramic media. I don't expect the ceramic media to enhance filtration, it's just there as a spacer so I don't accidentally push the foam to the bottom and impede flow. The gap underneath is key to ensuring even flow thru of the foam. The water then goes under the last baffle into the return pump chamber. In hindsight, I wish I had made the return chamber larger, but it was set up like this from the fw tank and not easy to cut the baffle out without breaking it. In the Pic below, you can see where I tried to do a dual return setup (a 210gph and an 80gph pump); however, it provided insufficient circulation in the tank itself. The flow thru the sump was great, almost bordering too swift. Sucks I wasn't able to implement the dual returns as I really liked the clean look and I spent a ton of time on hard line plumbing it with cpvc. Oh well.
OK, so that's the entire sump, I ended up not liking the straight down primary drain as it gurgled way too much and there was no room for a ball valve, so I redid it. I grabbed some pvc, heated it, and bent it with a mandrel and attached a ball valve. Now the slope into the sump is gentle and I have room to restrict the flow just enough to keep the bulkhead for the primary barely submerged. The emergency drain is the same diameter (1/2 pvc) as the primary. Both wede tested and can handle individually more than even the dual return could put out. The pill bottles with airline needle valves are my temporary dosing containers :D I'll show it better in a diff Pic, but I made a two part lid. In the gaps around the piping and lid, I cut some coarse filter foam to catch splash and evaporation and let it dribble back into the tank. It should mitigate salt creep a bit as well as prevent quite so much evaporation, while still allowing for air exchange.
Speaking of air exchange... Aeration is super important, but I don't have room for a skimmer, nor desire to run one, and I dislike air pump sounds, so I decided to use some Venturii principles. I like making in line venturi on return pumps or lines for fw tanks to provide aeration, but I don't want a ton of bubbles in this tank. Instead, I drilled a series of 1mm holes in the ball valve just after the restriction of the ball itself. The holes are angled at a ~45 degree angle inward toward the direction of flow of that makes sense. This draws in air and injects it into the water flow path, creating a ton of bubbles in the sump. It worked out very well, without all the splashing sound of water crashing down a drain line. I don't have a picture of that stuff, but here's a Pic of the crypt area. I have a media bag stuffed with k1 media at the bottom of the crypt. Its great media for bacteria colonization and is commonly used in moving bed bio reactors (mbbr) in aquaculture farms. It should provide a great place in a low flow environment for filter feeders and sponges to colonize. I topped it with a bunch of live rock rubble from the tank. I sprinkled a judicious amount of silica sand in there as well to hopefully help with sponge growth. No problems with diatoms thus far with it.
I guess I forgot to mention, the sump is houses directly behind the tank. There is no room under the tank as that's where my qt it.
Here's a Pic of the sump all buttoned up. I cut a two part tile lid. The finger hole in between the two pieces has an acrylic cap that recesses into it to locate it.
I don't have any good pictures of the return line setup as I changed it so many times. Basically, it's clear vinyl tubing that connects to a nylon barb, that is threaded into a cpvc fitting. The cpvc goes over the rim into a T so I have two return jet duck bills. One high, aimed at the surface, one low aimed at the front glass at a down angle to create movement on the sand bed. I have a circulation pump in the tank on the far left, but I'm still experimenting with placement. It's a 480gph circulation pump, which is ludicrous in a 10 gallon tank, so I opened it and put in a thin sheet of coarse filter foam like 1/8 in thick). It reduces flow in and disrupts flow out quite nicely.
At any rate, here is my ten gallon reef. I have named this tank Sandia Pagoda. We have 10 or so tanks in our house, so they must be named. Sandia because this is my proving ground tank before I finish my 45 gallon build. Pagoda inspired by the pagoda cup corals I bought, which made me think, hmm pagoda reminds me of Buddhist templates /pagodas and peace. This tank gives me some serious peace and happiness.
While it's been fun, and I'm still tinkering, the journey has met with sadness. My blue neon goby perished somewhere along the way in the transition from old tank to bucket to new tank. I really loved that little fish. I waited for months to get one as my lfs doesn't usually carry them. I also seem to have lost a couple hermit crabs which sucks, I really like them also. My nassarius snail and a ton of brittle stars and bristle worms made it, so that's good.
The brittle stars quickly colonized the rock on the overflow box. I love watching their little arms wave about when I feed the tank.
I got a pair of black ice snowflake clowns from my lfs and they made it thru quarantine. I'm still sketch on naming them until I've had them a solid month. They're both active and have very vibrant colors. That's my wife's candy cane coral. It's been doing quite well.
Here are some coral highlights...
