I hope I remember how to do this

[cmaxwell39]

Next I got a piece of acrylic cut and drilled holes in it for my filter socks and siliconed that in place in my sump. The only hole saw any local place had was a 4", which while it works, it leaves a little more play around the filter sock than I was hoping. I think it will work, but if it doesn't, I have a plan on how to fix it.

Next I cut a piece of plywood and mounted it behind the sump in order to have a place to mount my electrical/controller stuff to. This makes it super convenient to have everything plugged in right there. Everything will be on the GHL controller, but it is still nice to have it all convenient for unplugging stuff for maintenance/ect.

I also pulled a wire from the breaker box over to this location, but didn't get a pic of that.

I also finally got a pump to be able to handle the head pressure of coming out of the RO degassing station, through the DI canister and then through the RO tubing to the fish room. The original plan was to use a maxijet, but because of all the restriction it would not push water all the way to the fish room. So I tried a tunze osmolator pump. This would push water all the way there, but it was slow. It only was able to empty the 44 gal brute container about halfway in 7 hours. At this point I was still not happy with that, but it did get a little bit of water in the sump.

 

[cmaxwell39]

On Thursday, I cleaned my lifereef skimmer back up. It needed a good vinegar bath and scrub down. Not quite like brand new, but not bad. This is a 36" with the upgraded miazzi injector and the large collection cup.

While I was cleaning I went ahead and cleaned a bunch of other pumps up. I also pulled the mag 9.5 off the mixing station and cleaned that up as well as tried to use some silicone grease to help seal up the gasket between the body and the volute. It seems to be working.

On Friday, I had a major breakthrough on my RO degassing pump conundrum. I had run all of my RO tubing up to the ceiling of the basement to keep them out of the way and mostly hidden. This put the tubing height at a solid 8 foot, and with the brute container that I am degassing in sitting on the floor, it was just too much head. So, I realized that if I reran my tubing at a much lower height it would reduce the head the pump was pushing against and should allow for much better flow.

Success. I was able to pretty much empty the 44 gal brute container into the sump in a bit over 3 hours. This is fast enough for how I am going to run the system. I do have plans to completely automate this, but that will be down the road a ways. I still have a couple of things to dial in before I give a full review/description of my degassing station.

 

[jhoop]

Really nice work ! Fun to follow !

 

[cmaxwell39]

Thanks. Welcome aboard.

 

[cmaxwell39]

So, when I was filling the sump I noticed that the baffle between the fuge and skimmer sections was leaking. I was going to just leave it, but yesterday morning I decided to drain those two sections of the sump and redo the seam on that baffle. Dried it out during the day yesterday and redid the seam last night. Filled it back up this afternoon.

Holding water and no water getting into the skimmer section. Also got some temporary power hooked up above the sump so that I can use the sump to cure some more rock.

After 2 hours the skimmer section still remained dry, so filled up the sump, also got to try out the water change station as this is where I had stored the water that I had drained out of the sump yesterday morning. It should work very well to move water during water changes.

Got it full and fired up the mag 12 that I have plumbed in temporarily for flow through the sump.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Added salt to the water last night. My plan is to put the rock that is in the coral QT as well as the new rock I got into the sump to finish curing so that I can get the coral QT the rest of the way set up.

Checked everything this morning before leaving for work and was reminded once again why I wanted to go back to my Lifereef skimmer. This is less than 12 hours in new saltwater with no bipolar and I still get a foam head like this. Freshly cleaned skimmer as well.

 

[cmaxwell39]

As promised, here is the details on my RO degassing station.

As mentioned, after setting up the RO system I burned through a mixed bed DI canister in ~100 gallons of water. Since this was not going to work for me I started doing research on how to reduce DI resin consumption and came across a number of threads about CO2 in well water and how that could cause rapid DI resin completion. I saw a number of designs for degassing towers, but didn't really like that idea because my RO setup is not in the same room as the fish room, and because I will be storing water in at least two different places. Since most of these towers require you to gravity feed the RO water through the DI resin, I wasn't sure how I would be able to divert it to different storage barrels.

The other design that I saw was to collect water in a tub, barrel, or vat and run an air pump to drive the CO2 out. Most have suggested 48 hrs of aeration to be adequate. I went with a 44 gal brute trash can as my RO degassing container. I bought an air pump and a couple of air stone plates and added a float valve to the brute. This is just for safety so that it doesn't overflow while I am not watching it.

Then it was a matter of finding the right pump to push the water through the DI resin to the next room which is the fish room. For now this is to fill the RO storage barrel, but it was also used to fill the sump. Eventually there will be a separate ATO storage barrel that will be 40-50 gallons. I found that a Tunze Osmolator pump powered off an old netgear router power supply (12V 2.5amp rated) worked quite well for this purpose as long as I didn't run the RO tubing all the way to the ceiling.

So, the big question. Does it help with DI resin depletion. Well, I have around 120+/- gallons through the DI cartridge at this point, and it looks like this.

I have plans to add float switches and a couple of solenoids to automate this whole process eventually, but for now, I will manually plug the pump in and turn valves on and off to direct good clean RO water where I want it.

 

[cmaxwell39]

So I have started looking at what is going to be necessary to plumb the tank to the basement. Started by finding where the center of the tank will sit and cut a hole in the wall to bring pipes up through.

Next I had to pull some drywall down in the ceiling of the mechanical room in the basement.

Finally drilled a pilot hole to try to get bearings on everything above and below

This is going to be interesting. The other side of the wall that the tank is going to be sitting on is the fireplace in the living room. This has been reinforced and built up for all the brick work below as you can see in the pictures. The problem is going to be getting holes drilled that can not hit the fireplace and still leave the support framing for it completely in tact below. The 1" lines shouldn't be a problem, but I was planning on running a 1.5" line for the return and then splitting it up close the tank. This line is going to hard to get in I think. Tomorrow I am going to buy a couple of hole saws and possibly get some 1" and 1.5" spa flex to reduce/eliminate fittings in this tight area.

Also, I had been planning on running a bean animal drain setup off of the EMS overflow box, but I am seriously considering running a herbie to eliminate having to get 4 pipes into this extremely tight location.

Would love some input on this.

 

[cmaxwell39]

A little progress over the last couple of days.

First I went and got some spa flex and also went to the LFS and picked up my return pump and a heater. I have just had a cheap heater in the sump, and as I start to run plumbing I wanted the return pump to figure everything out off of.

Next I started drilling the holes for the return and drain lines. The first hole did not go too well.

In case you are wondering, that is a 2x4 drilling through the 1.5" dimension, a layer of 3/4" chip board, a layer of 3/4" plywood, a 2x6 drilling through the 5.5" dimension, and finally another layer of 3/4" plywood. That was not fun.

Thankfully, the next hole went a little better. I found a spot where there was no 2x6 in between the 2 layers of 3/4" plywood. That is about as far as I got yesterday as all batteries for the drill were dead.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Today I got the final hole drilled and started getting ready to run the spa flex. First I wanted to be able to anchor the spa flex just behind the finished wall and I also needed to have a way to attach some drywall over the hole that I cut in the wall, so I screwed in some 2x4s to the top and bottom of the opening.

Next I ran the spa flex lines down through the holes and anchored them in the wall.

From the mechanical room in the basement:

As you can see, because of the difficulty drilling the holes I decided to go with a herbie setup on the overflow instead of a bean animal. One less hole to drill. Should be fine with that.

Next I ran a wire for a dedicated circuit behind the tank. There will only be lights and powerheads plugged into this circuit and the outlets on each side of where the tank will be would have handled this fine, but wanted to separate it and will add a GFCI outlet to it as well.

Finally, cut a drywall patch to put the wall back together.

And put the duct work back together in the mechanical room

That is where I am leaving the plumbing for today. I will work on running everything over to the sump over the course of the week. Tomorrow is 9 weeks since ordering the tank, and I don't have any word on when it will be ready yet. I was told 8-9 weeks when I ordered, so hopefully it will show soon.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Well still no word on when the tank will ship, but I did get in a valuable piece of reefing equipment today.

We have only lost power here once or twice since we moved in back in June, but one time was ~11 hrs. All it would take is one time. And since I was buying one anyway, may as well make sure it can power a good portion of the house as well.

 

[dcmartinpc]

I suppose it’s time for me to start following your thread instead of just getting updates via text! Everything is looking amazing as expected! Hopefully I can get over soon to help. Excited to see what this becomes.

Don

 

[Malifry97]

Great Build! I’m Following!

 

[cmaxwell39]

I suppose it’s time for me to start following your thread instead of just getting updates via text! Everything is looking amazing as expected! Hopefully I can get over soon to help. Excited to see what this becomes.

Don

About time you stopped by. I expect harassment from you here often, and don't worry I will give it back. Thanks for keeping track of my skimmer and other equipment while I was shut down. Eventually I need to get that little 30 gal tank back from you, but it will be quite a while until I need it.

Glad to have you aboard in all seriousness. You do need to get down here.

Great Build! I’m Following!

Thanks. Glad to have you along for the ride

 

[cmaxwell39]

Got the drain plumbing connected from the lines that were stubbed through the floor over to the sump today.

I still need to get a gate valve for the full siphon line, but it willl simply be a matter of gluing it in once I get one.

Here are the connections in the mechanical room.

As you can see in the pictures I had to repair some of the drywall that got torn down to run the plumbing up into the wall before running the plumbing across.

Also, I still have to run the return line, but that should go relatively quickly. Hopefully will be able to get that done tomorrow.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Sorry it has been so long since I posted, but I did get a little bit done this week.

First of all, the small accomplishments.

The return line is stubbed into the fishroom.

Also, after much debate I finally decided which salt mix I will be going with on this system. So far I have just bought cheap salt to get everything curing, but it was time to make the decision on which salt mix would be the foundation of this reef tank. And the winner is....

Tropic Marin Pro Reef. Love the parameters it mixes up at, it is available at the LFS that I will be using and plenty of places on line, it mixes clean and has been out a long time.

Finally, the big project for the week was to get my ATO for the sump and the QT's set up. Here is a link to a full write up on it, but a few teaser pics for the thread are appropriate.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Over the weekend I tested nitrate and phosphate levels in the sump where all my rock is curing. I was actually really surprised by the results.

I started out the curing process by throwing a large raw shrimp in the sump and letting that completely break down. After that had completely disappeared I started throwing a cube of PE mysis in the filter socks every night to keep everything fed and make sure that it was ready for fish once the tank arrives.

I have not done any water changes on the sump up to the point that I tested, and the skimmer has not been pulling hardly anything. I have not even pulled the filter socks to clean them, Really just using them to keep the detritus out of the rock. Test results are as follows.

Salinity-- 34.7 PPT
Ammonia-- 0 (Salifert)
Nitrite-- 0 (Salifert)
Nitrate-- 2.5 (Salifert)
Phosphate-- .03 (Hannah)

I was really surprised that the NO3 and PO4 were not much higher. Did a 10 gallon water change on the sump and will keep feeding the sump to make sure that the rock is ready, but I am very encouraged by these results.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Well I am still waiting on the tank. I did get a few things done on the fish room this weekend though. First of all, I ran the plumbing and got a utility sink put in so that I don't have to carry skimmer cups, buckets, etc. upstairs to clean them out.

Area planned for the sink.

Roughing in the plumbing..

All the plumbing in the house is copper, so I decided that I didn't want to run Pex for the sink. I know how to sweat copper, and it was a fairly short run, so decided to run it all in copper. I also decided to add a hose connection in case I ever need to hook up a hose for the extra pressure to wash something out, or to fill buckets faster for any reason.

Sink set in place and drain line hooked up. The drain from the sink ties into the same drain that I ran over to the sump pit in the mechanical room that ties into the sump for water changes.

Finally, supply lines tied into the house plumbing.

It will be really nice to have a sink in the fish room. I would recommend one if possible.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Talked with the folks at Custom Aquariums today. The tank and stand are done and will ship out tomorrow. Should be to me Friday or Monday. It is getting real now.

 

[cmaxwell39]

I did get a little more done in the fish room as well. Got a shelf/equipment space built at the end of the sump out to the utility sink, and also got a shelf built under the QT tanks to increase storage in the room.

Pretty happy with the storage in the space for now. I will probably add some upper cabinets or extra shelf space later, but for now I am happy with it.