OINK! I'm a Pig. 200g Reef Savvy, Bashsea, Royal Exclusiv -Direct sunlight- In wall w/ IKEA fishroom basement sump build

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drtechno

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Nice setup and documentation of the build. I have a Reef Savvy 125 that I ordered in 2015 and it is still not running. Well, it was for several months before a hurricane left us without power for 21 days. Good call on the Generac before even starting your build. I have a generator, but they don't do much good when you have to evacuate the area for several weeks.

Are those Adaptive Reef control boards?

I hope Felix can get the tank built for you soon. He is a pleasure to work with and when you get the tank you will see that it was worth the wait. Looking forward to following your build.
Oh man :( ya evacuation is no good.
Yes even though we are very close to Boston, with good infrastructure, our town is “Tree City USA” certified, whatever that means. That translates into “power outage USA” every time it snows heavily, as all the dead limbs come off of the trees and take out power lines. We’ve had power out for a week before. Pretty crazy when you realize we are essentially a suburb. Anyways, yes I definitely needed the generac before I started. I’ve also been on vacation before and lost power at home, and had my old tank crash/flood >:(
Yes, those are adaptive reef boards. Well, one of them is “Marine Depot” branded because they were out of stock on the other sites but are literally the same thing.
 
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drtechno

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So not much to update on since the holidays were somehow busy, and our weekends right now are chewed up. Still no ETA on the tank, but that’s ok. The cycle tubs and rock has been going since November and I’ve been starting to “feed” them some fish food several times a week. So far so good. Also dosing with Microbacter7 for now good reason. Maybe to add some microbial diversity?
In any case, I’ve started hooking up the tubing for the DOS pumps. And found some orange RO tubing. So I swapped over all the yellow lines to orange. The rest, blue for ROFI water and black for saltwater remain the same. I’m weighing down the RO tubing in the 2 part solution by threading it through colored PVC drilled at 1/4”. I think its enough to keep it weighed dkwn
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Finally, I built a little chimney drain thing because my RO container is about 50” tall and I don’t want a gravity siphon to form. I decided against valves just in case they fail, and this should look fine anyway. I will drain the fresh salt water into this lower than the RODI ATO. In this way the ATO should continuously wash off the salt water tubing and prevent any crystals from forming. I hope.


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The next thing on the docket is to fix the filter roller so that it can fit into the space. However, grainger keeps shipping the wrong size tubing so I have to wait for the correct shipment.
I also plan on running some cable raceways to organize things a little. But just have to decide on black or white. I’m thinking black since I like the black accents in the room?

see you all for now!
 
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drtechno

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While I wait for Grainger's delivery of the silicone tubing so I can finish mounting the filter roller in the sump, I have been giving some thought to the light mount. I want to be able to mount the radions and kessils either in a single row, or in two separate rows (if I find a single row not to provide enough coverage). Also, I would like to be able to adjust the height of the light mount, to provide for flexibility. Finally, I would like to be able to move it out of the way for scraping of the tank.

The area I have to work with looks like this:
This is a shot from the closet/backside of the tank. There is a lot of headroom for the mount.
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I initially thought I would just hang the lights from the ceiling with aircraft cable, but then if I needed to move them out of the way, I would have to have some pulley system. Did that before and it was a bit hoe-ky. Also, the lights can sway around and getting exact spacing and symmetry is difficult. This could be solved by making an entire mount out of 80/20 aluminum and then hanging that... but then you need a pulley system to get it out of the way.

So I discussed with my wife and we came up with another solution that I think will work well (?). We are going to make the light mount out of 80/20, with three rows (cnetered and 2 off center) so we can choose to mount either one or two rows of lights. Then, this entire light mount will be hinged on the wall, off of another 80/20 aluminum frame, so that we can swing it up and out of the way for tank maintenance. This way the power cord length will always be the same and can be lashed to the mount.

The wall bracket will be tall enough that the entire light frame/hinge assembly can be loosened and moved up or down to raise or lower the height of the lights (frame).

I think this will be an awesome solution for the space :) I am going to figure out what I need for this for parts and order everything up.

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Hey all! It’s been a while since there has been an update. I’m mostly finished with the major stuff in the fish room, and am waiting for the tank at this stage. Still affected by Covid delays apparently :(

In any case, I’m super stoked right now as we fit the filter roller into the sump finally!! We jury rigged the thing within an inch of its life.. and if my wife had fatter hands it also wouldn’t have worked as we needed to attach the screws while the thing was in place. In any case, a MAJOR headache has been averted.
Some pics attached.

I’ve also cleaned up some wiring with conduits and attached orange tubing onto the DOS pumps.

I’ll have fully updated pics once we clean up the construction trash from the fish room.

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drtechno

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Last thing. A picture of the ATO and AWC “periscope” so that it doesn’t create a gravity siphon from the storage containers.
The fresh water is deposited on top of the salt water line to wash off any salt deposits that may form on the salt water change line.
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Mjl714

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Last thing. A picture of the ATO and AWC “periscope” so that it doesn’t create a gravity siphon from the storage containers.
The fresh water is deposited on top of the salt water line to wash off any salt deposits that may form on the salt water change line.
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I don’t get how the AWC periscope will help stop a gravity siphon, the water lines appear on a downward slope into sump, couldn’t a gravity siphon still start? I like the freshwater line on top of saltwater line to rinse off salt.
 
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drtechno

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I don’t get how the AWC periscope will help stop a gravity siphon, the water lines appear on a downward slope into sump, couldn’t a gravity siphon still start? I like the freshwater line on top of saltwater line to rinse off salt.
So apparently the rule is that the outlet of the top off line should be higher than the water level in the source container. I am using relatively narrow and tall water storage containers so the maximum water level in them is approximately 48” (im guessing here, but it’s something like that). The top of the sump was approximately 6” lower than this point. So if I wanted to be 100% sure I wouldn’t gravity siphon, I would need to have the water outlet 6” above the sump. There are several ways of doing this but the simplest and most fail safe way is to dump the ATO water into a piece of PVC above the level of the source water.
That’s why I went with the “periscope” approach.

:)

Hope that helps explain it. I think my understanding is correct
 
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Some more slow progress. Assembled the light rack that I planned out of 80/20 aluminum. So I made it in two parts. There’s the wall mount and the light mount. The wall mount allows me to move the light rack up and down, and adjust the height, just by loosening 3 screws. The light mount is attached to the wall mount using 90 degree pivot arms that stop at the 90 degree position. The pivot arms allow me to swing the lights up and out of the way to perform tank maintenance.
In any case, this still has to be cleaned up a bit and it’s not exactly square :/

I also have to figure out how to attach the radions to the aluminum rails, but that all should be not as hard.

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Very nice build so far!
 
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Mini update. Apparently there has been a glass shortage? Whatever the cause, the tank is still delayed :/
In the meantime, I bought some Oceans Direct live sand and put that into the cycling tubs (which have been going ?6 months now).. hoping to add more bacterial diversity before the tank comes.
That, and my Radions are still growing their tomatoes.
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Still “patiently” waiting. Will get a new update in a week or two, but the stories you find googling “glass shortage” make me depressed.

I have the 1/4” neoprene (Grainger supply, single sheet, 40 durometer density) down and the tomatoes repotted.
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