surfn's 50g cube tank

[I-K@ndY]

I like the plumbing :)

 

[surfn]

i did a water test tonight.....and all i got to say is SUCCESS!!!!! man, this thing couldn't of worked out much better! :D

theres only a couple of nit picky fixes i'll need to do sometime in the next couple of months, but as far as i'm concerned, this baby is ready to be a reef! :D:D:D

da'fuge! there is a perfect amount of water going back through the fuge from the return pump. its lit simply by one of those 24" T-5 lights from coralife, i think it cost like $30 or somethin'. i got it b/c the ballast on my 7g minibow burned out, so i needed something quickly and cheaply. works out perfectly! plus, i think i would rather go back to flourescent lighting in the fuge, as my minibow grows cheato so much better than in the fuge of my main tank. the fuge on my main tank is lit by that special screw in bulb everyone raved about over on RC.....all its done for me is grow alot of slime and macro algae.....chaeto doesnt do much under that light for me for some reason. i put a PC over it for a while and it flourished.....oh well.

its a good thing i remembered to put the light over it before i did the plumbing...so i could get the plumbing over top the light and into the slot for the fuge return flow.

 

[surfn]

as you can see, the water level is right at the top of the walls....lol it couldn't have got any closer!

water going through the bubble trap......it isn't perfect, as its kinda narrow so it sends the water through pretty fast, but most of the really big stuff is gone. most of the micro bubbles will be eliminated in the fuge section anyways.

 

[surfn]

having the piece of black acrylic seperating the fuge area from the sump was a great idea!!

this part is the only kind of annoyance...when that return water area is kinda low, that water pours over pretty hard and sounds like a water fall, pretty loud. if i fill the water level up to the teeth, its dead silent.

anyone got any suggestions to break up that flow? i might need to glue a piece of acrylic in like a stair case or something....any ideas?

here's another view of how far the water comes up in the sump area to the walls, i've had it running on a mag 3, dialed about 1/2 back using the ball valve for several hours, so i'm certain the water level is going to stay where its at. my guess is its around 150gph. my best hopes were to put a mag 3 dialed back 1/4, or a mag 5 on it...dialed down about 1/2 with the ball valve going to the fuge.

eventually i'll get the guy who built the sump for me, to cut some pieces of acrylic so i can raise these walls up to the height of the sump walls. it runs fine as is, but like i said, i'd like to put a tiny bit more flow through, so i need those walls to be a bit higher. if i put the mag 3 wide open, water will start to overflow those walls....so they need to be just a tad higher. ;)

 

[surfn]

here you can see that ball valve going to the fuge that is dialed back about 1/2.

looking straight into the fuge....i'm seriously thinking about putting my mantis in there so i dont have to mess with another tank (7g minibow w/ a bunch of majano anenomes basically)

here you can see the PFO parallel reflector....sorta....lol eventually i'm gonna stick in some T-5 actinics, but thats not a high priority at the moment.

everything up top looks great...i drilled the siphon break on the return pipe just perfectly so it breaks siphon when the pump is cut off. i probably only fill up 1-2gallons in the sump when the pump turns off.

i was worried at first about the noise coming from the overflow/drain pipe, as i've always had issues with them never being quite perfect. at first i put a 1" cap on that top tube, and drilled a small hole in it.....but after a couple of minutes i noticed some surging, so i took the cap off. then there was a lot of gurgling. so i needed a way to muffle the sound of the gurgling, but not cut off all the air. i guess i could have just drilled a bigger hole in the cap, but i just grabbed some cotten padding, and stuffed it in the top of the pipe........completely silent and no surging!!! best over flow i've ever finished! :D:D:D

 

[ecotoxlady]

Wow! That set-up is absolutely fantastic!!! I wish I had the skills to put something like this together. Congratulations on a job well done and I cannot wait to see this bad boy in action! :)

 

[surfn]

Wow! That set-up is absolutely fantastic!!! I wish I had the skills to put something like this together. Congratulations on a job well done and I cannot wait to see this bad boy in action! :)

thanks so much! i'm extatic about how well it turned out! :D i've never built a tank without at least a couple of days trouble shooting something stupid i didnt plan on happening. and it only took me like 5min to set the ball valve perfectly.....thats NEVER happened with me a a ball valve...lol


granted, i didnt have the necessary skills to make the acrylic sump and main tank. if i had the tools and a garage i DEFINITELY would have tried though. but i'm sure i would have screwed it up on my first attempt.

i'm really surprised i only had a couple of headaches with alligning all the plumbing together, and/or putting some things in backwards.

but heck, if it ain't broke...why fix it? lol :D

 

[surfn]

all i really have left to do that needs attention before i start it up, is to finish putting in a frame to hold a small fan in the back of the canopy. then cut some PVC to use a stands to raise the skimmer up a little bit higher in the sump, and make sure all of its plumbing is all ready to go so i dont need to cut anything after i move it as i probably wont have the tools handy.

only other thing i can think of is trying to figure out a nice way of delivering the 2-part dosing stuff to the sump. i think i may wait to get a couple scraps of acrylic and glue them to the sides and drill some holes in it so i can slide the tubing down into the holes. then i'll need to make a little stand to sit beside the tank to hold the dosing pumps, and the 1g resevoirs of the 2-part mix. if anyone has any ideas, links, pics on how to make something like this i'm all for it, so lets see it! :)

 

[143gadgets]

Al That setup looks awesome! I really like your sump. Who built it for you? Was it someone local?

 

[MarvinsReef]

man... I love how much planning and execution you are putting in this tank... it'll look killer for sure... :)

 

[surfn]

Al That setup looks awesome! I really like your sump. Who built it for you? Was it someone local?

it was a LFS guy who did the work, but it was mostly my design after alot of research i came up with it on paper and just gave to him.

man... I love how much planning and execution you are putting in this tank... it'll look killer for sure... :)

lots of planning and research paid off!! :D

 

[surfn]

FINALLY up and running

well, i'm officially moved 2+ hrs away, and the reef made it without a single loss!! :D

i thought i had some initial casualties though. when i opened one of the buckets that had corals, my six-line floated to the top and was gasping for air, and swimming erratically. also, my cleaner shrimp was lifeless...i picked him up in my hand and not even a twitch so i was about to flush him down the toilet...

but then i figured i would put everyone in the big 30g tub i had set up in the bathroom until i got the tank up and running. after i put everything in their, i turned on an air pump connected to an air stone which completely revived the wrasse and the shrimp to my amasement. that taught me a valuable lesson about available oxygen in buckets, next time i'm getting a battery operated air pump for the buckets. another hour and i'm SURE i would have had livestock losses.

anyways, the only other notable injuries, is that a couple of my corals fell on top of each other in the tub and stung each other. my sunset monti has a pretty good sting about the size of a quarter, but thats only about 1/6th of the colony. and a branch on my ORA purple pillow died for no reason, again...not a big deal as its a small branch. other than that, there were a couple small frags made accidently...and thats pretty much it.

i still have ALOT to set up, including the liter meter and new 2-part solutions, phosban reactor w/ carbon, fuge light, getting my aquacontroller completely set up, get the temp controlled on the tank better w/ fan(s), tweak the skimmer ALOT.....

i'll probably end up re-aquascaping somewhat. i put a new bag of sand in and the cloudiness would not go away even after a day. so i had to put the rock/corals in essentially blind which i was pretty nervous about. it worked out ok, and i havent had any rock slides.

 

[surfn]

oh, i did have 1 official casualty.

i brought down my 7g minibow that contained a 1.5" g.smithi mantis about a week before hand, which was very simple to set up. well, a couple days ago i found the mantis jumped out of the tank somehow and dried up on the floor. that really sucked, cuz i had the entire big reef moved down at the time and was concentrating on getting the big tank set up so i could get the stuff out of the tub.

no idea why he jumped, really sucks. :(

 

[fishes2889]

Lookin freakin aweswome Al!!! :thumbleft:

I am definitly going to have battery air pumps on all of my buckets when i move......

 

[143gadgets]

WOW Al! That looks beautiful! Where are the macro pics?

 

[fade2black]

Nice looking tank! I have one almost exactly like it (26x26x26), but I like your aquascaping better than mine. :)

 

[MarvinsReef]

so sweet and so clean!!!

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Hey Al glad most went ok! The tank looks great!

 

[surfn]

WOW Al! That looks beautiful! Where are the macro pics?

its gonna be a while before i can get the macro lens out. shoot, i dont even have room on the floor to set up the tripod at the moment. got tons of unpacking and organizing to do.

thanks guys, i'll try to keep this updated.

 

[JGoslee]

Aquascape looks good. Glad all your corals made it. That sucks your mantis died.