The doorway

xrouter · Sep 26, 2020

So I never planned to do a tank build thread but after checking out everyone else's I have really enjoyed reading them and they are like a diary of the tank so even though I'm probably 70% through my build I thought I would do the same and build a virtual thread of the first 70% as I have time. Hopefully I will get to present time in short order time allowing and then can run this thread as I progress. Tank is currently 2 months old.

The story begins....

About 15 years ago I had a 6 ft reef tank that I was forced to give up and I have been away from the hobby ever since then but always thinking I would return given the opportunity. A while back when I had removed a doorway we had a big hole in the house and I said to my wife what shall we do with it?

She uttered the phrase 'what about a fish tank'........Maybe she regrets those words now but for me that was basically game on. My brain instantly went to designing what I hoped would be my dream tank. Reality quickly set in and I realised that actually the space was not ideal for a tank. Way too much height compared to width, I needed to run power and I would need RO lines to avoid manual topup etc. I couldn't increase the hole size as its load bearing I really don't want to have to put an RSJ in.

I couldn't miss this chance so I rebuilt the wall and floor with power and pipework all the time working on the tank design to cope with the size. Once the hole was finished I had to set the rules of the build and get final measurements

Rules:

1. It has to be totally free standing, IE if we move we can take everything with us and return the doorway to how it was without patching holes etc.

2. It had to fit in with the period / feel of the house

3. Easy access for maintenance

So I came up with this design:

The stand has to be made of metal frame because I need to attach custom built panels with magnets to it for looks and access but the height of the tank! This was a crazy high tank and I'm going to need an actual step ladder to do maintenance thus breaking rule 3....but in the end I just had to have that height for visuals and also water volume so I placed the order and then covid hit so I had to wait 6 months for it to arrive. In the mean time I started work on the power:

A server rack mount PSU in a wood frame covered with marine ply was all I had to tinker with for 6 months. This was engineered so it slides out and can be simply unattached from the mains power so as not to break the rules....however the mount for it is screwed into beam so it does slightly breach them...;)

I also had a lot of thinking time...way too much thinking time. I started panicking, had I measured right! I won't relate how many times I went back and messured that hole, it was a lot. I planned every other detail, watched every BRS video going and started ordering a lot of kit. Then the day came it arrived!

Next up, pipes and wires!

MERKEY · Sep 26, 2020

Very nice start to the new tank!

Excited for you to fill it up!!

chaostactics · Sep 26, 2020

This is a neat concept

KWT · Sep 26, 2020

That looks great, very nice design

xrouter · Sep 27, 2020

So it fitted in the hole...just. There are a few mm in it

As another side project I had been building some of the rock work. Due to the tank dimensions height was going to be the key so I started building things with super glue and marco rock.

And now I started work on the wiring panel. This is what I came up with

Time to start plumbing and wiring everything up

Yup early rats nest :D

xrouter · Oct 2, 2020

So plumbed and filled shot from the back:

I suck at plumbing everyone. I ended up having to reseal two joints and I painted every joint on the outside as well after I found the two leaks. Its all leak free now but next time I'm going to take a lot more care with every joint!.

Still a bit rat nesty but going to clear all that up once I'm happy that the setup works.

Also I have been working on the front panels. This will be replicated for the rear as well

They are magnet'ed on for easy access to sump / hood IE:

Next up, CuC and fish.

xrouter · Oct 6, 2020

So my cycle process was to use an old sump I had and put the bio bricks and a lump of rock in there with a pump to move water from one end of the sump to another. I was dosing with startup and MB 7 for a month but without checking params as basically this was a mini cure of the rock and to give me 'some' media that was in theory cured and cycled but I wasn't depending on it.

I couldn't cure my main rock structures as they were basically too big to fit in anything other than the tank. I could have got some bins to cure in but I took the decision to accept a long tank cycle time and to basically accept I'm going to get blooms and in fact I kinda wanted to go through that process as a tester to see how well I can cope and deal with those.

So after filling the tank and added my in theory cycled media to the sump and rock to the tank along with all the non-cured rock I then cycled the tank for a week with some more start but I wasn't getting any ammonia build up so it looked like the initial media cycle had worked. I then added two clown fish and tested for another two weeks and also started the sump cheato grow and everything seemed pretty stable good news!

After starting the lights for a few hours a day the inevitable happened and the diatoms were upon me, time to get the clean-up crew.

Introducing dumbo and spike!

I have some hermits and various snails but there two guys are algae strip miners and currently holding back the outbreak. I had scaled up the lights slightly but they are now back to a few hours a day which seems to be tipping point between what clean-up crew can deal with and how much it can grow.

Hopefully as the silicates etc get used up I can scale up the lights again and these guys can deal. I did have a cheato die off which spiked my Phosphates slightly but I have solved that with some grow formula and now all the params are where I want them with the cheato out competing the diatom's hopefully.

I wanted to show my fish, two common clowns and 4 black stripe chromis (All very peaceful fish I'm going for zero fish hassle tank) but I haven't managed to get a decent shot yet that isn't a blur apart from this photo bomb

Going to get my proper camera on the job shortly.

So anyway this thread is now upto real time! :D

stylolvr · Oct 6, 2020

Interesting concept!

Conchman · Oct 6, 2020

Well done, was not sure where it was going. Looks very nice. A+,

Neuratox · Oct 6, 2020

hmmmm there are a couple of doorways in my house that I could probably do without.... :p
Very neat

xrouter · Oct 7, 2020

Neuratox said:
hmmmm there are a couple of doorways in my house that I could probably do without.... :p
Very neat

Haha what have I started? Wives coming home to find doorways stuffed with tanks :eek:

hmmmmm · Oct 7, 2020

Never seen this before, not jealous of the ease of maintenance but it's a very cool look.

Looks like you got some nice apex goodies there with the cor, flow meters etc, don't see those combined with black boxes a lot.

Following along!

hmmmmm · Oct 7, 2020

Neuratox said:
hmmmm there are a couple of doorways in my house that I could probably do without.... :p
Very neat

You don't have to tell me, rip em all out mate! ;Smuggrin

xrouter · Oct 7, 2020

hmmmmm said:
Looks like you got some nice apex goodies there with the cor, flow meters etc, don't see those combined with black boxes a lot.

The black boxes are being upgraded in the future to AI primes or similar pucks. They are just a temp measure to get me up and running while keeping the budget sensible for year one. The shape of that tank means I need pucks either side of the weir so I will get those in first then replace the boxes in probably a year but they will do for startup corals.

I may do it sooner if the maintenance (which they make harder) gets on nerves ;)

xrouter · Oct 9, 2020

Arggggggg. So for the last few weeks my nitrates have been rising too high, just now peeking at 25ppm! I was totally stumped why this suddenly started happening so on a hunch I tested the RO water I was about to use in a water change..Nearly 50ppm RO WTAF!! :mad:. I fire up the the TDS on the RO output and its reading 250!

I have no idea how but my RO unit (6 months old and probably only done 300g) appears to be letting water through with no affect on the TDS, both input output and drain all read basically the same TDS! Its a 6 stage filter! I can only hope that the chlorine filter was working.

I've lost complete trust in the unit but have order new membrane. If that doesn't work I will have to sort a new unit...Really annoyed at self for not spotting this before. I should check the TDS more often. Lesson learnt and Im going to have to do a load of water changes once this unit is sorted as have lost complete trust in water quality now.

xrouter · Oct 11, 2020

0 TDS water now being made and change done and nitrates already testing down :D

To celebrate I starting printing some add-ons for the system. First up a strainer for the Cor 15. Pretty happy with how this turned out. It was someones else model and there was no way you could print in one piece so I had to print as two parts and glue it but the only place to cut was not ideal. When I have time I'll design something that will print as two parts without a cut. Also I want to make the actual holes a lot smaller.

Next up I'm going to design a light cover for the kesil in the sump and also I have a plan for an chato spinner for the sump.

xrouter · Oct 13, 2020

Working on a design for a moduler frag rack and skimmer stand. Printed at much smaller scale to just test the concept and it seems to work great so next up full size version to raise my skimmer height

xrouter · Oct 16, 2020

So with all params now stable and algae under control of the cleaning crew its time for a tester zoa. He wont live here permanently as this is ear marked as my green star rock. Some day and moon cycle pics.

Placing this was the first time I struggled with tank height. I have a pretty good gripper tool for most tasks but it made me realise when it comes to glueing frags in place I'm going to struggle as thats not something you can do remotely. Fortuantly I'm lanky as hell so some taller steps should allow me to reach the bottom but its not ideal for delicate frag work.