Tim's 800 Gallon Phoenix Reef

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garbled

garbled

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Great write-up about your Seamless Sump journey. I use them inside my 150 gallon stand; either not too many people know about them, or choose for whatever reason not to use them. But I like them. Best wishes!

The Seamless Sumps are great! Until I found them I really had only a few options:

1) DIY an acrylic sump set. Unrealistic, I've never worked with acrylic, and would have to make like 15 errors before I got one right. Also, If I made one that was say, 30x30, I would never get it in between the uprights anyhow! (In theory I could have assembled the acrylic in-place, but I suspect that would have required expert-level skill)

2) Pay someone to custom make a sump set. I mean, yes, but again, uprights, and then it probably would have been like $4k.

3) Another variation on the rubbermaid tubs. ehhhhhh.... Couldn't find any the right shape.

4) Suck it up and keep using the trigger sumps. No. (to be fair, the trigger sumps are excellent, just not for this application, I'll be re-using them elsewhere)

The Seamless Sump is perfect. It's modular, so you just pick the parts you want or don't want. The pieces themselves are easy to modify and cut. The shape variety is good, so I could really maximize the space available down there. It's so easy to drill these compared to acrylic. I can very easily make cuts and holes as I need, attach bulkheads, float switches, ro fittings. The walls are thin so magnet probe racks work just great. The openings are huge, so I can fit a big skimmer or whatever in there. I was able to put my skimmer BEFORE my refugium, which IMHO is a huge deal.

I think the only thing that is potentially imperfect about them, is that you can't see into them from the sides. Initially this put me off, and I suspect is why others are not big on them. However, after 2 years, I couldn't see into the sides of the trigger sumps much at all either. Lets be realistic, I'm never going to scrape the glass on a sump. If you are dilligent about that, then yes, it's a difference. However, I can easily see the water levels in them, so thats good enough for me. I'll take that tradeoff for the price difference of pure custom, and not having what I want for design and flow.

In other news, problem 5, the sump bucket uniseal. Easily solved. Got a new uniseal, replaced it, works perfect. I inspected the old uniseal, and could see a ridge on the outside. I suspect over time the rubber hardens a bit, and when you move it, it breaks that seal that has formed. Then you will likely just never be able to get it back into the original perfect position where the ridge formed again. Thankfully, this was an easy fix.

I also finally finished running all the tubes for the AWC, so I'm hoping to give that a quick test today. I also have a bunch more cable management work to do. Re-routing all the cables made kind of a mess.
 

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02742E6E-F438-485A-8B45-109EEB76E75F.jpeg

I couldn’t agree more. about the Seamless Sumps. Strength, versatility, creativity, it’s like a hidden secret. Lol!
 
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Strange update on problem 4 (the flow numbers).

Last night, for who knows whatever reason, my FMM for the flow sensors crashed. Like, actually crashed. This has never ever happened to me before, in years of having it. It just showed up with a little red triangle. I'm also slightly annoyed there was no alarm for that.. but... Either way, I unplugged it from the aquabus, and plugged it back in, and it came back to life instantly. And now:

1616861610454.png


Huh. Well that's odd. 700 is probably way more in the range I expect. The 582 is weird, but the left has always run lower for some reason.. maybe my outputs are too restrictive over there. I might play with those.

Either way, somehow, now my numbers are up. Because, reasons? Maybe the FMM had just lost it's mind and then finally crashed, and now I'm getting more realistic numbers. I can kinda believe these.. At least I think so.. maybe?
 

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The disaster that is my in-wall aquarium


That's fixable though. What happened next, was not.

A little tiny solenoid, with a murloc push fitting, shattered. This push fitting, was what held back the mains water to my RO/DI unit. Solenoids get hot. I forgot that repeated heating and cooling of plastic causes it to get brittle...



This bad design resulted in a massive, and I mean massive flood of my house. The resulting damage destroyed tons of equipment, drywall, electrical stuff, etc. Many things did not survive this, including my will to keep working on the whole aquarium at all.

I have two of these solenoids, thinking redundancy if one ever failed open. I never considered the plastic breaking off, which would mean massive flood. I may have missed it in your thread, but what are you using now to automate your RO/DI?

Nevermind, I found your post on your RO/DI setup. :)
 
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A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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