Water Lily Reef (180g In-wall)

[DLHDesign]

12/6/2018 - Day 62

I don't even feel like I'm updating the same build thread at this point - it's been so long! I have no specific excuse any different from my last one (busy; work, new house, life,...). Sleep deprivation, I suppose, is as good a reason as any...
Soon after the above post, we got all the drywall in place and opened up the archway where the tank would fit:

The floor in the above picture was still wet from the acid-wash/cleaning process that I did in order to prepare the surface for an epoxy layer. This wasn't hard work, but it did take a few days of cleaning/drying cycles. While that was going on, I was rather impatient with all the delays, so I assembled the stand. It went together mostly as planned. It's upside down here, awaiting the self-leveling feet to be attached:

Adding the feet turned out to be a pain. Not that it was difficult to add them, but the holes where the foot plates mounted needed to be tapped with the appropriate thread. I had the tools to do such, but it snapped on the second hole. Which then required me to get another one from the local hardware store - which also snapped after just two holes. At that point, I decided to get something better than the stuff I was finding locally - ordered a pair of carbon steel ones from Amazon. Took a few days to get to me, so meanwhile I went back to the floor. The epoxy went on rather easily. I added some grit to the mix and then used the included flakes; the result is a floor that has good traction even when wet:

I sealed up the edges with rubber trim and silicone sealant. I'm not going to test it unless I must, but I'm pretty sure that it'll be able to hold some water if it needs to. If not, anything that does leak under would end up in the garage (and then out to the street) and not into the house, so there's that, at least. Yay!
Once the floor dried, I painted the room (above) and then moved on to installing the light rails. These were quickly designed while I was ordering the stand parts, so I was really hoping it would all work out. It did - and it didn't. My plan was (is) to have each light roll out on a track, allowing me to clean the tank without lights in my way. The problem came when I opened the boxes with the rollers in them. I had thought I'd ordered some wheels that had bearings in them, but the ones I have are just screws holding a metal ring pushed into a plastic wheel - no real bearings to speak of. Checking my order, they are what I ordered (serves me right for not taking my time). Beyond that, none of the parts seemed to fit together correctly... To top it off, I did a poor job of cutting the hanging wires to the same length, so had to shift the crossbar to account for that. Not a huge deal, per-se (I planned for having to level them some), but it does look rather... off. Still; everything plugged into the EB8 I purchased for the purpose;

The lights don't really roll out all that well, so I'll have to rebuild them at some point in the future. For now, I'm moving on to other things and will come back to this when I get frustrated with having lights in my way. ;-)
With the lights in place, I moved all the big things into the room - mostly the water mixing station and a storage rack.

With all the big stuff in place, I moved the stand into it's forever home:

I added the 3/4" flooring plywood to both the tank and sump rails. That was easy enough; even went ahead and painted the sump board to help protect it some. At that point, it was time to call in some help to lift the tank into position! I had planned on using the guys who moved our hot tub. They had offered to charge me $300. Instead, I went around the corner to where new homes are being built and had the foreman (whom I have worked with all throughout the house build) find a couple of guys to help me move it (for the far more reasonable rate of $50 per person). I unpacked the crate and got my first actual look at the tank!

The tank is well built and nearly everything was as I expected. The only thing wrong with it is that the back had been painted. I'm not really sure that I ever asked for it not to be, so no foul or fault on the builder there. In any case - and to make short of a lot of heavy lifting - the four of us lifted the ~450# tank into position. I followed that up by putting the sump and some gear into position and attaching the overflows. Luckily, it all fit according to plan!

At this point, I ran into a snag. The stand is certainly strong enough to hold up the tank, but the deflection was too much to trust. I went online and ordered some 45-angle supports that I could add to fix that. The delivery time was "8-10 days", however, and I was hoping to get things in place before then. I ended up solving it by attaching some l-brackets to the stand and the wall frame. Even relatively small (~2") brackets, it worked better than I expected - even with just one, the tank no longer wobbled! I added the second, of course, but I no longer worried about the deflection. When the angle pieces arrived yesterday, I went ahead and added them to the stand as well. I'm pretty confidant that the stand is now as stable as it needs to be.
Still have plumbing to do before I can fill it. I drew it all out ahead of time and ordered some of what I'd need, but now with everything in place, I'm glad I didn't order too much more. After looking at it all, I've redesigned the plumbing. Again. :-| I drew it all out and ordered a bunch more pieces from BRS - which should mostly be here tomorrow. Meanwhile, I cleaned off the paint using acetone and a razor blade. Then filled it with 100gal of RO/DI water - well below the drains, but enough to empty my water tanks so that I can fill them up again.

I'll try and update again in the next few days - hopefully once I get the plumbing in place...

 

[najer]

Nice work, looks great.

 

[DLHDesign]

12/18/2018 - Day 74

Sadly; the plumbing isn't in place yet. :-(
The wife wanted me to close up the wall before anything else, which I guess was fair - with the holidays and everyone coming over and such, it's a bit of an unusual design style. Before I could do that, however, I needed to set up the tools that would be needed. So I spent some time out in the workshop room. Our previous house had a workshop as well and it quickly become a mess as everything go covered in sawdust. Since this one is connected to our garage, I didn't want that same thing happening. The solution was to install a vacuum system - which took much more effort than I thought it would (as always...)

Having used the vacuum for the past few days, I can say that the spare hose (right side of the center split) and the floor sweep are easily the best parts of the room. The chop-saw seems to be almost totally ineffective, however - either because it's too far from the motor (doubt it) or because the sawdust collection is poorly designed (more likely). It's getting clogged up and worn out anyways, so may be time for an upgrade...

Having gotten the workshop in order, I was able to bang out the soffit above the tank. I used primed 1x3 pine for this (rather than 2x4's) in order to keep it lighter. Having installed the whole wall, of course, it was easy to know where my mounting points were located. Also closed up the lower section using 1/4" ply that had been painted on the inside with blue gloss paint (picture of that later, I'm sure). The lower boards are attached to the frame using some 80/20 brackets, so they are (conceptually) removable. I likely wouldn't do that unless required for some kind of repair or the like, but it's nice to have the option.

I ended up adding a vertical supports and a horizontal crossbeam at the height of the header to the front and back (as well as a spacer board to help stabilize the box) before adding some 1/8" ply as backing boards.

Once all that was up, it was on to the shiplap! This was far easier than I expected, actually. The spacer used between the boards is the "very modern" size of a nickel. Since I had the electrical off anyways, I went ahead and also swapped those two switches out to be "smart" switches (the whole house will - eventually - be connected via Z-Wave; currently only a few pieces are).

The wall includes an access door that actually came out better than I expected it would. It doesn't open a full 90 degrees (more like 45), but it's enough to get in there and scrape the glass, siphon the bottom, install/repair corals, and anything else I might not be able to do from the rear of the tank, so I'm happy with it - especially how hidden it is once closed.

We're still trying to decide how to finish the wall. The bare wood looks nice, but we're not sure that the warm tones goes with the cool of the rest of the room/house - especially with the blue lights on. I think we're going to whitewash it, even thought the original idea was to paint it white (matching the trim). With the whitewash, we keep the wood grain, but tie in the wall to the rest of the house (which continues with the white/grey pictured above throughout). We're still not totally decided, however, so if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, by all means - throw them out there!

I did get some plumbing done (can't be using the nail gun and such as night when everyone else is asleep, after all). The biggest accomplishment was extending the overflows to allow room for the infinity box that exists behind the tank. Here's the dry-fit test:

And then the final installed (the drain plumbing is still all dry-fit):

Pictured is the full-flow port (with gat valve, obviously) as well as one of the two emergency drains. The other side of the tank has the durso overflow as well as a second emergency overflow. Combined the drains form a bean animal with an extra emergency drain. Combined, they should be able to handle around 3000gph, I figure. Each drain line opens up to a 1.25" pipe straight away (and they combine into a 2" pipe just before entering the sump), so I'm not really worried about overflow capacity. The returns are two COR-20 pumps hooked up parallel, so I don't foresee any problems with circulation.
What's hard to see in the above picture is that there is an MP40 installed low in the tank (on the bottom, basically) near the back wall between the two pipes. You can see the power cord more than anything. There's another on the opposite side. Combined, these two pumps will help to keep substrate off the bottom of the tank. Combined with three 3/4" random flow generators on the returns and two 250 gyres on the back wall, I shouldn't have to worry about flow in the tank, I'm sure.

Sadly, my livestock has not done so well with the move. I lost 5 fish during the actual move, though the rest seem to have settled into their (too small) temporary home well enough. I need to move them out of the formal dining room and into my office before Christmas. I will likely run them through QT as part of that move, but will have to see how they do...
As for the corals; I have a few left. But most of them either died in the first few days after the (rather chaotic) move, or have faded since then. I have a few softies left, though my clam died a few days ago. The entire frag tank setup is depressing to look at, honestly. I'll throw out a picture here not because I'm proud of it, but because perhaps it'll highlight how even the best laid plans can go awry...

Ugh. I'll need to transfer what I can out of that tank and into a 10gal holding tank int eh next few days as well. I need to drill that tank and install it into the fish room. I've built the stand for it already, in fact. About 30 seconds after moving it into the room, it got buried in equipment, however, so it's a bit hard to see. Nothing fancy anyways; just some 2x4's screwed together and painted. Added a shelf in the middle because I can already tell that storage in this room will be at a premium:

The mess will get cleaned up as I get more of the tank together. The bin on the middle shelf, for example, is filled with all the electronics that will go up on the wall - in the yet-to-be-built equipment cabinet...

More to come, of course. Gotta' go let in the window blind installer... New houses sure are fun! :-|

 

[CoralWealth]

any updates?

 

[DLHDesign]

1/10/2019 - Day 97

Yes - there is! I have plumbing! At least; the main tank is plumbed in. The frag tank is close - the drains are in place, but I have about 2ft of return line to hook up later today. I ended up short a few 1" 45 pieces and even though I have a pile of 90's, I decided to hold off on finishing it until I could do it the right way. I got that shipment yesterday, however, so should be able to hook it up later today.

The plumbing, to be honest, turned out more of a mess than I had wanted, but about what I expected it would be. I'm not really worried about it, however, because it is workable - and totally out of sight in the fish room anyways.
Since the tank is drilled with two EShopps-M overflows, I had thought I would be able to create a "bean animal+" style of overflow (the "+" just being an extra emergency drain). While my theory was that this would be possible, in practice it was not. I put one emergency drain on each side, the main drain on the right and the Durso on the left. In that configuration, I couldn't get the Durso dialed in no matter how I tried - it had tons of bubbles and was very loud. So I removed the Durso bend and installed a second gate valve on that side. Once I did that, it took only moments to dial in both sides to flow as quietly as it's going to get - there's less noise than my old tank, even inside the room. The main drains on each side are 1" with the emergency overflows quickly opening up to 1.25".

(The handle on the gate valve above was still drying; it'll be blue just like all the rest.)

The frag tank was drilled with a Synergy Reef overflow and then was plumbed into the main sump as well, with the caveat that it has enough valves to be isolated from the main system if/as desired. I also installed check valves on the main and Durso drains just in case the DT drains had more pressure. I doubt that will actually be a problem (gravity will keep them flowing down, I'm sure), but I had the valves and the space (barely).

From the overflows, everything runs down into the sump. There are three 1.5" lines dropping into the sump's return chamber. The various lines from the DT and frag tank combine together into these three pipes. Anywhere two pipes join, I stepped up the plumbing size.

The returns are driven by two COR-20's, plumbed in serial. Both have check-valves, so I can run either one, or both. I can't imagine I'll ever need to run them at different speeds, but it should be possible if I needed to.

I managed to use 45's everywhere except for the turn from the returns out behind the tank (upper-left in the photo above). I worked at getting the 45's in there, but even with street connections, it would have required the plumbing to stick out a few extra inches - which I didn't think was worth the flow rate savings in this case.

After combining together into a 2" pipe, the return line runs through a flow meter into the UV bypass manifold. This is the part of the plumbing that I had the most trouble with. I had the option of either keeping the plumbing compact, but not having a flow meter on the UV itself, or having the plumbing a bit more obtrusive, but keeping the flow meter. Since this is a fish room, I opted for the latter.

I wasn't sure where to put the gate valve initially. I'd gathered opinions and the consensus seemed to be along one of the horizontal runs. Turns out with the way it worked out that this was a mistake - it should have gone in the vertical section of the by pass. By the time I decided to route the plumbing like this, however, I'd already glued together that section of plumbing. I could have rebuilt it, but that would have been more delays as I got the replacement parts. This didn't turn out to be that big a deal, however - I was able to use the flow meter and valves to get the desired flow pushing through the UV without much effort. I might have been able to squeeze out a few more GPH on the overall return had they been swapped, but I'm not going to worry about that.

Once past the UV bypass, the 2" pipe splits off into three 1" returns, which step down to 3/4" loc-line. Each of these terminate in a random flow generator.

With all of that, my flow into the DT ended up being right around 1,500gph, with 300gph going through the UV:

Once all the rock and such are in the tank, that will give me right around 10x turnover - which is nice to actually see since that's what my napkin math said it would be around. Yay for that!
Beyond the random-flow generators on the returns, I also have two MP40's in the bottom-back of the tank to stir up detritus and provide some bottom-tank flow. There are also two Gyre 250's in the tank. I'd wanted these on the side walls to really create that gyre effect, but I didn't leave myself enough room what with the walls and overflows. So instead they'll go on the back wall, between the returns. Still lots of flow in the tank, and it'll be interesting to see the movement be back-and-forth rather than side-to-side. At least; I hope it will...

The frag tank return will be handled by a COR-15. This pump will also handle the manifold that feeds the chiller as well as the carbon/GFO reactor. I've got 1" flow meters on the tank return and reactor lines, but not the chiller. I also added a pump-out line to the manifold in case I ever need to do large water removal. The tank will be plumbed for AWC, so this is mostly a "just in case" line so that I don't have to mess with dropping in a return pump. The manifold isn't in the final position yet - I ran out of slide-in 80/20 bolts (of course), so am waiting on those now (**sigh**). I'm using those bolts (and nuts) and some plastic pipe strapping to hold everything up (so that I'm not drilling into the wood that the tank is sitting on any more than I have to). Once those bolts arrive (any day now), I'll go ahead and plumb in the return line to the frag and get the COR-15 on line. That will obviously require adding more water, which will mean re-balancing the valves and such a bit, but I'm not worried about that - I'm sure it can get done.

Next up is to build the electrical cabinet. I just don't think this mess will work for long:

The tank is currently filled with just RO/DI water - no salt. My initial plan was to mix all the salt in the tank, but I'm not sure I'll actually do that. Not with this water, at least. What with all the time it took to get everything sorted, that water has been in the tank - practically motionless - for a few weeks now. When everything is turned off, there's a film on the surface, as well as detritus (small pieces of plaster that broke off during the light installation and plumbing work, dust and debris in the sump, etc.). Since I'm set up to run Triton, I don't have filter socks to easily remove this kind of stuff. So I'm leaning towards draining the tank (via that handy pump-out!) and refilling it with new water. That feels like a huge waste, however. :-\ I suppose I could pump the water into holding containers, filtering it along the way - but aside from my mixing and holding containers, I don't really have anything available to hold that much water (my three brute cans are currently holding all my rock). This may just be one of those instances where I feel like a horrible person for wasting so much water, but do it anyways because that's what's best for my little ocean box... :-|

 

[CoralWealth]

wow I appreciate all the details and everything.

The plumbing looks so good and glad to see it is all coming along! That will be a ton of flow in the tank, are you not having sand?

 

[DLHDesign]

Nope; no sand. Bare-bottom, Triton method (eventually; I'm under no illusions that I'll be 100% Triton until after the first year or so), fully APEX integrated. My goals with this tank are to create a stable tank that is easy to maintain and has as much redundancy as is practical. I want to be able to go on vacation without worrying about the tank, basically.

 

[CoralWealth]

Nope; no sand. Bare-bottom, Triton method (eventually; I'm under no illusions that I'll be 100% Triton until after the first year or so), fully APEX integrated. My goals with this tank are to create a stable tank that is easy to maintain and has as much redundancy as is practical. I want to be able to go on vacation without worrying about the tank, basically.

Sounds awesome, are you going to get an automated alk tester/controller? If so, I recommend the KH Guardian. I love mine and growth has taken off since I hooked it up

 

[DLHDesign]

are you going to get an automated alk tester/controller?

Yeah; I'll get the Trident when it's released and available. I've got months of cycling ahead of me, so no rush. I also don't plan on doing too much chasing of specific numbers for the first year or so while the tank settles itself, so won't need to have such detailed monitoring in place right away.

 

[NeveSSL]

Very cool build! Looking forward to seeing more.

Brandon

 

[siggy]

New houses sure are fun! :-|

Wo Ho Super Man! Im tired just reading this thread! I remodeled 2 homes and I was never so busy than when I built a home, then you go and do a renovation, a fish room and a reef tank, stand and WORK SHOP! Not surprising you lost some stock, Bummer for sure. But everything will get there. Just think You have the landscape, sprinklers, garage door openers, epoxy floors, shed, upgraded light fixtures, mirrors, shower doors, window treatments.........and on and on ....Take your time on that Awesome reef you very lucky.(wife is a sweetie)

 

[DLHDesign]

You have the landscape, sprinklers, garage door openers, epoxy floors, shed, upgraded light fixtures, mirrors, shower doors, window treatments

Plants are still to-do, but the concrete and fake turf are all in. No sprinklers - only drip - and I've already run the feed line. Gardener will do the manifold once we know how many ports we need. Garage door is done enough until the cheap motor burns up. No epoxy flooring now that the fish room is done. No room for a shed. The lights are all LED already, but I am putting in smart switches and plugs in some places. Bathrooms are finished and we had shutters installed a few weeks ago. The list of big things is shrinking; outdoor plants and installing the better stove and hood are the only big things left.

In the middle of white-washing the shiplap wall now. Should have the done tonight; I'll get that and the last bit of plumbing added to this thread as an official update later...

 

[AiKkz]

Love all the cad drawings!! Looks amazing!

 

[siggy]

Any updates?

 

[Ruben's Reef]

Awesome build !!! Can't wait to see it wet..

 

[DLHDesign]

1/23/2019 - Day 110

Yeah; let's do an update!
Whitewashing is done, but I've not yet finished up the painting. The wife wasn't sure if she would want a second coat to lighten it up more or not, so we decided to live with it for a bit and see how we felt. We're now both okay (as of last night) with the shade, so I hope to touch up the walls and caulk all the trim and such later today.
While I was waiting on that, I finished up all the plumbing and ensured that the whole system can run without much noise. Works like a charm - even with three pumps at 100% pushing upwards of 2000gph, I can't hear a sound from the other side of the wall. Awesome!
Also got the shadow box hooked up. I'm holding off on building the final shadow-scape until after the actual aquascape is in, but I threw in a couple of pieces of rough-cut cardboard to see how it looked...

It actually looks better in person; the color transition is much smoother. Since the cardboard pieces are - after all - cardboard, they are just leaning in the ~2" box area, which isn't ideal. The final pieces will be acrylic (cutting that will be fun without a CNC machine...) and will be mounted into position. I have two shades of acrylic sheet - one that is solid black, the other 50% transparent grey. I'll be using the black to create a "near" scape close to the glass of the tank, while the grey will be more "distant" near the back of the shadow box. I'm really looking forward to the end result, though it does mean that I not only have to scape the tank itself, but also two levels of depth... That'll be fun, I'm sure.

The tank is drained and dried and I have 50gal of saltwater mixed and ready, plus another 50gal of RO/DI water made up. Before moving that into the tank, however, I want to get the electrical board in place. This is because once the water is added to the tank, I want to be able to have the ATO, pump controls, and most of the wiring in place. That way if I have to drill into any walls and such to mount things (such as the light above the frag tank...), I don't have to worry about the drywall debris staying in the system.

Meanwhile; the fish from the old tank are (mostly) through QT. I had a few losses (darn you, copper!), but the fish that remain are all doing well and should make it to their new home (whenever it's done cycling, of course). One of my losses (the most recent; just a few days ago) was the male clown I've had from the start of my reefing journey. I feel bad for his mate, and am not sure what my plans are exactly with her. Keeping her, for sure - likely in the frag tank, while adding another pair (or perhaps a harem?) into the DT...

What I ended up with (one ea):
Ocellaris Clown (female) - Meridah
Blue Hippo Tang - Vinnie
Yellow Tang - Lemon
Banggai Cardinal
Lawnmower Blenny - Peek-a-go
Bluestreak Wrasse - Scrat
Filefish (aiptasia; I've got your number right from the start!)
Royal Gramma

Some of them are a slam-dunk for the new tank (Vinnie, Lemon, Peek-a-go, and Scrat) while the others are likely frag-tank bound (Meridah, Filefish, Cardinal, and the Gramma). That will leave me plenty of room to add more friends, of course. SO happy that @Humblefish Aquatics 2.0 is a thing! :-D

The QT tank is currently dosed with some General Cure. I've got a few more days of that, then a re-dose, wait, water change and carbon, and then everyone is cleaned up and ready for their move. The rock for the tank has been cycling for months now in the brute cans, so I don't expect a long delay getting everyone into their respective tanks once I get the electrical cleaned up. Not going to rush it, of course...

Speaking of which; it's interesting to compare the state of this build with the equivalent state of my last build. Clearly I'm moving MUCH slower with this one - and I'm okay with that.

 

[DLHDesign]

1/29/2018 - Day 116

The tank has been re-filled! Had a bit of a scare during this process as I saw some pretty significant air bubbles in the tank, even after it had been filled for a while:

That deeper blackness near the corner is where some silicone is missing. That's not holding the tank together, however - just holding the plastic down. What was happening was that as I was piling in the rock, air was being pushed out from between the glass and plastic, I guess? There are no actual water leaks anywhere, at least. Not ideal to have water under the plastic, but also not something I think is worth draining the tank over. I'll just dub it "The Pod Cave" and hope that it becomes a happy place for pods and such to grow...

Speaking of piling in rocks, that's pretty much what I've done - just piled them in there:

I started to think about the scape layout, but knew I didn't have time to spend getting it right, so I just went with a stable(ish) pile of rubble. Another few pieces ended up in the frag tank;

Which reminds me; I need to get a bit of black ABS to line the bottom of the frag tank...

With the rocks in and water filled, it was also time to get the electronics sorted out. As I dove into that, I ran into a snag. All this time I've been planning on two EB832's for all the main gear and two EB8's (one for lighting; one for mixing station). I also have an EB832 (and separate brain) on the QT tank for AWC, ATO, etc. All this time I had thought that I had the required gear. Turns out, I was short an EB832. Thought I had purchased three, but even opening all the boxes in the garage labeled "Kids Toys" failed to reveal the third 832. **sigh** Knowing I wanted it, I laid out the electronics cabinet for it and gave BRS some more of my money. Then I started pulling wires into the box. What I discovered was that I should have made the box deeper, I think...

I imagine that - with a few latches and some careful wire tying, I'll be able to get the door closed. If not, I'll have to take it all apart and build a deeper box. Not hard to do; just annoying.

With all the electronics in place, I spent some time (okay; more than some - quite a bit, really) setting up the Apex. One of the first things I did was turned the three pumps (2x COR-20 and a COR-15) up to 100% and dialed in the plumbing. My last build didn't have flow meters; this one does;

"F_MAIN" is the DT return line being fed by the two COR-20's in parallel. It's a 2" pipe that gets partially diverted into the "F_UV" meter; which measures how much flow I have going into the UV. The setup I have (pictured above) with the main flow going through a ball valve was not correct. I should have put the gate valve on the main flow to make restricting it in a controllable manner easier, and then just used the ball valves to open/close the UV off for maintenance. Ah well; I got it mostly dialed in anyways. Need to close off the UV line some (open up the main line, really) as my target is 300GPH, but the ~330GPH I'm getting is still within spec.
"F_FRAG" is a 1" meter measuring how much of the COR-15 running the manifold is going back into the frag tank. It's a ~25gal tank, so I'll likely need to dial that back some to avoid blasting corals. I'm able to either turn down the pump speed, or else divert more of the flow into the chiller or media reactor (both of which have ball valves, of course). The "F_GFO" is the 1" meter on that media reactor. It's empty right now, but I plan on running carbon, at least, through it. I added the flow meter just in case I ever want to add in anything that might need specific flow.

With that flow rate, I was able to dial in the returns to get everything as near-silent as I could hope for. Inside the room, there is a water-running noise, but with the door closed, you can't hear it unless you are putting your ear to the wall. I had originally planned on building out a sort of 4-port bean animal system, with each side having an emergency, one side having the full port, and the other with the Durso. But with them split between the two overflows, I wasn't able to get the Durso to work right - the water level was too high and I couldn't lower it due to the position of the pipes. Not a huge deal, it turns out - as I said; they run pretty quite. I did end up putting some guards into the downspouts in the drains, however, as these helped to break up the occasional vortexes that formed.

Here's how the sump "ended" up;

I'm going to add some egg-create to the back wall of the fuge to help keep the chaeto from catching on the heaters and such, but I should still have plenty of room for it. Lots of access to most of the key areas. One thing that I wish was better was the skimmer area. The Curve 5 I've got in there fits, but just barely. I was hoping there would be room for something bigger, however... The COR-15 is behind it and I have to take the skimmer cup off just to get to that. The probes are all located behind the COR-15, which makes getting to them even harder... I may end up moving them over into the fuge area once the crate is in place (I have extra holders; no problem there) just to make visually checking them easier. There's not much room on that back wall with the heaters there, however (those things are loooong). Whenever those heaters fail (or in a year or so), I'll likely swap them out for something that fits a bit better. It's a game of Tetris, basically...
Next to the sump, there is the dosing station;

Once the tank is established with something more than just rock, I'll be running Triton. So 4 dosing heads and 4 level sensors are ready to go. I'll likely use two of the heads to dose in some basic 2-part while the tank ramps up; enough to keep the coralline growing. I've also got the water bubbler feeding the CO2 scrubber, that's hooked into the skimmer. Not really sure how all of that is working; I barely see any bubbles in that bottle (none at all if I fill it to the "maximum" line). Which makes me think that the pressure that the Venturi is able to create isn't enough to draw from the scrubber, through the bubbler, and out the ~25ft of hose to the outside. Still need to play with all that... But since the simmer is offline till later anyways, not something I'm overly worried about right now.

One thing that happened during the initial leak test was that I shut everything off and checked the water level in the sump. It overflowed. Glad I did that test when I just had RO/DI water in the tank, because when I did it with the actual saltwater in there now, I was able to avoid the same flood. Barely;

That's like 1/4" or so. Which translates to a few gallons of water, I suspect. So if (when) a check-valve fails and I loose power to everything (or shut everything off for some reason), then I could get a flood. Once the Powerwall goes in (soon, I hope; waiting on permits from the city), I won't be concerned about loss of power very much (it would take a lot for that to happen). The check valves are clear and all are highly visible (and have lots of flow running through them), so keeping them clean shouldn't be too hard. Still; something to add to my "occasional maintenance" list...

Once I got the flow dialed in and electronics hooked up, I moved on to lighting. Not the final configuration (that will have to wait till I have the final scape and can get some PAR readings), but at least getting everything set up with the dawn/day/dusk/night schedules. The T5's above the tanks don't dim, so those are easy on/off cycles. I kept those "short" with an 8hr photo period:

(I've not calibrated the probes yet, so I've set everything to really high temps just to keep them on for now.)
The Radions are running the AB+ profile, with a 50% intensity for 12hrs, with a 1hr ramp up/down;

Night is just 10% RB and 10% UV; everything else 0%.

The light box contains two 36" Reef Bright strips, and I have the dimming module for them. I got the module as an open-box and it came with the older plug styles (the ones with two ports per cable instead of an RJ-45 plug). I could have gotten the conversion cable, but that would have meant using two VS ports. Rather, I just cut the wires, sorted out which was ground, and made my own dual-RJ-45 plug. Which is how the newer modules come, in case anyone is wondering (the hassle was not worth the $10 I saved, btw. Ah well; at least it worked out.).
With that in place, the light box turned out to be the hardest light to configure; not having a nice drag-n-drop interface and all. I ended up using the same schedule as the Radions - which took 4 different Profiles to achieve. Not really all that hard, I guess, just more complicated;
Variable Output 1/2

If Time 00:00 to 07:00 Then LB_Night
If Time 07:00 to 08:00 Then LB_Morning
If Time 08:00 to 20:00 Then LB_Day
If Time 20:00 to 21:00 Then LB_Dusk
If Time 21:00 to 23:59 Then LB_Night

I had to use an Intensity of 11 for "night" because using 10 resulted in the lights turning off. :-|

The only other light involved is the fuge light; which I set up to run opposite the DT lights, with a 1hr overlap;

And the result!

I'm pretty sure this is overlit. Which is fine - I'm okay with that for now. I'll be able to turn down the Radions, of course, and can also turn off the back T5's if needed. I've not dropped in the PAR meter yet; as I said - waiting until the rocks are in their final positions first.

Only one problem, however. At night, the fuge light is SO bright that it bounces off the back wall and reflects into the tank. And not by a little; by a very noticeable degree;

That's with JUST the fuge light on - no Radions, no light box. Obviously the fuge is still getting most of the light, but it didn't seem wise to bounce so much red light up into the tank - potentially causing algae growth where I didn't want it. My solution was to add curtains to the sump. We had some left over from the old house - blackout curtains that my wife had made for one of the girls rooms, which we kept just in case. They actually fit PERFECT. I had to cut out a hole for the 2" return pipe, but a quick hem and the addition of some velcro to hold them up, and I no longer had a light bleed problem at night;

(Note: The masking tape is just temporary until I can get some acrylic pins to hold the backing in place. I want to be able to remove it for cleaning if/as needed.)
My only concern is with gas and heat exchange in the sump with those curtains up. The other option is to black out the back of the light box (no problem - paint or a piece of black acrylic will do the trick) and to move the curtains up to cover the tank. I'm not sure which is the better option... I'm going to keep an eye on the Ph and temps for the next few days/weeks and see how it does with the curtains where they are. I might be able to remove the near-side curtain; which is away from the light source enough that I should be okay without it...

The nice part about having been cycling the rock in Brute cans since last March is that I don't think I'm going to have a cycle problem. Despite ghost-feeding the tank a few times now, the ammonia hasn't moved above 0.010 since after the rocks were moved in. I have dumped in some Turbo Start 900 and MicroBacter 7 (left over from seeding the QT) just to help out, but I am pretty confidant that the tank is well seeded with bacteria at this point...

Next update should include the next steps of building the ecosystem - pods! I've got two shipments on the way of the little critters (and some food for 'em). I also been working out the stocking list for the tank; should have some info on that soon as well...

 

[jorahx]

amazing set up, i am in the process of planing out a similar build with one of my spare bedrooms. So following along! good idea with the return pipes over the top, looks pretty good that way.

what made you choose to do two overflows? i was thinking about doing one with higher GPH flow.

 

[DLHDesign]

Cheers!
The dual overflows was to avoid having to have one on the back wall. I was really hoping to have that wall totally empty; still looking for a way to move the gyres off there.
With that, I only had limited space on the sides. A single overflow would not have been enough flow for the tank (limited to ~900gph), so I had to go with two to ensure I could get the turnover I’m looking for.

 

[DLHDesign]

2/10/2019 - Day 128

The scape is done. I was going to post it up and get feedback, but when the wife told me that she liked it, I decided I had all the input I needed. Happy wife; happy life and all that. Stands to reason - she helped me design it. I struggle with creating things that are artistic, but she does pretty well at it (which is odd on the face of it since she came out of school as an engineer while I dropped out of school to do art stuff, but that's who we were, not who we are now...).

This was the pre-mortar picture. I've since mortared everything into place, which changed the shape of things some (taking it out and moving it about and such), but it's basically the same as above in shape and flow. The plan is to make all along the top shelf an SPS garden (of course, eh?) and the center rock will be a zoa garden. The "lagoon" on the center-left would be for any of the lower-flow LPS, while everything else will get scattered about as light and flow requirements dictate. The lighting above is just bleed-over from the room lighting, btw - makes pictures easier being able to turn on a switch and get semi-normal colors.
Took a picture from each end as well, though the water was a bit hazy still since I don't have any filter socks. Here's the left corner:

And the right:

I'm going to pick up a camera for the right-side angle, since it backs up to a small corner that isn't really of any use. I can nestle a camera in there and run the cabling through to the other side. Should let me keep an eye on most of the tank action when I'm away.

Beyond the DT, I placed some rock in the frag tank as well, mostly to get more surface area since I can't really see into the tank all that well. I should have plumbed the return against the wall so that I could see into the tank, but that would have pushed it out a bit more, and the room is already tight enough down there... Ah well; it's the frag tank in the fish room. I can peak around to see into it when/as needed.

Still had some rock left over, so I dropped a few pieces into the sump as well. I had picked up a few blocks to start creating a pod complex, but the addition of the rock should give me even more.

I may need to remove some of that whenever I actually get that running as a fuge with chaeto and all, but it'll take a bit of time to get there and until then, the rock helps with the bacterial establishment.

Once all of that was in place, I still had some rock left over. Not much - about what I expected, really. Not sure what to do with it, though, so for now it's just sitting in a tub...

With all that (finally) done, I'll now wait a bit to let the dust and such settle out. I added in 4 full bottles of coralline algae from ARC Reef - 2 purple, 2 pink - before the weekend and have ordered another 2 of each that should be here before the end of the week. I've also got @AlgaeBarn sending me pods and such on repeat order to get those populations up before any fish get added in.
Speaking of fish; I actually lost another one - the last of the unnamed Cardinals. I'm not sure what happened; we went out of town for the weekend and got caught in the snow. I had my parents stop by two times over the course of the 4 days we were gone to feed the tank (which was on auto-feed anyways) and they never mentioned seeing anything out-of-sorts. Not that they are the best observers of the fish, but I imagine they would have seen a dead fish stuck to the intake of the HOB... Oddly, while all that was going on, the ammonia in the QT tank - which had been hovering around 0.05ppm on the Seneye- dropped to 0.001 over the course of the weekend. Not sure if the fish died, which gave the bacteria in the tank what it needed to explode or what... It was a bit disheartening to think that the tank was doing smashing while I was away (I attributed the drop to the reduced feeding), only to find out that the tank was doing well, but that I still lost a fish. Ah well; by the time we got home, there was almost nothing left of the fish, so no way to know what happened. A big water change just in case, and everyone is back to the holding pattern they are in. I do need to get the tangs, at least, out of there soon - they are starting to show signs of the too-small tank. Soon, my friends - soon. Hang in there; it'll get better soon...