Crewdawg's 180 Journey... from a NC12 on up.

[Crewdawg1981]

Okay, small updates. I've actually done more, but craziness has kept me from taking or posting pictures. Long story short... the hot water connection to the sink slipped off Sunday morning and pretty much flooded the basement. Get to add a big chunk of change to the cost of this build now... had to pay the deductible on the Homeowner's Insurance.... Yay. Even better was the whole thing was my fault. I shortened the pipe on Saturday so that the two feed lines werent overlapping and could be neatly fastened to the wall. At least I was able to install ball valves so that when I saw the mess I was quickly able to shut it off without killing the water to the whole house.

Live and learn I guess....

Anyways, because the only reason anyone ever looks at build threads is for pics:

I painted the back of the display tank with some Krylon. Three coats and:


And... with the help of some friends got the sump in place. I've since modified the table a tad with a leg under the corner of the tank on both ends.... you'll see when I update more:

[Crewdawg1981]

Okay... so now that I've gotten one major flood out of the way. I'm looking for some ideas to fool proof the room for floods. As you can see in the pics above, I went ahead and epoxy painted the wall behind the tank. Some more ideas:

- Epoxy the rest of the walls, at least a foot off the ground.
- Install a baseboard, also painted with epoxy paint, and caulk the top and bottom to make it ... sorta watertight I guess?
- Buy a waterbug leak detector and hook it up to my IO Breakout Box for my Apex Sorta like this: http://www.amazon.com/WaterBug%C2%AE.../dp/B0007PAN9G
- Add three-four water on the floor sensors. I guess the one good thing out of the flood is I now know where the water puddled and exactly where I should be putting these sensors. One is going under the sink, one under the front left corner of the sump stand and another just right of the sump adjacent to the water bins.

This is where I'm going to need some additional help. Not sure which parts to get or where to get em... or how to wire em up.
- Install solenoids to the feed lines to the faucet. What do I use and I guess this means another breakout box? I was thinking that I would set it up so that they are normally open? and close when the Apex/Waterbug finds water on the floor?
- Install a solenoid to the supply line for the RO/DI system.

[Crewdawg1981]

Okay... still need opinions/help on the waterproofing steps. Specifically... what solenoids to get and where... probably how to hook them up too.

But...

Founds some more photos.

Here is what I did to the stand for added support since the tank doesnt reach the corners of the stand:


Added ball valves to the supply lines of the faucet and a shark bite valve to hookup the RO/DI unit:


Finally, here is where I'm trying to drill through the floor. Got the tile up easy enough with a hand held grout removal tool (shoulder LOVED this...). Tip... dont bother wasting money on Harbor Freight tools. I should've just bought a new rigid hole saw. I know I am drilling through concrete backer board and then 3/4 ply... but after two holes the bit doesnt cut anything...


If you're wondering why I have an extension cord going through the first hole... its because I have so many air movers circulating air in the basement that it would trip the circuit breaker...

[JeF4y]

For auto-shutoff switches/solenoids, check this out.
http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/...i-systems.html

Might kill 2 birds with one stone.

[Crewdawg1981]

Yeah, I went ahead and got a WaterBug system with four sensors:


It can tie into my Apex with the I/O Breakout Box I already have.

[Crewdawg1981]

Looky what the delivery man brought me No more sleepless nights wondering if the AC is actually running water. Well... after I get it setup I guess.

[Crewdawg1981]

Okay... some work to the sump room/sump has been done!

First, A shot of the original design of the sump. I dont like the two 8 inch baffles. Not only are they low, the baffle next to the return only holds ~9 gallons of water. While I plan on using an osmolator, thats just not a lot of room for error when it comes to evaporation. Its sorta hard to see in the photograph, but whatever.


Soooo... I bought the five piece Neiko diamond dust drill bit kit and got to work. I cut five holes on this baffle in like... 20 minutes. Super easy. I just drilled with one hand and poured water with the other.


Next, I set to work on setting up the skimmer section. I wanted to direct the flow of the water so that new water was coming in on the same side as the skimmer pump rather than all around it and making it past the skimmer. So, I drilled two holes in the higher baffle and then an additional two on the low baffle (which I hate for being there anyways). Its kind of hard to see in these pics but you should get the idea. Hopefully this will keep more of the drained water flowing to the skimmer.



Next I siliconed my two new baffles in using GE Silicone I. Got Chris at FishScales to cut two pieces. The skimmer section is 11 inches and the final baffle to the return section is 10 inches.

Here is the skimmer section with the skimmer in place, but not on a stand (need to make that):


And... the final product. I think this gives me a 20 gallon fuge, ~20 gallon return and ~a 14"x23" skimmer section.


You can see my drain lines above the last picture. I'm trying to decide if I run two pieces of PVC straight down and then drill holes in the side under the water to reduce the back pressure or if I use an elbow under the water level and then extend a foot long piece of PVC drilled with several holes from each and capped.

[Crewdawg1981]

Time to commence with the water testing... at least with the sump.

Hooked up and fillin:



Only had 55 gallons to put in, so I didnt quite make it to the return section. I'll be making up more tonight, but so far its looking good.

[Crewdawg1981]

Well, I finally got the tank in place! Had some friends come over today to help lift this bad boy. I doubt we absolutely needed them, but I borrowed some furniture dollies from my parents and we just wheeled the tank around on em and then up to the stand. Marked where my bulkheads were going to be for the overflows and returns, quickly cut out the holes with a 3 inch hole saw and back on she went!

[Crewdawg1981]

Well... last week was a busy one. Got everything all glued together and running for once:

Here's the plumbing as I've got it setup... let me know some of your thoughts. This was my first go at doing it and... well I'm not going to claim to be any sort of a plumber.

Under the tank:


Behind the tank:


Under the floor:


When I finally went to pump water through the system for the first time... I did have a large problem. The Sch 80 1.5 inch threaded unions I bought were an absolute waste. Even with teflon tape and screwed together as good as I could get them... they leaked pretty badly. So, I went up to home depot and bought some much cheaper Sch 40 solvent unions... Of course with everything glued in place, I had to also buy one of those wire pvc cutting kits because of how tight some of the areas were. 1.5 hours later... I was leak free (fingers crossed very tightly and head knocking on wood for no more leaks).

[Crewdawg1981]

Got the tank and stand assembled together too. It is such a gorgeous setup. My girlfriend had a housewarming/GA vs. AU party at her house and I got SEVERAL compliments, plus many "Wow! I didnt realize Dustin could build this kind of stuff" (Dustin and I have several mutual friends).

The tank, stand and canopy JUST fits when you lift the hood up.

Tank with the stand and canopy and starting the water fill:


Doors open:


Canopy Up:


Also, I got to work adding the salt to the system... took about, 4/5ths of a bucket of salinity (I used about 60 gallons of water from my old system). Doing this slowly, it took about a day to bring it up to 1.025


Finally... added sand and marco rock before I had to leave for Warrenton, VA for the week for some job training for a new position I just took with Asset Management. From what I hear... its still pretty cloudy. Unfortunately, I dont feel comfortable letting the system run 24/7 while i'm out of town. If something were to go wrong, I dont know that my girlfriend would know what to do. Also, I still need to setup a stand to run my protien skimmer. The holes I drilled to control the direction of the water into the skimmer chamber works perfectly might I add.


Here's a picture of the cloudy sump:


Definitely need to change up the drain pipes... there isnt much backpressure with all the holes I drilled into the PVC, but definitely a lot of turbulence right at the edge of the tank rim (and splashing)...

Any thoughts on improving the design right there? Also, I would like a way to drain the water from the return line without having to remove the check valve. I was thinking of installing a wye tee fitting above the top ball valve in the picture and then connecting yet another ball valve on to that. From there, if I ever wanted to drain the water from the system I could simply open the valve and voila!

Good idea? Better ideas?

[purpleGORILLA]

Wow, that is super nice..I love it...

[Crewdawg1981]

Thanks Trinh!

[gmpolan]

Looking good grant...

[Crewdawg1981]

Thanks Geoff

Hope the frag is doin well. I know it wasnt all that much.

[Crewdawg1981]

Well... and we move along.

Getting a lot more done these days. The tank is up, running and into week two. I've gotten sand in, dead and live rock in and the lights hooked up. I dont have a very good picture of the lights because my iPhone pretty much washes out any photos. As soon as I get my camera over there I'll try and take some corrected for the white balance.

Here is a shot of the running sump though. I got it all setup, just waiting to transfer my Apex over before hooking it all up to an EB8:


Added some things to it though to try and keep everything clean and in place. This is the divider I've created to keep fish, corals and whatever else in the fuge. Its simply egg crate, so its not gonna stop everything, but still.


Built a stand and installed my Protein Skimmer - a Super Reef Octopus XP3000i. Used some egg crate and some 1.5 inch PVC couplings for the stand. I have it sitting in approximately 6.5 inches of water:


Finally, I added a splash guard over the drains. It looks all nice and neat in this picture, but since taking the picture the heat of the water and the void between the sides has the plexiglass bowing in towards the water. Not the ideal, and I'd love some fix suggestions, but one perk to this inward bow is that any splashing water now simply collects at the center and drips back down.

[Crewdawg1981]

Next I set to work on the hood. I installed three Lumenmax Elite reflectors (but never remembered to take a picture of em). Oh well, you've seen them before and if not here's a link to what I'm talking about: http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewIt...ory=FILTFIMHTN

I figured that I'd want to be able to take the canopy off of the tank every now and then and not have to worry about undoing a lot of cables etc., so I cut the cables and installed some plug ends to make life a tad easier in that area:



Got everything all laid out the way I wanted, used some black zip ties and fasteners to hold everything in place:


Finally, Here is what i'm left with:

[Crewdawg1981]

Now I just need to figure out where I'm going to mount the ballasts on the stand. I'm trying to decide if I mount them along the top of the inside of the stand or along the side.

THOUGHTS?

[Crewdawg1981]

Ooooooh yeah. Forgot to mention that I also added a startup dose of Prodibio BioDigest and Bioptim to the tank a week ago. This amounted to 30 ampules of the BioDigest and 12 ampules of the Bioptim. I'm considering adding these to my regular routine. More research ahead of me.

[RedEDGE2k1]

Originally Posted by Crewdawg1981

Now I just need to figure out where I'm going to mount the ballasts on the stand. I'm trying to decide if I mount them along the top of the inside of the stand or along the side.

THOUGHTS?

I remember contemplating this same issue on my personal cabinet as well, and looking back it's kind of funny...the only time I touched the ballasts over the 3yr life of my tank was when I installed them and when I took the tank apart and sold everything. So don't worry about it too much -- just put them anywhere they will be out of the way, yet still easily accessible if you need to replace one for whatever reason. I'd screw them to the top inside of the stand, so they're away from salty air and heat.

Switching gears -- maybe it's just the way the canopy was positioned when you took the picture of the wire plugs (the pic above), but is the canopy not deep enough (front-to-back) to sit on the back rim of the tank, when its fully seated on the front rim of the tank?

Dustin