Chad's 195 total gallon VB garage build

[Chad]

I am not one to do build threads usually, but since I have moved to Virginia Beach and a few folks have asked me, here it goes.

 

The sump, filtration, frag tank, and everything but the display tank volume will be in a cabinet in the garage. At this point all I have built is the cabinet, but the tank move is coming on Saturday, so things will move fast. I'll probably have everything up, going, and tweaked by the new year.

 

Almost all of my previous equipment will be reused. The only thing that will not is the display tank, not long ago I found a deal on a tank with the exact same footprint as the one I planned on using (my current - and now future - sump). Nicer, less work, and cheap. I love those deals.

 

The DT is a rimless 90 gallon (36x24x24), the sump is a custom 75 gallon (36x24x21), and the frag tank is a 30 gallon 18x18x21. When equipment comes up, I'll say more about it at that point.

 

Here is the base for the cabinet, only half is for the tank, but the total size is 8' wide x 8' tall x 2' deep. I can't even say how much I love my deep sink.

 

 

Some building (I painted whenever I stopped building for the day... so some of the in-progress painting is a little goofy looking).

 

 

 

 

And the (mostly) finished product... I am going to add a couple of barrel locks to keep the doors nicely shut. I'm pretty happy with the way it looks overall.

 

 

The first order of business was hooking up the RO/DI to make water. The right side of the cabinet holds the water processing station (after my auto water changer is installed, I will make the tubing look a little nicer and plumb it into the cabinet):

 

 

And a closeup of my completely gutted and rebuilt RO/DI filter.

 

 

Well, that's that for now... more to come. I will say, though, that I am really excited about the stand and seeing all of this come together in a new way

[zoozilla]

You didn't waste any time Tagging along.

[Sharkey18]

Wow. That is really cool.

[jimlin]

that looks great.

[Ryan S]

woohoo!

[surf&turf]

Awesome Chad!!

[DaveS]

Looks great. Where's the LED fixture going???

[Brian Ward]

Can't wait to see this on Sat!

[Jon Lazar]

Chad, what is going where on the cabinet unit?

[Chad]

Thanks for the comments, y'all

 

Dave, the LED (when it's finished... it's on Sun time these days... ) will go above the DT on the other side of the wall you can see above. I'll show some pictures of that when the time comes.

 

Jon, The bottom right shelf will hold the sump, the middle shelf will hold the frag tank a QT and the saltwater reservoir for my auto water changer, the top shelf will be storage area and where I put the majority of my electronics and power supplies. The chiller will be mounted on top of the cabinet. Finally, a large freshwater reservoir will be in the bottom left side of the cabinet. The rest of the left side will be garage storage.

 

Brian, I'll text you when I have a good idea when I'll be in town. Likely, it'll be ~4-5.

[Chad]

Last image of the old setup before tear-down.

 

[Chad]

OK, it's been a crazy couple of days!!

 

Here is a shot of the back of the Uhaul that held 1400# of fish tank equipment!

 

 

The system is almost completely back up... the only think that I am missing is a DT! The stand wasn't quite finished, so I went ahead and set up everything in the frag tank and refugium for the time being. I think the stand will be worth waiting for, I'm pretty excited to see how my idea for it came together!

 

However, I was able to make good progress on doing plumbing, wiring, and all that I can with the filtration cabinet... Some will have to be redone, and I've left the tunze stuff aside (albeit hooked up - so it makes the wiring in some of the pics look bad...).

 

Here is everything set into place before the fury of plumbing started:

 

 

Despite my best efforts, the temp of my livestock fell to ~67, so I am having a little RTN on a few of the SPS colonies... but most everything seems to have come through and is looking OK. I haven't seen my midas blenny, but I can't say I expected to yet.

 

Messy... but the life support is going:

 

 

Cleaning up the wiring a bit and getting the controller going:

 

 

And the automatic water change station plumbed up:

 

 

All the wiring done (except tunze stuff that will be added after the DT).

 

 

And doing some tweaking to the final equipment setup (this is the pic with the most messy tunze wiring... I'll fix that later):

 

 

Lights are off (and will be until tomorrow when I start ramping it back up slowly to acclimate the corals), but here is the whole filtration cabinet:

 

 

The sump and refugium area (all of the plumbing in the sump is temporary until I get the DT on the other side of the wall, I'll deal with annoyong bubbles at that time):

 

 

And the frag tank and salt tank storage (I still have a lot of water to make!):

 

 

Sorry about the crappy cell phone pics... As you can imagine, my priority the last couple of days hasn't been taking nice pics... Although once things calm down a bit I promise I'll go through with my nice camera and make up for it

[zygote2k]

looks good.

whatever happened with that light that you were building?

[Chad]

Thanks, Rob.

 

I am still building the fixture... Other than general life issues taking my project time away, I had an issue with one of the drivers that took me a while to correct. It's corrected as of last week... so sometime in the near future I'll finish it up.

 

LOL, this thread gets no love

[jimlin]

I thought you had a filter sock for your sump?

[Chad]

Nope, I have been sockless and spongeless for a very long time.

 

I try to set up my systems with maintenance in mind. If the maintenance is easy, it's much more likely to get done. Things like sump space and access (that's why I had the sump sticking out the back of my tank stand before... it was easy to get to).

 

For filter socks and sponges, I think the all too often turn into a "crap catcher" that become a liability. Either by stuff rotting and negatively impacting water quality or by becoming clogged and overflowing.

 

My method is to provide a "settling" area for debris and detritus to cycle through the system until it is either eaten (i.e., in the frag tank or DT by CUC, livestock, or coral) or easily processed / removed (i.e., a refugium or settling tank).

[jimlin]

When I had the sock on, I had no pods. After I took the socks off I suddenly had pods everywhere. The critters seems to like the crud that settled on the bottom of my refugium. Pods were fairly large in there as well and seem to be eating something from the fuge. Pods in the display tank are so much smaller for some reason.

[Steve175]

Very nice Chad! It's fun to see it coming together after all your great planning. Glad you went with the chiller outside the cabinet. Still might want to think about ventilating it a bit (dehumidifier with hose into the sink maybe)

 

 

"How did 1500G of saltwater cost THAT much?"

[Coral Hind]

Wow, you've been busy! Nice work Chad.

 

I know the sump plumbing is only temporary but maybe a partial lid might help cut down on the salt creep from the bubbles.

[Chad]

Steve, I think I am going to do exactly that There is a really high probability that I will install a vent fan that goes right out the side of the house. That project is on the list (though after installing the DT!)...

 

Thanks, David, after your post, I actually went out to see what I had on hand and could use and found one of the lids for my makeup tank works acceptably since the bubbles are just on one side.

 

I have a bit of an update, but still waiting in the DT...

 

First the progress:

 

I cleaned up the DT (and found there was something on the front glass that left little pock marks when I cleaned it off. Grrr... We'll see how it looks with water in it. After I cleaned it up, I made a makeshift stand in the garage and test filled it.

 

 

While filling, I set up to drill another hole for an overflow. I drill all of my tanks in (at least) three locations: One for the drain, one for the return, and one for an emergency dry drain.

 

Then I drilled the hole (yes, I did it with water in the tank... which I periodically dipped the hole saw in to provide cooling and lubrication).

 

Success!

 

Then I put turn ups in all the bulkheads and test filled the tank for 24 hours (it passed fine ). The water is cloudy from the glass dust left by drilling the hole.

 

 

OK, now the sad part.

 

I had an issue with my ATO that I *think* I figured out... After starting up the ATO, I went outside the next morning to find it was stuck on (only 4-5 gallons of water, but the sump overflowed... no significant SG change, but a pain and mess to clean up nonetheless). I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure the switch floated, filled with water, and then sank... I had set it in the water until I could get a holder for it only fastened at the top edge of the tank but not the bottom. Every time I tested it, it worked... so that's my best theory. Thoughts?

 

I had an issue with one of my EB8s on the apex that caused the light to stick on in the tank holding most of my corals. I had heavy RTN and dieoff. As with most problems, this happened while I was out of town for three days and I discovered the problem when I got back (it took me a little bit to figure out what it was).

 

Several large acan, gorgonian, cyphastrea, chalice and favia colonies are either heavily damaged or dead. I'm not sure on several of the zoas, efflatounaria, and leathers as they are tightly closed and have been since I noticed the problem. The leathers may be looking a little better now than they were a few days ago (bumps where the polyps are instead of a very smooth looking surface with mucous covering).

 

Some photos of the damage:

 

 

 

[Chad]

Doing a little more work on the tank prep and stand...

 

I decided to go with a little different of a color and I haven't decided what I think yet, I may scrape it off and redo it... What do y'all think?

 

 

And here is the first look at the stand... It's not done quite yet, but it's looking pretty good, I think

 

 

 

[smallreef]

I LOVE the WOOD!!! its sooo designer furniture looking!

[Chad]

Thanks That's what I was going for... It's not quite done yet as I intend to add a strip of stainless steel to contrast it a bit, but I am pretty happy with how it's turned out so far. It's made of African mahogany (frames) and ebony wood veneers (panels).

 

Here's one of the removable door.

 

[smallreef]

I should have had you build my stand before you left:( i can build... but dont do it well enough to make it look like furniture like that!

[Chad]

John from WAMAS (screen name John) did the veneer work for me... On this one, the framing was easy as I had the local lumber mill cut all the wood, I just provided dimensions 1" more and then cut to length. Basically, if you can build the frame out of 2x4s, you could do this. It's not the cheapest way, as the mill work charges a bit (though still much less than if you were to have a furniture maker do it), but it wasn't too bad and I think the final piece is worth it.