Alan's Rimless 75 build

[AlanM]

Vince from Quantum Reefs came by last Saturday to drop off most of my order to get me started after planning and changing my mind multiple times between July and now.

 

So far I've got a tank (Deep Blue Edge 75 non reef ready):

 

 

and a box of parts:

 

 

which consists of Apex, extra VDM, couple Eheim Jager 250W heaters, Reeflo Blowhole 1450 return pump, 2 Tunze 6095 controllables, and some other small bits. They're bringing two boxes of reeflakes too.

 

Also have a CS1 to build (or trade for a built and modified one to Zygote2k when I have him out for a consultation), Swabbie, Davy Jones' Locker, Avast MR5, Avast Deluxe ATO.

 

It's going to go on this wall:

 

 

where the green taped rectangle is on the floor.

 

At the moment I'm planning to drill the top rear of the tank and silicone in some glass panes to make an internal Bean overflow. I'm going to put the drain pipes in the wall behind the tank. The drains and returns will emerge from the wall rather than being visible behind the tank. The other side of that wall is the fridge, so I'll put a panel on the wall that I can remove to get to the plumbing for cleanouts by rolling the fridge out of the way. I'm going to try to run the overflows down to the basement which will involve a 10 foot horizontal run that is less slope than ideal for the full siphon part of the BeanAnimal overflow, so I'll just see if it works and move it up under the tank if it doesn't.

 

Also going to do DIY LEDs, probably Phillips Rebel ES from Stevesleds with Meanwell LDD-1000H drivers and a Makersled heatsink (www.makersled.com) and 6 colors of dimming because I'll have a lot of fun playing with the colors.

Edited January 19, 2013 by AlanM

[BowieReefer84]

NICE! You are going to love those 6095's. They are great pumps.

[jimlin]

cant wait to see how corals respond to those rebel leds.

[flooddc]

very nice! can't wait to see it up and running.

[zoozilla]

Tagging along.

[AlanM]

NICE! You are going to love those 6095's. They are great pumps.

 

Hope so. I'd thought about 2 MP40's, but I really liked the idea of controlling everything with the Apex and didn't want to buy an additional box to do it. Also, I don't trust my kids to not constantly be messing with the cords on the dry sides of them since they'd be basically out there in the middle of the ends of the tank. I'm worried that these will be kind of eye sores in my desired rimless and minimal-hardware-showing build, but hopefully not.

[zygote2k]

For a 75g tank, one MP40 positioned dead center back is plenty of current/wave action. Travis runs a single Mp10 on his 4' ADA tank and it's impressive. No cords for kids to get to.

[AlanM]

Rob, I should just talk to you first before I buy stuff. I'd like one little powerhead on the center back. I'll try these out and see how it goes. May have a WTB and WTS at some point.

 

The glass on this tank is just a smidge over what the max is stated for the mp40, I think, because its rimless and thicker. I'm going to bring the caliper from work to measure since its hard to view the glass in parallax on a tape measure. I know people run half inch glass with their mp40 with mixed results.

[rainbowfish]

tagging along as well

[epleeds]

Mp40 can do 3/4" glass. U would be fine on your tank. Ddiver has one for sale right now.

 

But if your going to do SPS you will need more than one MP40.

 

Also if your going to do a sandbed having a MP40 on the back wall will cause a sandstorm in front of it.

 

But I recently went to Tunze over vortech and never looked back. The 6095's will rock the tank

Edited January 20, 2013 by epleeds

[AlanM]

OK, thanks for the info epleeds. I'm going to try not to buy more stuff until I actually need them instead of anticipating what I think will work and then changing plans and realizing that I've got a bin of parts to put up for sale.

 

In retrospect I grew up kind of poor (but didn't realize it at the time) and then went to grad school and got even poorer, and now that I've had a well paying job for 12 years I have strong "buyer" tendencies, which I'm trying to tame into "planner" ones.

[AlanM]

So I've decided to do DIY LED for sure, not the Razor, even though I really like how the Razor looks and like the specs.

 

I ordered a bunch of the attached boards that a guy on ReefCentral designed and they're being made by iteadstudio.com. They will make the boards you submit in a minimum quantity of 10, so I'll have a few extra.

 

Also getting various connectors and surface mount resistors and chip sockets and stuff from china (via ebay) and will run the teensy MeanWell LDD-1000H drivers on them which can do 14 LEDs per series string and dim via PWM signals like from a Reef Angel or other Arduino based controller or from one of StevesLEDs interface boards which converts 0-10v analog into digital PWM signals.

 

[AlanM]

I got my boards yesterday for building the LED arrays. I think I've settled on an arrangement of the tank and stand and overflow and sump, and blah blah. I'm a bit of an Ikea hacker, so what I have in mind should end up looking really nice!! I'm not going to build the stand out of Ikea, but other stuff.

 

I'm ready to drill the tank, but had a style question that I could use some advice on.

 

I'm going to ask Adam to make me a coast to coast overflow out of white acrylic. Basically an L-shaped box with a slot cut across the entire front as a weir and a nice white lid. Doing it in white because I like the Innovative Marine Nuvo's so much. So that handles the drains, but I need to put in the returns. I got some 3/4" locline, but you all know what it looks like. Basically like a big black knobby turd. If I was going with a black background and overflow box it would kind of blend in, but I feel like it will really stick out with a white background and overflow box.

 

I'm considering just bringing the overflow up and over the top of the back and using standard PVC painted shiny white or the glossy furniture grade stuff. I'd put a 90 in to get the water moving forward and then a 45 to put it down into the tank and extend a piece of pipe down under the surface of the water. It would be right along the wall. I'd actually like to use the return to blow behind the rocks along the back to keep the doo doo from settling out there, but I think if I did that then I'd have a back-siphon possibility of water all the way to below the overflow box when the pump is turned off.

 

Does anyone have other ideas for what would make the return look nice?

[AlanM]

I built the stand today. Made it out of 3/4" plywood, biscuits and glue. I haven't decided if I'm going to finish it or paint it.

 

Because of the way it's put together all of the weight will be carried from the frame of the tank straight down the plywood sides and back and front. The biscuits just hold the box together. They don't carry any load. It can't shear in either direction because it would have to somehow compress the plywood to do it. I think it will be nice and sturdy, and I like how there aren't any visible joints.

 

The hardest part was carefully cutting the plywood and making sure it was all square and cut to within a smidge of accuracy to avoid any gaps which would let the load shift. Lots of careful measurements and fence placement and a new circular saw blade designed for plywood to avoid tearout.

 

Here it is getting laid out to make sure the biscuit slots are all in the right place:

 

 

Gluing the side and the top:

 

 

Everything on and clamped up except the bottom:

 

 

The bottom is a panel that just sits on some supports so I can lift it to dry the floor if water gets underneath it:

 

 

Here it is with the tank on top. The stand is 40 inches tall. I'm a bit surprised at how tall that actually is, but I think I'll like it:

 

[YHSublime]

Well done! Glad to see that thing propped up. Lets get it wet so we can all vicariously live through you! I LOVE the Deep Blue rimless. I'm going to go for their 80 when I move.

[AlanM]

Some progress. I got the stand puttied, sanded, and painted. Also painted the back of the tank and have most of my LEDs mounted on the heatsink. I ran out of 4-40 screws and washers, so waiting for more from McMaster now. It's interesting how the front panel of the tank is "low iron" glass and it looks much less green than the sides when you're looking at the wall through the glass.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2013 by AlanM

[CaptainRon]

Looks like a great setup - and looks like a really great job on that stand!

[Shoelace]

Looks like a great setup - and looks like a really great job on that stand!

 

I second that. It's nice to see a stand that is not a tangled mass of 2x4's.

[AlanM]

Quick update.  Got lots of carpentry and plumbing done.  Lights all work.  Apex stuff is hung and working.  Sump is drilled and plumbed to Reeflo Blowhole 1450.  The tank is on the main floor, then drains go through the floor and drop 8 inches as they travel about 8 feet across the basement ceiling to the utility part of the basement where they drop where you see them in the picture below.   I put a layer of Fiberglass Reinforced Panels on the walls of my fish area and caulked them in.  Should help keep the water off the walls.  There is a drain in the floor to the left of where the Apex stuff is hung.  I have the three BeanAnimal drains in there with a gate valve on one and the return way in the corner.  All 1.5" PVC.  I don't have baffles in my sump yet, so I'm waiting to cut the drains to length until I do.  I have a pile of Avast equipment to hook up and get running too. One of the network connections you can see is really network.  The other is patched up to the tank to transmit control signals from the Apex to the Tunze 6095 powerheads.

 

 

I found a great set of shelves at Lowes really cheap that happens to be exactly 36x18 in footprint and each shelf supports 1000 pounds.  I'm using that for my sump area.  It can be extended to 6 feet high, so I'll have room above the sump for doser containers or reactors or a fuge or frag tank or something.  At the moment I'm going to put chemicals and equipment up there. 

 

 

Also, big thanks to Coral Hind as well.  He gave me a 4x4 piece of black acrylic a couple of months back which Roscoe's Reefs was kind enough to pick up for me.  I made an internal overflow box which is 36" wide and an external part to go behind the tank which covers up the plumbing and lets me bring the returns out above the water line.  I think it will look really nice.  I'm going to use the rest of the piece to make baffles for my sump where I may try the weatherstripping pressure method posted about recently.

 

 

Getting close to getting it wet!

 

[monkiboy]

dude. sweet. you weren't joking about having her wet before the next meeting! good work, sir!

[roni]

Just saw this build...very clean look and layout so far. Excited to see how everything comes together!

[AlanM]

I siliconed on the overflow box and sump baffles and mounted my tunzes. Waiting for the cure on the silicone is killing me. I wanna tryout the return pump and these drains, but I also want to wait long enough for my splooged on caulk to dry in the sump because it would be a mess if it fell. Overflow box caulk feels nice and hard, though.

[monkiboy]

did you end up using the dow or rtv product? which was it? any more pictures?

[AlanM]

Momentive rtv-108, I think if that's the black stuff. I liked the sound of dow745 that you used, but this stuff was super sticky and easy to work with so far. I can take some pictures, but with black acrylic, black background, and black silicone it is hard to see details.

[AlanM]

RTV103 is the black stuff.  Here are a couple of pictures. 

 

I ended up putting under/over baffles really close to the end where the drains are with the heaters in that chamber.  They're 4 inches off the end of the 40B sump.  They will set the water level for the drains and heaters at 12 inches, and there is 1.5 inches between the baffles so that I hope the water doesn't fly through too fast and carry bubbles with it.  In the foreground you can see the drain I drilled in the bottom. 

 

 

Here is the overflow box.  4.5 inches tall, 2.5 inches front to back, 36 inches wide, with a lid and 0.75 inch gap between the overflow and the lid.  Not quite coast to coast.  Almost.  I am bringing the returns over the top of the tank and used some black acrylic to hide the plumbing and to attach the locline for the returns.  It's all removable with unions in the back. 

 

You can also see some locline flare nozzles that I have coming out under the overflow box.  They run on a ball valve behind the tank so that I can blow stuff from behind the rocks out towards the sides to get picked up by the powerheads and put through the tank.

 

The lights I'm working on are in the picture too.  I've been hot-gluing on 60 degree lenses for the past few days here and there.  I'm planning to mount it 18 inches over the water.  So glad I decided to do hot glue rather than silicone or something else.  The hot glue pops right off if you make a mistake, and I never do anything right the first time (or second or third usually).