Origami

No, I'm not. You have 1-1/2 inch overflows? Many setups have 1" drains and 3/4" returns. Please describe your setup more completely please. We're kind of going 'round and 'round.

Thanks, Forrest. I was thinking of something like this just this morning but which used a single piece of PVC notched and folded back on itself to form the inner and outer boxes, and a small bit of plastic hose. I like this - nice and ghetto.

I used flexible PVC (in very limited areas) for two reasons: First, for installation flexibility - I didn't have to line things up just so; and, second, for noise suppression (suppressing transmitted vibration). If you use flexible PVC, be aware that you treat it a little differently than hard PVC. Don't use primer on it, for example, as it weakens the joint in a long term sense; and use medium pvc cement on it, too, rather than the thin stuff. As for where I used it: I used it in my stand between my display drains / returns and the wall (along one leg only) and I used it at the input and output of my main pump. Everything else is hard PVC. 1-1/2 inch PVC would be the minimum that I'd use if you're merging two one inch drains if you want to retain full drainage capacity.

That's unusual. Given that it's Friday, you may not hear until Monday. Rest assured, though, they're very good to their customers and they've got a very good product as well.

I run my refugium and frag tanks on a cycle opposite my display. It stabilizes both pH and heat.

I don't recommend that you go with ebay. Instead, go to a reputable vendor that will give you a great product, great price & great service. One of our sponsors, airwaterice.com is just such a vendor. They even give WAMAS members a discount (you have to look up the code to use). Head over and check out their reefkeeper systems. Many of us here run some variant of their 75 gpd Typhoon III.

You should be just fine as long as you've mixed up new salt water and let it age for a day or two before connecting it up. It's kind of like a water change in a way.

On my old system, I just siliconed it in place over the top of the baffle (siliconed to the edges of the tank and on the baffle itself, that is).

The basics are fine. I would use a Durso-style overflow to provide some venting and to help quiet things some. I would add ball valves at both tank drains and returns. Personally, I use full union valves here so that I can overhaul the plumbing if required. You might also put a ball or gate valve on the pressure side of your return pump so that you can throttle it back from a single point if needed. I'd use 1-1/2 inch minimum pipe for the merged drains . 1-1/4 inch minimum for the merged return. If you submerge and "L" your return at your sump, it'll run quieter. If you ever get to using an external pump, having valves and unions in line and close is very useful to facilitate pump cleaning, repair or replacement. As I recall, you're planning on putting your sump in the garage, right? You may wish to consider several things in this case: a) Impact on evaporation b) Impact on temperature and the need for temperature control (especially in the summer if the garage gets particularly hot) c) Vulnerability / access to accidental pollutants

Whoa. What's behind it, Doug?

Sorry for the mishap. Good perspective, though. "If it ain't one thing, it's another." - Roseanne Roseanadana

Yes, Forrest, please read before proceeding and go forward with caution understanding the biological mechanisms, the risks, and risk mitigation methods. I did it for a while on my 90 display and had good results - only some of my early softies (which seem to prefer dirtier water) seemed not to like the regimen. Be aware that nitrate reduction can be limited by available phosphates and vice-versa. Thus, if you're using something like GFO, I'd stop using it while while you dose so you can pull both down effectively. You have a small tank so be cautious. (Hi Cliff. Good to see you here and, more frequently, over at RC's chem forum....)

This link will give you some idea of the capacity of standard PVC pipe: http://flexpvc.com/WaterFlowBasedOnPipeSize.shtml With 1" drains, if you're going to merge two of them, you want to increase the merged pipe size to a minimum of 1.5" to avoid a major capacity constriction. You can go larger if you want. This is applicable to both return and drain situations. To answer your two questions: 1) You can elbow over wherever you think is appropriate. If you avoid long vertical drops, you may be able to pipe noise somewhat. 2) A "big slant" is not necessary. Water will flow to the pipe exit as long as the exit is below the entry point to the pipe and there is positive head pressure to move it out (i.e. as long as water is flowing into the pipe at a higher level, it will flow out an exit placed at a lower point - not necessarily at the lowest point - in the route). A modest slant (1/4" per foot of horizontal run) is typical for household drains which are designed to completely drain intermittent water flow. Note that our aquarium application has a continuous, not intermittent, flow. Thus, the slant is not needed. As long as the exit is lower than the entry point, you'll get flow. However, if you want to be able to completely empty the pipe should flow into the pipe stop, then you should slant the pipe, making the exit the lowest point in the drain, or put a drain in at the lowest point in the run.

Most of my plumbing is 1-1/2 inch, necking down to 1 inch at the various tanks. Return into each tank, though, is 3/4". The number of valves and unions that you use is a personal design choice and depends upon how much control you want or need to facilitate maintenance (including breaking down or servicing plumbing without breaking down the tanks tied to it), and the cost you're willing to bear. Designs vary. I can't give you a hard number.

Yep. I have four vents on my drain system. Probably overkill, but it prevents any siphoning sounds. I cap each vent though with a drilled cap much like what you'd see on a Durso drain. This keeps the noise from water moving through the drain down as well.

That's still code, I believe. If you need the pipe to empty completely after the water flow stops, that's advised as well. However, I don't need that to happen in my system (unless I'm completely draining it down), so I'm comfortable with the slight rise in the piping just before sump entry. Queloque, if you'd like to see my setup sometime (I'm in Ashburn, just north of Manassas), I'd be happy to show it to you personally and to discuss some thoughts and to address some of your questions on the subject.

See below. (Oddly, I received an unintended double post.)

Some dose it manually (which I think is a pain because you're advised to do it very slowly in order to minimize the effect of lowering pH rapidly). A variation on this is to mix up a slurry with a small amount of kalk powder (calcium hydroxide) and just dump it into a high flow area of your system one or more times a day. (Anthony Calfo does this on his commercial system.) The caution that's advised here regards the potential for short-term pH disruption (that's why Calfo does this more than once a day). Some drip it in like Rob (zygote) described. Some (very respected people, such as Randy Holmes-Farley - a very respected chemist in the hobby) add it to their top off water reservoirs directly. These top off reservoirs can be as large as 50 gallons. And some use reactors which are often used in conjunction with automatic top off systems. With proper precautions, the risks that Rob describes are readily mitigated. This article (by RHF) is a few years old, but is a very good place to start. http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.php In the article, Randy covers some of the methods of Kalk dosing.

Premium Aquatics carries a wide variety of 80W T5's, too. Head over to www.premiumaquatics.com to see the selection. You can get them from Nadir over at www.fishnreef.com. He's a new, local vendor that supports WAMAS. Great article by the way. I've saved a copy for future reference. Unfortunately, I just changed out my t5's a couple of weeks ago.

Not everyone... they are kind of large. You have to have enough space for them. They come in a variety of sizes - 50, 70, and 100 gallons are most common. I believe that they're also available in 150 and 300 gallon sizes. You can find them at Tractor Supply Company. One good thing is that they're very rugged and can withstand the force of being filled with water. After all, that's what they're built for. By the way, David (dschflier) doesn't use a stock tank but has a custom acrylic sump visible on the floor under the stairs in the top picture above. In my case, I keep a separate refugium tank. You can plumb it in separately or can integrate it into your other plumbing with some thought. In my pictures above, my refugium drains into the main drain line that you saw the display emptying into while the return comes from one of the outputs of my return manifold. Return flow is adjusted using the in-line ball valves. My sump has extra live rock and a skimmer (set on a stand) in it. I don't try to subdivide it with baffles.

RHF is probably the most respected chemist in the hobby today in my opinion. Head on over to RC's chemistry forum... he's a frequent poster and the person everyone looks to for advice. He's a chemist over at Genzyme, I believe. Cliff Babcock (Highland Reefer) is over there, too, and posting more frequently over there nowadays than here.... I've not been following this thread, Forrest, but just read it. I'm not sure how Amquel+ is locking things up but let me make a couple of comments. First, a quick read of Amquel's action indicates that it binds multiple nitrogen compounds, including ammonia. While this is good in an emergency situation, ammonia IS the food that feeds a substantial part of your biological filter. If you go "locking it up" as part of your regular practice, you'll degrade your biological filter because bacteria will die off until they balance the available nutrients (ammonia). Effectively, you'll be asking your bacterial friends to compete with your chemical additives for food. That is probably the principle reason that I'd be wary of trying to control nitrogen compounds this way. A second, albeit minor, reason is that you'll be disrupting the completion of the nitrogen cycle which has an effect on alkalinity. You see, in the conversion path between ammonia and nitrate, a unit of alkalinity is consumed. In completing the cycle, when nitrate is converted to N2 gas, that unit of alkalinity is returned. Interrupting this conversion - whether it be through the use of an additive or through water changes, effectively unbalances your calcium - alkalinity ratio, forcing you to supplement using an unbalanced additive to make up the difference. Like I said, it's a minor reason. Many people control nitrates with water changes.

9-1/2 horizontal feet. But, you may be missing the point, these horizontal runs could be 50 feet and it wouldn't make much of a difference. The water would flow even in this case. Consider the following thought experiment: Imagine that you have a 50 foot garden hose going down your driveway. Now, grab the end of the hose at the top of your driveway and pour a gallon of water down into the open end of the hose. Look down at the other end of the hose - see the water coming out? Now put the hose on a level sidewalk and do the same thing. You'll get the same result as long as you're holding your end of the hose up higher than the drain end. That's gravity. The horizontal run is not all that important - there's some resistance, yes, but it's inconsequential given the short distances we're talking about as long as the pipe's diameter is large enough so that friction (due to fluid velocity) is not be a limiting factor. This is how water flows out out of your house, too. When water goes down the drain in your house, the distance traveled horizontally is often much, much longer than the vertical descent. In the case of your aquarium overflow, there's water entering the high side of your overflow and it's applying pressure to the water already in the drain system. That water that's higher than the water in other parts of the pipe presses downward, through gravity, on the water that's below it, providing the motivating force to move water through the pipe.

Picture #1 looks under my 180 display at one of two drains. One of the descending pipes is a return, while the other is a drain. The one on the right is actually the return. You can see how the return line elbows back outside the stand to the wall that's behind the stand. Picture #2 shows the drain in the last shot entering a PVC tee (1" flex PVC entering a 1.5" PVC Tee) and exiting the stand back toward the wall. There's a union between the tee and the wall. Picture #3 shows the drain (toward the center of the picture) passing into a sanitary tee on the other side of the wall. The upright above the sanitary tee is actually a vent, capped and drilled to keep the drain system quiet and flowing without siphon action. The flow of the water is to the right in this picture. Other system elements (a refugium and a frag tank) drain into the main horizontal run and the display is actually about the last system element entering the drain before it reaches the sump. Picture #4 shows the drain line rounding a corner (twice) and entering the side of my 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank through a 1-1/2 inch bulkhead adapter. This is my sump. You'll notice that there's a slight rise in the drain line (which otherwise had been flowing 'downhill' in all the other pictures). Water enters the sump and makes a left turn, circulating water in the sump (clockwise when viewed from the top). You can also see how water is returned from my sump from the bulkhead adapter toward the bottom of the picture. While it looks like I'm taking water off the bottom of the sump, there's actually an upright pipe and strainer inside the sump that helps me take water from the middle of the water column in the sump. The return is made via the Reeflo Wahoo pump that is visible just beyond the valve in the center of the picture. Picture #5 is an overview of my sump area. In the upper left of the picture, you can see some of my manifold plumbing that separates my water return to feed multiple systems (2 to the display, 1 to the refugium / frag tank combo, and one to a garden hose that's used for water changes. One port on the manifold is being held in reserve for expansion or whatever use I might have later on.) It looks like I need to empty the skimmer again! Questions?