AlanM

I'm interested in seeing the details too. Maybe this doesn't bode well for my future success (where most TOTM owners preach stability over constantly changing coditions), but part of what I'm looking forward to with my tank is being able to try stuff like this. ATS, bucket remote DSB, macro and rubble in a fuge. All kind of sounds fun.

Fun one! Hmm. What do I need? Now I have a reason to watch the game. I predict everyone sitting there with stuff in their cart until just after a touchdown and then hitting submit. And then after the next touchdown buying something else.

Thanks for taking the time to chat and point at stuff and tell me what is what. Richard has some seriously nice stuff in those tubs. A few minutes off 270, so it was about a 15 min trip from Gaithersburg. About the same as Rockville, and in the easier direction.

Mr Coral Retail was in Maryland, up in Frederick. Since this topic started about Aquarium One, it's nice that they're expanding into more coral tubs. I'd like it if they had more equipment and stuff to just walk in and buy, but I understand why that's difficult for most stores, especially theirs which is small inside. I think the challenge in Montgomery County is that any retail space is crazy expensive, but it almost has to be worse in NoVa. Also, I don't understand how it's even possible for any fish stores to stay open and pay the rent, let alone generate enough income to pay personal bills. I just don't get the economics. You spend money to buy fish, try to get healthy ones, spend money maintaining the tanks and feeding them, try to keep them healthy until customers get them, then send them off to possibly be abused in who knows what kind of conditions in a customer's tank, and if they die because of something the customer did, the customer will come back to you and want it replaced. And all of that when clown fish are being sold for like $10 each. Where does the money get made? I don't get it.

Good idea. I may just try that. Would be easier to run two holes to the basement than three.

Thanks. I know he says to use a sanitary tee so that the open channel has a more gradual fall and doesn't have as much turbulence with the gradual taper. 1" sanitary tees basically don't exist, though. Does your open channel make noise? He says that the alternative is to tilt the open channel a bit so that it runs down the side of the pipe. Are you using a sched 40 gate valve, or a sched 80?

I like the Herbie too, and I'd use it for sure if I had a cornerflo or some other "reef-ready" tank. But a couple of things. One is that I've never seen a herbie done with rear overflows and an internal overflow box like this at the top of the tank. Seems like it could work, just haven't seen it, and I don't want to lose the sandbed of a top to bottom overflow section. Herbie was developed to retro fit into "reef-ready" tanks to allow people to use the durso drain and the return as a siphon and open channel/emergency, respectively. Other is that BeanAnimal is only more complicated if you do the sanitary tees and threaded caps and stuff like in his page diagram. Those things make it easier to maintain, and I'd probably want to do them on a Herbie coming out the back too, so the fittings would be similar on a rear-herbie design. Just two bulkheads instead of three. It's certainly possible to do a BeanAnimal with much less complicated fittings. Is this what you'd been picturing the Herbie to be like, minus 1 pipe? http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16040282&postcount=1121

Not drilled yet. On sizes, I'm not doing a herbie. I'm doing a Bean Animal which is a herbie plus one. I'm going with different sizes to duplicate his diagram. http://www.beananimal.com/projects/silent-and-fail-safe-aquarium-overflow-system.aspx His sizes were dictated just by the holes he already had, nothing more, but it worked really well, so I'll just do what he did.

Aquarium One had ABS bulkheads and a few fittings. After looking there and Lowes I think I have a plan. The guy at Aquarium One, not Paul, one of the workers said that they would be organizing their stock of them and refilling the bins soon. I have a 1-1/2" gate valve in my cart at BRS, but can't bring myself to pull the trigger on a $56 valve. I'll do it eventually. I missed getting in on the BRS group buy too, oh well. I already have some 1" Schedule 80 bulkheads that I had Quantum Reefs order for me from BRS since they were already bringing me a bunch of stuff which are SlipxThread with the thread on the back side. BRS doesn't have SlipxSlip schedule 80 bulkheads. In retrospect these bulkheads are not the ideal ones for this setup. They have a very pronounced slope on the flange side input which makes putting a street 90 on them basically impossible. I'm not convinced that they're even designed to take a a fitting or pipe on the flange side, actually. It just rattles around in there. Also, the street 90 I tried at Lowes was a schedule 40, so that's probably why it rattled around, because it's not as thick. Hmm. I should have gotten 1" Slip x Slip ABS bulkheads instead which have a shallower in-tank profile and are still plenty beefy enough to seal well. The good news is that Aquarium One carries those. I'm trying to picture how to use what I've already got and do a horizontal BeanAnimal drain with the minimum amounts of fittings and minimum depth behind the tank. I'm thinking I can get a 1" nipple on the threaded output of this bulkhead, and then get a 1"NPT x 1.5" spigot coupler and fit that into a 1.5" sanitary Tee that BeanAnimal calls for. I'd thought about just putting an elbow down off the back of the bulkhead, but I buy his argument that the Tee makes it much easier to clean out or see what's happening. I also discovered that the hole saw I had from a GlassHoles overflow kit I bought from a member is too small for a 1" Schedule 80 bulkhead. It's 45mm, and I need a 48mm according to what I measure and what BRS says. In non-plumbing news Aquarium One also has some huge huge frag bins that have water circulating, but no coral in them yet because no lights. They said they are getting some nice SPS ones in the bin in the front and lots of others in the bin near the back. Also some teensy triggers in the fish tanks (I think that's what they were) which were fun to see and a monster of a mantis shrimp that looked like a lobster it was so big.

Will try them. I've been wanting to go there since their big changes anyway. I'd gone in multiple times over the past year while thinking about setting up a tank and talked to Paul a few times, but now that I've got the stuff I should go again. Thanks for the reminder.

I think I remember a post that said that either BRK or F&F has lots of plumbing parts. I'd like to buy parts for a BeanAnimal setup from some place local and also visit some VA fish stores instead of ordering a pile of stuff from BRS that I can't fit together and see and measure and will probably have to return half of. I'd ideally like some street 90s which aren't readily available at the big boxes.

DCReefer, you posted that you'd used a waterbed heater in the past. Would something like this: http://www.waterbedoutlet.com/Touch-Temp-Digital-Waterbed-Heater-Full-Watt-p/wbh-ino-digital.htm work if placed below and in contact with the bottom of an acrylic sump or something so it would be in good contact? Seems like it's a nice large surface area and not much more expensive than the heaters that are put in the water. Another idea would be something like heat tape: http://www.lowes.com/pd_24490-72436-ADKS-500_0__ which could be wrapped around the return piping or just wrapped and taped around the outside of the sump and controlled by an Apex or ReefKeeper.

I don't understand how putting any 120V device in the water in the sump or display is different from any other. I can't see how a heater represents a uniquely bad electrical device in your saltwater when pumps and powerheads do not. I agree with basser that I've never heard of someone's submersible pump crashing and getting voltage all over the tank causing it to crash, but it seems like any 120V device that goes in the water could leak, short, and drop current in the water.

Sheesh, sorry Robert. Hope they aren't permanently bleached. Maybe I should put a natural gas heater on my tank instead of electric ones considering 2 crashes in 2 days in the club from heaters.

It's really pretty. I'm also impressed that Paul M was willing to drill that return pipe hole so close to the top and corner of the glass of that very nice tank. You pop on the board and drop not one but two really nice looking rimless ADA tanks on us and then play coy with how "neglected" the kitchen counter one is. It's great too! What are you doing for filtration on the counter? You sneak a sump inside that corner cabinet? I like the kitchen too. Looks like Ikea Adel doors which is what we've done in our last two kitchens.

I was so busy looking at the tank that I totally missed the rocks and the overhang. It's really great! I'm impressed that the sprayfoam holds that well. Do you have a base with an acrylic rod or something going up that left piece to keep it from falling over?

You're buying it?

Love it! Is the glass-holes overflow quiet enough for a living room? Where's the skimmer in that sump?

It's very pretty. I really want to do a build like this with a clear glass full height overflow with clear PVC standpipes on my non-drilled rimless tank but everyone I talk to says it will be crazy hard to keep it all clean. I've never seen the regimen required to maintain photo-quality cleanliness in one of these all glass ADA type builds in a planted tank, and I'm really interested in watching how yours looks over time.

I've seen that a few times on there. I can't imagine the bad things that would be done to me if I got that tank. Nice, though.

Check out this guy's build. He's a seriously neat installer. Here's the post with his equipment panel: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18412611&postcount=3

Yeah, I didn't really get the clown thing. Seems like that fish wouldn't be able to eat the jelly food, and once you started feeding the clown the water quality would go downhill fast.

After seeing the big room full at National Aquarium in baltimore, I'd really like one. It's fun that thinkgeek is selling them. Wonder if I could get a small blue blubber jellyfish in it, they were really cool looking.

The Bayer that they carry at my Lowes is the "Complete Insect Killer For Soil and Turf" which has Imidacloprid and something else instead of the "Home Pest" one that OUSnakebyte wrote about. Seems like the folks on the reef central thread that he has worked on say that both seem to be effective. Does Home Depot have the other kind?

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.