Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Over the weekend, I setup a 575g basement sump setup in my house. Thought you all might be interested in some of the pictures. http://www.phortawesome.com/tank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Grenier January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Woah! It will be connected through the floor to the 75 upstairs right? Will it be viewable from the top only? What will be in it & over it ...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KABALA January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Are you going to be adding another tank in the future. if so what size, hope its big to need a 575g sump. Unless it was free, just curious whats the thinking behind having a 575g sump connected to a 75g tank, assuming you arent getting a new tank? Thanks, Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 The plan is to have most of the tank dark. It has a 6" bed of southdown (about 1300 pounds) in it already. One section will be lit for coral propogation to try to offset the tank costs a bit. Another section will have a big basket of macro algae in it. We might also toss some mangroves just for fun. The sump will be on the 75g lps/softies tank, but also around april, will be hooked up to a 90g sps tank that is being planned for another room in the house. And finally about this time next year, it will be joined to a 180g reef tank that will also be in the basement. So in the end it will support about 400g of display tank. It will also have an MR-3 skimmer with dual beckett injectors on it. Though we are hoping that most nutrient export will be handled biologically. We are going to test a mag24 for the return pump, which should put out about 1200 at the 11' head we will have, but if it turns out to be insufficient, we'll go with an amp master 3000 for the return. Lighting for the coral prop will be supplied by a 65kk 250w MH bulb, while the macro's will get 80w of NO flourecent lighting. Most of the sump will be dark however, and to that end we are covering most of the surface with as much insulation (styrofoam) as possible to save on heating costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coral Hind January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Are you using a rubber liner or epoxy paint for the inside? How are the corners braced because you are talking about alot of water pressure? Post more pics as it progresses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 There are 13 pages of pictures at that link I posted of the entire build/fill process. We used a pond liner, and the entire box is built to code (ie 16 on center studs, 2x4's screwed and glued). Check out the pictures, and you can pretty much see any part of the entire box being built. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Cool, Next winter your going to need a lot of heaters. That tub looks pretty deep. Have you thought about adding a shelf or two. Maintenance chores would require you to wear a snorkel. :D How soon will it be online? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Heating general rule: Three watts per gallon of water. 600g = 1800 watts of heater(s). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Tank will be cycling in about a week, it will come fully "on line" by about april. We did add a shelf on one end to hold the skimmer, pump, and possibly some coral frags/prop stuff later on. As for requiring heating. Yes, it will require a great deal to get it going, but thats why we took such pains to insulate the box and even the top of the water. We have r-20 total around the box and then we are covering about 2/3 of the surface w/ styrofoam to cut down heat loss even more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgasmd January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 I can tell you that rule is just kaka. I have 1600 wats of heater going at4 full blast on my 450 gal system and it is set up at 80 degrees. The temp by morning when the lights go on is at 77 and barely hits 82-83 with the lights during the day. Our electricity bill had a dramatic jump last month with the weather being so cold and trying to heat up that sump in the garage. That is despite covering the top of it!! ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgasmd January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Couple of comments. First of all, very impressed with the entire thing. I see in the background you have torn a concrete block wall. It makes me feel better about making a hole in the wall to get my tank in the house! :D Seemed like a fun project and it doesn't look overly complicated. A couple of things "I" would have done differently though. I would have lined the entire interior with fiberglass epoxy and then put the liner like you did. Would have made it 100% water tight and waterproof not to mention that it would allow yout to drill for bulkheads after it was done rather to be limited to what you put in while building it. I see you have a couple of computers in the background and washer and dryer. If that liner ever gets a tiny break from rubbing live rock there or from the corner of the racks you have, you are going to have a huge problem to solve extremely quickly. Another thing is that I see no holes or plumbing. That leads me to believe that you are going to be using internal pumps only. Although that simplifies some things (less plumbing), you are going to be extremely limited. As far as heating the water, since it is in a basement I see no problems keeping temps stable so long as you mildly heat the room to low 70's. As far as the design itself, you are going to find out in a few months that you wished you had gone with half as tall!! Getting to do things in that sump is going to be a real chore because it is so deep. Getting very wet to do things a few times is going to be fun, but past that it will turn into a huge pain in the a..s. Having said that and seing the space you have available, I personally would ahve gone with two 300 gal rubbermaid tub. Plumb them together and turn one into a propagation section with the skimmer and hardware in it and the other turn it into a 300 gal refugium with a DSB. More versatile, about the same cost I presume and quite shallow (easy to work on). :: Would love to see this thing running, plumbed, lit, and going. Keep the pictures and updates going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Thanks for the comments, and compliments After building the tank out, we also found it to be quite deep, and hard to work on. So we built a step to use outside of the tank, to raise ourselves up a bit so its easier to bend over. This helped quite a bit, and since most of the tank will be covered/dark 95% of the time, we didnt forsee a big problem as far as maintenence goes. Hopefully, if anything organic makes it to the sand bed, it'll get eaten by the trillions of bugs/worms/goodies which will be in the sand. If we drop some tools, we've planned to have one of those "pole claw" things that should allow us to grab most anything from the back side of the tank. As far as having two 300g stock tanks, the price of doing it this way was far cheaper. The tank itself cost 350$. Thats including insulation, wood, liner, screws, glue, the whole nine. The sand we would have needed to purchase for either tank, so I wont consider that a cost savings vs. the stock tank. As far as pumps went. We looked into an amp master 3000 for the return, and actually decided on a submersible pump for a few reasons. First, we had a spare mag24 laying around with which to test the setup, Second, heating this thing is going to be a constant problem, so actually the waste heat from the submersible pump is actually desirable at this point. Kind of killing two birds with one stone. The head on the pump will be about 10' , at which the mag is flowing around 1400gph. We were shooting for 600gph through both tanks, so its going to be really close with the pipe friction and elbows. If we find that the mag just cant hack it, we'l go out and pay for the larger external pump. With regards to cutting holes in the tank or lining the tank with epoxy/fiber. This added to the complexity and cost a great deal. Our original though was to go with a plywood tank style sump where there is no liner, but instead use the binary epoxy to seal the wood. We simply werent comfortable with that setup. If there is a leak, we will have the mag24 setup so that we can drain the entire tank in about 15 minutes, even less with us bucket bailing. The computers will actually get moved in the not too distant future, and the washer and dryer will be behind a 12" water break that we will be installing over the next few weeks. You can be assured that we will continue to keep the pictures updated, especially in about 2 months when things get going w/ the coral propogation and all the lighting/plumbing is in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KABALA January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 If the mag 24 doesnt work, not sure if they are out yet or where to find them but might want a mag36 to see if its any better. Do a search Im sure you can find them. At least you can stick with an internal pump and utilize the excess heat, which like you, i would try to use if possible. Then you can throw the 24 on the skimmer with dual becketts. Might be overkill but thats what ball valves are for. Just checked out place where ive bought my pumps from http://www.aquatictech.com/pumps.html. Great place Although they screwed up some shipping over christmas. but they have the mag36 for $141 if you find yourself needing something bigger than the 24. I have found this place to be the cheapest, but you can always have your preferred vendor price match. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brobak January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 We are actually using a mag24 for the dual becket skimmer. Thats what the manufacturer recommends Plus, it looks like with all the weird tube sizing we had to do, we'll be losing a lot of the flow. Since we started talking about the mag36, my cohort in crime on this project and I have decided to use the mag36 as the return. Its only about 30$ more for the extra capacity, and we can always T it off and use the extra for some circulation within the sump itself. Thanks for the link btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgasmd January 6, 2003 Share January 6, 2003 Brobak: As far as having two 300g stock tanks, the price of doing it this way was far cheaper. The tank itself cost 350$. Thats including insulation, wood, liner, screws, glue, the whole nine. I don't know where you checked prices, but a 300 gal rubbermaid stock tank is about $150-160. I know because I looked into it while setting up my tank. Regardless, I think your set up looks good. You can pile up some insane amounts of LR in that thing, which is what I would do to maximaze space on the tanks themselves. You can build some PVC racks to put rock in the display tanks where they won't ne seen, but leave a lot of room for fish to swim and also have the appearance of larger rock amounts without actually having it since you can place it on the sump. There is a guy on ebay, or at least was a few weeks ago, that sells bulk dead rock. You could go with it as base and then get some live rock on top for seeding like a 3:1 ratio. In a year, you would have so much live that you wouldn't know what to do with it. If you go this route, I highly recommend you put some lighting over it even if it some NO bulbs. It is not for making it look good, but rather for making some of the photosynthetic stuff thrive. Keep the pictures coming a you progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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