Dave W's 3000 gal plankton/reef tank

[Guest thefishman65]

I disagree on the use of CPVC over PVC. CPVC is meant for hot water as such I expect that it will have a higher melting point. Regular PVC becomes bendable in boiling water. Or am I misreading your statement?

[Coral Hind]

I stated it's easier to mold as it forms better for me because when at a malleable temp it is better controlled so there is less sag or droop. PVC can become too soft to work with at times and lose it's shape where you don't want it. CPVC has a larger window between softening and melting temperatures which gives you more time to work with it. I just think it is easier to work with, others might think PVC is better.

 

As for your "higher melting point" being why it is used in hot water systems, CPVC is used for hot water not because of a higher melting point, house water temps shouldn't be hot enough to "melt" PVC. It is used because it doesn't leach out chemicals as regular PVC does at those temperatures.

[Guest thefishman65]

Well learn something new every day - thanks for the explanation

[dave w]

Oh yea, Der ABT. That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about! I just didn't know they were called flare fittings. $3.99 seems a little expensive for 2 grams of plastic and I will probably need about thirty. I'll try forming some CPVC as an experiment. If they come out looking too ugly, I'll pay $100 for an ounce of plastic. Seems I could get them shaped from silver for that price. (complain, complain)

 

Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong business. I should have been an aquarium parts manufacturer.

Edited January 17, 2013 by dave w

[dave w]

If you are going to make one, depending on size, use CPVC as it is easier to mold. I heated the part in an oven then stuck needle nose pliers inside it to stretch it out while making it flat.

 

I spent a few years as a plumber and never knew that CPVC worked easier than PVC. Like Rob the Fishman, I've learned something new today.

[matt]

Does cpvc ever leach the 'c'? ..that is...chlorine

[Coral Hind]

I'm no PVC/CPVC expert, I just mentioned that to me the CPVC seemed easier to shape. I have read that when burned the chlorine is released but I'm sure so are several other bad things. I also read that when both PVC and CPVC are first used they release small amounts of chemicals from the surfaces but it drops rapidly and I'm sure those levels are very small and of no concern to our tanks.

[Der ABT]

another option would be to make them out of fiberglass, pretty sure you have some left over, i would think a mold would be fairly easy to make, i think i may have one of those things but will have to check.

 

little wood carving/cutting and then molding to a piece of locline

 

that would not cost you anywhere near 100 dollars as long as you dont put a price on the time haha.

[Guest thefishman65]

If you don't like the way the CPVC handles try regular PVC in boiling water. It is still fairly stiff, but for what you are forming I think it would work well. Might even be cheaper

[dave w]

another option would be to make them out of fiberglass, pretty sure you have some left over, i would think a mold would be fairly easy to make, i think i may have one of those things but will have to check.

 

little wood carving/cutting and then molding to a piece of locline

 

that would not cost you anywhere near 100 dollars as long as you dont put a price on the time haha.

 

You're right about the fiberglass mold. I could make a bigger fitting to better suit my purposes, mold two at the same time joined at the flare then cut it in half on a bandsaw. The problem is how to attach the fiberglass fitting onto a PVC tube, fiberglass doesn't stick well to PVC. So it looks like a lot of time involved.

 

On the other hand, how about making the flares out of sheet PVC? It would glue together quickly and easily attach to PVC pipe. Shower pan liner seems a little too flimsy for this but a thin (1/16" or 1/8") sheet PVC should be easy and fast to work with. Does anyone around here sell sheet PVC?

[dave w]

If you don't like the way the CPVC handles try regular PVC in boiling water. It is still fairly stiff, but for what you are forming I think it would work well. Might even be cheaper

 

You're right, heating some plastic pipe and flattening it into flare fittings is probably the fastest way to get this job done. It doesn't have to look pretty and will soon be covered by algae anyway.

[Guest thefishman65]

What size pipe?

[dave w]

Three sizes Mr. Fishman. This is is the output from a surge tank so I will probably have several 1" flare fittings, then the pipe will drop down to 3/4" for the next several then the last several would be 1/2". This would give more uniform pressure on the surge flow across the tank bottom.

 

Basically I hope to fill a surge tank with a geyser pump. When the surge tank is full a float valve will tell the controller to open a drain solenoid on the bottom of the tank, and water will go down a pipe along the back of the display tank via a graduated pipe starting at 1" for 3 or 4 outlets a foot apart, then drop to 3/4" for the next set of outlets a foot apart, then finally drop to 1/2" for the last several outlets.

 

I think each outlet will be teed and with a 45 degree fitting to points all the flare fittings in a clockwise direction around the circular tank until the detritus washes into the settlement chamber and a gallon of brown water gets pumped out every 30 minutes. Because the back of the tank is about 43 feet long, I will probably use three drain solenoids, each handling one third of the tank (about 14 feet).

 

Sorry for the long reply. If I don't say enough it's hard to visualize, if I say too much it's boring. Although I will use slow turning propellers for my water circulation they won't have the energy to roll fish poop 43 feet to the settlement trap, even if the tank has a smooth bottom. So I hope a 50 gallon surge tank about 5' above the water will generate this energy.

 

Do you think this will accomplish it's purpose? Should the surge tank be larger? If I have a bunch of larval fish in the tank they could be damaged by the acceleration through the flared fittings (or get stuck), so I will screen the inlet of the geyser pump. I will probably also have a valve between the surge tank and the solenoid to clean it out if things get stuck in it.

[Seahorseconservancy]

dave , this spring we are getting water in youre tank, when do we get the glass? march? that would be nice, keep fiberglassing, sanding and painting.youre friend walt.

[Seahorseconservancy]

i think i sent a reply? maybe it went to egg?

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

I think 5 months is a little long to leave pictures out of a awesome build like this one...

[dave w]

Hey folks, just thought I'd give a quick greenhouse update.  One of my (many) failings is that I keep making my setup more complex and it keeps extending my build time.  I'm at 3 yearsof building  and still no water.

 

First update, I put in a couple of 275 gallon totes under the floor.  One gets filled with sterilized water and pumped into the algae towers every day while the second is filling with water and sterilized to be used the next day.  It took a lot of hand digging to get them in and it was a tight squeeze but I'm happy to have them.  I also cleared out enough space to put in a bunch of 4' high skimmers out of 4" PVC to keep up water quality in the copepod tanks.

 

Next, I decided to give up the middle of the big greenhouse floor.  Instead of a comfortable sofa, I got another couple of totes (330 gallons) and will put them side by side in the middle of the floor for copepod tanks, and will put about 5 more algae towers above them.  So all in all, this place is turning into more of a lab and less of a fish cave.  Too bad because the sofa would have been a great place to hang out.

 

Then, after I finally got my bobcat working again, I was able to dig some deep trenches and put in a horizontal geothermal system.  It is just a bunch of rolls of plastic pipe set in 3' to 6' below ground to exchange heat.  I've learned the hard way that in summer afternoons the greenhouse will spike up to 120F to 130F.  Very hot.  I had an informative talk with Dr. Mac's wife at a grand opening and she wisely told me what they had learned about their greenhouse, to "cool the water, not the air".  So the freshwater lines will get warm in a heat exchanger in my settlement chamber, then be pumped out through the buried pipes to cool, then back into the aquarium in a loop.  Theoretically it takes 500-700' of underground water pipe to equal a ton of cooling and I have about 5500' of pipe which should mean at least 7 tons of cooling, but my system may not be as efficient as other vertical systems.  I guess that I will need at least 4 tons to cool the greenhouse on a hot August day.  If I am lucky enough to have excess capacity I will use it to help cool my house.

 

To get a little technical, I will soon be making the heat exchangers out of two part epoxy, using waxed plywood as the female mold.  I'm not sure it will work, but because the system will be just a few p.s.i. of water pressure my gut says it probably won't leak.  If it does the tank will start to overflow with fresh water very quickly.

 

I still don't have glass on the tank because I've been doing a lot of welding and grinding of the steel handrails, shelving and catwalk.  I also made the decision to make all the cabinets and shelving from leftover pieces of granite that I have, so there will be no wood in that 100% humidity environment.  I've wanted to wait on glass until all the steel and granite is done.  But I keep adding complexity to the steel work so I keep putting off the glass.

 

I will send some pics soon.  I am embarrassed to send pics of the tank itself because it is full of lumber and tools, so it looks very dirty.  But I can send pics of the totes, shelving and geothermal if anyone is having a hard time getting to sleep at night.  Assuming that rain doesn't prevent me from finishing the geothermal system soon, I hope to get water in the tank in about a month so I can still get angelfish this winter.  But I've broken so many deadlines with this build that none of my predictions can be trusted!

 

Happy holidays to all.

Edited November 22, 2013 by dave w

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Dude your insane! I want to see this setup so bad please call if you ever need help. I love the knowledge you have and how your using it to make a system you will love and be able to learn with. The day this thing gets water I am going to cry with joy

[JR-Tanked150]

I want to see pictures, wow sounds like a incredible set up you will have in the future.

[Coral Hind]

I've been wondering how this project has been going, thanks for the update. Take photos of how you make the heat exchanger as I'm interested in seeing how you DIY that.

[dave w]

Dude your insane! I want to see this setup so bad please call if you ever need help. I love the knowledge you have and how your using it to make a system you will love and be able to learn with. The day this thing gets water I am going to cry with joy

Piper27, let's both hope that we're not old men before the glass finally happens.  But you're right, hopefully I'm setting up a system that will last 30 years and allow me to do everything i've ever wanted with saltwater.  If all else fails I can always dismantle all the complex systems and just grow a long reef.  

[dave w]

I want to see pictures, wow sounds like a incredible set up you will have in the future.

pictures to come soon.

[dave w]

I've been wondering how this project has been going, thanks for the update. Take photos of how you make the heat exchanger as I'm interested in seeing how you DIY that.

No problem in showing how the heat exchangers are built, I will post pics.  But hopefully I can clearly describe it now.  Imagine 15 parallel thin sleeves, like bread slices.  Each 1/2" slice is hollow, has cold fresh water flowing through it and is about 20" high by 48" long.  Because they are not exciting to look at, I'm putting this bank of sleeves/water jackets in the settlement chamber, so as water flows around the circular display tank it flows between the cool sleeves.  The (now warm) fresh water leaving each sleeve then goes out through an underground 500' loop of plastic pipe, where the 57F soil will draw off the heat before circulating back into the greenhouse.

 

I will use a router to bullnose round edges of plywood, wax it, then wrap it with perhaps two layers of 5 oz fiberglass cloth and resin.  Then I'll cut the glass off the perimeter of the plywood male mold in the middle of the round edge and glass in 1/2" U-shaped pieces to hold the sides in or it would balloon under the water pressure.  Then I epoxy paint both sides of the jacket, fiberglass the cut edges back together with fiberglass tape, and viola!, a hollow sleeve for cool water to circulate through.  One bulkhead fitting is the cool water inlet, another is the warm outlet.  I haven't decided yet if (how) I will baffle the sleeves.  

 

Basically I just can't afford 5 tons of titanium chillers and the electric to run all that compressor power so I am doing the poor boy DIY approach where each loop circulates by a small (30 or 50 watt) water pump and each pump can be turned on or off individually to meet demand.  The wall thickness of two layers of fiberglass, resin and paint will probably be less than 1/32" thick, so I think heat exchange will be pretty good.  The bank of sleeves will be removable to pull out and clean at the end of each summer, maybe more often.  The settlement chamber is fairly dark and I don't know what may grow on it.  In the winter the built up ground heat outdoors tends to get used up in a couple of months so when the ground loop water temps fall below 75F I must valve them off and then open a valve to my house hot water heater so hot water circulates through the sleeves in winter.  My hot water heater is only set at 105F and this brand of epoxy can take temps as high as 180F so I don't think heat will be a problem.  

 

Although I am not technical enough to put digital temp controls on the loops and have a controller turn the 15 circulation pumps on and off as needed, I'm sure one of my friends in WAMAS will walk me through that when the time comes.  I'd guess that about 15 square feet of heat exchange surface area per sleeve (times 15 sleeves is 225 sq. ft.) will probably not give me 5 tons of cooling.  It depends on a lot of variables like the speed of water flows, organic growth on the sleeves, the temp difference between the two volumes of water, baffling, and how many circulation pumps are on.  Plus I don't know exactly how much cooling I will need in mid-August when it is 100F outside.  This winter I will learn if 225 sq. ft. is sufficient for heating and by next August I will learn if it is sufficient for cooling.  If my suspicion is right that I need more heat exchange surface area, I have room to expand.

 

Coral Hind, I meant to make this a short post but have gotten carried away and turned it into a long answer.  Sorry about that, when I take pics it should be more clear than this explanation.

[dave w]

Ok, here's another update.  I keep putting off getting in the glass because I keep putting more steel features in the sunroom, and I don't want to be doing all that welding and grinding around the glass.  I'm not the most coordinated person, and whenever I put something fragile in the greenhouse it ends up getting knocked around or having tools fall on it.  I think that's to be expected on a construction project.  I put as many pipes as possible in a 250' trench in the backyard for geothermal cooling, but may not finish hooking up all the plumbing until I need cooling next summer.

 

At last posting I had decided to lose the sofa area in the middle of the floor to put algae towers atop a couple of 330 gallon totes.  I changed my mind (again) and instead dug under the floor and put the totes below ground to get the sofa back.  I've also put another algae rack under the main beam across the greenhouse for more phyto reactors.  Also I put in a stack of five shelves in one corner to keep a fair number of blackworms.  Blackworms are great for getting fish to breed.  The rack is just five steel angles holding shelves that are about 12 square feet of water that is only about 1.5" deep.  Blackworms like good levels of dissolved oxygen.  The shelves are 4" apart, I can barely squeeze a hand in there for access if needed.  When finished, the shelves will have well water trickling into the top one, then overflowing down to the next until the bottom shelf overflows and goes out to water the azaelas.

 

I'll post some pics later after the Xmas holidays.  Merry Christmas.

[Origami]

Merry Christmas, Dave. I'm glad that sofa's back in the picture. It'll be awesome to sit there and watch the tanks.