Dave W's 3000 gal plankton/reef tank

[dave w]

I'd give free greenhouse tours, but only to WAMAS members.  I've been involved in small business for a while and understand the advantage of writing off expenses.  And I understand that hobbies operating as fake companies are cracked down on by the IRS, as they should be.  But I've also heard that if you claim the expenses of a home business or depreciate any part of your home, you are pretty much guaranteed to get audited by the IRS.  Even though I've never been audited, I'd think its cheaper to miss the audit and skip the write-offs.  If I'm in the 25% tax bracket, an expense is only a 25% cash reduction of my income taxes.

 

In short, I'd rather not do things by the book than risk facing an audit.  If I get lucky and a meaningful income occurs, then its time to consider a business.  They don't take too long to set up and a LLC doesn't even need a separate tax return.

[BowieReefer84]

Sounds perfect to me.  Now get back to the tank build. 

[Myers71]

All I can say is wow! This was a perfect way to kill four hours in dr waiting rooms today. I am all caught up.

 

Thanks for sharing and I hope you get there soon would love to see it in action. I am inspired to finish my little basement sump room project now. Or maybe I can talk the wife into another addition

[dave w]

All I can say is wow! This was a perfect way to kill four hours in dr waiting rooms today. I am all caught up.

 

I'm glad I was able to help you catch up on your sleep!  I think it would be tiring to read the whole thread because I changed my mind so many times.  But thanks for persevering.

[DuffyGeos]

Update?

[DuffyGeos]

Save it has been over a month, did you fill it? Did you have to fix the panels?

[dave w]

DuffyGeos, sorry for the late reply.  I was on vacation in South Carolina for a week (got some great copepods) and I got busy with the kids the last week before school.  I am still working on the addition and haven't filled the tank again.  I'm not sure what you mean by panles.  I made some precast concrete panels for the additon and started putting them in place today.  Hopefully I'll get them in before it rains Sunday and turns everything into mud again.  I'll invite you out to see the setup sometime in the next month or two when water goes in again.

[DuffyGeos]

DuffyGeos, sorry for the late reply.  I was on vacation in South Carolina for a week (got some great copepods) and I got busy with the kids the last week before school.  I am still working on the addition and haven't filled the tank again.  I'm not sure what you mean by panles.  I made some precast concrete panels for the additon and started putting them in place today.  Hopefully I'll get them in before it rains Sunday and turns everything into mud again.  I'll invite you out to see the setup sometime in the next month or two when water goes in again.

 

Vacation is good, no problem. What I mean by panels (without going back and reading everything), I thought you had put the glass/acrylic (can't remember which one) in and you had one that did not fit correctly, you had to cut it down, then reinstalled and it was leaking/ or bowing and you were not going to fill it up yet till you fixed it. Am I on the right track? 

 

I think you are in Fairfax Station/ Clifton, I am out that way all the time, I have a job going off Henderson, and one off of Hampton. Do you work from home or are you retired? If so I might pop in sometime to take a look at your addition( fish room/greenhouse)....If that is OK.

[dave w]

You have a good memory.  I had several glass panels that were too tight and needed to be sanded down, and I also had the long front panel bow out about half an inch.  I think that's tolerable but I'm still mulling over options on what to do with it.  Your two landscape jobs are both in my neighborhood, I'll send you a PM for a visit.

[DuffyGeos]

You have a good memory.  I had several glass panels that were too tight and needed to be sanded down, and I also had the long front panel bow out about half an inch.  I think that's tolerable but I'm still mulling over options on what to do with it.  Your two landscape jobs are both in my neighborhood, I'll send you a PM for a visit.

Thanks.

[surf&turf]

And still no pictures. 

[TrueTricia]

Any update Dave?

[dave w]

Hey surf&turf and Tricia,

 

Sorry to be late answering your posts.  The addition to the greenhouse has been giving me quite a bit of trouble the past month.  Every time it rains, it becomes too slippery to work, and by the time 3 or 4 days pass for the ground to dry out and work to start again --- wouldn't you know but it rains again.  At least this week it's supposed to stay dry so maybe I can get some good progress and post some pics.  

 

There isn't anything to really post a pic of, the addition is very messy and the tank is drained of water to take weight off the footing.  However I am happy to report that in the addition I should have room for some 300 gallon tanks to try breeding medium sized angels, the deep water anthias and other neat stuff.  This may turn out to be a good niche for me because few others are working on this level.  Most basement operations, university labs and even public aquariums don't have this volume of water to throw at a single pair of fish.  And it now looks like some of the pomecanthus angels have larval periods as short as 25 or 30 days.

 

So I will post something when a little more progress has been made.

[DuffyGeos]

Hey surf&turf and Tricia,

 

Sorry to be late answering your posts.  The addition to the greenhouse has been giving me quite a bit of trouble the past month.  Every time it rains, it becomes too slippery to work, and by the time 3 or 4 days pass for the ground to dry out and work to start again --- wouldn't you know but it rains again.  At least this week it's supposed to stay dry so maybe I can get some good progress and post some pics.  

 

There isn't anything to really post a pic of, the addition is very messy and the tank is drained of water to take weight off the footing.  However I am happy to report that in the addition I should have room for some 300 gallon tanks to try breeding medium sized angels, the deep water anthias and other neat stuff.  This may turn out to be a good niche for me because few others are working on this level.  Most basement operations, university labs and even public aquariums don't have this volume of water to throw at a single pair of fish.  And it now looks like some of the pomecanthus angels have larval periods as short as 25 or 30 days.

 

So I will post something when a little more progress has been made.

 

Ok Dave, it has come to the point where i am going to bring my camera out there and take some pics.  I will be at my clients house multiple times this week, so I wlll be getting in touch.

[Coral Hind]

Anything new happen over the last three and half months?

[DuffyGeos]

If not 3.5 months , how about 4.5 months?

 

Come on Dave, give me a break......

 

(I just like Van Halen)

[dave w]

CoralHind and DuffyGeos, thanks for asking about updates.  So much has happened in the past year.  And what a shot of adrenaline it was to see my first MACNA show in D.C. this fall with all of my WAMAS friends.

 

Wow, where do I start?  After the glass installation party I decided to expand the size of the greenhouse (as if it wasn't big enough already) which has taken a whole 'nother year.   Now the big tank is cycled and has a lot of nice rocks in it thanks to Justin of Avast.   Does anyone have any frags to trade so I can start growing the reef?  If so, skip to the last paragraph.  I saw Avast's production facility near Front Royal and am amazed at what a high end manufacturing facility they run.    

 

I dug a geothermal cooling system last summer but then decided to put the smaller tanks on a shelf lined with rubber sheet and use freshwater for cooling instead.  It worked well in trials this summer but I have yet to do it for the whole greenhouse.  Now that cold weather is upon us I have decided to build a long overdue rooftop solar water collector, which is what this post is about, mostly.  The largest part of my roof faces due south and is right above the greenhouse, so I got lucky.  Plus the 6:12 pitch allows me to put the water heating panels right on the roof without reinforcing raised panels to withstand high winds.  That's being lucky twice!  

 

I've been thinking for years about how to do a large cheap solar water heater, so try to suffer through the next short paragraph regarding costs.

 

I decided to make my collector panels the same size as the 4'x12' and the 4'x16' twinwall polycarbonate sheets which are used in greenhouses and sunrooms.  With that cover glazing at $1.50/square foot (s.f.), I'm laying 1/2" R-max (30 cents/s.f.) on the existing roof for heat protection, and then a horizontal run of corrugated polycarbonate ($1.00/s.f.), and finally a roll of EPDM rubber roofing liner (40 cents/s.f.) as the black sun absorber.  I should add another .30 cents per foot for piping, pressure treated 2x6's for the panel sides and for fastening screws.   The whole collector is about 750 square feet which cost about $2,500 and should collect 1,000 BTUs per square foot per day.  That's about 750,000 BTUs/ day for the whole collector.  

 

OK, that's it on the math.  That wasn't too bad, was it?

 

Handling the hot water is another matter.  The greenhouse addition has a basement and I'm putting two steel 275 gallon used oil tanks on the ground floor, lined with EPDM rubber.  The water coming off the collector will be very hot so I need steel tanks and EPDM to handle the heat.  The hot water from those tanks gets pumped under the 3,500 gallon tank and under the greenhouse floor through high temp tubing (the stuff for radiant floor heating).  The 2x4 joists under the tank make natural heat traps and will warm the bottom of the tank.  Other pumps send the hot water through 150,000 BTU heat exchangers (simple $130 radiators from ebay) that I'm installing in my main furnace duct.  I need to leave the furnace fan running all winter to bleed enough heat off the water and get it under 150F so CPVC pipe can handle the rest of the flow.  

 

OK, that's it on the solar collector.  

 

Now back to the fun part.  Regarding frags, I need to start with hardy, cheap corals (Bali green slimer, sinularia, leathers, gorgos, zoas) and I'm happy to buy big cuttings as well as trade for any sized frag.  I have a contact where I can get any fish imaginable for frag trading.    I can't even guess how many frags I need to start with to fill the big part of the tank which is 240 cubic feet.  Maybe 1,000?  

Edited November 11, 2015 by dave w

[zygote2k]

what happens if the furnace fan dies unexpectedly and subsequent hot water melts the cpvc?

if that water were clean, then you could also get free hot water for showers and cleaning/cooking.

why not just make an immersion heater with a coil of tubing and a programmable valved thermostat?

when not heating the tank in the summer, remove entire heater and store for winter use.

[dave w]

Rob, 

 

Several long, boring and technical responses to your points.  If the furnace fan dies it would remove one of two methods to bleed off heat.  As a second method I'm also putting 1,000 or 2,000 feet of pex tubing in a 150 gallon tank of salt water for a heat exchanger, maybe that is similar to the immersion heater you suggest.  A high temp circulation pump pushes hot fresh water continuously through the pex tubing, releasing heat to the cool saltwater.  The 150 gallon tank sits a couple inches below the skimmer outlet but a couple inches above the 4,000 gallon tank.  The skimmer is powered by a Jebao DC 15,000 liter water pump so 4,000 gph leaving the skimmer will drop into the heat exchanger and then overflow again to the tank.   But I'd be in big trouble if the skimmer pump died suddenly.  Should I plumb a backup pump?

 

Your point is a good one.  If the circulator pump died, yet the pump supplying the solar panels continued, temperature would rise until something melts.  All the materials involved (pex, EPDM, cpvc, the pumps) have upper temperature limits around 170F to 200F, and safety dictates that I bleed off heat by several methods in case one fails.   The radiators in the house heating ducts are one method, the 150 gallon heat exchanger tank with pex is a second.  If you can think of others please let me know.  For a third method, maybe I can use a 150 gallon hot tub in my house as another heat sink.  Would a standard controller like Reefkeeper Lite turn on a pump to the hot tub when a thermometer in the reservoir hits a certain limit like 140F?  

 

If I find that the 150 gallon heat exchanger is too small I could put a 1,000 foot coil of pex right in the big tank as an additional heat exchanger but that would be hard to do aesthetically.  It could be hidden by rocks but seems like a lot of work.   And my gut feeling is that 4,000 gph of skimmer water flowing around 1,000 feet of pex  in the heat exchanging system is sufficient.  If I'm wrong, a powerhead in there would help.  I'd rather flow hot fresh water through the pex than salt water but maybe another backup system would be to pump tank water through a pex coil in the heat exchanger and back to the tank.  I'm not crazy about this idea because it would need a cloggable inlet screen and organic matter could grow inside the 1/2" pex tubing.  So I'd rather stick with fresh water inside the tube.

 

Another safety feature would be to use a temperature switch to turn off the pump supplying the collector panels if the reservoirs get too hot.  I hope a standard aquarium controller can handle that.   But then that would cause a temperature spike in the solar panels.  Without a cool water supply the panel temps go sky high.  I'll drill an air hole in the bottom and top of each panel so hot air can exit, but it will still get very hot.

 

Rob, I am thinking that the tank with 1,000-2,000 feet of pex is an immersion heater, please let me know if you're suggesting something else.   I'm reluctant to use any other energy source for the immersion heater because that would kind of defeat the purpose of collecting all that heat from the sun for just $20 a month of pump electricity.  

 

You're right that I could use the solar water for my house water supply, but this solar collector is an open (non pressurized) system.  To get it back up to 40 p.s.i. to supply my house I'd need to get it into a pressure tank, which involves some tricky plumbing.  But there's still an easy way to heat my shower water.  I can put another coil of pex in the hot water reservoir and run a line of house water through this before it feeds into the two house water heaters.  I'm guessing that instead of supplying 55F inlet water to the water heaters, this pre-heater might supply them with 90F water.  It would reduce the electric consumption of the water heaters by about 60%.  I think I remember reading somewhere that a third of house energy use is hot water, so this would save me maybe $75-100 a month on the electric bill.  It's also a failproof task to make two connections and hook a coil of water into my domestic hot water supply.  

 

And a final point.  I am fortunate to be on a well and septic because I only pay $15 a month in well pump electricity and don't pay a municipality one cent per gallon for sewage treatment.  In the summer I turn a couple of valves and push cold 55F well water through the heat exchangers to cool the tank and through the radiators to cool the house.  After this cold water absorbs heat from the tank and house, it might rise to 70-75F, and then it goes outside to water the garden so more cold water can enter the system.  I couldn't afford to use this much water if I lived in the city, but on a well it is no problem and it should cut my A/C bill by quite a bit.  It's not like I'd be wasting water because the garden water just percolates down through the ground to my well again.

Edited November 16, 2015 by dave w

[Bruleyii]

You may also be able to pick ideas from Earth Ships. They are completely off the grid and use water 3 or 4 times. http://earthship.com/ just a thought. 

[dave w]

Thanks David, I'll look them up tonight.  I haven't heard of them before.

Edited November 17, 2015 by dave w

[dave w]

OK, I clicked on your link and realize that I have seen them before but I had forgotten their "earthship" label.  I really like their stuff and have always liked the idea of going off grid.

 

But in the more practical world in which my wife and I have been working and raising a family I've made a lot of compromises.  At least there are still things like the solar water heater and geothermal cooling to make me feel like I'm living out some of the ideas that I've wanted to do ever since I was a kid delving into alternative energy and recycling ideas.  

 

Thanks for recommending their website.

Edited November 17, 2015 by dave w

[Bruleyii]

Yeah, I wasnt talking going completely off the grid with (although that would be really cool) but more so taking a few ideas of how they heat and cool and maintain water pressure. This doesnt seem too far off from what you are trying to do with you trying to keep electrical usage costs low.

[dave w]

I agree with you.  Their advantages are that the southwest has twice the sunlight as us (given their lack of cloud cover) and their state governments subsidize the purchase of solar panels.  By comparison, Virginia receives only half the sunlight, our state government provides squadoosh in solar subsidies, and even if they did, a solar panel needs to pass the SERI approval out in Colorado to qualify.  A DIY system like mine built by a non-approved installer doesn't have much of a chance.  So I think going off grid can only be a dream for me.  

 

Being a Virginian isn't without our own traditional benefits, I hear the Old Dominion still bestows free cartons of cigarettes to every kid upon their 8th birthday.  

 

OK, so that got a little mean.  

 

I sure wish I could get a tax break for solar but I can't.  I really admire how advanced southwest architecture is.  My father was an architect and he said that all new design started in California, took 10 years to reach Denver, then another 10 years to make it to the east coast.   

Edited November 19, 2015 by dave w

[dave w]

Now that the big tank is getting full of rock and ready for fish, I'm wondering how I would ever catch a fish out of there with so many hiding places.  

 

So I'm thinking of feeding the fish from a couple of permanent boxes made of screen or acrylic, with trap doors at each end.  When the target fish goes in to eat I pull a fishing line from 10' away and the doors slide down.

 

Has anyone ever seen or made one of these?