davelin315's 300 Gallon In Wall Reef Tank

[Rascal]

I have nowhere near the construction expertise of a lot of these other guys, but here's my advice anyway, from one dad to another. I made the stand for my 150 out of 2x4s & 3/4 plywood for top & bottom. Front & sides were skinned with 1/8 birch plywood. Even though ErikS and others are probably right about the amount of lateral stability added by the sheathing, I put a 2x4 diagonal brace on all the legs and corners, top and bottom, so that the stand has plenty of lateral support both front to back and side to side. It was the easiest thing to do - just a bunch of quick 45 deg cuts with the miter saw, then glue & screw. I just didn't want to be at work and have that nagging fear in the back of my mind that I was going to get a phone call telling me my 10 year old daughter or 16 month old son had just been killed by my falling tank. With an in-wall I guess the risk of some kid banging into it isn't as great, but you never know. It is in a kids play room, right?

 

Overkill = Piece of Mind. Just my 2 cents.

 

Good luck on this and keep us posted.

[davelin315]

OK, construction is going VERY slowly, especially because I tore out all of the carpeting in the basement and am going to tile it with some slate (around 600 sq. ft. when you count the tank area out). My wife describes it as us buying a house with a finished basement and unfinishing it... tore out the carpeting, tore out the existing wet bar that was simply cabinets against the wall, retiling, adding another room for the tank, changing the recessed lighting...

 

Anyway, I did manage to make a bit more headway today on equipment. I went out to BRK and picked up the Ocean Motions 8 way (apparently many have gawked at it sitting on the counter for the past couple of months) that I ordered a long time ago and the Geo reactor that came in after a long wait (although I wasn't in any hurry considering my tank still doesn't have a stand). Unfortunately, the nylon screws were broken on the reactor so I've got to get some new ones, but it looks great and so all of the equipment is in line except the lights.

 

I'm beginning to swing back towards not going with the 400W HQI bulbs as I have heard that they really haven't gotten production going on these that is effective and consistent. So, I may be calling John for some of those lumenarcs...

 

I'll try and line up all of the equipment that I've got at some point and then take a picture. It'd be interesting to see how it all looks together compared to the big pile of cash that it once was!

 

Oh, and I will probably continue to go to the overkill level with the tank stand. I agree with your sentiments, Rascal, as a father, better safe than sorry. The tank is not quite in the playroom, but since the basement has always been nothing but toys, it's the same as being in a playroom.

Edited December 24, 2006 by davelin315

[davelin315]

OK, so I've been working on the basement and the tank set up again of late, but mostly the basement. Well, thanks to my friend 2x4,

I did some work on some of the equipment for the tank tonight instead of working on the tile. Basically, 2x4 stopped in for a visit with my toe and decided that dropping its 40" length on my one toe was a good idea...

 

Anyway, I was installing the laundry tub in the basement and was cutting a 2x4 to hang the RO/DI on and the half I cut fell off of the sink on which I was balancing it and right onto my toe. I then proceeded to attack a box on the floor with the saw I was using as that was a much better option than punching holes in the drywall. As I sit here posting this stuff, it's because my to hurts too much to go to sleep!

 

Anyway, here's some pictures of the laundry tub that will be in the tank room.

The tub itself and the RO/DI mounted above it.

 

The P-trap I installed. The original one had a drop that was somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh, around 2', so I had to cut it down to size and redid the entire pipe itself. I added the clean out in the bottom since this is for my tank room and I figure I'll get quite a bit of build up of sand in there if I'm not careful. I also added on a drain pipe outside of the tub itself (not sure why I did this as it goes to the same place anyway, but I thought I'd put a clean out on the top so that if I wanted, I could plumb the skimmer and the RO/DI waste water directly into it. Speaking of which, here it is.

 

Here's the RO/DI itself. I use a 6 stage that I changed around myself. The initial stage is a sediment filter at 5 microns then it goes into a 1 micron sediment filter. It then goes through a GAC chamber and then through a chlorine guzzler from Buckeye Field Supply. It is rated at less than a micron and should take care of anything left in the water from the GAC. It then runs into the bucket in the sink where the coils let the water warm up (it's got a heater in it) before entering the RO filter. It goes into the RO, then it goes into the DI chamber on the far right and the water is then ready to go!

Edited December 31, 2006 by davelin315

[YBeNormal]

Ouch! Well, at least it wasn't one of those boxes of slate!

[davelin315]

Here's a shot of the room itself. This is exactly where the bar used to be and you can even see the paint outline on the wall. I tore the bar out and also the flooring that was beneath it as well as all of the carpeting. The pile of stone tile you see there is natural slate which will be the flooring for the entire basement. That's what I was going to install tonight before the 2x4 changed my mind.

 

This is what the other side of the room looks like right now. As you can see the tank is really far along. It's being protected right now by all of the toys, bookshelves, and exercise equipment that we had in the basement, just in case someone were to break in and try and run off with it...

 

Here's my skimmer, an ASM G6, unmodified as of this picture. It's in its temporary home, the corner of the basement bathroom.

 

OK, so since my toe hurt so bad and I didn't want to do any tiling with it like that since it would require me to drag it on the ground as I knelt down to lay the tile, I decided to drag the skimmer out and do the gate valve modification I've been planning on doing since I picked the skimmer up months ago... In this picture, you can see that the skimmer itself is 4' tall including the collection cup. It's also got 3 Sedra 9000 needle wheel pumps on it. Haven't figured out yet if I'll do the recirculating mod, but most likely I will.

 

Here's the pipes all laid out and ready for me to glue. Always plans to plan ahead before gluing!

 

Here's a close up of the gate valve itself and the T and elbow I'll be using on it.

 

 

 

Remember what I said about not gluing and carefully planning? OK, so I didn't actually put it onto the skimmer itself... I glued the parts together (I could always pitch the T and elbow and simply unscrew the gate valve itself...) and discovered that the T itself was at the same level as the collection cup and so it would basically cause the water to be high no matter what... So much for my carefully laid plans...

 

Never fear, though, improvisation here we come! I decided that I'd reverse the output and the input and simply add another section of pipe to it so that it would sit in the riser assembly without problems. By the way, if you decide to mod this yourself, make sure that you shave down and round the outside edge of the pipe you are putting into the riser. There's an O-ring in the riser that keeps it water tight and if you are not careful with the pipe you put in there you could tear or damage the O-ring.

 

So, I modified it and stuck it into the riser assembly...

 

...and now I think it's at the right height. I did replace the air vent with the stock output riser as I figured I paid so much for the skimmer, I'm going to use all of the parts, so instead of the white riser, I've got a black/gray riser. You can see that the T is below the top of the skimmer now so the gate valve can now actually do its job. Just in case, though, I didn't glue in the riser above the T... I might want to replumb the thing and do it the original way again instead of taking the quick way out.

[Jager]

yeah done that to my toe as well, i waer shoes now for that very reason.

 

hope it heals well and good work on the skimmer

[davelin315]

Ouch! Well, at least it wasn't one of those boxes of slate!

 

DOH! Hope you didn't jinx me! I did notice that when I stacked the slate to make room for the tub to be installed it was awfully unstable. I'll make my wife unstack the stone and wash it before I install it... that way my toes will be safe!

 

I did try and test out the gate valve modification after completing it, but I realized I don't have anything I can actually sit it in right now to test it out with. Last time I put it into the bath tub but I don't currently have anything of the right size to do this again. I'll have to wait and see when I get everything set up...

 

The next step is going to be either modifying it for recirculation or work on the stand. The stand is what I'd prefer to do, but since there's around 110 or so boxes of slate still sitting there, it might be awhile before I get around to having someplace to put the actual stand. Only catch with the recirc is that I'll have to decide how to actually do it. I was thinking I could use two of the pumps and modify them for recirculating and then leave the 3rd pump alone so that it is still feeding the skimmer and I also thought of possibly having my drain from the main tank go directly into the skimmer, but I am leaning towards the 3rd pump being a pump feed. Anyone have any ideas on this?

[ridetheducati]

Be sure to put the mesh mod on your Sedras.

[davelin315]

OK, so now I'm short one ballast, 3 bulbs, and (this is by far the smallest thing) a stand and wall to put the system on. Of course, I also need all of the room to be constructed with venting, fuse boxes, etc., but that's the easy part! I hope to find some time soon to actually finish off the stand so I can work on the floor around the room and I'm still on track right now for 2 years!

 

As far as the mesh mods, I have heard that with the mods the impeller life is significantly reduced and then the pumps go because of the imbalance. Obviously, the impeller is not that big a deal, but if the pump goes, too, I'm wondering about that. I think I'm going to have it recirculating, but as of now, I'm going to test it out when I get things set up and then decide from there on further modifications.

[steveoutlaw]

As far as the mesh mods, I have heard that with the mods the impeller life is significantly reduced and then the pumps go because of the imbalance. Obviously, the impeller is not that big a deal, but if the pump goes, too, I'm wondering about that. I think I'm going to have it recirculating, but as of now, I'm going to test it out when I get things set up and then decide from there on further modifications.

 

 

I can tell you from experience that the mesh mods are flawed. They do have fantastic bubble producing capability but as stated above, they don't last. The problem I ran into was the mesh not holding it's form and coming apart........I imagine that would play H-E-double hocky sticks on a pump. Hopefully someone is going to come up with a design that will keep it's shape because when they are new, they kick a$$.

[davelin315]

OK, so I've made a little progress, not with the tank, but with some of the logistics and equipment. I decided that the G6 was not going to do the job that I wanted it to do alone, so I modified it to turn it into a recirculating skimmer. I consulted a bit with our resident nasty-skimmate-expert, Dan Lichens, and began to fix up the skimmer. Although the advice was to go Deltec style on the pumps so that the path of least resistance for the bubbles was directly from the pump into the chamber without any elbows, the venturi pieces that mine came with do not fit into a regular 1" pipe, so I left it with the pumps oriented as is. I converted all 3 into recirculating pumps and did a few freshwater tests with it. There are some minor leaks due to the quality of the uniseals and the fact that I didn't want to glue anything so I am going to go ahead and leave it in sump. Tonight, I drilled the hole for the feed pump and am using a Sen 700 for the time being. I think that this is too much flow as according to the RC head calculator, I'm getting about 650 gph on the set up. Anyway, I may dial it back a bit, but it seems to work out pretty well for the time being as I think the pump is probably not going at peak (it's an old one). Anyway, the recirc pumps go into the skimmer body and use 45 degree angles to vent the water upward. The feed pump goes in and directs the water straight down, so the feed is hitting the bubble column and pushing some of the bubbles down towards the bottom so that they get more contact time.

 

I'll try and take some photos of this set up with the venturis on and with them off so you can see the difference. I'm looking forward to seeing if it can skim any junk out of the new sump as I tossed some rock I was cooking into the sump and it carried some sediment with it. It's been online for about an hour now so I'll check it again tomorrow evening to see what it pulled if anything. I have it adjusted right now to have the water column reaching the base of the cone at the top, and when I watched it for a few minutes, the foam was making its way about halfway up the neck.

 

Next step, finish the stand!

[davelin315]

Here's the skimmer sitting in the new sump.

 

A picture of the neck and the water level inside the skimmer.

 

Here's a peek at what it looks like with the feed pump.

 

A side view of the feed and the return alongside the cone.

 

The level of the foam in the neck of the collection cup, since this is all new RO/DI water and the rock was rinsed out in the holding tub before being added, there's relatively little to actually skim.

 

And below, here are some close-ups of the bubbles themselves. The skimmer itself when you look at it is slightly marbled because the water from the feed is being pushed straight down into the foam that is being pushed up towards the neck, but these close-ups can show you what the microbubbles look like. They are not as small as I think they could get if I modified even further, but they're small enough for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[davelin315]

OK, since I now have a wide open sump that is already having huge evaporation issues (the water is down nearly an inch in the sump from when I filled it up a few days ago) I decided that it was time to tinker with the kalk stirrer I purchased a couple of years ago. Anyway, I dumped way too much kalk into the stirrer, probably around 4-5 cups, and then hooked it up. The magnetic stir bar failed to move and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why until I realized that it was trying to stir all that kalk that had only been moistened rather than submerged. Anyway, I let it fill up about halfway, shook the bejesus out of it, and then it began to spin. I have it fed with a Tom's Aqualifter pump which rates at max 3.5 gph, so I hooked it up to a timer and am going to let it run for an hour to see how this does.

 

Here's a question, though, for those with kalk stirrer experience. Do I leave the magnetic stirrer going 24/7 or do I run it periodically? I'm not sure how much kalk is going to be dumped in there tonight, but I figure it's a good opportunity to perfect the system before I run through it all. I'll post some pictures after taking them. The whole place is a huge mess right now, but since the tank's not even set up as yet, who cares! It'll get organized when I actually build the stand.

[jamesbuf]

I modded my G5 this weekend and I couldn't be happier with the results. I did it the same exact way as yours. The bubble and foam production is soooooo much better. I'm only feeding it with a maxijet 1200 since I only have 42gallons in my main tank and about 30 in the sump. The skimmate is definitly darker than it was before.

[davelin315]

I can't wait to test it out with some actually dirty water! It's funny looking at the bubbles, they are all perfectly white all the way up to the top! I think it's a combination of clean water and too much flow through the skimmer, but I'll tinker with that later. What's the recommended flow on the G5 when it's a recirc? I haven't seen any information out there on the G6 and flow through when doing the recirc mod, but I get tired of going through those RC threads that are 40+ pages long... I figure the G5 and the G6 are not all that different so they probably can handle very similar flow through and be efficient. Hmmm... maybe it's time to shoot Dan a PM again and ask him for his advice as the resident skimmer guru...

 

By the way, looks like studying is going great! modding... online...

[jamesbuf]

I thought it didn't matter about the skimmer, I thought it was supposed to be 1.5-2 times per hour of your total water volume for any recirc skimmer. Not sure on this though. I figure if I take pressure and height loss from the maxijet 1200, it probably lowers it down to about 200gph which is about 3 times per hour of my total water volume.

I would put a gate valve on the Sen pump when you actually have the 300gal up and running so you could adjust it accordingly. The main thing for me was that I didn't want the skimmer pumping out alot of microbubbles to cloud up the tank. I don't have any bubbles coming out at all right now. I'm going to keep it like it is and see how it goes.

[davelin315]

Hmmm... as you can see, I'm new to the world of modern protein skimming. I'll have to research this and see. How are you dealing with the water that is returning to the sump from the skimmer? Since it's submerged I'm having trouble seeing if it's got any microbubbles in it and whether the bubbles reach all the way to the bottom of the skimmer or if they kind of level off. Also, when you introduce your water into the skimmer, are you pointing it down towards the bottom or just letting it flow in? Mine is currently pointing down but I'm not sure if that's the way to go or not. I notice that there's a lot of turbulence in my skimmer chamber, is this desired or not? My last skimmer was a Top Fathom and it swirled the water around the chamber creating a whirlpool. It was somewhat effective but not as effective as they are today! Even the seaclone skimmers get finer bubbles than that one did!

 

Anyway, here are some pictures of the kalk reactor in action.

 

Here's the full kalk reactor. It's sitting on top of a bucket of kalk from the 2006 spring meeting (this is the first time I have opened it so you can see how quickly I'm progressing!). As you can see, the fluidized kalk is actually over halfway up the chamber. I'm not sure if this is because of the inflow of water, the fact that I've got it constantly stirring at a low speed, or simply because I dumped way too much kalk in there! When I added it, like I said, there's probably 4-5 cups and I added it to a dry reactor. It only filled up about 2" of the reactor, but now that it's fluidized it fills up quite a bit more! The solution is not clear at the top, but then again it's pumping it in immediately after mixing it the first time so it hasn't had much time to sit.

 

Here's the magnetic stirrer motor. I've got it dialed down right now, no idea how many RPMs it's doing, but it's fairly slow.

 

Here's the temporary ghetto set up. The rubbermaid trash can on the right is the reservoir of RO/DI water. The black tube that's coming out of it is anchored to the bottom of the trash can and runs into the Aqualifter pump which is on top of the RO/DI unit. The clear tubing that runs down from there goes through an airline check valve and then into the kalk reactor. The kalk reactor then has a blue tube that runs out of the top of it and goes through a hole in the sump lip and then loops back down to the sump itself. The tube is weighted down with a PVC slip bulkhead that has been screwed into a piece of PVC in order to hold it down in the sump. It's suspended above water as you'll see here...

 

This is where the water returns to the sump as top off. This is a temporary measure, although I may end up keeping it similar to this so that I can see the amount of water entering the system. Maybe I'll buy some JG check valves and drill it directly into the side of the sump itself in the future when I have it set up for real.

 

Here you can see the Aqualifter pump in the back of the RO chamber. It's the black and gray item with the red tip where the hoses come out.

 

Here's another close up of the water coming out of the reactor. I love this camera! I set it to shutter speed priority and it was able to capture drops of water in mid-air clearly! I love the D80!

[jamesbuf]

I have the gatevalve mod on my G5 and have a PVC "T" at the end of my output, which is just at the top of the water level in the sump. The water hit the inside of the "T" and flows through out through the other two directions of the T, and the output skims across the top fo the water so if there were any microbubbles they aren't projected into the water column. Since you are using a much larger feed pump, I don't think this would work for you.

 

As far as the feed pump, I've seen the 45 degree pvc on the deltecs and euroreefs and they have the water projecting slightly upwards. I have mine projecting perfectly perpendicular to the bottom of the sump. It gives the bubble column a nice circular motion inside, which again, it what I see most deltecs and euroreefs do. Online time will tell which is right. You'll only really be able to tell when you have a ton of fish producing waste to pull out of the water. I think you'll be fine. Your bubble column looked really thick inside the skimmer. I'm sure you'll be amazed at the crap its gonna pull out of the water.

[davelin315]

Hmmm... I wonder if that T would actually work for the output. Maybe not a T but a 4 way and a T underneath it... I'll have to play around.

 

On the kalk reactor, lo and behold, this morning the column of fluidized kalk is only 2-3" high. Guess it settled down pretty well. I didn't notice a lot of water being added so I added another hour to the Aqualifter pump. I will hook it up to a graduated reservoir and see what it does as far as evaporation on a daily basis. I'll snap some more pictures when time is available.

[davelin315]

OK, so when the water is on and running through the kalk reactor the fluidized kalk rises up to about the halfway mark, when it's not running, it drops down and compacts itself. It does not, however, extend beyond this and stays at the bottom because of the slow mixing and low flow.

 

Another question for Kalk Reactor Experts - I know that kalk stays better when it's not exposed to air, hence the effectiveness of a kalk reactor, but do I ever need to get rid of the kalk in the reactor or do I simply replenish it? Is there a time that the kalk in there becomes useless or counterproductive because it's been in a mixture for too long?

[Guest tgallo]

if the ph falls below 12 in the reactor, add more kalk. you will have to empty it and clean it from time to time.

[Guest Bemmer]

Hi Dave,

I have not had a chance to read your entire thread yet but I did catch some of your comments about the Kalk stirrer. I have a Grey Seas Kalk Stirrer and Dan told me to clean out the kalk stirrer about every 30-45 days and replace the Kalk. Also, I add kalkwasser to the stirrer about one a week to keep the kalk level up. I have never tested the level of the pH in the Kalk stirrer, though. Interesting.

 

Let me know if the Aqualift pump works for adding your kalk water at an appropriate rate. I am using an Aqua doser and it is not putting but a drip a second into the sump. I would like to get a little more out of the kalk stirrer but cant with this dosing pump.

[davelin315]

Hi Dave,

I have not had a chance to read your entire thread yet but I did catch some of your comments about the Kalk stirrer. I have a Grey Seas Kalk Stirrer and Dan told me to clean out the kalk stirrer about every 30-45 days and replace the Kalk. Also, I add kalkwasser to the stirrer about one a week to keep the kalk level up. I have never tested the level of the pH in the Kalk stirrer, though. Interesting.

 

Let me know if the Aqualift pump works for adding your kalk water at an appropriate rate. I am using an Aqua doser and it is not putting but a drip a second into the sump. I would like to get a little more out of the kalk stirrer but cant with this dosing pump.

 

So far so good. The Aqualifter states that it doses up to 3.5 gph, and since I've now got it turning on for around 2 hours at night. Seems like there was little to no evaporation last night but I can't be sure of that. I put a piece of rock up near the surface and I'm using that as the gauge for the water level and how this does to add it in.

 

Tony - thanks for the advice on the pH. I will test it out when I get around to actually adding anything of value to the tank.

 

Now that I know that I have to clean out the reactor periodically I will make sure that I keep it in a very accessible place. That way I can clean and dump it. I wonder if it would be a good idea to drill in a valve near the bottom of the reactor so that I can simply drain it out when I want to replace the media...

[davelin315]

Hey Rebecca, I switched the time around that I use and it's now set to top off 4 times per day for about 30 minutes each time. The Aqualifter seems to do the job and has kept the water level stable since last night. I'll continue to monitor and see how it works out. Heck, by the time I get the tank set up, I'll probably have 2 years of field testing done on this pump!

[YBeNormal]

I'm using an aqualifter on my GSA kalk stirrer with ~6' of airline tubing and I get several drops per second of output, almost a small stream. I am only using about 5'-6' of airline tubing though. I originally had it set up with the pump on a shelf and using ~12' of tubing and the drip rate was very slow.

 

I also had mine set up on a timer but have since connected it to my ATO instead. This seems to work out best for my setup.