450 progress

VegasMike · #1 02/09/2004, 12:28 AM

Well, we got the tank up on the stand late Friday afternoon and I have spent a little time cleaning the tank and getting it ready for a leak test. Here is a pic.

VegasMike · #2 02/09/2004, 12:29 AM

Another picture

VegasMike · #3 02/09/2004, 12:30 AM

3rd of 5

VegasMike · #4 02/09/2004, 12:32 AM

The previous pic is from the back side of the tank in the fish room which shows the catwalk across the back of the stand.

VegasMike · #5 02/09/2004, 12:34 AM

Last pic for now. I have the tank 1/3 filled as of tonight. The electricians will be done on Tuesday and I'll finish the plumbing after that.

120bamaguy · #6 02/09/2004, 09:15 AM

great looking setup.

dgasmd · #7 02/09/2004, 10:07 AM

Mike:

Just a quick question. Why did you decide to go with a smaller sump under the tank when you have the room behind it available and could have put in a couple of those rubbermaid tubs there and nearly double your volume? Just curious.

VegasMike · #8 02/09/2004, 01:22 PM

dgas, great question. The sump under the tank is 60"x24"x22" so around 130+ gallons. What isn't in the room yet is my 150 gallon tank which I am turning into a refugium. The 150 is reef ready as well and will be run out of the same sump. My plans for the acrylic sump are actually very simple. There will not be any sand at all in the sump. The MR-4 skimmer will be located in the sump. I actually put it in there yesterday afternoon. and it fits with plenty of room to spare. I am having to raise it up about 5", but that's part of the beauty of the steel stand, 40" of space. The sump will also be used for any chemical media such as carbon. There are trays that the water flows through that are perfect areas for filter bags. I am not planning on putting any live rock in the sump unless I need it to break up the flow a little to aid in bubble dispersal.

I have not even plumbed everything yet. The pumps aren't set up either. Heck, there isn't even any electricity in the addition yet. That is scheduled for Tuesday. Final plumbing should be today or tomorrow, my bet is tomorrow. Plumbing will be nice since right now I am filling it up by pumping water from a water starage container in front of the tank that I load via bucket from my current water makeup area in my garage about 200' away. I put in about 150 gallons yesterday and got my workout. At 50 gallons a day from here on out, the tank won't need to be plumbed until next week. I have all of the in-tank bulheads installed and leak-free so far so the closed loop will be easy to get set up quickly. Once I get it to that point I will run it for a while and mix the salt in and plumb the sump in. Then I will put live rock in and probably be able to get everything going. The schedule is as follows, I hope:

Tuesday - electricians get me power and light (it's been tough working at night with a clamp-on work light and no heat).

Tuesday night - plumb in closed loop (only thing left is pump connections)

Tuesday - plumbers install final plumbing including RO hook up so now more lugging water.

Now through Sunday - keep filling tank, heating water, etc.

Wednesday-Friday - Plumb in sump

Saturday - Mix in salt

Sunday - Day of REST - Who am I kidding, I will find something to do.

Sometime next week - Rock - Then the room set up, lighting, etc.

The builders still need to build the "false wall" in front of the tank up to the trim and the trim guy needs to dress up the frame around the tank.

Oh well, gotta get some work done.

willis · #9 02/10/2004, 09:21 AM

You are into way too much fun

By the time you get done you will know every type of pvc fitting that is made, and a couple of others that they don't !!!!!. Oh yeah, and I'm sure you know this already, don't glue anything right away. My 300 sat for awhile, plumbed but not glued. Make the changes now because it sure is a pain in the butt doin it later. I really like your stand, by the way. Looking back, I wish I had made my stand a little taller, but oh well. Good luck

VegasMike · #10 02/10/2004, 12:19 PM

Thanks for the words of encouragement Willis.

I actually have a written out plumbing plan believe it or not. That was one of the benefits to having Mitch and the Contractors be late, I planned and planned and planned.

I even went so far as to lay out all of the fittings and put them in large Ziploc bags labeled like "cl pump to cl bulkhead 1", "sump pump to sump", etc. My plumbers have been kidding me about being way too organized. I have even been helping them out with fittings to plumb in the RO which they should be completing this morning. They had the feed line done yesterday, but not the drain line, so I just put the drain line in the floor drain and cranked it up. At 50 gpd, this is taking way too long.

I called a LFS that carries Catalina water to see if they would deliver it. They said "no" at first until I told them I wanted 400 gallons. Then they said that the in-store price was $1 per gallon, but deliveered, they could do it for $1.50 per gallon. I pointed out that that was a $200 delivery charge, but they didn't care and actually told me that nobody in town would do it for cheaper. I told them I would just keep up with the RO unless they gave me a better deal on delivery. They actually hung up on me. I will be posting something in the vendor feedback area since they are also a tank manufacturer. They screwed me a few years ago and I swore I would not do business with them again. They just reinforced my position.

The good thing is that the electricians were on-site by 7:30 this morning and thought they would be done by lunch. Now, I don't believe anything a contractoe says, but they are pretty good and, at least, I am pretty confident I will have power by tonight. No more working by lantern or clamp-on work light, yipee.

That also means that the heating and AC guys should be installing the units either tomorrow or Thursday. I think I am still on-schedule to add salt this weekend. Tonight's project is a little stand to elevate the MR-4 skimmer 5" using 2" PVC fittings. I also need to put a heater a a circulation pump in the tank once I have power. That water has got to be around 50 degrees.

And your are right, this is way too much fun. I would bet that I will have about $200 worth of PVC Fitting inventory sitting around AFTER I am finished with the plumbing. All of my plumbing haas been designed around "what if I have to change something". I have plenty of single union ball valves and union couplings.

My only "whoops" so far has been relying on threaded caps in the CL bulkheads that I am not going to use initially. I have two 1.5" bulkheads that will not be used unless I want to add another closed loop later on down the road. I put threaded caps with tephlon tape around them and screwed them in tight. I still developed slow leaks in each one of them (about 1 drop every 30 seconds) so I glued in an 8" section on PVC with a glued on cap at the end to each one of them. That solved the problem and still gives me enough pipe to do whatever I want to down the road.

The stand is amazing. Looking back on it though, it would have also worked well to have them put in a couple of 8" I-beams that spanned the whole length, but why complicate things. If I ever move, I can take the whole thing with me. By the way, the catwalk across the back was one of the best things I ever did.

willis · #11 02/10/2004, 12:48 PM

Mike,
PVC = big boys tinker toys
Are you gonna keep all your extra fittings? I have an excess of 2" stuff that I was gonna use for my overflows, stuff like ball valves and such. I'm just gonna take them back to Home Depot for credit or something, those things are pricey!!!
How many dedicated circuits do you have? I've got 8 for the room that the 300 is in and I used every one of them and probably could have done at least 2 more. The wall behind the tank looks like a used spaghetti factory, and that is with going thru at least 1 pack of tywraps. Thank God for the phone company!!!

VegasMike · #12 02/10/2004, 01:42 PM

I have seven different 20 AMP Circuits in the room. There are a total of nine outlets in the room, every one of them GFCI. Attached to each of the outlets around the tank (six total) are six outlet surge protectors, so just around the big tank there are 24 outlets. Another twelve outlets are on the wall about five feet behind the tank (where the 150 is going). The outlets are spaced so that there are 12 outlets below the tank in the stand area and twelve outlets above the tank fro the lighting/Tunze units. The outlets in the stand area will be for the pumps and heaters. It should finish out pretty clean, at least that's my intent. My current 150 is way too chaotic.

Oh yea, I forget to add that I have two separate 20 AMP circuits just outside the room for an external chiller. I had them put in a 12" access door about 6" from the floor just in case I needed to run anything outside. I am checking into split design chillers that keep all of the hot air outside while locating the colling part inside.

If that's not enough, they located the 200 AMP panel for the addition (weigh overkill) in my fishroom so power access is not an issue.

Did you find it easier to use flex PVC or hard-line everything?

VegasMike · #13 02/10/2004, 01:55 PM

I forgot to add one thing.....

I never thought about returning all of the PVC parts to Home Depot. My problem is that most of them came from Savko. The Home Depot and Lowes here have very poor selections.

Maybe I will get into PVC art as an additional hobby.....

willis · #14 02/10/2004, 03:24 PM

The only thing that I used flex on was from my skimmer pump, Iwaki 55RLT, to my skimmer. That's just cuz it was real convenient, and the curve in the flex hos matched up with the distance. That stuff is not real pliable. All my circuits are 20 amp too. If you do go into PVC art, don't quit your day job.

1Floyd · #15 02/10/2004, 09:07 PM

Mike,

Looks like it is coming together very well. I too had way too many fittings when I was done with initial plumbing - but soon used them, so keep your extras, you will use !

Looks like you did drill the CLs bottom. It is working amazing well in our tank, the water movement is awesome, especially with the single CL feed pipe - with the four sequences hooked up to it, there is a definite constant volume of water moving towards it - almost like a full time surge ... you'll see when you hook it up and test the current, it is too cool!

I can't tell where your extra CLs are, but I used all 4 bottom ones of mine, and it works very well.

I only flexi-plumbed a few things, most everything else was hard and the 2" flexi is not really that flexi

You are off to a great start !!!

dgasmd · #16 02/11/2004, 10:50 AM

Mike:

Looking good. You give detailed enough descriptions that I feel I am at home right there with you.
As far as making water, one of the best pieces of investments you can make now that you are talking major water volume is to replace your RO membrane for a 100gpd and also get a booster pump. Both with shipping will come under $200, less than the water delivery charge and will pay for thenselves in the long run. I will go one up and just add a 100gpd membrane to your existing 50 gpd. With the booster pump you will be making well over 200 gpd. This is one very overlooked piece of equipment in a large tank/set up. You need to be able to make large amounts of water quickly if you need to for changes or for disasters. I can't emphasize that enough. Looking ahead for my move to FL I did this already and couldn't tell you how happy I am I did.

As far as plumbing, I actually like doing hard PVC much better. Cleaner too. For a number of reasons I ended up doing some flex PVC in some places because I had to. Next time, it is all hard PVC if I can help it. They are both equally easy to work with, but I feel the glued slip joints are better glued with the hard than the flex.

VegasMike · #17 02/11/2004, 12:13 PM

Thanks once again dgas.

I actually ordered a new membrane yesterday. I called up Marine Depot and added a "piggy-back kit" which adds another membrane to the unit, thus doubling the capacity. I have now tripled the size of my RO for $130 (piggy back kit = $120, difference for larger membrane = $10).

I wish I had done this a week ago, the tank would be full by now.

I spent my time last night getting the stand done for the skimmer to raise it 5" and plumbing in the pumps. I also got the internal spray bars for the CL done.

Mike

dgasmd · #18 02/11/2004, 01:33 PM

Dude, you can't possibly prepare for everything. Something always has to give. The good thing is to learn from it since it will prepare you better for "next time".

VegasMike · #19 02/11/2004, 01:54 PM

Yea, things never work out exactly as planned. I am trying to get away from that undertank spaghetti look, but I don't think there is really anyway to avoid it when you have three drain lines, two sump return lines, 2 closed loop feeds and 2 closed loop returns, not to mention the skimmer, refugium, etc.

Tonight's goal is going to be finishing the closed loop and removing the closed loop on my 150 so that I can reuse the 1.5" ball valves. If I can get to it, I want to get the overflow drains done as well.

But now it's off to Home Depot once again over lunch to buy a few fittings and some more 1.5" PVC.

willis · #20 02/11/2004, 02:02 PM

Hey Mike, Spaghetti isn't real bad as long as you understand it

Good luck with the Home Depot trip. From yesterdays statement I hope they have everything you need!

VegasMike · #21 02/11/2004, 04:33 PM

Understanding it isn't so bad. It's the planning so that you make sure you don't do anything stupid like blocking access to your skimmer.

I was only after a 1" 90 degree street el and some 45's so it wasn't so bad. The standard 1.5" PVC is also an easy one.

I think I broke a personal record though by walking out of Home Depot and spending less than $20.

willis · #22 02/11/2004, 04:54 PM

WHAT!!!!!
That's gotta be a typo, did you say that you walked out of Home Depot spending less than $20. You must have gone to Lowe's right after that, huh?
Good job, keep us updated.

VegasMike · #23 02/11/2004, 05:11 PM

Nope, no typo. It helped that I was on my way to meet my wife for lunch and didn't have time to loiter.

The Heating and Air guys came today so that part of the addition should be done now. Looks like the only things they have left on the interior are finishing around the front of the tank, sealing the tile, carpet, paint (trim and touch-up) and a bunch of little stuff like door handles, threshholds, bathroom mirror, shower door, bathroom lighting, ceiling fan. They also have quite a bit to do outdoors, but that is really secondary.

VegasMike · #24 02/12/2004, 01:04 PM

Well, it turned out to be a very busy night last night.

The Heating and Air guys got the main unit on-line, but are back today finishing the unit in my fish room. I don't really need the AC yet anyway.

The water heated up over night to about 78 degrees. The tank is about 2/3 full right now and, in a suprise move, I had to put the salt in the tank.

I got a call from Chris at ReeferMadness that he just got in soem show rock that looked awesome and was very fresh if I wanted it. I figured, what the heck, It's only 300 pounds so it should be able to lay on the bottom of the tank. That just made heating and salinity a priority last night. I also finished the spray bars for the closed loop behind the rocks and plumbing the rest of the closed loop. I will probably flood the pipes and turn it on tonight. I am also going to try and get the sump totally plumbed, but I think that may have to wait for the weekend.

Talk about good service from Fed Ex, they just called me to make sure it was OK to leave the boxes at the front door even though they are marked "live fish". One of the nice things about Las Vegas is that Fed Ex two day from LA is really only one day.

I'll post some pics of the rock soon.

willis · #25 02/12/2004, 02:12 PM

Mike,
Do you have the pics of your closed loop spray bars? I'm thinking that I'm gonna redo my closed loops while I still can get back there. PM me if you can send the pics.
Can't wait to see the rock you came up with

I know the rock I've got is some of the best I've seen, but that is my personal opinion