JHendu's 115 tall

[jhendu]

Alright, here's what has gone on so far. Delays, that's the first thing. Not going to be adding water until the 26th based on the tanks "born on" date and the manufacturer's required curing time for the seals. But I have been making headway with today being a particularly productive day. Here's we are: I have finished foaming the tank. I first siliconed squares of eggcrate to the back of the tank to provide a more secure anchoring point for the foam. I have added additional bracing to the underneath of the stand to help support the weight of the sump. I noticed the lack of support when I had installed the sump awhile back. I then used rubber runner to live the bottom of the stand to help alleviate some of the water issues when spillage occurs. From there I lined the inside of the stand with acoustic foam to dampen some of the noise of the pumps and water flowing from underneath. I cut a piece of 1/2 foam insulation to size for the tank to rest on so the glass is not on the wood (manufacturer recommended 3/4 inch but I'm going with 1/2 cause that's what I bought). I then treated my stand with copious amounts of old english oil to try to make up for years of abuse and water contact. It sopped it up like a dry sponge. I have just come in from plumbing the overflow for the durso and the return line. I ended up just running the return line up and over the overflow as I really didn't want to try to drill the glass. I think it will look fine when all is said and done. I used 3/4 for the return line to a locline "y". Here's the pics so far:

[cerreta]

Nice job Jason. I like th echoice of materials you have chosen.

If you have gurgle with that standpipe, let me know. There are some easy fixes gurgling. It will all depend on how big your return pump is and how much flow is traveling trough the pipe.

Higher flows are likely to cause gurgle with the top hole siphon design.

I like how you did the return line. I have tried using Locline to come out and over teh wall before and LocLine will occasionaly suck air into the system from the joints and spray the air into the tank. How much of the LocLine will be exposed to the air?

[ZOAKEEPER]

I'll give ya 500 bucks for the whole thing as is. You go out buy a nice R/C car and eleminate years of stress and wanting.(cause your always going to want another coral) LOL It's looking great Jason, PM me if you need any physical help,i'm avail.

[jhendu]

I just went out and eyeballed the return line...it looks like only the ball joint at the "Y" will be exposed to air. Maybe 1 joint after that but it will be close. If it does do that I'll buy a small extension to screw onto the end to bring the locline fully under water. I'll be running a mag 7 for the return pump so I don't think the flow will be to bad.

Now I have the following left to do:

Hopefully finish this all today:

Move stand back into place
Lug tank onto stand
Plumb underneath
build PVC aquascaping rack
Cut eggcrate for bottom

For Wednesday:
Aquascape and fill er up

[jhendu]

My buddy just came over and we got the tank in place.

[ZOAKEEPER]

Got your fuge in there right? Door open pics?

[jhendu]

Oops, my bad. Its under there. About to head out to Lowes. I started the plumbing but realized that I didn't have a ball valve to shut off the water from the overflow for maintenance.

[cerreta]

Jason, you don't need a ball valve on the drain. As long as the Durso is in place, water can not go down. If you have to remove the pipe, then you will only drain the water in the resavoir, about 3 gallons, not the whole tank.

I like how you made a removeable panel for sump to enter and exit. You will be happy that is there.
Cheers

[philblumenfeld]

Jason,
What is the purpose of the foam on the back wall of the tank.
Looks great by the way.
Thanks for the education I'm getting watching what you are doing.

[jhendu]

The foam is acoustic sound-proofing foam. I'm hoping that this will cut down on some of the noise from the sump area (water flowing, pumps etc.). The tank is in our family/dining room and my baby daughter takes naps in her playpen right next to the tank. Fingers crossed that it works. I think I originally saw the idea on Cerrata's 110 build thread.

[jhendu]

Scott, I could of use that bit of info about 8 dollars ago. I had kind of thought that would be the case but was trying to err on the side of caution. I'll return the valve in that case. It was kind of big for the space that I'm working with anyway.

[jhendu]

Well I decided to leak check the plumbing...I know, I'm not supposed to fill the tank until wednesday but I only planned to fill it up, check for leaks and then drain it. But here is the problem. The mag 7 is draining water from the sump faster than the drain is putting it back. Any ideas? The drain is 1 1/2 inches so it should be holding up to the mag 7 with no problem. Please help!!!

[cerreta]

Simple fix, no worries.

One of two problems need attention.


1. You simply do not have enough water in the tank. If you built your sump like my sump-a-fuge design (check my gallery), then the return chamber is where all water evaporation will occur in the system. In other words, just pour more water into the chamber where the return pump is located until your water level rises to the desired level. Problem solved.

If you add the water and you notice that the water level in return chamber stays low and the main tank is getting higher and higher and reaches the point where it is about to overflow onto the floor, then shut the system down and correct problem #2.


2. Your Durso drain pipe is not set properly. With the system running look into the overflow chamber. the water level should be around the middle of the "T". If the water level is much higher than that, then the standpipe is not draining water fast enough.

If you place a finger over the vent hole you will notice that the water will drain to the level of the elbow placed into the "T". If this occurs then the culprit is the siphon hole. The hole is too big. You will need to replace the cap, hopefully it is not glued on.

I do not like vent holes in the cap like that because once the hole is there, you can not adjust its size. I prefer drilling a hole in the side of the cap that penatrates the cap and the PVC pipe. Drill about a 1/8" hole. You will need to glue the small piece of PVC pipe into the top of the "T". From this point you can turn the cap freely and manually adjust the 1/8" hole from fully open down to a tiny little crack. This allows you to fine tune the air entry into the standpipe and should solve the problem.

If you go to my build tread you will see this design. You may also notice the larger hole drilled right into the center of the "T". This is the AGA modified version. I love this design, it is fool-proof. The purpose of the AGA hole is to force the water level in the overflow chamber to stay at the TOP level of the hole. Therefore, you will never hear slurping sounds fom water rushing into the elbow opening. Furthermore, water flowing into the overflow chamber will not fall as far, thus the system is quieter. Your little Mag pump is not likely to move enough flow to create noise problems, but it may. I built my system with an AmpMaster 3000 and the flowrate through a similar sized overflow was about 1800gph. It was loud until I minimized the distance the water had to fall into the chamber.

I wil try to bump that build tread to the top.

Let us know what you discover. BTW, it was the right thing to do to add water today and test out your plumbing before adding the aquascaping. You would be very sad to discover problems at that time.

[cerreta]

Phil, the foam is a new introduction to the reef hobby. It is called Handi-Foam. It is used in ponds to create elaborate water fall structures and such. Dr. Forsters sells is for about $8.00 per can.

The purpose is to create a textured wall that appeared more natural and more like rock. When corraline grows on it, you can hardly tell that it is foam. The foam has a tendacy to float, so using the eggcrate squares will keep it attached to the backwall and gives more places to anchor. Otherwise, it will peel away in one big sheet.

I did not have issues with peeling or shrinkage, but others have.

Cheers

[jhendu]

My bad Phil...wrong foam. Scott nailed it. I used 6 cans of the stuff but I could probably do it in less next time now that I kind of know what I'm doing.

[philblumenfeld]

Thanks guys

[cerreta]

Jason, did you solve the tank problem?

[jhendu]

I have yet to make another attempt at it. I needed to fix my sump and I'm waiting for the silicone to cure. I made a poor decision and went with pretty thin plexi for the baffles (a mistake I will never make again) so when the water level got to low in the pump chamber the baffle popped out due to the pressure from the adjacent(fuge) chamber. I resealed it and used eggcrate to brace everything so I think that I'll be good to go. After thinking a bit more about the water issue I think your solution of adding water will be the right fix. I was adding water while testing things last night and I got to a point where the level didn't seem to go down any more. This evening when I try again I'm going to keep adding and see what happens. I'll be sure to let you all know.

[jhendu]

I built the PVC aquascaping rack today. I made it kind of compact so it would easily fit into the tank and would be easy to hide in its entirety. I'm gonna test run everything either tonight or tomorrow. If all goes well then Wednesday will still be the day. Woo hooooooo.

[jhendu]

I just set hings back up and filled it with water for try # 2. Success!!!! Everything is working great. I unplugged everything and the water doesn't overflow the sump either. Whew, what a load off my mind. I think the water volume was my issue. I also, thanks to the advice of Zoakeeper after his visit the other day, trimmed a bit of foam from around the teeth of the overflow to ensure that there is no restriction of the return. I have one small leak in the return line but it drips right back into the sump. I'm going to unscrew the fitting and add some pipe type to fix it though. It truly was a Merry Christmas.

[jhendu]

Alrighty for tonights update.... I have set the sump up completely. It has its sand and rock and water in preperation for tomorrow. I have also lined the bottom of the tank with eggcrate to protect the glass. Now for a shower and some much needed sleepy time.

[cerreta]

Things are coming along nicely, very nice job!

Couple things may need tweaked. First, I have always drilled holes in the PVC so that it will not be buoyant and it may be useful to anchor a zip tie through the hole instead of around the pipe for some applications that need more security.

Second, that rack sits very tall in the tank. Not sure what your quascape plan is, but unless you want the rock all the way to the top, it may need trimmed. Furthermore, if you plan to zip tie a rock to the top of the PVC, then you will likely need to stack another rock on top of that to hide the exposed zip tie.

You may want to draw out some aquascape plans and make sure the rack meets your requirrement. You will also find that you will not be able to keep the rack that close to the wall, because the rock shapes will be hanging over the back side of the top pipe and you will need clearance.

Play with some rock and the rack on ground and try to get a feel for how you will use it. I think you may find that you need to shorten the bottom plate by four inches and lower it by about 4-6"

Cheers

[jhendu]

Scott, there you are a day late and a dollar short. Could have used that insight about 13 hrs ago. While we didn't have any probs with the rack floating after we put the first rock on it, we did realize that it was a bit higher than it should have been. Of course we didn't realize that until we were well into the construction and past the point of no return for the day. We adapted and I think we overcame pretty well. We placed a few critters up there nice and high so they can get lots of light. We probably could have done a better job of ensuring there were really good spots for our livestock. We made do with what we ended up with but we really only enusred a spot for our large colony of green favites. Everything else was placed randomly around based on where we thought it would sit well. We clustered some corals closer than we would have liked simply because of the need for a good spot for the frags. I only glued a couple of items in place in case we decide that we hate this in a few weeks and want to take a mulligan. If that happens I will probably offer one of you guys a few bucks to have you do it for me. I can't even feel my fingers from all the time spent in the water and grasping sharp rocks today. But we got it done and so far we are happy with the way it came out. I built the PVC frame a few inches to high so the right side is higher than we had really planned but we don't hate it. We left some room in front of the overflow in case we find new rocks that we like with cool critters attached to them. We got everyone situated in some new spots but we'll see how they like them in a few days. Depending on all of the tudes of the critters, we may move some folks around in the days to come. I'm not sure how happy the xenia are going to be with the current from the koralia 3s. No major issues during the build except that it proved to be quite a pain in the hind quarters to cover some of the PVC frame. I like the way we were able to secure some larger pieces higher up but I'm not convinced that I would I do it that way again. This photo was just snapped so most everything is sleeping (or still stressed) so I'll get another photo tomorrow after the lights have been on for a bit so we can all get a feel for how things are really going. The biggest problem that I had today is an unpleasant odor from the sump. We can't figure out if its due to the sand that I put in there, the skimmer, or???? Hopefully it will dissipate by tomorrow or I'm going to have to go all Encyclopedia Brown/Hardy Boys on that thing. Hard to describe the odor as anything other than "Funky". We'll see, now its time to sleep.

[McCrary]

Great aquascaping, I love how tall the rocks go, you will have to get some photos of it from the side and at angles so we can really see the rockwork.

[cerreta]

Hey, you did great! Sure is a lot of work, huh?

That water is very clear for being the first day, wow!

Are the rocks just stacked or did you use some method of anchoring them?
Cheers