JapanReef - 450 gallon In-Wall system

[NexDog]

Those strainers arrived and they don't fit so I'm going to have some kind of elbow off the bulkhead - I'll work it out. Mattt (MDP) on this board lives in Tokyo and has graciously agreed to hand pick me coral at a great shop up there. Look at the size of this hammer:



But at a cool equivalent of $1000 I think I'll pass.

[melev]

That is monstrous. Amazingly so. I've never seen one that large.

[NexDog]

I didn't know that they could even get that big!

[rulesmith]

So are you going to cure your live rock ahead of time? Are you worried about putting in livestock so soon?

The reason I ask is that I plan on putting the contents of my 50 gallon into my new 360. The 360 arrives in January, I am hoping to have all equipment up and running by February and figured maybe for my sps's I would wait tell April or May to put in. I figured the cycle on the big tank would not be dramatic, but still a cycle.

I currently have about 100 lbs of live rock in various old tanks around the house. I also have about 100 lbs in the 55 tank. Figured this will get me started. I am planning on getting another 100 lbs. or so and during the trash can thing with it. Figured with that much healthy live rock it will not be too bad.

I figure I am missing something or being overly cautious since you seem to think most things out very well ahead of time.

[NexDog]

I'm going to transfer the rock from my 50g and monitor parameters. I'm a little concerned that there will be enough bacteria to fully colonise this new system. I'm considering adding the rock to the sump as soon as the sump is filled to give teh bacteria time to spread. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I don't think I'll be adding any livestock till January - not any new stuff anyway. I've just ran out of money because I have thousands in extra and unbudgetted for bills. These 2 transformers I need for the 2 circuits into the tank room will be the best part of a grand and I need some repair work done on my car as I just introduced it to the end of a low-lying wall and my car lost.

[Bax]

NexDog

FWIW, I started my 75 with a big lot of base rock (60 - 80 pounds) and added about 10 pounds of LR to jump start it. After cycling that I split the base rock up between the tank and the fuge and added some more LR. Let that sit until I was sure I wouldn't get another amm spike. I also added new sand with new live sand and seeded with old sand from my existing tank. I observed a very limited cycle. I then added the rest of my LR from the existing tank and 75 seems to be breaking in well. It is still very young and I am keeping an eye on it. If it continues to go this well I plan on a similar approach to starting up my 240 g.

[NexDog]

Sump is officially full now and my PanWorld return pump plug doesn't reach the socket. Don't know why, I just never checked until now. So I have to try and find an extension cord that supports a US 3 pin plugs. Our plugs over here are the same as yours without the top round pin. If I can't find one I'll just use the transformer powering my skimmer pump on the 50 as a temporary measure to get the water up to the main tank.

I had to order 3 transformers - one per electrical box I put in the tank room. They are custom made but the company does them in 12A and 16.6A and any more ampage than that and we are talking silly money. As it stands they still cost me the best part of $1500 - an extra bill I did not need right before Christmas.

Took a few pics for you to take a gander at.....

So I have 3 electrical boxes in the room and here is the 16.6A one. I have 3 timers plugged into the GCFI's and from there will run my ballasts and the the 2 pump on CLs. Wiring will be nice and tidy when it's all really live.



Shelf above is support 2 single and 1 dual PFO pulse start ballasts plus the PC ballasts.



Shot of the messy work in progress.



Some plumbing. That diagonal pipe is the temporary return line. Ran out of 1" pipe but will redo next week when it arrives.



RODI production. The yellow tank is the 50g container that I'll use for water changes and the blue one I'll use for auto top-off. Bit of a squeeze to get into the sink but I can make it just. This is where I started to regret not making the room bigger.



Sump filling with water. The back right of the sump you can see the 2 lines from the overflow. I put Tee's on the end for ease of using filter socks. I can rubber-band a filter sock to a 3" length of 1.5" pipe and stick it in the Tee. The easier I make maintenance tasks the more likely I am to do them.



Still got a lot to do. The access doors on the front need to be done. The sliding light rack is almost done. Need to plumb in the 2 CLs on 4 Ways and the skimmer but I figure it'll be complete by Xmas.

[jeffbrig]

Originally posted by NexDog
I figure it'll be complete by Xmas.

Just keep telling yourself that, lol.

I thought I'd have everything done by August. Melev's been about to finish his canopy for about a year now. A big tank is NEVER complete....

[biodegraded]

Done by Xmas of what year?

[dgasmd]

[i]Sump is officially full now and my PanWorld return pump plug doesn't reach the socket. Don't know why, I just never checked until now.

So you mean to tell me you are filling the entire thing for the first time with RO/DI water only? You never filled it and ran everything with tap water only? What happens when you ahve the entire thing filled and you get a leak, and you will, in a couple of pipes that require you to remove all the water?

The first time I did my 125g tank years back, I did the same you are dong only to find out I had to drain the entire thing to fix a leak at the bottom of the tank. Every tank since then I fill with tap water and run everything for about 3 days non-stop to figure out any leaks and any microbubbles coming from air being sucked in by the plumbing. It is just so much easier I think.

Good luck

[RobbyG]

Filled mine twice with pipe water, found a few problems each time then when I filled it with Salt Water everything was perfect until I realized that I had put the Tank 1/2" closer to the wall on the left side. LOL you can never win

[Bax]

Plumbing looks great NexDog, but do a tap water test first.

Get some trash cans and continue making SW until you can test all your plumbing. I am still chasing microbubbles in one of my CLs. Doesn't leak, but does suck in air. It's areal hassle to fix with a full system.

Leave you sump full, with all those true union valves, you can test above and below them with no problem.

[NexDog]

I did a leak test with tap water - good enough for me. If I have micro-bubble issues on the CLs then I have union ball valves after the bulkheads and before the pumps so easy to dismantle and troubleshoot. Only plumbed in the PVC rack CL at the mo and will add the other 2 slowly.

[boxer85]

why don't you build another shelf above your sink and put one of those water containers up there???

[rdmpe]

Hey Laurence, I can't believe the hassle you had to deal with on the electricity. Man that is a pain in the rear. I am very interested to hear how things work out once you have those pumps running. I have my system running right now with ONLY a dart on a closed loop. No other pumps, no lights, nothing. The dart pump is keeping my 180g at about 3 degrees above room temp. Not what I was hoping for since I didn't want to use a chiller.

[G_cuvier]

Sump is officially full now and my PanWorld return pump plug doesn't reach the socket.

I hate to do an "I told you so" but IIRC, way back in this thread, I said put your outlets all around and you responded that you would like them all tidily put in certain places.... I should have responded that you were wrong but I didn't want to make the thread a place to argue a point.... (If I'm confusing you with someone else I apologise).

I'm a little "ahead" of you in my construction of the "perfect" reef.. and have learned from my own errors... Guess what.... This was one we share..... Rewiring after the fact is a pain... Especially when it's a job you don't like doing and you think you have finished it... It's demoralizing to have to go back and do more of it when it's now more difficult to do.....

My sympathy.... Sincerely... I know how long I have put off replacing that extension cord with actual wiring....

[CAreefer]

Why not just pick up a heavy duty, long lamp cord and rewire the pump with a longer cord? 14-3 should do just fine.

[duhfactor]

Nexdog,
Bummer not having a home depot down the street......Seriously though, it's coming along well. Sometimes we forget what a massive job it is setting up such a large system.....Keep it up!

D

[NexDog]

Guys, I'm so dumb, or have some weird short-sightedness. I have 2 electrical boxes on that side of the sump and I was trying to plug it into the one above the skimmer. It does reach the other one but only just. G, I hear what you saying but I just don't want exposed outlets so I have 10 outlets per box and there are 3 boxes under the tank so you'd think it would be plenty.

CAreefer, ah, if only I lived stateside.

Damon, it is a massive task. I've never done anything like this and it terrifies and excites me at the same time. I read a million threads on RC trying to learn from other people's mistakes but no matter how much you read, there's nothing quite like learning from your own mistakes, lol.

rdmpe, wow that's a lot of heat output from one pump! I've got 2 Darts, a Sequence 1000, a PanWorld and 2 Iwakis on my system. But I'm not hooking up the 2 Darts for a while. I think I'll be streamlining this setup alot over the next year especially if those IceCaps pumps live up to the hype.

boxer, yea might do just that.

Here's a few more pics. I worked out the space issue at the back of the PVC racks. With the strainers in the racks wouldn't fit into the bottom bulkhead. Here you can see teh bottom bulkhead and the the 2" bulkheads for the CL intakes - strainers were just too big.



Here are the wide strainers from AquaEco - very cool indeed. Compared against the standard long strainers here:



So instead of hanging the Tee straight down I managed to cut the back section off, put in a new Tee at 90 degrees and have an elbow come off that - plenty of space for the strainers now.





Here is where I'm at now:

[rdmpe]

Yeah I didn't realize that one external pump would heat the water up three deg. above ambient. I'll be running some fans I guess to try to cool things down. I am trying not to get a chiller since that just adds more plumbing, noise, heat in the room and ongoing expense to the situation.

[melev]

What happened? I feel like I'm reading a book and suddenly the last few chapters are blank pages.

[Adambalding]

haha....... I know. I check this Thread before I even check my e-mails in the morning. Where are you nexdog?????

[NexDog]

Well, it's been boring in some ways. I've been waiting for the tank to fill but it is now full. I have been doing a few other things:

Return Pump: Iredid the return plumbing so it's very neat and out the way of the way. I just had a temporary line up until now to get the water up there while it was filling. Now goes up the tank frame to the bottom of the tank, splits into a tee and then goes up next to the overflow boxes. I'm definitely not happy with the PanWorld pump. It's noisier thanmy Sequence 1000. Going to replace that with a Velocity pump as a few members suggested in another thread.

PVC Rack Closed Loop: This was quite a shocker. I did my sand test and with 3 nozzles pointed down on each rack it was not clearing out the sand enough. I'm getting less flow that an MJ 400 on those nozzles. Do I decided that if I was going to keep that idea I needed to point all 6 nozzles down. So I redid that and did another sand test it was just perfect. All the sand was blown out and most of it to the back. I have a 5" space there to siphon detritus and I'm very happy with this method.

Skimmer: Plumbed in my Deltec 902 and having a bit of a problem getting it dialled in. I posted a thread in the Deltec forum and received some most excellent detailed advice and setting it up. Some people say it took a few hours and some people say it took a few days for their skimmer to break in so I'm just letting it run and hopefully will see some skimmate today or tomorrow as it's been two days now.

The transformers still haven't arrived so I'm running the Sequence, the PanWorld return and the Iwaki (skimmer) and the skimmer's 2 Eheims at the moment. The 2 Finnex 500w heaters have brought the temperature up nicely and salinity is at 1.025.

I hope to plumb in one of the Dart closed loops today or tomorrow and do the Phosban/Carbon reactors plus the Tunze Osmolator.

Now a few questions.

1) So I have a running 450g system now. I have a 50g with about 50lbs of LR and I have 4 sponges in the fuge that should have collected alot of bacteria by now (2-3 months). If I transfer all that, will it contain enough bacteria to avoid a cycle? Would it help if I put the rock in and waited a while for the bacteria to spread about a bit? Should I split the rock between tank and sump?

Or should I just toss in a few frozen shrimp and do it the long way?

2) The noisiest thing in the tank room is not the pumps or skimmer but the resonating from skimmer portion of the sump. It seems the vibration from the Iwaki is travelling down the pipe and causing a hum to emanate from that portion of the sump. If I fill the sump up to the top the noise has no chamber so it's quiet so my options are raise up the baffle to the next section so the water level is higher or use some kind of soft pipe (tubing/spaflex etc). Any other options?

[melev]

Why do you need the new tank to cycle? With the existing bacteria and LR, it will slowly spread. If you gradually add more LR and livestock at a slow pace, bacteria will continue to grow at the same rate or need.

SpaFlex from the pump to the skimmer may help resolve that other problem.

[NexDog]

I'm just afraid if I add the LR and my fish it will be too much load right away. I have:

2 Clarkii clowns
1 Coral Beauty
1 Yellow Tang
2 Chromis
1 6-Spot Goby
1 Yellow Watchman Goby

I also adjusted the overflows. The Durso that James put in works great but it was just too low down. Even with the lids on the waterfall sound was driving me crazy. So I went with my original plan. I have one drain handling must of the flow. It's a piece of pipe about 4" long and choked off with a ball valve. Level slowly rises and the Durso takes the rest. I extended the Durso so the level inside the overfloxes is almost the same as the tank.

I have some photos which I'll scan in and upload tomorrow.