Chronicle of my 180g Aquarium

[Psyire]

Hello

This thread will be a story of sorts about my new 180g Aquarium. It all started early last year when my father-in-law setup a 33g reef tank. At first I just thought it was cool and checked it out when I was over there. I never was very interested in fish, as freshwater fish seemed kinda boring to me. (they still do mostly) It was the corals and that 33g tank teaming with life that caught my attention. I couldn't believe how neat and amazing everything was. Come the summer I knew I had to set up my own reef to enjoy.

This is when I started searching the Internet for information and inevitably stumbled onto this board. The wealth of information here simply amazed me and I was sucked right in. I spent the better part of August to November doing a pile of research. I wanted to do as much right as possible the first time around.

I scoped out a space in my house for my new tank and figured I would go as big as I could for that area. There were some better spots but I knew my wife wasn't going to go for it. So I settled on a tank with the dimensions 66"x24"x26". Originally I wanted to go higher but shortened it so I could safely use 1/2" glass and get away with 250w MH's.

My next step was to scope out places to get it built. I live in a remote area of Alberta, Canada so I figured this might be tough. Upon looking around though I found a few custom tank dealers in Canada. I won't go into why I chose who I did but I ended up going with Will from Aquarium Obsessed in Barrie, Ontario. I ofcourse had a million questions regarding nearly everything about the tank I wanted built. Will was great, and a ton of emails later I had placed my order. This was early November. Will kept me updated as the build process on my tank proceeded. Dealing with him through the whole thing was great and I'd recommend him to anybody looking for a custom tank.

A couple of days after I placed my order with Will, I decided to order my stand. I wanted to go with a metal stand because I know I won't live where i'm at forever and I figured moving a metal stand would be easier. I knew that Bow Valley Aquariums made stands in Calgary, and shipping it from Calgary was going to be a lot cheaper than across Canada. So I called Mitch up and ordered my stand. A few weeks later it arrived.

Next step was to order my sump. I did some talking to a few custom sump makers and ended up going with Barr Aquatic Systems. Being from Spokane, shipping was the most reasonable and I heard nothing but good things about Brent.

I knew it was going to be quite a wait now for anything else to happen. I did more research on what kind of support equipment I was going to get and I'll get into that later. It's January now and I recieved my tank a few weeks ago pretty much on time. (A few delays but nothing unreasonable due to the holiday season) I was very worried about it arriving safely as it had to travel across Canada in the back of a freight truck in freezing cold weather. (It hit -40*F here the day before it arrived) But it made it in once piece and I am still happy!

Moving it was heavy but not too bad. It took everything 4 guys could throw at it, but we did it. It now sits nicely on the stand.

[Psyire]

Tanks Specifications:

-66x24x26 (lxwxh) 180 gallons, give or take.
-PPG Starphire Glass on Front and Sides
-1/2" Glass with 3/4" Bottom Glass
-Euro-Bracing (Perimeter) which is also PPG Starphire
-All Edges Ground & Polished
-4 Holes drilled in bottom (1.5" piping for drains, 3/4" piping for returns)
-Hole Sizes: Schedule 80: 2x 2.625" (drains) 2x 1.625" (returns)
-Interior Grey PVC piping included
-2 Durso Drains Included
-All 8 Bulkheads Included
-Custom tinted glass overflow with 4 drilled return line holes
-Black Silicone on Overflow seams and Clear on the rest

Pictures
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[Psyire]

Back in November I setup my RO/DI unit as I knew this was going to be crucial for the success of my Aquarium.

Here are the full details setup:

Unit before installation:



Mounted on wall doing initial flushing:



Top Plumbing:



Plumbing to Tank:



Bottom Plumbing:





Explaination of plumbing:



Faucet Installation:



Waste H2O into sink: (other side of wall)



And that's pretty much it. Basically I've set it up so that I use only the DI part for my Aquarium water. The Storage tank is used to store water that we use for filling up the dog's dish, mini freshwater aquarium, and any other water around the house. I use the 'bottle fill valve' to fill up the 5 gallon water cooler jugs that was use for 99% of our drinking water. I also routed the waste water in such a way that it can either be used to fill up the Washing machine, or just go down the sink drain.

Note: I have an inline TDS meter installed and you can see it in pic #3 above. You can see the feed water probe in pic #6. The final water probe is tough to see as it is installed to the right and sort of behind the RO unit, you can kind of see it in pic #3.

I've been using this unit for a couple months and it works great. I have no complaints at all. Without using the DI my TDS (total dissolved solids) reading is at around 4-5, with the DI it is 0. Perfect.

The only thing I have yet to figure out is how to route my line in order to use it as an auto-top off. It's quite far away from my tank but I really don't want to be packing all that water to my Aquarium everyday...

[Psyire]

Another thing I had to figure out was power since there were no outlets in the wall where I wanted to tank. The only close outlet was under heavy attack by my computer. The upstairs of my house (where the tank is) has 2x 15amp 120v circuits. I don't have a whole pile of electricity use upstairs so I decided to tap into both circuits and run 2 lines down the wall and install 2 GFCI outlets for my tank. This way I can share the load of the tank across both 15amp breakers. It's not overkill, but it should be plenty.

Here are some pics of my outlets. (I did the wiring just before Christmas)





*Note* The camera angle makes the outlets look crooked, which they aren't.

[Psyire]

My Sump Design.

Back in November I spent a few hours in photoshop designing my sump. I looked at as many sumps on the 'net as I could find and I came up with this:



Brent with Barr Aquatic is going to build it for me, he should be starting on it soon. It sounds like he is swamped with work so I'm trying to be patient.

*Note* Thanks to Melev (Marc) & Brent for some helpful suggestions

[A Reef Scene]

Looks great so far.

[twinreef]

looks like you are doing a great job. very nice and well planed out. question how tall is the stand? and do you feel it's going to hold up? i ask becaues i'm planning on making a steel stand also. i want a taller stand then i have now(aga stand).

[Psyire]

Stand Specifications:

I layed thin carpet down on my hardwood so the plywood would lay on this. Then I went with painted 3/4" plywood in which the stand sits on. On top of the stand I have another sheet of painted 3/4" plywood and on that I have 1/2" foam. The tank sits on this foam. The stand is made from 1.5" tube steel and is 40" high. Combined with the foam, plywood & carpet. The bottom of the tank is a hair under 43" off the hardwood.

I have no doubts at all that the stand will hold the weight. I went with such a high tank because of where it is located. Most of the viewing will take place standing up, I have no couches or anything up in this room. Just my computer desk and chair, and I can see it fine from the chair. If it was in a living room or something I probably would have dropped the height 4-6" any lower and I find you are always crouching to look at the tank. I also like the height because it gives me more room for equipment under the tank, as all my equipment must fit under here.

More Stand pics:







Before holes in top:





Holes cut out:



Hole Dimensions are: 3.5" & 5" These are big to account for the large Schedule 80 bulkheads I'm using.

I will also be covering the stand with wood, this will make it look quite a bit nicer.

[hdtvguy]

Originally posted by twinreef
looks like you are doing a great job. very nice and well planed out. question how tall is the stand? and do you feel it's going to hold up? i ask becaues i'm planning on making a steel stand also. i want a taller stand then i have now(aga stand).

It will hold the weight no problem! Ever see the stands made by All Glass. They are made very skimpy.


Setup looks good so far.

[Kevin McG]

Great start, I look forward to the progress.

Hey nice Boston Bruins stuff!!! I am a devoted fan from NH

[sfsuphysics]

Very nice, btw from your plumbing one you have both hot and cold going into your RO/DI unit, isn't that a no-no?

[Psyire]

Kev, Thanks I'm a huge bruins fan and can't wait until the NHL starts up again.

sfsu, I do have the Hot/Cold plumbed in but I'm very careful on my temps. For normal water use I just run the cold but for when I go to fill this bad boy I'm going to run warm water so I don't have so much waste. I thought someone would mention this.

[acanthurus4lyfe]

on your sump design the actual sump/reservore is very small and looks like it wont be able to hold that much water so ull have to fill it up a lot. especially scince you added the 4 plates that help take the settlable solids out. you should have that just infront of the skimmer before it goes into the sump section. or i just interpretted it wrong. idk.

[Psyire]

I knew it was fairly small, but now you've got me thinking. Maybe if I moved one of the 'under' baffles over to the skimmer section and only put three in the return section. The 'hole' would act as an 'over' baffle. Doing this would give me a bit more room. As it is, I would have 12 gallons on the return side of the sump, assuming a 12" water height. This would probably be realistically 7 or 8 that will be effected by evaporation. I would definately have to setup some sort of reservior or topoff system or else fill it by hand at the minimum every other day. It's tough to put a larger sump underneth the stand as I'm already taking up 36" of 66" with just the sump. Only leaving me 30" for pumps and electrical work. Anyone else think I should make it bigger or change it?

[Psyire]

Will sent me some pics of my tank in various stages of the build process. Very cool. Here they are for your viewing pleasure








The following are pics of the tank the day it arrived.

[acanthurus4lyfe]

that is and amazing tank

y dont you do the sump but have the skimmer outside and you could also make the refugium bigger and also make the sump larger. also if your stands high enough make your sump taller so it can hold more water

you could also hook your ro unit on a float valve to have an atomatic top off and then it wouldnt really matter how large the sump is.

[AJP]

Looks very nice, and also like you have put a lot of thought into the tank. Can't wait to see it up and running, should be very nice. Good luck and keep up the good work.

[Psyire]

Originally posted by acanthurus4lyfe
that is and amazing tank

y dont you do the sump but have the skimmer outside and you could also make the refugium bigger and also make the sump larger. also if your stands high enough make your sump taller so it can hold more water

you could also hook your ro unit on a float valve to have an atomatic top off and then it wouldnt really matter how large the sump is.

Yeah, I'm definately going to have to add a reservior or figure out how to get an RO water line right to the tank. It's going to be to hard to do it any other way. I have some ideas, we'll see what happens.

[Psyire]

Originally posted by adamjonpeterson
Looks very nice, and also like you have put a lot of thought into the tank. Can't wait to see it up and running, should be very nice. Good luck and keep up the good work.

Thanks!

[Muligan]

I live in Barrie does Will have a web site?

[Psyire]

www.aquariumobsessed.com

[Cheesy_Puffs]

Psyire,

What connections did you use to connect your RODI tubing to the washing machine water inputs. I'm interested in connecting our unit the same way. As it is now we have our RODI unit set up in the garage which is normally fine for spring summer and fall, but in winter time it gets very cold in there (ice)

Thanks

[Psyire]

Hey Cheesy_Puffs, I used to 'Y' adapters that you should be able to find at any hardware store and then 2 of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...85287&tc=photo

They work great! Hope this helps.

[Cheesy_Puffs]

Thanks for the link

Can't wait to see more of your project.

[Psyire]

Well I ordered my Base Rock today! I decided to go with Reefer Rocks for this stuff because all the pictures I have seen of his rock are awesome. I would have liked to setup this tank using 100% live rock but the economics of such a thing wasn't very smart. I live in Northern Alberta, Canada so you can imagine how close the nearest Ocean is.. and if you can't, well.. it's just far away. I have seen pictures of quite a few tanks that started out with just Base rock and I think they work out great. However I do plan to buy 30-50 lbs of LR to 'seed' the tank with. Anyhow, here are some pics that ReeferRocks sent me of my order:

Complete Order:



Closeups:





I also made up a list of pvc fittings and valves that I'll be needing and called to place an order for those. I wanted an 'all grey look' for my piping so I went with everything in Schedule 80. This came out to around $200 CDN.

I will be picking up these parts and the 80 lbs. of Black Tahiti Moon Sand that I'll be using for substrate on Feb. 5th. Then I'll actually get some water in this baby!