Addiction wins, 450 gallon system begins

[george_grat]

Great work. More Pictures please !!!

[Hop]

Originally posted by george_grat
Great work. More Pictures please !!!

Thanks george_grat... Ask and ye shall receive!

So I got down to business today and I think completed the basic plumbing for the sump and fuge. I took a few hours of thinking and re-thinking, but I think I got it figured out. There were a couple things that I wasn't crazy about, but it seemed to turn out in the end.

I started out with the 1 1/2" bulkhead and plumbing into the sump.


Next I moved onto the return pump.. this was one section that I was not crazy about, but it's the way things had to go in there.



Then I got the skimmer pump going. I wanted to tuck it the corner, but with the ball valve and the coupling, I had to put it out a little.

[Hop]

Cont....

After I got everything dry-fitted, I took it all apart, cleaned everything and painted the stand. Then it was time to slowly put it all back together and do the glueing.








To be continued later tonight with the wet-run testing pics.

[NexDog]

Why are you teeing the return back into the sump?

[jnarowe]

Looking like lots of fun!

[Hop]

Originally posted by NexDog
Why are you teeing the return back into the sump?

I hope I can answer this and make sense It is Tee'd and what you see going over the sump is going to be the feed for the fuge. I decided to Tee it off here for two resons. First if I need to shut the return to the tank off, the 1 1/2" drain from the fuge cannot keep up with the 3000 gph, so I can crank it open and still have flow going into the fuge... and second, I'm not exactly sure what my headloss is going to be as I could only get an approximate using the headloss calc... Basically its a just in case handle, to make sure I have another area of tuning, incase I have more flow than I can handle I hope that makes sense and I hope it's proper thinking.... I was hoping it could be an ounce of prevention handle.

[Hop]

So after dinner the glue was dry and to be quite honest, I was a little itchy since I've had this equipment sitting around collecting dust for over a month... SO I loaded the sump and fuge with some water and gave it a whirl I was pleasently suprised that there were only a few issues. 1st I forgot teflon tape on the skimmer output (duh) and after that was fixed I found out that the drain on the bottom of the baracuda leaked a bit. I noticed that it went away after awhile though. And the final issue was that the rubbermaid bulkhead dripped a little, but it too has seemed to stopped. I'm going to leave the water in it over night and see if it presents itself as a problem again. I couldn't tell if it was from the bulkhead, or the plug.

[WarEagleNR88]

Very nice, professional looking switch install! Looks good.

And there's nothing like good ol' PVC to get your aquarium up to speed.

I'm looking forward to what you get to next. Btw, what is next?

[jnarowe]

can you tell us about the switch install?

[Hop]

Originally posted by WarEagleNR88
Very nice, professional looking switch install! Looks good.

And there's nothing like good ol' PVC to get your aquarium up to speed.

I'm looking forward to what you get to next. Btw, what is next?

Thanks WarEagleNR88,

I guess there is pleantly left to do. My wife's friend's husband is a plumber, so he is going to be coming over this weekend to get the sink plumbed and help get the RO/DI going in the wetroom. After this is done, I've got to figure out the auto top off and get the auto shut off and float valve installed into my RO/DI unit. Then I have to order some fans and get those wired up to a humidistat and tap into the HVAC system to keep the room at proper temp. And I'm sure I'll find some other things that need to be tended to before the tank gets here.

jnarowe.
The switch system is an American DJ PC-100A system. I got the idea from another person here on RC and ordered it from musician's friend. I have another one that will be going under the stand for the light timers and such. I've been going back and forth on whether to use them as I may wind up with an aquacontroller down the road. But for now I'm trying to keep the KISS method going on the system.

[george_grat]

Hop,
can you tell us the water direction, please?

[bullfish]

Looking good, can learn alot from all these pics, keep em' coming.

[Hop]

Originally posted by george_grat
Hop,
can you tell us the water direction, please?

Well, in the sump it goes from right to left. The right side of the sump is where the drains from the tank will be, along with the drain from the fuge. In this section I have the intake for the skimmer pump. The skimmer return is deposited in to the fuge, just to give the bubbles the furthest distance possible to dicipate before returning to the main tank. Then obviously water goes through the baffles to the return pump. At this point, most of the water goes back to the main, but some gets tee'd off and feeds the fuge.

I hope that makes sense!!!!

[george_grat]

Originally posted by Hop
Well, in the sump it goes from right to left. The right side of the sump is where the drains from the tank will be, along with the drain from the fuge. In this section I have the intake for the skimmer pump. The skimmer return is deposited in to the fuge, just to give the bubbles the furthest distance possible to dicipate before returning to the main tank. Then obviously water goes through the baffles to the return pump. At this point, most of the water goes back to the main, but some gets tee'd off and feeds the fuge.

I hope that makes sense!!!!

Thanks, but if you can in the future please do some drawings, it's really help me for my new refugium.

[GSchiemer]

Originally posted by george_grat
Thanks, but if you can in the future please do some drawings, it's really help me for my new refugium.

Maybe he can come over and build it for you too.

The refugium is just a Rubbermaid tub with an overflow drain at the top. What kind of "drawings" do you need? Perhaps I take too much for granted.

[Hop]

Ok this is way off topic but.... I had to put my Aus. Shephard down the other week due to a long battle with cancer. Long story short is that we wound up going for a drive today and picked up this lil' guy. He's a red mearl and so far his main function in life is to sleep! Still looking for a good name if any one out there has any great ideas!

[ohioreef]

Too cute!!!

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

Frank
OR
Sinatra

with those eyes it's a have to, imho!

nice pooch, sorry for your loss, it's sooo hard everytime.

[Hop]

Thanks for the comments! Yeah the eyes are what suckered me in. Tyler, the last Aussie had blue eyes too! And yeah it was very hard to do what had to be done with Tyler.

[ohioreef]

Is he an Australian sheperd?

[Chihuahua6]

Hop I truly feel for you. I had to do the same with my Queen (real name is Baby) 1 1/2 years ago and it still hurts each and every day. I have three of her offspring and they all have heart disease (enlarged heart and atrium) like she did. I also lost my Belgian Shepherd this past December after he got out and did not return. $1000s in lost dog ads did not return him. I also had to put my Balinese cat down one year ago. Anyway before I depress you here is a list of all my pets' names including the three mentioned above. Maybe you will like on of them. That pup is prescious. I love herding dogs.

Baby (aka Queen)
Austin
Sergio
Travis
Beaugahn (pronounced Bo-gin)
Rio
Juno
Ashley
Riot
Teak

Foster dogs now with new families:
Chloe
Girly
Fritter
Autumn
Veta

[Hop]

ohioreefer: Yup. Red merle. Tyler was a blue merle and I didn't think I could bring another dog in that would look so close. Not yet at least

Chihuahua6: I am so sorry for your losses, from experience I know there just isn't anything that any one can say... But thanks for the names. Right now I think that Austin is at the top of the list

[Hop]

Well Chihuahua6 thanks a bunch. We put it to a family vote and decided that Austin suits the lil' guy! Problem solved.

So a quick pictureless update on the tank. About all I got accomplished this weekend was a couple days on the boat Did some wakeboarding and took the little ones tubing. Then we did dinner on the lake and watched the sunset! I did manage to get one of the fans mounted in the wetroom in order to vent cool/warm air out and reduce the humidity. I also got the quarantine tank set up and filled with water. I'm going to get a sponge for a hot magnum going on the 125 so that I can get the cycling process started in the q-tank asap.

Not sure I'm going to get anything else done on this vacation until I get the sink plumbed and start running feed/return lines to where the tank is going to sit.

Thanks again!

[sscherin]

Sorry to hear about your aussie.
I don't know what the girls would do if we lost ours.

[hail_sniper]

i love dogs, sorry for your loss, idk what i'd do if i lost mine



she's a mutt, i think theres some aus. in there but she's great

good luck with the tank, its coming along nicely