DIY Grow Out Setup - Day By Day

[jnowell]

OK, so after some research, and being bitten by this breeding bug, I've decided to build myself a growout system and try to take this all a little more seriously.

First I cleaned out the spare bedroom, that was last weekend. Then I went shopping. I got the shelving unit for $69 at Home Depot, it's not perfect, but it'll do. I've spent probaly $50 on PVC and fittings, glue, etc.

This is a work in progress, but I'll try to post daily updates, and tell you what I got, where I got it, and how much it cost for just about everything. This is my method, I hope it helps some of you, but more importantly, I hope some of you spot some things that I'm doing wrong, and correct me before I make a mess of it I've tried to read everything I can get my hands on, and mold it all together into a system that works.

Here is the first area, it is the phyto culture/storage shelves, and the big Home Depot shelves, they will house 4 ten gallons, each drilled and plumbed to a central sump...we'll discuss the sump and filtration when I get to it. The ten gallon on the bottom in my rotifer culture. The clear plastic tray in the middle is slated to be a racetrack style coral prop area. My plan is to drain the water from the rearing tanks, and flow it through this before it hits the sump. Not sure if this is a good idea or not.


Here is the sump (27 gallon Tuff Box also from home depot) and the rotifer tank...needs to be cleaned.....again!


These are the returns, seen at the top of the first pic. These will mount to the bottom of the top shelf, and hang down into the tanks. (all from Home Depot)


This is the overflow plumbing, with homemade bulkheads. 1/2" going in, 3/4" going out. ID is 1/2", and garden hose rubber washers fit perfectly and seal them up tight.


This is the top from the sump, I plan to plumb it in to the system as well, it will flow water though it, just over 1" deep, I plan to use it for cutting and mounting coral frags before adding them to the race track.


And just for kicks, this was a computer desk a week ago. This is where I plan to keep track of all the tanks once they are setup and going, for now, it's a catch all. (don't show this one to the wife when asking permission to build one of these )


I eventually plan on having three of these shelving units setup as described. That should give me twelve tanks, which should in theory be enough to raise every batch of eggs my clownfish lay. God knows what I'll do when my Royal Grammas start spawning.

Comments, suggestions, chastising, I'll take anything right now!

Jason

[rsman]

first biggest mistake I see is your algae, move it

when the rotifers/brine shrimp grow wings they will get into those, and then you will have soup.

then this "coral" area if its a fish grow out area and this is plumbed inline you might be unsatisfied with the results.

[jnowell]

Yep, the algae location is temporary, there just isn't enough room on the other wall (yet) to put it in it's permanent location. This side is a mess, but the other side use to be an RC Airplane workshop, I was too embarrased to show it..piles and piles of stuff everywhere!

I was thinking the water might not be conducive to corals, thanks. I know my CURRENT water wouldn't be, but thought with a bigger sump and better circulation it might be OK, but I'll take that as a no. Thanks rsman!

[rsman]

oooh RC airplanes cool whatcha fly???

as for corals you can do some, but not all that many, some will grow fast with the tons of food and leftovers and such, but those wont be the high sellers and for the most part NOPE just isnt worth it.

[Fishboy42]

Great thread! Thanks for sharing. I always like to see new setups.

rsman do you fly RC too? There seem to be quite a few RC pilots around here...

It might be hard to make any corals happy after you get a couple of hundred clowns in that system. I know there aren't many corals that would survive in mine!

What is on the shelf that's just above the tuff-box? Would it be possible to adjust the shelves to fit two rows of 10g tanks instead of the coral tray? Of course, you will want to leave plenty of room to get into the tanks for maintenance, etc. Just a question. I know I am always looking for a way to fit "just one more" tank into any available space.

-Matt

[jnowell]

RC - Mostly electrics, sport aerobatic and a heli too. I'm into the micro stuff, have a 13" span biplane that rocks, but I digress.

Back to the coral idea, my 58g propagation tank is being overrun with mushrooms, Zoanthids, Xenia, Palythoa, Colts, and Ricordia. I wanted to make some room for some gorgonians and acros by moving the easy stuff somewhere else. These are about all that sells here in my local market, my branching hammer gets trimmed frquently too, but it's in the display tank.

I got some free 400w mogul style metal halides from my work (they are replacing all of the MH's with high pressure sodium lighting in our 125,000 sq. ft. facility). The ballasts are HUGE, and noisy, but free is free. No good for mounting over a tank, but as you can see from the pics above, asthetics aren't high on my list

I wanted to take a big outdoor pond, hang the MH over it, and culture stuff in there, maybe i'll go back to some form of that idea.

[jnowell]

Matt, your setup pics inspired me to start this, so I'm glad you're tagging along.

Just above the tuff box is the coral prop container. I can;t really get two rows of 10's in there because one shelf connects the top and bottom half of the unit together. I thought about trying to bolt it together, but opted for the safety of the tanks abive the split. The vertical corner peices are split right in the middle, so that it can be workbench style or shelf style. I almost went side by side in a workbench setup (still may) but then I don't have anything above to mount lights and plumbing too.

[rsman]

thermal, slope, gas, electric planes and now a small electric heli

you can do corals in the same setup, its just much more difficult, you will need much better filtration, and place that filtration just before the corals, putting them in a lower flow portion of the entire setup, which means an additional pump to increase water flow over the corals feeding corals tons does help them grow, and the effect of feeding the fish down stream is always a plus.

if you decide to take that route, id suggest a coil denitrifier and a large PO4 removal filter, kalk for topoff and a ca reactor also growing microalgae inline is a fine way to reduce nitrates and phosphates, but its the more dificult setup requiring more constant care....

[jnowell]

Small electric heli - hehe, I have a Shogun 2 (brushless and Lipo of course). Maybe we should start a thread called RC'ers who also breed fish, and show our wares in there. We might bore the non-RC types here

[jnowell]

On the filtration thing, I think I will go with a seperate system for corals. But I'm concerned about Nitrates in my grow out system. I will have LR, LS and macro algae in the sump, a DIY trickle filter (half finished, leaning in the left corner of the first pic), and plan to run my Magnum 350 with bio-wheels in the sump, alternating between micron catridges and carbon/phosban.

All of these are great, but they all make Nitrates, and I'm assuming there will be a bunch of it in a system like this. How do you guys export the nitrates?

[Fishboy42]

Hmm..just glow sport/aerobatic here, although I've always wanted to try a heli...

I see what you mean about the shelving. The "modular" design looks like a good idea though--you can just add another shelving unit system when you have the need for it.

rsman the fish/coral system sounds interesting actually. Did you ever have a system like that? I would try it myself but I don't have the space or budget or time (those little obstacles...).

[rsman]

blade cp, lipo, not brushless

yea tons of nitrates

I used a coil denitrator
and pumped nasty water thru a filter and into my algae cultures

it was fun

next best is to do lots of waterchanges

[Fishboy42]

For nitrates I just do waterchanges, because they do build up, but I've recently been looking into denitrator coils or sulfur denitrators. I don't really think I have the room for macroalgae or I might try that. I think rsman had denitrator coils?

[rsman]

yea I ran mine with fish and corals for a while, in the end it was a pain, and coral $ never came close to fish $$$

[Fishboy42]

woops, posted at the same time...

[spk]

Jason,

Am interested in the trickle that you are building. Any chance of some more detail on that?

Thanks

Steve

[jnowell]

I've been looking into Denitrating coils, will probably try one of these, That Fish Place has 500 ft. of airline tubing on sale for $21 thanks for the tip guys.

Steve, The trickle filter is another of my attempts at hacking something together for little to no money. Not sure how efficient it will be, but it's a 4ft. flourescent bulb protector ($.99 at home Depot). Basically it is a flimsy extruded acrylic tube. I just filled it up with bio-balls, and plan to run a light flow of water down through it, my uninformed plan is to drill and plumb to give me 6-12" of water collecting in the bottom. to have an airstone down there pushing air back up through it. Needless to say, I still need to do a little more reading on this, but I'll post pics of it as I progress. I just always liked the trickle filter idea, and then saw those Fl. bulb protectors and decided to see if I could make it work.

[Kathy55g]

Anyone consider a deep sand bed bucket ala A. Calfo's thread to remove nitrates? I am thinking of this. Also lots of water changes.

[jnowell]

I had considered the DSB bucket also, I was re-reading that thread last night. I will probably do both, and then some. The funny part about the way those shelf units are laid out is that when all 3 of them are in place, there will be 12 ft. of bottom shelf for filtration experiments. I'll probably start with just the system mentioned above, and then add different denitrators (is that a word?) one by one and check their efficiency.

For some reason, I REALLY want to do a coil, don't know why, I think it's the ingenious simplicity of it. I'll probably just buy 100ft of airline, start a syphon running from the overflow (which will all be joined together before the sump). The way I understand it, you let it run fast for a period of time, and then slow it to a drip. It should be about 90 feet of anoxic goodness. Is my reasoning correct that the longer I make the coil, the faster the water could travel through it? More reading on this required also.

[spk]

Kathy,

I prefer the trickle filter method, rather than the DSB. Although I have got 100ft of 1/4" pipe somewhere that I was planning on doing a coil too.

Jason, the one thing that you need to remember is that if you supply air at the bottom of the trickle, then you will have a smelly room. But the efficiency does increase.

I might revert to using a couple of schedule 40 drain pipes and then have these return to my sump.

Stvee

[jnowell]

Hadn't thought about the smell yet Steve, thanks for bringing that to my attention before I plumbed it for air. I'm not all that worried about the ammonia and nitrites anyways (plenty of facilities on hand for dealing with those), so boosting the efficiency of the trickle isn't really nessecary.

I've always had problems with nitrates though, even in my display tank. Since my rearing tanks will likely have lots more bio load, and a lot less sand and LR, I'm a bit concerned about that aspect. I'll probably end up with a coil and DSB before it's all said and done. Nitrate removal requires an anoxic (or at least highly anaerobic) zone doesn't it? Sounded as if you might be saying the trickle wouild be for nitrate removal, want to make sure I'm not missing something.

[Kathy55g]

Trickle is for ammonia and nitrite. Aerobic.
coil or dsb is for nitrate. Anaerobic.

I think you need both aerobic and anaerobic.

1. trickle and a lot of water changes.
or
2. tricle and dsb
or
3. trickle and coil

[jnowell]

Thanks Kathy, that's what I thought, but as we all know, my newbie-ness still shows up now and then. I have a feeling that will be a life-long attribute.

I think I'll go with #4 - Trickle, DSB, Coil, Magnum 350, Fuge, Macroalgae, Live Rock, Live Sand, AND lots of water changes

Is it proper to use Carbon on a rearing tank? If so, how often and for how long at a time? I do about 1 week, once a month on my display. I can't really see where there would be that much difference between a Reef tank and a growout w/ LR/LS in a fuge, other than the volume of LR/LS per gallon.

Of course, there is also the volume of gunk per gallon which will be higher in the growout system. I'm looking into skimmers for it, I assume it would be smart to go with one rated higher than the actual gallons involved, due to the higher nutrient levels?

Jason

[NicoleC]

I would go with TWO skimmers, both good quality ones. That way you can clean them on alternating days and don't have down-time when the skimmers don't skim well because they are either too clean or too dirty.

I would worry less about the skimmer's "rating" (which is pretty much a made-up number by the marketing staff) and focus on best placement and other practices to get a high quality skim. This is a good chance to set up your skimmer so it is fed from the overflow if you have enough flow, and have one less pump running using electricity and generating heat.

If you go with carbon (I don't see a downside if you change it regularly, but wait for the more experienced to chime in), definately buy in bulk. Locally we have set up a couple of group buys from a company that supplies carbon to water companies (and the big Aquarium of the Pacific). We carefully checked out the supply, it was an excellent grade, and ended up paying about $1/pound... in 50 pound sacks!

[Fishboy42]

I agree you will want a skimmer capable of taking care of that high "gunk per gallon" reading in the growout Nicole has a good point there. I always have a few hours per week after skimmer cleaning when the skimmer "simmers" before it takes off again, and of course the efficiency goes down throughout the week as the skimmer gets dirty. It might be something to think about if you have room.

Before I started using ozone, I would run carbon in a HOT magnum for 1 week/month on the growout to clear up the water and remove organics. I don't know if this was really necessary, but it made the tanks look nicer and I don't think it hurt