not another 120 in wall walk-through! (pictures)

[wonk]

For those who just can't get enough of blow-by-blow accounts of some dweeb setting up a 120 gallon reef tank: read on!

I Started my “in-wall� 120 SPS tank about a month ago. This design is a bit different because the tank isn’t really so much in-wall as a wall built around and over the tank. See pictures below. Basically I built a stand that I then lagged to the wall, then drywalled around it. The look I’m going for is to have it look part of the house. I own an older (1905) craftsman home with fir picture moldings and tall baseboards. I’ll be putting those around after the paint goes on.

I wish that I could have done a larger tank. 180-220 would have been more like it, but I was limited by the space between two windows length wise. I also didn’t want the tank to protrude too far out from the wall. And many people have suggested that 24� tall is so much more practical than 30�. So my tank is a 48x24x24 (1/2� thick) custom made by Envision Acrylics.

I’m fortunate to have one of the best acrylic manufacturers anywhere local to me. James at Envision was a total joy to work with—he actually came in on a Saturday just to meet me and talk about the tank. The craftsmanship is excellent and the attention to the small details great. The one sort of odd thing that I’ve done is make a corner overflow that takes the right back 18� x 8�. Actually, I think I already regret this—after reading Anthony Calfo’s threads on making basically a full-back overflow, I wish I would have at least given that serious consideration.

The reason I wanted a right corner overflow is because I planned to put the tank almost flush against the wall. My plan was to run plumbing over the right back corner and soffit around it.

We join my tank adventure in progress: I’ve built the stand out of doubled 2x6 (way overkill but everything I’m doing to this setup is designed to maximize sleeping well at night), using plenty of strong ties to buff it up. My house slopes about a quarter an inch from the wall in the 2 feet the tank spans out so I made the front half of the stand taller to compensate for it. I put the stand up on the wall and lagged it to the studs with 8 8� screws.


All the plumbing save the closed loop will be in the basement. I’m really looking forward to that! I can’t stand working in the tank I have now. My sump is impossible to do anything in and is a salty mess. The basement will give me plenty of space to work in.

[reefD]

wow. dont say that dweep crud! LOL . just kidding this is a great set up. this is what i dream to do when i become a home owner. seriously keep the pictures comming with updates! im subscribing to this thread!LOL good luck

[reefD]

if you have heat issues the basement sump/drain is immediate repair.! luv the clear bottom area!

[wonk]

The next picture details what will be the hood. I've got the plumbing stubbed in and the fan in place:



One thing I've learned is that the brand spa-flex flexable pvc is not as flexable as others. I defenately prefer the more flex. www.savko.com carries the stuff I like better.

The fan will be put into a rheostat so I can control the air movement out. I'm thinking that it will probably not need to run full capacity. We will see.

The closed loop will go into a manifold. I already built one that I hated. It has been recommended to use 1 1/2 for the manifold plumbing to match the output of the sequence dart I'll have driving it. I had the manifold sitting on the eurobracing which was really cumbersome. My next attempt will have the manifold attached to the top of the 'hood' which is 15" off the tank. I'll use locklines to drop off of the effuent tee's, that way I'll have some hope of getting my hand in the tank.

I used melemine for the hood on the inside, with dry-wall on the outside. The melemine box only goes up the 15"inches of the hood. the space above it to the cealing is dead space with just drywall screwed to a top plate.The drywall will be painted the same color as the walls (green/ dark purple). I'm going for the most 'natural part of the house' look I can get. One thing that I don't like about non-built in tanks is they look so squat. Often non-reefers will comment really early on when looking at my typically hooded tank like 'what is that box on top of your tank for?' The hoods just don't look right to me either. I'm pleased so far with the way that this build-to-the-cealing aproach resolves this. We will see if that pans out when it's all done.

I'm really paranoid about vapor damage, so I've made the hood water-tight with the melemine and latex calking. I'm hoping between that and the fan I should be OK.

If you look closely at the overflow box, you can see some strange pipes coming up. Those are the sump and closed loop pipes on the outside of the tank wall. Those pipes are cover up on the outside w/ a soffit (that's why the wall isn't all one piece on the right but has a step-off of 4 inches). Since the right side of the tank is not viewable because of the overflow, that's where I'm running the plumbing and electric.

[wonk]

I hope you are right about the basement helping moderate the temperture. I've done a lot of planning to try to make that happen. I'll discuss that when I get to the basement work.

Thanks for the encouragement!

[wonk]

In the picture above you can see the closed loop plumbing. the next picture is a detail of that area. All of my plumbing will be in the basement, but the closed loop will be below the tank to keep the head pressure at a minimum.



A few things about the plumbing:

<soapbox>
There is a huge difference in quality in bulkheads, I've learned. I'll never work with cheap ones again after using the heavy-duty versions (Hayword or other brand). The difference is more than worth the price. Check www.savko.com or www.usplastics.com. It's remarkable to me that more hobbists don't know about how bad the bulkeheads generally available to us are. When the bulkhead is such an important part of the system, it's IMHO not something to mess with.
</soapbox>

I attached the sequence dart to the intake bulkhead with flex pvc. after connecting it, I decided not to attach it to framing. I might later on, but I don't think it needs to be attached and it will help with vibration/noise.

From the picture you can see the overbuilt doubled 2x6 with strong tie construction. I'm thinking you could park a car on the stand. Lagging it to the wall made it very stiff.

cutting out the holes in the melemine and styrofoam to meet the bulkhead hole was a total pain. The 4" hole saw I used to do it would not bite and kept skipping around on the surface Better to use a jigsaw like I did on the right holes. the holes aren't round but it's way easier and cleaner. It's no fun to get showered with the dust drilling under the stand.

There are 2 1.5" drainpipes. one is a durso setup (a 2" pipe reducing at the bulkead to 1.5") the other is just a riser pipe above the water level serving as an emergency overflow. It should normally not receive any water.

The return pipe from the sump comes up here as well. An sch 80 electrical conduit will come up here eventually too--but honestly I haven't really nailed down how I'm going to do the electrical all the way yet.

[shag26272]

nice, I like how you are using the spa flex instead of PVC, think I might try to mostly use it on my 110

[wonk]

flex pvc is much easier to work with for most situations, I'm finding. In the past Id used hard pipes and bent it slighty to get it to fit--not good.

I'm not going to have a 90 elbow in the whole system. They are flow killers. all bends will be flex pvc or two 45's.

[wonk]

the basement

This system is plumbed to the basement. My older home has a basement that is half concrete floor and half dirt that is higher than the concrete floor. That was pretty standard for the houses in my area. I think it was so labor intensive for them to dig back then that they opted for this technique.

So my tank sits above the dirt section of the basement. I decided to 'reclaim' some of that space by digging out an area that would be at floor level and then leaving a 'counter' by the foundational wall cemented in. So I dug out some dirt and poured some concrete. This was quite the task but has been taking place over the last year so I hacked away at it over time.

The counter space ended up not being big enough and I didn't really rellish the thought of working directly on concrete so I built a melemine top. I'll put the more important stuff on that & the parts I don't really need to access (more on that later) on the dirt.



There's about 4' space between the counter and the joists. The counter is 40" wide an 7' long.

you can see the tank drain lines poking out of the joist space. I'll spaflex that down into the sump. The sump is a dyi design that's about 30 gallons itself. I'm sure that it's going to have to be redesigned / rebuilt now that the plumbing is starting to take shape, but I'm going to start the system using it so I can account for all of its weaknesses in the replacement. One thing that I think I'll be doing is making the sump a bit longer so I have more space for the various return lines to dump in.

Note the 55G drum back in the corner. I'm planning two 55g drums that will just have water pumped into them from the return pump to add more volume. This water will have been skimmed so I'm hoping that there will be very little particle settling in them. I'll partialy bury the drums in the dirt. I'm hoping just by the sheer volume of the water in the basement to get enough cooling in the summer by heat exchange to not need a chiller.

You can see the remote deep sand bed (rdsb) in the picture as well. This bucket will follow the technique outlined in Anthony Calfo's RDSB thread.

Also pictured is the massive sequence 4300 pump. Oh my freaking god is that thing big. That pump will server to push the return up the estimated 12' head to the tank as well as provide the circulation to the 'fuge, 55g drums, rdsb, ozonator, etc. I'd never seen a 4300 in person b4 buying it. Now that I see it I'm wondering if I bought too much pump.

[wonk]

Here's another view of the basement counter. This one gives a better view of the sequence 4300 mega pump. The thing is like 2x the size of the Iwaki I'm using on my current system. It's hard to believe that this thing pushes 4500 +- gph at around 250 watts. That was one of my primary reasons for buying it. I got the pressure and volume I needed while doing it for less watts than other pumps. Most pressure rated pumps draw over 330 watts.



I want zero air bubbles going up to the display so I put 4 baffles in the sump for a bubble trap then have the last baffle angle down to ease the cascade into the return section of the sump. I'm not sure this angled piece is a good idea. Like I mentioned, this sump will be rebuit at some point after the tank is up. If the angled piece is bogus it will be tossed in the new design.

If you haven't seen 'heavy-duty' bulkheads before, let me stress again how much better they are than the ones typically available. There is easily 2x the material and prob more like 3x in a heavy duty bulkhead. Don't skimp on bulkheads! get the heavy duty ones!

[wonk]

Here's a schematic of what I'm planning on doing with the plumbing.



It's a logical, not an actual physical placement drawing

the 'fuge will be my current 75g tank when it can be broken down after the new 120 is up and running, so it will not be in line until after the new system is going.

I'm calculating about 250gals of water in the basement. so thats 2x my display volume. I'm hoping that (a) that helps with overall system stability and (b) it specifically helps keep the temperture constant.

I had planned for a MRC-2 skimmer, but want to do a recirc deal w/o sticking on yet another power hungry pump. So I've almost decided to us the ASM G3 recirc fed w/ overflow because it only uses 40 watts on the recirc pump. The thing that's a turn off is the ASM build quailty is not as good as other manufacturers, but I'm thinking down the road I might try my hand at a dyi recric needle wheel so the ASM is a cheap way to get a great skimmer for now. I might never be able to design/build a better one anyhow.

all of the pipes except the calc reactor will be 1.5". the calc reactor will just get the effluent tubing off of it.

The 'fuge will have a bulkhead and ball valve low down on the tank that I'll use to drain for water changes.

[The steven liu]

The diagram is a killer, alittle confusing though, is the fuge over the tank or in your basement? If your fuge water need to be pumped up into the display tank instead of flow into it, you may loose a lot of pod population by the pump killing a good portion of it before it hits the display tank.

[wonk]

the 'fuge is in the basement. I'm hearing conflicting reports about how much pumps kill pods in route to the display. Anthony Calfo is of the mind that it's not as damaging as people believe. In any event, I can't put it above the tank, so my only option is in the basement.

[The Reefer91]

i think the idea of a pump killing pods is a little ridiculous. think about it, pods are pretty small organisims right? and a pumps motor is not a refined blade like a fan, it's bulky, and big, that's what's neede to return alot of water. so i don't think that a pump that large is seriously going to damage your pods.

Awesome tank by the way!

[Shooter7]

LOL...see, it's 120 projects like this one that make MY 120 look pretty boring!
Tagging along, keep the pics coming.

[elephen]

Looks really nice man

[Ocicat]

Wonk, this looks very cool. I have toyed with the idea of doing something like it with the 180 I am setting up. What makes yours fit so well is those windows, even if they restrict you on tank length. It will really look like it belongs there. For mine it would just come right out of the middle of a wall, although I have thought I could put bookcases or something on either side.

What I'm most concerned about, though, is being totally unable to access the back of the tank in any way. Do you think that is a potential problem?

Also, I feel like I would need to have doors both above the front of the tank and above the ends, to give me as much access to the top as possible and make it easier to get to the overflows. (I have an AGA MegaFlow, and the dual overflows are set several inches in from each end.) That still would make me nervous; I know fish can find their way into the overflows sometimes, and without the ability to completely remove a canopy and get on a step ladder to get down into that overflow from above, it seems like it might be tricky dealing with certain situations. Since your overflow is at the end of the tank, I don't think it would be as difficult.

I'm definitely tagging along for this one!

[Ocicat]

One more question — how are you handling access to the plumbing and pump immediately beneath the tank? Are you putting access doors in the "wall" below the tank?

[wonk]

Thanks for the interest, all.

Answers to questions:

The tank pushed flush against a full length melemine panel that extends up into the hood (see picture above). I then siliconed the tank top back edge to the melemine. There shouldn't be any reason to access the back of the tank. If there is, then something is so wrong with my setup that I'm royally screwed anyhow.

the thought process was to move everything that is typically off the back either to the tank bottom (bulkheads) or off to the right back corner in the soffit. Time will tell if this is really a good idea.

My current crappy setup has full access to the back of the tank and I never go back there, so that helped inform my decision do it this way.

I'm really glad I took various reefers advice not to go 30" tall. I can barely reach the back corner on the 24x24 when I'm shoulder into the tank. I'm 5'9" w/ normal ape index.

There will be standard cabinet doors below the stand (the part that is not drywalled. this will be a standard shaker-style setup, giving full access to the closed loop and dart pump driving it. I'll also store my stepladder down there. Did I mention the tank is 48" off the ground? I'm glad that I did it higher than normal, but you have to have something tall to stand on to get up there. it will be interesting with the lights in it.

[wonk]

Oh one thing that I forgot is that a negative to having no back access to the tank is that there is more head pressure against the closed loop pump. I'm guessing I have 5' of head before the water hits the manifold, so I'm adding more resistance than would be present off the back.

The overflow has a cover on it. there isn't any way a fish could get into it. This was a nice touch by EnvisionAcrylics- a custom fit black overflow cover. I'll take a picture of it on and post it.

OciCat--you might be right: I could end up cursing not having more access to the tank. I hope not!

[wonk]

overflow detail

<www.envisionacrylics.com plug>

Like I said, Envision Acrylics makes one mean tank. Here's a picture of the overflow cover that comes standard. Its made (as is everything on the tank) of 1/2" cast acrylic.

No, I don't have any association with the company
< / www.envisionacrylics.com plug>

here's the cover on:



and the cover off, showing the emergency overflow and durso standpipe:

[wonk]

closed loop manifold

read about CLM's in  Anthony Calfo's CLM how-to thread if interested.

got the closed loop done (again). It's made out of 1.5" pvc. This one is my second attempt. The first one, aside of being poorly constructed, sat on the tank top. since it was 2" tall, it was really going to be in the way. Since it was recommended by those in the know that you want to keep the pipe size the same as coming out of the pump (in my case a sequence dart) to maximize flow, and I was already concerned about how much head I was putting atop my pump already, I really wanted 1.5" pipe. But it was really cumbersome sitting on the tank.

So attempt #2: I'm going to mount the CLM to the top of the hood and run the locklines down to the water. I'm planing on using these bomber looking pipe clips to mount the pvc (which will probably way 40 pounds with water in it) to the top of the hood.

The CLM isn't yet mounted so it's sitting on some books







There are 8 effulent tee's off the manifold. I'm hoping that that isn't too much. I guess I can always take one or two off line by capping it to keep the flow at the recommended 4-500 gph.

My lighting will most likely be 2x250 DE XM 10,000K pendants that wil hang between the eurobraces. I keep going back and forth with adding VHO. Now that that CLM is in place, I'm not sure how I could get light tubes in the hood anyhow. The plan is to not have VHO supplementation off the bat but add it later if I decide to. I'm hoping to rig up a pully system to get the pendants close to the water. The hood is 15" tall.

You can see the return line stub behind the incoming CLM line. It's going to be tight to make it turn the way I want to. The plan is to have it come across the middle eurobrace and dump into a wavySea thingie (if you haven't heard of this new device, its like what a SeaSwirl wants to be when it grows up and got way smaller: http://www.wavysea.com/ ) that will clip onto the brace (where the books are in the pic above) close to the front pointing towards the back. This is one of those unknowns though.... It might not practically be feesable.

[wonk]

start of basement plumbing

Just getting the basement rolling. I put the sequence 4300 through a bulkhead, started the return spaflex run, began the drain lines.

There are two drain lines. The emergency line is connected to a standpipe that is higher than the durso standpipe that will under normal situations receive all of the overflow. The emergency should only handle well, um, emergency situations where the durso cannot take the load due to some blockage or other.



The gate valve allows me to limit the amount of flow going into the recirculating ASM G3. ASM recommends 3-400 gph and there will be about 1000 gph or so coming through the drain line. I have plenty of pressure with the sequence 4300 so I'm going to push up as much water to the display as the overflow will handle gracefully. This will be going through the wavyseas thingie so I'd like to have as much flow as possible through it.



the above image shows the seq4300 with the 'not-true' unions attached. The extra bulkhead is there just in case I want to stick something on the sump in the future.

I gotta say that the seq4300 looks like one monster of a pump. With the Baldur motor and only using like 220 watts to put out the pressure and volume that it is rated at, it's something else. Hopefully I'll like it as much when I actually put water through it

The pump will be sitting on a couple of mouse pads to reduce vibrations. It's on the MDF to get the height to the bulkhead right.

[staticfishmonger]

i have a few sequences running right now, a dart and a 3600, they put out some serious flow and run quiter than any pump i have ever owned.
as for the tank things are looking good i like the return output plumbing you did, i have a similar setup above my tank. it makes for good even flow between the outlets and really spreads the flow around.

Good luck

[wonk]

staticfishmonder--

you have any pictures of your setup? I'd love to see...

I'm actually thinking of swapping out my 1.5" drain spaflex with 2"

The thing that really gets me about the sequence 1000 series is how efficiently they run. at about 200 watts it puts out incredible numbers. I haven't seen a pump anywhere close to it efficiency-wise, which makes me wonder how they have designed it to be so much better.

Anyone have insight in what the scoop is as far as trade-offfs in pump efficiency, head pressure, volume? Is it mostly a motor issue or is the volute, etc a big contributer as well?