105 gallon inwall installation with pictures

[Radicaljbr]

Hi All, I first want to thank everyone for the vast wealth of knowledge I have learned and enjoyed which have kept me going.

I recently moved from one suburb in Cleveland to another here in Hudson, Ohio. The house had a great location for an inwall setup and tank room. Took a few months to get started, but now I am on my way and it is looking like I might get to fill this thing up in the next week or so.

I forgot to take pictures of what the wall looked like before, but I think we all know what a bare wall looks like.

[Radicaljbr]

Here is a picture of what the room behind the wall looked like.

[Radicaljbr]

And here is what it looks like with all the trim work done on the outside. I still need to paint the trim, but that is for another day.

[Radicaljbr]

More behind the seens

[Radicaljbr]

Those two trash cans are holding my live rock and sand till time to fill the tank.

[mg426]

That is going to be one nice set up.

[mike660r]

Man, not to be negative or anything. I have to ask, why use a tank with a huge light diffuser running across the top center like that? Reef tanks are all about getting as much light into it as possible. Are you doing a fish only with LR this time?

[MyMonkey]

Very nice start there. Tagging along.

[Radicaljbr]

Originally posted by mike660r
Man, not to be negative or anything. I have to ask, why use a tank with a huge light diffuser running across the top center like that? Reef tanks are all about getting as much light into it as possible. Are you doing a fish only with LR this time?

I think you are talking about that big stretch of glass that connects the top walls of my tank???

Yes, it has been a pain to get light around it. This is the tank I am stuck with and I have to make it work. This glass tank I got when I started out in this hobby and I really did not know what I was doing at the time. So please, if you have suggestions on how to make it work, please let me know.

[Radicaljbr]

I do have a question here. Has anyone had problems with the salt rusting items in their tank room? My tank also houses my hot water heater, furnice and the house well system.

Does anyone see this as a problem?

I can always cut these parts off with a wall, but really do not want to do that.

Thanks

[mike660r]

Sorry man, there is no really good solution for getting around those braces on the oceanic tanks. I actually helped my uncle take out his 180 gallon oceanic last Saturday for the same brace. It blocked 1/3 of the light penetration into his tank.

If you have a sump room and tank together things are going to rust. You can try and keep the humidity down to slow the process. Paint all the bare metal surfaces that you can with a rust prohibiting paint.

[ktkreegs]

I see a RODI unit? If you are on a well system, what unit is that? and how is it on the well water?

[tcmfish]

You can work around the brace. I had a 75 SPS reef in a tank like that with that brace. You just have to experiment with coral placement. The only lighting I had over the tank were 2 250 watt HQI's so it can be done don't worry about it too much. I don't know what kind of coral you want to keep but it can be done. And at least IME the glass blocked light in like a V shape because the halides were over the open spaces since I only had two and my rocks weren't very high there so it didn't affect too much. Good luck keep up the good work.

[Radicaljbr]

Originally posted by ktkreegs
I see a RODI unit? If you are on a well system, what unit is that? and how is it on the well water?

What unit is the RODI? It is an Airwaterice unit.

Not sure what you mean by "how is it on the well water". Do you mean how is it working out or how is it hooked up? It is working out great and it is hooked up after the water softener.

It is a great system with TDS meter and a DI by pass which I have hooked up to my ice maker and a seperate drinking faucet on the kitcken sink.

[Radicaljbr]

Originally posted by tcmfish
You can work around the brace. I had a 75 SPS reef in a tank like that with that brace. You just have to experiment with coral placement. The only lighting I had over the tank were 2 250 watt HQI's so it can be done don't worry about it too much. I don't know what kind of coral you want to keep but it can be done. And at least IME the glass blocked light in like a V shape because the halides were over the open spaces since I only had two and my rocks weren't very high there so it didn't affect too much. Good luck keep up the good work.

Thanks for the comments. I am not too worried about it. I had it set up like this for 2 years and it was fine. There is just a little chady spot in the upper middle like you say and it turns out to be a great place for corals that do not like a lot of light.

[Snowboarda42]

Originally posted by Radicaljbr
What unit is the RODI? It is an Airwaterice unit.

Not sure what you mean by "how is it on the well water". Do you mean how is it working out or how is it hooked up? It is working out great and it is hooked up after the water softener.

It is a great system with TDS meter and a DI by pass which I have hooked up to my ice maker and a seperate drinking faucet on the kitcken sink.

The whole thing is an RO/DI. It stands for Reverse Osmosis/DeIonization. It takes the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) out of your water. Lower the number on your TDS the more pure the water is. Well water is the type of water you get from your area. Well water comes from the ground (like a well).

[Radicaljbr]

Ya, I just took this picture and noticed my TDS is readling 2. I just changed these filters 1 month ago. "0" is the optimal reading, correct?

[ktkreegs]

Thanks. I'm on well water as well, and live somewhat near you and I was wondering what kind of unit you used and how well it performs on the well water.

Thanks again. Will be following to see how the build goes.

Kevin

[Radicaljbr]

Originally posted by ktkreegs
Thanks. I'm on well water as well, and live somewhat near you and I was wondering what kind of unit you used and how well it performs on the well water.

Thanks again. Will be following to see how the build goes.

Kevin

Well I should have stated that my tank has not been up yet since I have lived here on well water. The rock and sand are in those trash cans and I guess I cannot really see how things are going. I need to get this thing up and running so that the rock and sand don't die off any more than they have. I still see a little coraline algea on the rock, but I have not had any light on them. We just moved down here over the summer. I did do some research and found that everyone suggests installing the unit after the Watersoftener. Even the maker states this in the manual.

[Radicaljbr]

Originally posted by ktkreegs
Thanks. I'm on well water as well, and live somewhat near you and I was wondering what kind of unit you used and how well it performs on the well water.

Thanks again. Will be following to see how the build goes.

Kevin

By the way, the unit is called Airwaterice and you can go to their site for tons of unit variences.

[rbursek]

Nice set up!!!
Bob

[rottbo]

I hope you checked to make sure that wall is not load bearing I assume not since you did not place a header to support the weight of the wall and floor above... otherwise nice set up... I wanted to chime in about the rusting problem use a good dehumidifier I have over 3k gallons of FW in my basement and I dont think I could have a big enough dehumidifier I still notice the humidity at times with it running a t full bore.. There are so many problems that can come from this that a cheap dehumidifier can solve.. IE... mold midew rust spiders love the humidity (I know from experience) plus if enough humidity is present you can have your floor structure begin to rot away

[rottbo]

after looking at the pic again I answered my own ?? about the load bearing wall its not load bearing I guess I should have looked at the floor structure above before I said anything sorry

[Radicaljbr]

Hey Rottbo,

No, it is not a load bearring wall as you noticed from the pics. Actually, the wall does not even tough the joists above.

As you do point out, I am very concerned about the rusting. Not so worried about the humidity as I am about salt in the humidity. I have a couple of dehumidifiers sitting here doing nothing. We used them all the time at our last house, but so far here, the humidity has never gotten out of the 40s (with AC or heat on). So I do have those if needed. I also have a vent in this room in a basement window that I can turn on to force air out of the room.

This room houses my furnice, hot water heater, water softener and well pump and tank. Oh, and let me not forget the fish tank.

My next problem is the plumbing lines. I started to glue all the fittings together last night and went to do a test run and check for leaks and when I plugged in my return pump it blew up. I could hear it snap even through the water.

So now I need a new return pump.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the size of pump I should use? It will also be used to flow the fuge and phosban canister.

Does anyone think I could really go overboard with a pump so that in the future I might use it to incorporate a closed loop system? If I had most of the water looped back into my midle part of my sump, would that work? Or would it just be too much?

[poppin_fresh]

The dehumidifiers are a good back up, but the easiest way to deal with the moisture is to ventillate the room. This can be as simple as a bathroom fan on a humidistat ducted to the outside.

I have a basement sump and its open to the rest of the basement (for a little longer). It is fairly humid down there, but not water running down the windows humid. Most of my tools have gotten a little rusty, but it hasn't bothered anything else. When I had my furnace cleaned, I even asked the guy if it looked like the humidity was causing any issues, and he said no.

As far as a return pump, I am a believer in a slower sump, 5-10X turnover of the sump volume, up to the skimmers limit. For you I would go with something in the 300-400 gph range max after headloss. Trying to buy a big pump to act as a return and closed loop pump wont work very well and it will use more power. I would get more Tunzes for in tank flow. They will pay for themselves in power savings.