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Sam's 350 gallon system


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This is somewhat of a continuation of this thread, however my plans have changed so much that I think it would be more organized to start a new thread, especially since I'm about to get the system off the ground.

 

I'll start out with the stand. It's 7ft 2in* 3ft 5in * 3ft 3in tall. The tanks will be situated like so:

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Right now, all we're building is the "skeleton" due to the amount of plumbing and work needed to be done in order to plumb together the total of four tanks. Today we will be finishing up the stand with cross braces, etc. and assembling it in it's "final home" until we have all the under tank work done, then we will find a way to "spiff it up". In order to transport such a monster of a stand, we created the separate "walls" individually and then lag bolted them together. Here's what we have so far:

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As mentioned above, I will have a total of four tanks in the system: a 75 gallon cuttlefish tank, a 120 cube reef tank, a 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank refugium (seen in pics above), and a 50 or so gallon sump. One of my main goals with the project was to incorporate the 100 gallon refugium because the height will give me the ability to put a 8 or so inch DSB in it as well as all the "regular" refugium stuff. In order to do this we had to make the stand a little bit wider.

 

For filtration, I have an ATI bubblemaster 200 skimmer as well as an ER RS-80 (which I will soon be modding to basically be an RC-80) that is now powering my temporary tank, however, if need be in the future, I can add it to the 350 system to help out with filtration. For lighting, I will probably be going with some sort of MH lighting over the cube which I would like to achieve using a single bulb. Over the 75, I haven't quite decided, but I will probably start out with some sort of basic lighting just to light up the tank, and then move to T5's.

 

I also have in place a no bucket water change system that currently has the capacity to change 100 gallons, however it would not take much effort to add additional 50 gallon Pepsi barrels:

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Under the sink^ The water then goes through a line then goes into the wall and through the ceiling to the furnace room.

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In the furnace room, I can do any number of things with the right combination of valves- stir one tank, move water from one tank to the other, draw water from one tank into the aquarium, draw water from both tanks into the aquarium, you get the idea. I plan on upgrading the pump. Once I have the stand and aquariums in place, I will send a line from the pipe on the cross pointing up, through the back wall to the aquarium. I will then attach a T to the line going from my return pump that can pump water out of the aquarium to the outside.

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Close up of float valves.

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The aquarium will be on the right side of this picture pushed up against the wall. For reference, those are just under 1ft tiles. The furnace room is on the other side of the wall on the right.

 

After I get the stand in the basement, the next step is to buy the sump, and plumb the system together. I will not be adding the 120 right away as I don

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Do you have a check valve on that waste line? Since it is connected to the drain you do not want any backup into your ro lines.

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Very nice start. Glass or acrylic for the tank and sump?

 

Glass for the 75, really wishing I went with a starfire front panel though. Acrylic for the sump. For the 120, whatever's cheaper, but I'm definetly going to go with starfire on the two front panels if I go glass.

 

 

Do you have a check valve on that waste line? Since it is connected to the drain you do not want any backup into your ro lines.

 

No, I never even thought about it, good point, and thanks!

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  • 1 month later...

Build is moving along steadily. Here's some pics of the stand being re-setup in the basement. We put laminate flooring over the laminate flooring that's already down, it goes up about a foot on either wall, and when all is said and done, will go up about 3-4 inches on the viewable sides and will be stapled to the stand in between the stand frame and the decorative covering; thereby giving us about 3 inches of water holding ability under the stand (not that I want to test it). Sorry, I don't have any pics of the beginning... mainly just the finishing touches, and no, we did not paint the playwood just for this ;), we've had this thing for about 12 years and it's heavy enough that it might as well be petrified wood, it was originally used as the stage for an electric race track.

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What did my uncle do for on his last day of 5 over from England? Work on the fish tank stand :lol2:.

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The 100g stock tank in place:

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I'm now working on peicing the whole thing together, starting with the sump tank. A major problem with designing this thing was that I have around 20g of overflow from all of my tanks if the return shuts off. Because of this, the water in the final chamber will be very low, so I'm going to try to have a diagonal piece in there to decrease any splashing.

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Looking good Sam. I would try to leave some way to pull the sump out if you need to for maintenance. Also, you're going to want to have a way to look into the sump and get your hand in to the bottom of it.

 

Jon

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Are you talking about the rubbermaid stock tank (refugium)? or the sump that I put designs up for? In the case of the stock tank, we can pull it out through the side. The center support beam on that side is removable and it can be pulled out. For the sump, it would have to be drained and tipped on it's side and then pulled out of the cupboard door. For the Refugium I'll have about 10-12 inches of room to work in there which will be a squeeze, but I've tried it out and I should be able to manage. It'll be easier for the shorter sump though. We were originally planning on having to build the stock tank in, but then quazi came over to pick up hermits and really made us think about it, so we scrapped the old plans and got this...

 

Thanks a lot for the help and suggestions!

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(edited)

Just in general curiosity. Is your house a "ranch" style house? Have you considered the additional load your placing one the structure of the house if it is a two story house? Id hate to see all that work crack a wall or worse fall thru the floor. :wacko:

Edited by reefmontalvo
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Thats coming along nicely Sam. Looks like a really cool setup with a lot of thought put into it!

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Thanks! And it's in the basement for that exact reason.

 

Good spot I have seen people have large tanks in places I'd be scared to walk around in, that is why I choose the place I live now its the bottom floor condo nothing but cement and earth below me.

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Looks like a great project!

 

Maybe put the sump & rubbermaid on some heavy duty casters? Then you can roll them out for service.

 

hmmm... Never thought of that. It wouldn't work with the sump because it can only be brought out on it's side, but I could put some on the rubbermaid and take it out of the side. Casters wouldn't work because of the floor bracing, but is there any sort of sliding shelving that can hold that sort of weight (~800 pounds) that I can put under there?

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hmmm... Never thought of that. It wouldn't work with the sump because it can only be brought out on it's side, but I could put some on the rubbermaid and take it out of the side. Casters wouldn't work because of the floor bracing, but is there any sort of sliding shelving that can hold that sort of weight (~800 pounds) that I can put under there?

You could cut some pieces of 2x6 that fit perpendicular to the 2x4's in the base of your stand. That way you'll have a track that the casters can roll on. I saw some 3" casters at home depot the other day that are rated over 200lbs each, so you should be ok.

 

You really don't need all those 2x4s in the bottom of your stand anyway, why not just cut them out so the tub can roll directly on the floor?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
(edited)
cougar?

 

Oakton cougar?

 

I went there a number of years ago..

 

 

great build so far

 

Yep :), there's a couple of people on the board that went there.

 

The build's moving along well, considering that it's been a year since my 75 gallon first arrived. Picking up the sump on Monday or Tuesday:

(No the wooden legs won't still be there, he just hasn't finished gluing it in yet.)

 

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The plumbing should be done and the tanks filled by the end of the week. I'll be getting the rest of my LR next weekend, the closed loop will be plumbed in later when I have the money, but for right now it'll just be holes with double union ball valves attached. The idea is to get it cycling before I head off to Switzerland so that when I get back I'll hopefully be ready to get my first batch of cuttle eggs. The 120 will be quite a ways in the future because right now, it looks like the cheapest I could set the tank and light up for that tank will be around a grand which I can't afford :wacko:.

Edited by L8 2 RISE
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  • 1 month later...

Well, about time for an update. I got the tank up and running about 4 weeks ago, before I left for Europe. I really wanted to get it up then so that it could cycle while I was away, as a result, I was up until 1-2 in the morning for the 3-4 nights before I left, and needless to say, slept better than I ever had on the flight. My last update was a while ago, so this covers about six weeks I think.

 

At the fragfest I drilled 5 holes in the tank, 3 for closed loop and 2 for return. All of you that were there probably know this because it wasn

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Thanks guys! On another note, I'm not happy at all with the sump, and it's a good thing I got it built very cheap because the design didn't work out at all. The drop, even with the diagnal baffle, still makes it sound like niagra and creates quite a few bubbles which end up in the tank as micro bubbles. It works fine with the water level up about 6 inches, but then I face it overflowing when the pump goes off. Instead, I've realized I can go with a very simple design that's a lot smaller. Here it is below.

 

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  • 4 months later...

Ok, finally getting around to making an update. I plan on making these more often this year as it's one of my new years resolutions to keep better track of the tank (it's also a resolution to cut back on the "extra-curricular activities", hmmm, I see conflicting interests...) Anywho, I've had a lot of fish additions, losses, etc, so I won't go into it all, basically, I now have a 1 ft snow flake eel that I made some trades with encideout for, it'll eventually go into a 150 aggressive at school, but it's definitely awesome to watch, I also have a Kole tang from petco (had it for a month now), and a CBB from BRK two weeks ago. I plan on adding at least a pair if not a trio of multibanded angels, some anthias (leaning towards purple queens), a small regal angel, a jawfish (can't decide on a type yet), a pair of B&W clowns, and possibly another tang, most likely tomini. I've also, veered away from my original plan for the 75 as a cuttle tank, and have added a 20L for hatching/breeding cuttles, will add a 40-50 gallon breeder for the same reason next to the 20 except pushed up against the side of the stand (see pics), and then a 2*2*2 cuttle display on a seperate stand just to the right of the big stand. I'll be getting in my cuttle eggs sometime in the next two weeks, as well as a bunch of fish. January *should* be a pretty exciting month for this system, so updates to come, for now, here's some pics to replace the far outdated ones above.

 

Full Stand Shot

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Right Side

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Left Side

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Some Coral pics:

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Fish Pics: (note, the dragons breath from the eel pics is no longer there)

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'Fuge

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I'm just getting the hang of our new D40, so sorry for some of the bad quality pics, suggestions appreciated. Also, some stuff I've remembered that I haven't said before. I got the closed loop up and running with a mag 12, however the mag 12 apparently isn't air tight so shoves tons of micro bubbles into the tank (yes, I'm sure it's the mag 12). Therefore, I've taken the CL offline until I can get a large eheim. I've put a large coralvue powerhead in the tank, as well as one in the fuge to grow dragonsbreath, so far I'm pretty happy with them, I kind of doubt they push the advertised amount, but for the price and quality, I'm not complaining. It also appears that my return is producing some micro bubbles so my next job will be to figure out from where. I might end up adding stuff as I think of it, but that's all for now folks!

 

Suggestions and comments GREATLY appreciated!!

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Sam,

 

I think in you add a Tomini with your Kole, your asking for trouble. Same type of tangs and they both can get aggressive in a 75 gallon. Maybe do like a powder brown/blue instead.

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Good point. I'd love to get a powder blue, but would be worried about the aggression and it getting too big. I may end up just switching out the kole tang for a tomini, haven't decided yet as far as tangs go. Another thing I'm considering is getting a juvi orange shoulder.

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Wave bye bye to that copperband if you add a powder blue. Mine killed off a copperband in my 300 and it certainly has enough other fish to spar with...

 

Where's an updated picture of the cube for the cuttle eggs?

 

I would stick with the Kole instead of the Tomini, personal preference. I don't think they're all that pretty to look at and the Kole is an easier to care for fish and stays smaller I believe. The orange shoulder tangs seem to be sensitive and grow rather large as well.

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