Tank Journal Archive

[noah]

ok so i figured that being my first marine setup i should go the full monty as that way i can see my progress in 6months time and receive the council of many.

System Objectives:to make a kick ass reef tank

System Type: Mixed Reef - Looking towards predatory tank

Display Tank: modded. http://www.aquaone.co.uk/prod_details.php?id_no=52056BK
Display Lighting: Stock aqua one lighting. 2x8000k 1x15000 to be updated
Stand: Custom build
Hood: Stock lighting hood with top live rock sump. To be updated
Sump: TBA
Return Pump: 6500 lph
Skimmer: TBA
Internal wavemaker: 12000lph dual head

After a lot of reading and searching I've just made my weir.
Its ( inside ) dimensions are 130mm high x 120mm wide x 240mm long
Giving me 360 mm of surface flow.

Will be looking at 2000lph for top sump and 3500 to 6500 lph for main sump. Will depend on how much return flow I'm gonna get from a 32mm plumbing plus a 20mm sypon from top sump to main sump.
Testing of pump
[Broken External Image]:http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h387/Rivertribe/e7565566.jpg


looking at My aquascape now and I've got a bunch of dry rock that I'm fond of and I think as I've got time I'm gonna seed it with some live rock I'll need to find. Than move the LR to sump after it's seeded my aquascape

With the aquascape I'm thinking of will be minimalistic as I'm not too fond of a pile of rock look. No offense to those who have a pile of rock look we all have our aesthetic preference. I work with clay and I'm hoping my method of joining these rather fragile chances of coral Will work as with pottery.

Ok so here's what I got for the overrflow to sump. Single down pipe syphon 32 mm way overkill i know but I'd be putting a reducer on it and a tap to control flow. Looking at a return pump between 6500lph. Again maybe overkill but I've got a big 5ft head pressure to deal with and i could than use it in series with chiller. also the pump can be out of the sump so not to function as a heat source as it runs at 140w.

will post pics asap as soon as ipad charges up

 

[MagicJ]

noah :welcome. Look forward to some pics.

 

[MTG]

:welcome
Bring on the pictures!

 

[noah]

ya ya ... ipad still charging all pics on that...;) geeze it hot eh....

 

[MTG]

;) where abouts are you from mate? I'm cooking up in the Goldcoast

 

[noah]

im in brisvagas and moving house tonight after work so this week the tanks gonna finally get set up and we start the cycle. just need live rock ... would like to get small amounts from many people if anyones willing to donate to the cause.:cool: im thinking ill get a wider varitey of life that way.

 

[noah]

More pics my aquascape that I've been playing around with not finished yet

Egg crate on weir

2 protien skimmers yet to be tested ... May get a better one and use the tall one As a calcium reactor just need to modit but it's the right height
[Broken External Image]:http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h387/Rivertribe/80e60574.jpg

Modded top sump with just live rubble

Will have more soon as setting up tank in next couple of days

 

[MTG]

interesting design mate. did that top sump come with the tank?

 

[MagicJ]

If I PM you my address can you send me this please - I will pay for postage and you can have some credits for your troubles ;)

Great work.

 

[noah]

interesting design mate. did that top sump come with the tank?

Ya the aqua one grande series comes with a wet dry trickle filter that runs over the top . When I start getting my corals in 3-6months I'll ditch it for more lighting. But for now it's a simple extra bit of filtration that I'll need as I'll possibly be going bare Bottom and quite minimalistic in my aquascape so all the filtration I can get at this stage the better . Once things are well established in the sump and main tank I will remove the top sump.

 

[jashay]

so your top sump has an intake from the DT via a power head then goes to an over flow to the bottom sump? I am curious as I have a all in one unit with a similar filtration unit on the top, and have been trying to figure out how to work out a sump below. planned on leaving the main top filtration unit as is and just running a syphon as it is fed by the power head. but it looks like yours is fed by power head then to an over flow?

I was under the assumption of trying to run a pump from the DT to push water to the sump then have a return pump that I could never get the pumps to match. does having the top powerhead going through the filter to an overflow fix this problem? I presume that you can tune the top powerhead somewhat aswell?

nice scaping by the way, that is gonna look awesome!

 

[MagicJ]

I was under the assumption of trying to run a pump from the DT to push water to the sump then have a return pump that I could never get the pumps to match. does having the top powerhead going through the filter to an overflow fix this problem? I presume that you can tune the top powerhead somewhat aswell?

Your assumption is correct. I am not sure how this is proposed to work but I am sure noah can fill in the details.

At a guess, the top filter area is fed from a pump in the DT and overflows back into the DT. The flow to the proposed sump will be totally sperate??

 

[jashay]

will be good to see how it works as I have been thinking bout plumbing the outlet of mine out the back and down to the sump but was concerned about the pump pressure matching would cause alot of greif.

I was also thinking if i was to just use a syphon that I could fit the top fitration unit to the syphon down into the sump, to keep that filtration unit going but was concerned that it might slow down the syhpon to much that it would over flow the tank, I guess that would just require tuning the return pump to what the syphon could handle.

 

[noah]

I'd think of the top sump and lower sump as 2 independent sumps starting both from the left hand side weir and both returning to the right side.

The top sump which started out as a trickle filt meaning it didn't hold water until i damed it ... It just runs out to the right side through the bottom of the top unit back into main tank.you can see here in pic the plastic dam wall I've inserted to make the sump and it returns back into main tank via a 40mm hold in the unit.

I was at one stage going to put an extra down pipe until I tested my full 32mm syphon and it moved almost the same if not more than my 6500lph return pump so I don't think I needed any more flow to the lower sump. If anything I'm gonna have to put a 20mm reducer with a ball valve to control flow and keep a steady syphon. Here what I was planing.
[Broken External Image]:http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h387/Rivertribe/1c78d9dc.jpg

So than for my lower sump I have an option of a second hole in the tank or drill a hole into the top sump where the water from the top sump returns to the tank this will create a nice flow into tank and with my 12000lph wave makers on the opposite side I should be looking at approx 12000lph+6500lph+2000lph = 20500lph of water movement so with a 250lr tank I would get 82x turnover per hour. So with all head loss and being generous I think is should get the 50x turnover I was trying to achieve. If it's too much I can always turn things down abit but well see in the next few weeks how things will go.

Thanks for all the interest. Definitely makes posting a little more interactive Than just talking to myself



At one point of my

 

[slin1977]

LOl, I had one of those tanks ages ago, ahh the memories. Like how you made your drilled overflow system.:cool:

 

[MTG]

what do you have in the top "sump"?

 

[MagicJ]

what do you have in the top "sump"?

Modded top sump with just live rubble

;)

 

[noah]

I got 20kg of live rock rubble cured. And I'll use that with the 40+kg of dry rock I plan to seed as too my aquascape .
So I'll be putting most of my rubble in top sump and mabye a few kg or dry to be seeded.

Than I'll pick up a kg of live rock here and there to help add a good variety of live organisms .

For now I'll just run the top sump as I've not made the main sump yet. And I'm getting impatient waiting with a empty tank. So gonna start seeded and cycling.

 

[jashay]

thanks for that champ! gives me a few ideas with mine and how I can mod it. my biggest dilemma is it is full of water and scaped etc. drama to pull it all down to drill some holes then rebuild it again. would be a full couple of days of the tank being down to drill holes etc and silicone everything. but this has given me some ideas on what I can do without doing that!

nice work, it sucks looking at an empty tank hey!

 

[noah]

Indeed ....

I'm assuming jas that your a bonsai bud. Mee too been into bonsai since I was about 21 im33now so about 10+ years ... I've been traveling the planet fairly solid for the last 8 years so I'd start some than give em away been a local in brissy for almost 3 years now and these are my latest all from seedling as I prefer em that way. Jus takes alittle more patience

This one I ripped from a rock when it was little and grafted a second on ( smaller on left) to it than ran the lower branches down tree and into ground to root them to chunk up the turn some. Haven't touched it in about 1 year.

Oh I'm a potter too so I make all my own pots.