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Aberrix's 40 Gallon Breeder (1 Viewer)

Aberrix said:
oh I understand and I'm not trying to be an ass, but I'm asking for more input than "durr... it's broke".

how about telling me how high they should be or what I can do differently.
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the height of the baffle varies from tank to tank. What is taken into consideration regarding the height of the baffle is how much water the sump itself can hold. You can have a baffle that is basically sitting under the trim as long as when there is a power outage, the excess water from the main tank will not flood the sump.

taken that into consideration, you will know if your baffles are too high when you fill the whole tank with water and set the water level in the sump to where you want it to be, unplug the system and see how much water from the main tank drains into your sump. If the sump can hold all the water without having a flood then it is good to go, if it floods, time to reconsider and make the baffles shorter.
 
I plan on putting a wye check valve on the return line, is there a calculator out there or any way I can estimate the amount of water that'll fill the sump upon power outage?

(I plan to do lots of power failure testing, etc before this stocked)

I am planning on moving around the baffles so it goes [Skimmer] > [Refugium] > [Return]

I was thinking of lower the last baffle by an inch or two (8-9"), think that would put me in a safe zone? or will I simply have to fill it up and do some testing?
 
Use the Volume calculator at Reef Central to guess the amount of water from the main tank go to the sump when the pump is turn off
http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/vol.php

For example:
Tank Length = 36 inches
Tank Width = 16 inches
Tank Height = 2 inches <= From the max water line in main tank to the lowest teeth cut in your overflow.

Tank volume is calculated as
Tank Volume = 5 Gallons

If your sump is 20 gal, this will take 1/4 of the sump to hold that 5 gal of water.

That's how I calculated mine. Other people may have better/simplier methods.
 
Alright, after 2 nights of work my canopy has been re-done. I honestly wish I would have taken the time the first go around and just done it right, but I got impatient and wanted it done. oh well... I got to do some sanding in between paint coats so the paint job is smoother, I'm overall just WAY happier with the canopy now. I plan to go to Home Depot and pick up some thin weather stripping of some sort and plan to use that in the joint to keep the light from escaping but even now its really not that bad...

Here is the old setup;
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I thought it wouldn't be bad and thought it would work, I was wrong. It was a PITA and I strongly urge everyone to learn from my mistake and avoid this setup at all costs.

Here is the new setup;
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I thought the trade off with this design was gonna be me getting blasted in the face with light when I had it open... Surprisingly, I don't... the light shoots straight up and straight down, I didn't plan it that way but it worked out great!

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Here is a pic with the lights on and the canopy closed, you can see there really isnt much light escaping from the joint at this point, I have maybe a 1/16th-1/8th gap when its closed. I still plan to do some weather stripping in there though to block it out completely;

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The whole thing is just 11ty billion times more easier to work with, I'm just so much happier with the canopy now...

I can scratch this off my list now... next up is re-doing the sump... :/

My wye check valve won't ship until Monday, my (2) K2's said they shipped yesterday so who knows... I'm hoping to get this cycling by the end of next week if I get those parts in soon! weeeeeee
 
Are the lights on a swivel, or do your lights fire to the front and back of the tank with the Canopy closed? NVm.. I looked at the pic again, and saw that you slit the canopy in the middle, with the front fixture pointing up with it open.. Very nice!
 
I think you did a nice job on your stand. not tons of overkill thats a good thing so you have more room!! Lots of wood laying all over..............thats funny.
 
Good work. I've still got that stuff for you here. Are you going to come to the bbq? You could get it then.
 
you'll be very happy with the rebuild, no doubt. That's one thing on my to do list. the rim around my canopy is solid, but only 1/2 the lid flips up. it's workable, but I'd really like to have the better access allowed by a canopy like yours.

The check valves don't work reliably IME, and you'll need to calculate the amount of water lost until there is a siphon break. I bought a system with check valves already installed and found that they would flutter and slow the siphon, but until it sucked air, it wouldn't stop completely.
 
Thanks everyone!

A quick note on the check valve is that I don't think I would trust an in-line check valve very much (see: at all), but I feel pretty confident with this wye check valve... its got a solid plunger piece that is pushed up and out of the way (45 degree angle) and the water flows freely, if that flow stops then the little (weighted) plunger falls back down and stops the flow... the best part is that you can uncap it and take the little plunger out and clean it all very well (unlike the in-line ones, which is why I think they're so flaky), so I think if I stay on-top of maintenance that I should be okay for the time being... but I do plan to improve upon it in time... Here is a youtube video showing the differences, anyways that's a different topic...

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I did re-do my sump (pic above), its hard to tell in the pictures but I moved the return pump all the way to one end, the refuge in the middle and the skimmer on the other end. The skimmer chamber is about 10" high, the refuge section is about 8.5" high and the return pump area I'm keeping around 7" of water in there (or trying). I did lots of "power failure" tests by pulling power on the return pump just to see how much water flow would come back in my sump and everything works really nice, I get maybe 2-ish gallons at most and I have more than enough room to handle that... I also intend to sabotage my check valve and do a test just to see how it would look if my check valve did fail during a power failure...

I've got 80lbs of Fiji pink sand in the tank now (?!), gives me about a 3" sand bed. (I like the way it looks) I've got about 40-ish lbs of the BRS “Reef Saver” eco rocks, 3 large near soccer ball sized pieces and two football sized pieces spanning them, looks like a "M" with two arches (maybe McDonalds will sponsor my tank? oh crap, or I'll get sued for trademark infringement). I've got 3 softball sized pieces of dry rock in the refuge right now, I'd say 10-ish lbs(?). I also moved to having (2) 150w heaters vs. (1) 300w, not only for redundancy but also because those 300w-ers are BAH-HUGE! the (2) 150w fit perfectly in the sump, right now they're in the refuge chamber, should I put them somewhere else? still kinda unsure where all my heater and probe type stuff should go in the sump(?)

I started up my skimmer for the first time last night, now this is my first skimmer (Octopus Extreme 160 w/ ATB pinwheel) so I don't have anything to compare it to but WHOA! micro bubble-city! I'm very impressed, I think it's working extremely well... However I have a few skimmer questions maybe someone can answer for me? Upon first plugging in the skimmer I was hearing clicking as if the pinwheel was caught or something, I pulled the pump apart and everything looked fine, plugged it back in, same thing, unplugged it and tried again and boom she fired up and started making bubbles... but when I was playing with the valve a couple times I lost pressure(?) and all my bubbles and then heard the clicking again I noticed if I put my hand in there and covered the water intake hole on the pump (almost to create more pressure in the air tube) then it fired backup and started creating bubbles again... Is this normal? what am I to do during a power failure? will it eventually start back up on its own? is this purely because its brand new and not yet broken in?

Second question, right now the skimmer is in 10" of water and iirc it says it operates best in 8-9" of water... is this going to be a problem for me? I noticed right now its skimming extremely wet, so much in fact that I actually had to remove the plug on the skimate cup because it was filling up rapidly, so right now its just dumping the water back into the tank. I figured maybe this was because its new and still needs to break in, not like there is much to skim right now anyways... I figured worst case I could just build a 1-2" stand to put it on top of to raise it a bit(?), but again this is my first skimmer and the manual doesn't go over much more than how to put it together... Is there anything else special I need to do for a brand new skimmer to break it in?

So the tank is officially up as of yesterday evening... I still don't have any pics yet as it was pretty cloudy from me messing with it all but I should have something to show you guys in the next day or two...
 
IITTT'SSS ALIIIIIIIVVVEEEEE!

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Things are still a little cloudy, I came home last night and did some re-aquascaping and managed to kick up a bunch of sand in the process... Don't mine the gigantic heater to the left right now, that'll go away once I get my controller in the mail (tomorrow!). I don't have enough outlets for both my 150w heaters in the sump right now. Other than that things are looking good, I read up on skimmer break in and my skimmer is still going nuts. My salinity is a couple points low but not terrible (1.021 iirc) so I'm working on raising that a little every night, no big deal right now as nothing is in there... So yeah, that's that... now, I'm hoping to pick up a Delorean off craigslist today so I can go to the future 3 weeks and skip this whole waiting for the cycle to finish thing :)
 
Thanks guys, I need to get some new pics up... I got my reefkeeper lite up and running. My display tank is free from the gigantor 300w heater so now its just my Koralias in there.

I did my first water test;
Temp: 83F
Salinity: 1.024
pH: 8.4
Ammonia: < 0.25
Nitrite: 0.25
Nitrate: 0
Cal: 400
Alk: 160

I need to get the fans installed in my canopy, I think that'll help me regulate my temp a lot better. I've been working on raising my salinity, almost there. That was also the first time I tested Alk so I'm probably a little off... I think my skimmer is almost done breaking in... It doesn't look like I've even started my cycle yet(?)... Anyone have any experience with stuff like Bio-Spira? to help start the cycle, any place local carry it?
 
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