The 280 is finally going to get set up.. (1 Viewer)

[NorthSide Reef]

Put the pumps in tonight, I didn't think I would have those in until this weekend but it went pretty fast.

They went on the incoming lines from the 325 gallon reservoir to help pull the water out of there since my lines did not seem to have much drop in them from the reservoir to the return sump.

Those are 3/4" pipes going a couple of inches up the 1.5" incoming pipe. That was enough to really help pull water down those pipes. I was actually able to turn one of the pumps off and the flow was still able to keep up with the water being pumped up. So I think I will be fine, I will have a little redundancy built in by going with the two.

Here is the flow down

Compare that to this trickle I was at before:

Greatly improved flow. I am going to make a few tweaks to improve it a little more but I am pretty satisfied with tonight's results and it is time to drain all of that water and move on to the next phase. FINALLY!!!

Earlier today I actually worked on the Seahorse tank.

Here is the before

Here is the after

Stand still needs paint but By gosh the back (and side) of the tank is painted

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Not much new news but I do have the seahorse tank in its home.

Was able to do some test aquascaping for the 280 with the flat rock for the walls.

Came out like this, I'm kind of meh on it. but I learned a couple of things:

I think maybe once there are some corals attached to it I will like it a lot more.

Couple more shots:

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Also put in the vent for the 280, I decided to go with corrugated plastic above the tank because I may have to get to that area where the plumbing comes down from the shed and I did not want sheetrock dust to be a problem. So I went from this:

to this:

There will be a humidistat in there to operate the vent fan. I plumbed the vent over to the dryer vent so I can send the humidity outside in the summer. I am giving serious consideration to putting in a bypass to keep that humid air for winter. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[marty9876]

I think humidity is harder on the houses in the winter due to condensation on the windows. Cool air less ability to hold water messes up the absolute humidity vs. relative humidity.

If it was controllable to pipe some warm moist air back and dump the rest outside I could see that making sense.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

When I visited Energy I asked Stan about humidity. He simply replied in the summer he opens a window. In the winter he lets it into his house. It has seemed to work well for him.

 

[Taklu]

Two key points, esp in Stan's case... His home is built with logs so that humidity is actually good as it keeps the logs from drying out and cracking/warping. His room is fully isolated (so is urs) so in summers it's good on days it's not as humid outside.

I pretty much rely on the same thing... By not venting/controlling the humidity we get by without having to use a humidifier during winter.. Right now the humidity is 54% ...too low for us... Dry/bleedy nose. We are actually planning on a third tank to add more humidity in the master bedroom

During summer I open the windows most days esp when there is a strong wind. On real humid days (also very hot) I turn the ac on. One thing to watch out for if ur dosing kalk... With the windows open the ph will rise very quickly and go quite far if there isn't a good ph control... U may want to switch to normal rodi top off with no kalk

 

[NorthSide Reef]

LOL you know sometimes I will read something you've posted and at first I miss it because I move on.

I will try to convince the wife we need more tanks to add humidity to the house.

As of now the vent is piped out of the house, I am not sure how much it would help to just divert it into the house. It is probably something to play with in the future but not now. I have enough on my plate as it is.

Update:

I put the rock up on the back wall of the tank. Took forever, I just now took out the "holding" rocks (rock leaned up against the rock wall to hold it in place while the silicone drys) off the last piece so I could see how it came out.

I am happier with these results. I will still have to piece in some rubble into the wall to give a more 3D appearance. The flash on the tank makes it hard to get a good shot of it. here is the best I can do.

a shot form inside the tank shows the rubble I embedded a little better. That left side wall will have a black background on it so it will match the back of the tank.

The will all look better once the actual rock is in place in the center of the tank and there is some substrate on the tank floor (I think).

 

[NorthSide Reef]

A couple trial and error stabs at building my structure today. had a beautiful arch just snap. There was swearing involved :mad_3:

taking a break while the two small starter islands dry.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

so the aquascaping is done. and try as I might I cannot get a decent picture of it. with the rock on the back wall and the sand in the tank all it is, is a huge white out.

I'll try a few other angles and see if I can get something that does not look like the white blob. IMO it looks pretty good in person where you can actually see the 3 dimensional depth. But it is not nearly as good as I hoped.


best I can get:

 

[NorthSide Reef]

So today was major destruction day in the filter shed. I decided I wanted to raise the 325 gallon reservoir up 16" and not rely on the pumps I added to pull water out of the reservoir. I tried to talk myself out of it, but in the end I know I will be happier with not needing to depend on a pump to do what I know gravity will always do.

I am working on the WC system and I had to make the decision to do this before it went into the shed and I started making water. I hope it is all back together by this weekend.

meanwhile. My camera died, kind of sucked. It was just a point and shot, but still I really did not want to get another one right now. I picked up another P&S to get me by.

Figured a couple things out with setting the F-stop so I could keep the flash off and still get decent pictures. I think the aquascaping shows a little better here.

You can actually see the sea serpent sculpture in this shot, something I tried in vain with the other camera to capture. I decided to not even mention it in the other shots because it was impossible to see.

Something else I did not mention about the rock work. Only the rock rubble I put in is on (and in) the sand the rest of the structure all sits above the sand

Anyhow I am happy that the new camera at least let me take some pictures I liked. I have a lot of work ahead of me this weekend.

 

[Chuckytt]

Every time I look at this I drool a bit. This is a great build thread!

 

[Jacob]

Looking good.

 

[eschulist]

The rock structure really turned out great with the built in returns.

So what is your plan with all of the tubs that need to be raised higher???

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Every time I look at this I drool a bit. This is a great build thread!

Looking good.

The rock structure really turned out great with the built in returns.

So what is your plan with all of the tubs that need to be raised higher???

Thanks guys.


I am raising this reservoir (big white tank in the back):

I had some problem with it draining as fast as I was filling it. I added some pumps to help pull the water out of those two slightly less than horizontal lines coming out of it (pictures and explanation are in post 81) that worked well, but still left me with counting on a pump (actually two pumps) to pull the water down those lines. One pump did a good job of keeping up so if one failed I would be OK but I still felt uneasy about relying on them. Raising that reservoir up so that gravity drains those lines is really what needed to be done. I did that today, but it means all of the plumbing going into and coming out of it has to be redone. It also meant everything I had in the lower part of the shed needed to be moved to accomplish that. It's a mess right now.

 

[Taklu]

lol, something I noticed tonight.. almost exact 12 months have gone by from page 1 to page 5 opworm:

Oh the rockwork looks awesome... :bow:

 

[jlpaske]

What did you use for all of the rock work cement/ epoxy? Looks like you would have needed a million tubes of aquastik if you were using something like that.

And, are those cut up pieces of schedule 80 as the risers off the bottom? If so, I really wish I would have known about that concept a year ago.:book2: Smart!

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Time and money Tak, something I do not have a lot of.

and it bums me to have to take such a large step back this late in the game.

 

[Taklu]

Time and money Tak, something I do not have a lot of.

It costs neither to give folks and friends a hard time :kackle:

For the WC reservoir... whats the estimate electricity cost if you were to not change anything and use a pump... I'd imagine it will be miniscule compared to the time and effort and material costs of raising it to use gravity. I'd probably consider raising it if the cost of raising would pay off within a year.

Or I previously overlooked the thought... you are trying to create more space UNDER the reservoir for something else

 

[Jacob]

Time and money Tak, something I do not have a lot of.

and it bums me to have to take such a large step back this late in the game.

It took me two years to setup my tank, but everything is excatly how i want it. Nothing comes fast or easy in this hobby. Do it right (and the way you want it) the first time even if it means a minor setback. You will regret it later, and once the water is in, it is too late to make major changes and it will just bug you.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

It costs neither to give folks and friends a hard time :kackle:

For the WC reservoir... whats the estimate electricity cost if you were to not change anything and use a pump... I'd imagine it will be miniscule compared to the time and effort and material costs of raising it to use gravity. I'd probably consider raising it if the cost of raising would pay off within a year.

Or I previously overlooked the thought... you are trying to create more space UNDER the reservoir for something else

It's the idea I would have been depending on something that I could not monitor 100% of the time. I travel a lot and although I had redundancy built into the system with the two pumps the "what if" factor still bothered me enough to tear it down and redo it. The reservoir is not for water changes it is part of the overall system. If it stopped draining back to the tank because both pumps failed it would have been bad.

The lines coming out of it now will have a nice drop and I know gravity although it has always kept me down, it will never let me down.