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

[NorthSide Reef]

So moved rooms for the weekend so I can be near the ocean, going to get some snorkeling in tomorrow which they tell me will be sunnier than today.

pretty cloudy but still warm here is the view from my room:

I ordered a beer I have to say I was surprised by the brand. All you Vikings fans out there can attest to how cool this is:

I think it's good luck

 

[phoenix77]

Jealous! Enjoy the snorkeling and we will enjoy the 40 degree weather. Thanks for the pics (never been to Brazil)

 

[NorthSide Reef]

I am HOME!!!!!!!

man it is good to be back!!!

O have a bunch of stuff to open for the extra flow down from the upper half, and my water change over tanks arrived at the shop.

Other than going to the swap this weekend though I do not think much will get done these next couple of days. I really need to reconnect with the kids and wife.

I Plan to be at the Expo around 12:30 how are folks identifying themselves?

 

[Taklu]

I Plan to be at the Expo around 12:30 how are folks identifying themselves?

ever been to a wholesale fish market during an auction in a third world country...? Every one runs around with a name tag shouting names and quoting their price lol

 

[NorthSide Reef]

So had to do something on the system before the wife and I head out to get some shopping in, and just needed to stop being ticked off at a certain reef supplier.

That reef supplier made me happy today and I am glad they are stand up men who can admit when they make mistakes and do what it takes to make it right. Well done! I make mistakes too and I am thankful for the second chances I have been given.

So I put in some the the additional flow down plumbing from the upper level still need to do more.

Here are two of the valves I installed:

Going to have to plumb those up something like this:

This top bulkhead fitting is how I had originally installed it. I learned quickly that that is not going to work like that without putting a 90 degree fitting in there and making the water line horizontal with the turned up 90. The way I have that pipe going up from the lower fitting. The water fills the tub and even after I turn the water off it continues to flow out of the tank until it completely below the fitting. Times three that is a lot of water still moving down after the pumps is shut off.

So I will build some type of traditional horizontal overflow for those even it is just a modified fitting with slots cut into them.

 

[.Marshall]

That reef supplier made me happy today and I am glad they are stand up men who can admit when they make mistakes and do what it takes to make it right. Well done! I make mistakes too and I am thankful for the second chances I have been given.

I am very glad you were taken care of, and you got everything sorted out! I expected nothing less from "certain reef supplier".

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Thanks Marshall, looking forward to talking about plumbing and reef building again. I have a new idea for my aquascape. Something DG said that got me thinking and I placed a new order with that "certain reef supplier" as the base for that new idea.

 

[.Marshall]

Thanks Marshall, looking forward to talking about plumbing and reef building again. I have a new idea for my aquascape. Something DG said that got me thinking and I placed a new order with that "certain reef supplier" as the base for that new idea.

** Staying tuned in ** :agree:

Are you going away from the aquascape you posted in the other thread? I love that aquascape.. My aquascape is somewhat similar where I can't just take out 1 rock, they are all epoxied together making 4 big rocks in which all my SPS corals are attached to. I like how sturdy it is, and how easy it was to take BRS reef-saver rock and get creative with it.

Take a look: My Build Thread.

 

[Taklu]

Depending on how the corals are let to encrust/grow in the longer in most case its not possible to take out individual rocks anyway. however when using the pegging technique and being dliligent about not letting the corals enrust its possible to not only move corals around/take em out for treatment or just simply taking out rock for maintenance is a breeze,

Is that going to be just a stand pipe? if so plan for a tad bit higher water level

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Depending on how the corals are let to encrust/grow in the longer in most case its not possible to take out individual rocks anyway. however when using the pegging technique and being dliligent about not letting the corals enrust its possible to not only move corals around/take em out for treatment or just simply taking out rock for maintenance is a breeze,

Is that going to be just a stand pipe? if so plan for a tad bit higher water level

I plan to let the corals encrust onto the rock, I hope with trying to QT everything and treating everything before it goes in the tank I can keep the pests out.

AS for the stand pipe I am thinking something like what I have pictured below will work. Although I think I went too deep with those grooves so I will have to redo this set. But this should also help with the water level

 

[Soup3777]

What an insane build!

I am impressed

 

[NorthSide Reef]

well it is insane

Wait till you see the scaffold extension. It will be done tomorrow I think. I got tired of that cheap POS I put up there wobbling all over heck. So the extension is a must. Plus it just looks cool as all heck.

Then I will finish the plumbing up there.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

So been too busy to do much, but I did get the extension put in and stabilized the old one. I will work on plumbing this weekend. Too much to do with the kids and around the house right now.

Here are some before pics of the scaffold, it does not quite reach where I wanted it to go and it also was not very sturdy to be wrestling with those tank covers.

So I beefed it up and extended it. it reaches all the way to both ends now and I put a rail on it so I have something to grab onto when I am climbing it.
The room is pretty crowded so it's tough to get a good shot of it.

I know nothing to do with reefs at all lol but I will feel better working up there. I hope I get time this weekend to actually do something.

Here are some of my Black Friday Purchases coming in.

table full of rock. Already broke some of the big pieces up and working on some idea on the aquascaping. which I seem to change my mind about hourly. But expect me to be cementing (Marco Rocks stuff) a lot of this back together in some other configuration.

Some other stuff.

I was not sure how I wanted to do it, but I did not want the refugiums to have a lot of dead spots in them, I also did not want to put a powerhead in them and created a whirlpool. So I decided to go with a Hydor Koralia Smart Wave Pump Controller. According to the literature it has two channels each good for up to 100 watts. that should mean I can run a few off of each channel so one controller will control several pumps. I plan to have it control 6 pumps (maybe 8 I might get some nano ones for the QT tank as well) 2 per refugium. So here is a box full of pumps and heaters. Each refugium will have a Eheim-JAGER TS Heater - 300 watt in it and the big reservoir will have 2 300watt heaters in it. I decided to go with the Tunze Osmolator top-off system.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

So played around a bit tonight and finished getting the returns in the refugiums in. I have part of the return pipe in from the last tank down to the reservoir, but I am going to let that glue dry before I do too much more there.

I redid the first tank I did I did not like how deep those slots were so I went from this:

To this:

That should help with the flow back if the pump stops.

The other two are done as well.

They all came out different because I had to fit things in where I could. If all goes well I will finish that return line down from the last tank. It was a real PITA to get that piped in and luckily I had everything on couplers because I had to completely disconnect that last tub, so I could get it off the wall to get the fitting on. I actually did something very few reefers have accomplished...

I got the wife to help! :jester: She helped line up the drop to keep it level. It came out perfect.

Hopefully I can get the last of the leak testing done this weekend. I have to go out of town again Monday, but return midweek so next weekend maybe (fingers crossed) I can do some aquascaping!

 

[Navychief52]

Epic build...... great job !

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Epic build...... great job !

Thanks Chief, I'm a pretty big fan of your build as well.

So plumbing done and refilling the tanks now. So far I'm very happy with the flow through the added pipes, and also the new slotted fittings this will help a lot with the flow down when the pumps are turned off.

The flow looks pretty even so this should absolutely help with the problem I had with the pump pumping up a lot more than what was flowing back down

 

[NorthSide Reef]

Man this takes a long time. I cannot imagine how long it is going to take to mix salt water for this monstrosity.

which reminds me I have a saltwater mixing station to make soon!

 

[NorthSide Reef]

So today we learned a thing or two about gravity feed systems.

Unfortunately we learned these things the hard way..

The extra line (the one coming down at 45 degree angle) really helped add the flow I was looking for:

This idea I had to help bring the warm water up to the chiller was brilliant.

It also helped pull water from the reservoir.

these lines do not have enough drop on them to pull much water out of the tank:

those two 1.5" lines had very little flow going through them. Most of it went through that one chiller line because the chiller pump created enough suction to help pull water out of the reservoir. Which meant all of the extra flow I tried to add ended up on the floor.

I caught in time but it was still a mess. Choking the feed pump back really does not help because then I end up where I was. Not much coming down to the display tanks.

I think you can see from this picture:

that the line going to the chiller station really does not drop that much more than the two going to the return sump, but the flow down from the one 1.5" chiller line was dramatically more then what was going through those two 1.5" return sump lines.

So I think that brings me to plan C. I will add a couple of pumps just like the one over on the chiller station to created enough suction to help pull the water out of the reservoir.

The way I have the chiller pump set up, the pump is pulling water out of the chiller reservoir, but the line coming in from the main reservoir connects to that line, so it also helps pull water down that line as well. I had no idea it was aiding it that much though.

This might be a better picture

So another set back, but not a big one, as this looks like a pretty easy fix, just really unexpected, but one I learned from... The hard way

 

[ArstenA]

You should post a few more images of the whole setup. It is hard (for me at least) to see the big picture.

 

[NorthSide Reef]

The whole thing is in two separate rooms and they're both small rooms so it is really difficult to get a shot of everything at once.

You have the 280 in a room below the filtershed. not much there just a big aquarium.

But here is an old concept drawing of the filtershed it is not laid out exactly like this things changed but the concept itself is the same.

You'll just have to stop by and see it when you get done with my QT tank .

I'll have the mag 5's in by then and I should have this running. I could use an extra set of eyes on this thing. I have it all in my head one way but the reality of it all does not seem be jiving. I honestly never thought that the water coming back down was going to be an issue. I thought I was going to have a problem pumping it up as far as it's going. That hammerhead is one powerful pump. If I could get the same flow down as what is going up I would be pretty satisfied. I could then move on to the next phase.

Going out of town Monday so won't get to work on this until I get the pumps in from the vendor. If anyone has a couple of mag 5s or 7s laying around that I could test this theory out before I go that would be cool.