Building a 550, Advice and Critiques Appreciated

[Jobiwan]

I've been lurking about RF for the past several months absorbing all I can in preparation for the construction of my 550 reef setup. Jason Gregory of Clear Fabrications will begin building this towards the end of June, it will be delivered some time after July 1. With Jason's guidance and what I've learned from many hours on RF I feel like I've got a good overall design, but there are bound to be a few things that I could tweak to improve it, I hope that those of you with more experience and knowledge than me would share your insights to help me create my dream system. I'll give you an overview of where I'm at now:

The dimensions of the tank will be 54" wide, 72" long, and 32" high. The back 54" will be against the wall in an alcove, it will be black plex with a full length overflow, the tank will project out in the room 72" in a peninsula style. There is a picture of the tank, stand and hood outline as it will be placed in the thumnail below, the Yellow rule is 4 feet for scale:



The right side will have the back 28" tucked against the alcove wall, that is the only part of the sides and the front that will be obscured. The framework of the stand will be 2" square steel pipe (1/4" I believe) and will be 31 1/4" high, there will then be 3/4" plywood on top of that for a total height of 32". The hood sides will be 12" with a 2" overlap on the tank, so total height inside the hood will be 10". Overall height to the top of the hood will be 74".

The tank will be constructed with 1" plex on the sides and 3/4" on the top, 1" is way more than needed, but it is what I wanted to go with. The sump will be 58" x 36" x 18"h. The front 18" of the sump will be a refugium, with a 15" high baffle, so it will be 36" x 18" x 15", for a volume of forty gallons, I'd go bigger if I could, but there are other things to factor in of course. Jason will build a custom prefilter, and I'm considering a Bubble Master 250 Protein Skimmer (If the 300 comes out in the near future I will take a look at it), and I'm leaning towards the Precision Marine CR622D dual chamber Calcium Reactor. There will be a full belly pan under the sump (1/2 inch acrylic, 62" x 50", not sure of the height. Auto top off with a solenoid activated Spectrapure RO unit, 90 gpd.

The skin of the stand and hood will be constructed of 5000 series 1/8" aluminum. The 5000 alloy's are somewhat corrosion resistant, but not enough to be unprotected around salt, so once the skins are constructed they will be tinted and clearcoated. The reason for this is that I want to try something other than wood, stainless steel is not an option due to price, weight, and difficulty of working with, titanium would be my first choice, but those damn lottery tickets just aren't cooperating...

Circulation will be provided by a total of 6 closed loop pumps, 2 sequence hammerheads will run continously, 4 Iwaki 70's will be timed to go off at night, they will be staggered as far as time to come on and off, 2 at 8 am, other two on at 11 am, first two off at 6 pm, last two off at 9 pm, so max current for 7 hours, not really a wave maker sort of thing, but I'm ok with that. Sump return pump will be a fifth Iwaki 70. All pumps will be remoted to the crawl space beneath the tank.

Lighting will be 4 400w mogul halides with luminarc reflectors and Icecap electronic balasts, 2 x Icecap 660 ballasts to power 6 60" actinics, leaning toward VHO's cuz I don't know anything about T5's.. 4 or 6 icecap 4" fans in hood. Some kind of moonlight LED's, yet to be determined.

Octopus controller, to control lighting and temp, Temp, pH, and conductivity probes. System will be chiller ready, as my home is air conditioned and kept at 70 in the summer I'm hoping I can get by without the chiller, but we shall see. Per Mark's (aka Dragaoneggs) advice I will be using American DJ PC-100A 8-Switch ON/OFF Power Centers throughout my system for pumps and lighting, I'll be using either four or five of these, Jason is fabricating boxes for all of them, I will miss having power strips everywhere, it adds so much excitement to your life when water drips into them...

There will be some reinforcement placed under the floor joists, and my electrician is installing 5 dedicated 20 Amp circuits for this system along with a transfer panel for my generator, I got tired of messing with extension cords last winter.

Last but not least I'm going to install some kind of electric winch/hoist to raise the hood completely off the tank when necessary, has anyone ever used or seen anything like this? Costco.com has a winch for lifting bicycles for sale, it is $189.99 and is rated for 250 pounds, my hood should be no more than 150 pounds, so I ordered one of these to check it out, if it won't work Costco does have a great return policy.. I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have about this, since it was my own idea I can't help but think there must be all kinds of flaws.. Thanks again for any tips you can pass on, I wan't to do this right so I don't end up having to replace or redo things if I can avoid that, best regards, Joe

 

[Jobiwan]

I've begun a thread under the Member's Showcase forum, titled "Joe's Wet Dream, A 550 Gallon Work in Progress", I hope to see you there.

 

[Jobiwan]

llllllllll

 

[mojoreef]

Well it sounds first class Jobi!!
Wheres the sump going?? and do you have a layout of the plumbing plan??


Mike

 

[Jobiwan]

Hi Mike, nice to hear from you, hope things are going well, I hope to have a system that will at least approach the quality of yours, how is your restart on that going?. I don't have a diagram set up, I have a pretty good idea in my head, before we get to the final build I'll get together with Jason, and we will diagram it out, he is doing all the plumbing, and we have discussed it a lot, things keep changing as we progress, all I've really diagrammed out is my aquascaping so we can determine outlet placements for the CL's, I cover that a little more on the Member's showcase thread, that's wheret I'll be focusing the progress on this from here out, best regards, Joe

 

[Jobiwan]

 

[mojoreef]

Nope still havent started yet, every time I begin to get a plan something comes up and pulls me away, but soon.

You have a big tank my friend, when you get to this size you basically have to concede that you are not going to be able to get to all the areas with good enough flow to keep detritus build at bay. You should try to pick areas of your tank that are easy to get to and try to make them the places that the build up occurs. Dont be afraid to blow right onto your rocks also, removing detritus from their is not that easy either.
Just try to picture in your mind all the crappy jobs this tank is going to make for you and then do you best to eliminate them.


Mike

 

[Jobiwan]

Let me know if you ever need an extra hand Mike, I have lot's of free time. I couldn't reach the bottom in my 24" deep 180, this is 8 inches deeper, when I saw your rank I seem to remember it was over three feet deep, how did you deal with the depth as far as maintainance?

 

[class clown]

Hey Joe - I rmeember meeting you in person at a PSAS event last year. You had a really neat friendly dog w/ you too.

Anyhow - to possible suggestions I thought Id throw out there to help you with your flow design.

1) come to the next PSAS event on Sat - we're having a speaker come in to talk about reef flow - this may give you some good ideas.

2) Im not sure if youre planning on doing oceans motions or not, but if you are, its worth it to give Paul at Oceans Motions a call to talk with him about flow design. If not planning on going oceans motions, you can still sign up and peruse their forums which are totally totally dedicated to obtaining the best flow.

Good luck man! I wish you much success w/ your newest adventure. It looks like its going to be a good one.

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks for the Head's up on PSAS

Thank you Ben, I appreciate you letting me know about the speaker, I might have passed on the meeting what with two ferry rides to deal with each way, but I'll definitely be there now, and of course my dog Bonnie will be with me-oops, forgot to say I was bringing a guest on the eVite reply....hope you make it too, I'd love to discuss use of controllers with you, that is totally new to me, I have no hands on experience with them, best regards, joe