Joe's Wet Dream, A 550 Gallon Work In Progress

[Jobiwan]

For months now, I’ve been planning my own personal ultimate reef system, a 600 gallon acrylic work of art. I’d like to thank the many members of Reef Frontiers and the Puget Sound Aquarium Society who have been so great about sharing information and answering my questions. I'd especially like to thank Jason Gregory of Clear Fabrications, Inc, and Eric of Veralte Aquatics, without their help and expertise this system would never have taken place. I’ll post the progression of building and establishing my system in this thread.

Things are starting to come together. Jason of Clear Fabrications will begin building my system in the next few weeks, it will be delivered some time after Sept 25. With Jason's guidance and what I've learned from many hours on RF I feel like I've got a good overall design, I'll give you an overview of where I'm at now:

The dimensions of the tank will be 54" wide, 72" long, and 36" 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 thumb nail 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 36, the steel will be professionally coated with Line-X bed liner for lifetime protection against salt corrosion. 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 78".

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 20"h. The front 20" of the sump will be a refugium, with a 18" high baffle, so it will be 36" x 20" x 18", for a volume of fifty six 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 my protein skimmer will be a Bubble King 300 internal (in sump). I'm leaning towards the Precision Marine CR622D dual chamber Calcium Reactor with a 20 pound CO2 tank. 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 shells will extend four inches up the side of the tank to help hide the closed loop outlets and the algae and such that always forms in the gravel against the tank.

Circulation will be provided by 3 closed loop pumps, 3 Sequence Hammerheads will be used, each with an Ocean Motions 8-way, so there will be a total of 24 outlets within the tank, 8 positioned around the top of the tank, and 16 around the bottom, the 8-ways will be configured to power two outlets at any given time, there will be 6 outlets operating at any given time, each one putting out 2500 gph. Sump return pump will be an <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><ST1Iwaki</ST1</st1:City> 70. All pumps and the 8-ways will be remoted to the crawl space beneath the tank.

Lighting will be 4 400w mogul halides with luminarc reflectors and Icecap electronic ballasts, 2 x Icecap 660 ballasts to power 6 60" VHO actinics. 6 icecap 4" fans will be used in the hood. Some kind of moonlight LED's will be used, yet to be determined.

I’ll be using an Octopus controller to control lighting and temp. Temp, pH, and conductivity probes will be used. 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. 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.

Some kind of electric winch/hoist to raise the hood completely off the tank when necessary will be used.

That's about it for now, best regards, Joe

 

[szidls]

Hey Joe, So apparently you haven't told the wife about the new second mortgage yet????? Glad to see another nano system going up. Seriously though.....Sweeeeeet!
My first thought is you will be wanting that chiller. With the amount of pumps and lighting planned I think it will be a must. Also what about ventilation/exhaust fan/dehumidifier? Lets see some plumbing diagram.
Congrats on the new tank!
Scott

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

So I also assume you are going to have a dedicated generator attached to this system??? I can't wait to see pictures of it all coming together.

Jason delivered my tank last week and should be getting together this week to do the install, plumbing, etc.

If you want to see his work checkout my blog site:

http://project370.wordpress.com

I also have a thread in the Clear Fabrications Forum.

Kirk

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks Scott, but congratulations at this point are very painful, I want it yesterday, as Jason likes to say, "I'm Jonesing real bad"... You are spot on about the chiller I'm sure, I think I could "get by" without one if I wanted the tank to operate at higher than optimal temps with wide swings in highs and lows, after what I'm putting into my system that would make a lot of sense wouldn't it, but I do so love living in denial... I'll be putting a lot of rock in here, somwhere in the 500 to 1000 pound range I should think, I'll let the tank run a few months with just the rock and a few algae controlling fish/inverts, I want it to be quite stable before I stock it, that will give my credit line a few months to heal a little bit at least, all the plumbing and electrical will be in place, so it will be chiller ready... We do have a dehumidifier operating now, hope it will keep up with this.. Jason is doing all the plumbing, if you saw the 180 I set up 6 years ago you would understand why, functional but hideous. I'll try to put together some kind of diagram, but there is so much to it that will be hard to do and have it legible. Basically there will be four pumps (3 Hammerhead CL's, 1 Iwaki 70 sump return) directly underneath the tank in our 5 foot high crawl space, it does have a cement floor. The trick part will be the 8-ways, I can't wait to see how Jason deals with 24 1" pvc flex hoses coming up to the tank, the exact positioning of all 24 outlets is yet to be determined. The hood will extend down enough (2") to let us run 1" pvc around the inside top of the tank, if we go that route then the water level within the tank will be 1 1/2" from the top, that should conceal the pipes, I really don't want the pipes strung out around the top, I'd rather have them inside the tank (inner part on the sides of the top) if we can work that out. With the depth of this tank I have to have some way to run one of the CL's at the surface or I will never get the kind of circ I want, Tunze's and Seaswirls aren't an option due to personal preference.....

Hello Kirk, I missed seeing your tank at Jason's by just a day, I popped in there last Friday, right after he delivered it, I did see your stand a couple of weeks before that, I love the way he overengineers everything, no worries about that stand collapsing. I checked out your blog, you are going to have a masterpiece there. I gotta say though, I really hate and despise Jason for donating that 120 to the PSAS fundraiser last summer, that's like an alcohol distributor donating a case of scotch to an Alcoholics Anonymous convention. That was the first time I saw his work, it blew me away. Years ago I worked in a fish store and sold "assembly line" plex tanks, absolutely no comparison, well, I'm wrong there, you can compare a Yugo to a BMW after all, can't you??? Anyway, his craftmanship is exceeded only by his patience, I started talking to him last December, he's been great about helping me through the planning / design process, and he's headed me off from a lot of major mistakes. I'm glad you are posting, I'll continue to follow the progress of your system...

 

[Jobiwan]

Latest change: going with OM 4-ways instead of 8-ways, 12 returns instead of 24, half as much plumbing....

 

[dragoneggs]

Wow Joe! Another fun project to watch... I look forward to following along. You are in good hands with Jason. I know what you mean with spagetti of 1in flex. I have five pumps located 25ft from my tank in the crawlspace. Have fun horsing that stuff around.

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

So does half as much plumbing mean you are spending half as much on the project??

Kirk

 

[Jobiwan]

I figured out the cost of this a while back on Excel, the last thing I remember was reaching for the enter button, my wife found me unconscious on the floor curled up in the fetal position and drooling uncontrollably. I've tried to open the spreadsheet since then to find out what this will cost, but whenever I do I start screaming, right before the projectile vomiting and incontinence occur.....

 

[Jobiwan]

Placement of Closed Loop Outlets

Here are a couple of diagrams I did showing my proposed placement of closed loop outlets, four at the top surface, eight at the bottom, placement is based on the proposed aquascaping, the labels represent the 3 hammerheads: A, B & C, the numbers are based on the version 3 OM 4-ways, where outlets 1 & 3 alternate with outlets 2 & 4, the outlets are moveable, they can be directed up down left right, I should be able to generate some real serious random water movement I hope...

 

[Jobiwan]

Closed Loop Layouts, take 2....

Just learned how to do big pictures...

 

[Brenden]

Joe I pretty much have this tank setting in my foyer. My advice.
* If possible put pumps in garage, under house etc. I have mine all under the stand. Sealed and insulated with a exhaust fan. Lots of heat. In the winter blow the exhaust in the house for heat. (works great).
*Dehumidifier is a must. I average 5-7 gallons a day evaporation.
* Do canopy same as stand mentioned above. Utilize heat for house in cold months. Def use exhaust fan when lights are on in summer. My air ran nonstop until I did this. The tank will heat the main floor of the house when outside temp is down to 50-55.
*Make sure your floor is properly braced and figure out a plumbing system for easy water changes. I got my setup mastered now. A 200-250 water change takes around 15 minutes. Just waiting, no lifting. I will think of more later.
PS. Get ready for power bill.

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks Brendan, I am incorporating your ideas, pumps will go in the crawl space below, I've already installed the dehumidifier. What is your lighting configuration? I'd also like to know what your aquascaping looks like, do you have any pictures posted? Regards, joe

 

[Brenden]

Lighting is 8- 250W coralvue HQI sun replicator pendants. I used 1" square tub aluminum from lowes to make the fixture. I would recommend getting some good reflectors and going with 250w instead of 400w. Aquascaping a tank iewable from 3 sides is a pain. I never found anything I like.

 

[Jobiwan]

Lighting considerations

I'll give your lighting suggestions some thought Brenden, I'm concerned about the vertical penetration of 250W vs 400W, I'll be using Lumenarc reflectors, either the standard or Mini III's, I think they are the best on the market, but I'd love to hear suggestions if anyone thinks there is anything better out there. Heat is a big consideration also of course, I'm wondering how the heat output of 8 250W HQI's would compare to 4 400w mogels... also having a smaller number of higher output lights allows me to blast the center 12 - 15 square feet of surface with more intense light, using eight smaller lights would give me more even distribution of lighting, but I will have an open perimeter of 6 to 8 inches around the three viewing surfaces, I don't really want to focus any photons there, so I actually am trying for an uneven light placement with the emphasis on the center....The other thing I am trying to figure is how I want to place the 6 60" actinics in relation to the Lumenarcs, all six in the middle, or 4 in the middle and 1 on the outside of each pair of lumenarcs (out close to the left and right side viewing surfaces), or two in middle and two on each side, or even three on each outer side to really focus the halides on the middle, but would I get the effect I want in a 4 1/2 foot wide tank if the actincs are not in the middle 3 1/2 feet of the tank and are all placed 3 to 9 inches from the left/right viewing surfaces, seems like very little actinic lighting would reach the middle of the tank in this configuration, any suggestions/input there?

 

[bc_slc]

My tank is about half this size, but it was a big step up for me. it seems like you learn with each new project, esp when you upsize. A few pieces of advice.

1. Save the money on the calcium reactor for now, and go with a chiller. It may be a year before you need the calc reactor if you stock slowly and allow the tank to truly mature before you start adding corals.

2. Four 250w Halides with luminarcs should be more than enough. I have 250w DE bulbs (Reef optix 3 pendants) and my tank is 30" deep, no troubles with light anywhere in the tank for any of my SPS. I think a good reflector with 250w DE setup is equivalent to 250w SE halides with luminarcs. Will save you some money up front, and every month.

3. Three complete closed loops is a good improvement/adjustment. I also like the idea of monitoring the system, having multiple probes and the dedicated electrical setup. The generator is good as well.

4. The recommendation above to automate the water changes is a HUGE deal. I still am carrying and dumping buckets due to the confines of my house and reluctance to drill holes in the floor/walls.

Best of luck,

Mat

 

[bc_slc]

Now that I think more about it, the 72" x width of 54" makes me think that two rows of three bulbs for a total of 6 bulbs would probably be best. And again, the 250w bulbs will be less electricity, less heat, less cost to setup, cheaper bulbs to maintain and with a good reflector, should cover your 32" depth fine.

Lastly, if the stand is not made yet, i would consider raising it up some. Will give you a better viewing angle for the tank bringing it up to eye level and give you extra space underneith for your skimmer, Kalk reactor, phosban reactor, calcium reactor or whatever.

Mat

 

[Brenden]

I did not mean 8- 250w I would def only do 6.

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

I plan on taking some good pics of the plumbing that Jason is going to do on my setup. Maybe you can get some ideas from it. I plan on having my water changes fully automated and all I need to do is open two values (one to empty the water from the tank and the other value will open the water from the mixing tank into the tank). Should take about 15-20 mins to do a 45 gallon water change.

Kirk

 

[Brenden]

Def get you a water change setup. You do not want to be carrying that much water. Mine is setup to do a 200 gallon WC in about 20 minutes.

 

[Jobiwan]

Great Suggestions, Keep 'Em Coming!

Thanks Guys, this is a big help. I'll definitly work out a water change system with Jason, knowing him he probably already has it figured out, I'll discuss it with him soon. I'll kick the stand height around a little more, but there are some trade offs to consider, much as I would like additional height underneath, I may have to stick with the proposed dimensions. As for the lighting issues, if we were talking about 6 400w vs 6 250w everthing you folks have mentioned regarding advantages (heat production, energy usage, bulb replacement, etc) would be absolutely right on. However, when we put it in the context of 4 400w vs. 6 250w suddenly things are much different. Not a signifigant difference re: heat and electricity, bulb replacement costs (if anything a bit less for 4 400w vs 6 250w), but there would be some initial equipment savings (because I'm buying 4 instead of 6) on Lumenarcs reflectors, electronic ballasts, X1 controllers. The 4 400w scheme also fits in with my desire to have more "light gradients" with the tanks,I want to blast the middle with intense light and have it a bit less intense around the perimeter, if I wanted an even light distribution the 6 250w's would absolutely be the way to go, but that is not really what I'm going for, let me know what you think of this...