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

[mmkeeper]

This build is unreal. What kind of budget are you working with?

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks, actually, having a budget probably would have been a sensible idea, but I've never been good at that sort of thing...

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

If you need any help moving it, I can see if I can get an "OK" from her. Not promising anything but she does surprise me from time to time.

 

[NC2WA]

mmkeeper,

Being an owner of a recent tank that Jason built/install for me, Joe is spending some serious serious cash. I went over my budget by 20%, but if you see the craftsmanship of Jason's tanks it was worth every single penny.

Kirk

 

[Jobiwan]

....)

That would be much appreciated Kirk, There's going to be some weight involved, Jason would like me to line up some extra bodies to assist, when we get an actual delivery date I will check with you to see if it fits your schedule... I think it will be fun to see Jason assemble this, he is adamant about wanting to get water in it immediately, I've got 250 gallons of RO socked away in the garage and I may be able to get a 250 gallon vat to fill, so we will be able to fill it the first day if all goes as planned, (I think........)

 

[NC2WA]

ROFL...the understatement of the year....

...There's going to be some weight involved.....

yeah, I agree with you bud, there is..

don't know what your stand is going to look like, but the stand for my 375g tank, it took three large guys to move it into place. I am guessing at least 4-5 men. Yes, Jason will have furntiure rollers but that can only go so far. This should be interested to see.

I will work on the wife....

Kirk

 

[wayne11]

Great setup Joe, everytime i see a new build i get the tape measure out and see if i can squeeze another metre or so from somewhere in the house

Would be good to see it filled up and pumping round

Zoas are my passion but just cannot get the good morphs over here without paying an arm and a leg, time to emergrate i think

Wayne

 

[Jobiwan]

Welcome to reef frontiers Wayne, I love Zoas myself, don't have any of the real exotic ones yet though. If you haven't joined a reef club in your area try to do so, it's a great way to meet others in the hobby, you might be able to trade for different Zoa's.

 

[Damsel13]

:badgrin::badgrin:So where are you going to keep that bad boy??? NO I mean the TANK!

 

[Jobiwan]

Hey Deb, It's going right in the middle of our living room, the ceiling is 13 feet high over the system, the system itself will be over 7 1/2 feet tall to the top of the cover, so it's good we have a little space for raising the hood. Looks like I'll be spending lot's of time climbing ladders....

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

Welcome to the Jungle..I know what you mean. The ladder is the only way I can get on the catwalk of my stand to access the top of my tank. It is also the only way I can feed my fish as I do not have a front access panel from within the house.

Kirk

 

[Jobiwan]

Hi Kirk, I picked up a couple of Eheim 3581 automatic feeders to make things easier, saves me a few ladder trips a week, nice if you are keeping any plankton feeders that like to be fed 4 times a day (cardinals, anthias, etc). I don't know if you use flake or pellets as part of your feeding regimen, if you do you might want to look at these, from what I could find out the Eheims seem to be the most reliable, on sale at Foster/Smith for $39.99,

regards,

Joe

 

[NC2WA]

currently, I am using frozen food, ocean nutrition, Marine Cuisine soak in garlic and vitamins. the clownfish love this stuff.

Once I start to house tangs, angelfish and butterflyfish, I plan on using PE Mysis Shrimp and possible Rod Foods.

Kirk

 

[JPG@CFI]

Looking good, Joe!

 

[Jobiwan]

Lots of Holes......

Took another trip down to Jason's yesterday to map out all the placements for the closed loop inlets and outlets, by now Jason has drilled a total of 27 bulkhead holes in various spots on the tank and overflow box. Schedule 80 bulkheads will be used wherever a cracked bulkhead could lead to disasterous leak. These are amazing compared to the schedule 40's normally found in use, you probably couldn't break them with a hammer, nothing like a little extra piece of mind knowing that a shifting piece of rock won't lead to a disastrous failure. We are using Oceans Motions Omni Flex nozzles with the closed loops, they are available in 1 inch diameters, loc line only goes up to 3/4 inch, won't work with the 18,000+ gallons per hour that will be turning over in the tank..... I'm worried about having such a stagnant tank, perhaps someday I can upgrade and get some serious water movement.....

 

[Scooterman]

I know what your talking about the HD bh's over the regulars, I had cracked one on my old tank & since then used nothing but the SCH. 80's !
I think your going to be a little light on 18k of flow, you may want to give Paul at OM a call & see what he does before you finish drilling all of the holes, you would really be amazed! Hurry Up or no soup for you:evil:

 

[Jobiwan]

I have talked to Paul, very helpful guy, but boy is he an engineer, he was willing to set up some individual programs on a chip to randomly alter the rotation speeds of my four ways, but I would have had to buy a small computer just for this, a little more technology that I wanted. He's basically on board with my low flow setup, I emailed him a diagram of my outlet placement, he did offer some improvements which I have incorporated as my system has morphed.

 

[Scooterman]

You would be better off using a PLC (Programmable Logic controller) with the OM's, you can get one fairly cheap, also you can add to it to control lighting etc, all you need is someone to program the thing unless you wanted to dabble in it yourself which isn't that hard to do basic controls like this.

 

[Jobiwan]

Actually, it was a PLC that Paul discussed now that you've jogged my memory, if you don't mind Scooty I'd like to talk to you more about this when the dust settles, if I try to learn one more thing at this point my head will explode...The motors on OM's are 1 rpm, I assume the PLC would slow down the rotation to give more time for each set of outlets, I think it would be a neat thing to do...

 

[Scooterman]

Actually a proximity switch installed at the correct point in the OM head will allow the PLC to switch on & off the OM at whatever given time needed or a multiple time intervals if desired. The little Siemens PLC I got sells for around $200 new, I think it has 8 Di's & 4 DO's, so you can do a good bit with one, also you can expand it as necessary.I don't have the software nor did I program it, I have so many guys at work that does that daily It is a breeze for them so a little beer will go a long way for me but I have in the past done some programming & for what we need it shouldn't be too difficult, maybe I could even get someone to write something up If we have the same software but from there it would be good to have someone locally to modify it or add on as necessary, these reef controllers you buy for $500 is basically the same thing but custom designed for our hobby.