Yes once I get my thermal compound I will be cutting the copper pipe to the proper size and attaching it to the aluminum plate. Plumbing water to run underground to dissipate the heat. The pump will be under the house so there will be no noise from the pump and best of all most of the time there will be no noisy fans blowing... (on hot days I may have a fan set up to help with cooling the tank... I may just install a solenoid to have the water cool off the sump.)

Oh you misunderstood my thread! That is my planning list for my tank. I have none of that yet. I have a sump on hold for me though but the equipment is still on my want list :smile: But yah, my tank is on the stand though:lol:. I do want my tank running by August though at the latest with its first fish.

LOL okay... but when do you "plan" on having fish?

By the end of august hopefully, probably sept like yourself.

oh... okay then we are close to the same stage I just have a lot more work ahead of me :D

I would say so, I have this month to gather the bare neccesities to run my tank, sump, pump, skimmer, plumbing, rock, substrate, salt, RO water, and at least one MP40 and then I can start cycling it. I can bring the light into the picture by mid august and then by the end of august or begining of september, i can have fish!

Basically I'm waiting on a drill bit to arrive and that's at least 2 weeks away. Then I will be putting my tank on the stand and start setting up the plumbing (it will take at least one week to do, That's the start of august if I'm lucky... probably mid august)... I'll give the plumbing about 1 week to cure then I can start adding the rest of the rocks and sand (if I have to glue any rocks to hold them in place I'm looking at another week min to cure.) I'm hoping some time in September... maybe the end of September.

Oh the fun of waiting Eh? Its torture enough to see the tank just sitting there, taunting you to hurry up and put it to use

be careful on "glueing" the rocks in place it makes for harder future aqua scaping. what some ppl do is drill holes in the rocks and ad plastic pegs to hold them in place then you can take them apart and move if need be in the future. i tried using frag putty to hold a few rocks in place as well and it doesnt seem to stick and just pops apart. most of my rocks are just carefully placed as to not cause a rock slide.

but since you are doing the waiting game set up a mock tank out of carboard or wood and pre plan your aquascape gives you time to get that litle bit of perfection without getting as wet:)

Large plastic tie straps work well with small pieces and mixed with acrylic rods for bigger pieces just drill some holes it's how I kept my eel from toppling over his mountain lair when I had him:)

I really liked your homemade liverock idea and I'm gonna try it out over the next few weeks I'm going to gather up materials next week and you'll probably here from me asking what went wrong lol looking forward to love projects like this:)

As I said if I have to I will glue... don't plan on it though... but I'm taking my rocks out tomorrow so I will have lots of time to try and figure out what I'm doing.

I may use the tie straps and rods but I will see first how well I can stack them.

I find making the rocks a blast... one thing to keep in mind is in my video I said 1 part cement I would not do it again with less then 1.5 parts.

What did you find when using just one part? Is there anysize restrictions to rock or larger pieces just take longer to cure??

Just one part would cure faster... I just found there wasn't enough strength. The rock with just one part tends to be flaky and weak (the outsides of the rock tends to flake off little by little... it's a pain)... 1.5 parts is about the sweet spot where it is still very porous and has enough strength. May take a little bit longer to cure but it's worth the wait.

Cant wait to see this filled. Tagging along

Welcome aboard :D

So I was thinking (always trouble when I do that) solder is a pretty good conductor of heat... and it's a lot cheaper then thermal compound I'll just solder the pipe to the aluminum... so I attach all my pipe to the aluminum and all the corners, so I have a nice long single line... I start to solder and I solder the elbow to the small connecting piece then to the other elbow... seems a little difficult but I figure it's just cause I haven't done it in a very long time... then I try to solder the elbow to the long line... not happening... I keep trying anyways... after about 5 min of going "What the heck!" I figure it out... (most people know that to solder you need both pieces to be hot enough to melt the solder so it can "stick") Well it turns out that my aluminum heat sink works well with no solder or thermal paste as it wont let the pipe attached to it heat up enough to solder it. Now I'm going to have to take all the pipe off and solder it before re-attaching it. What a pain. oh ya and there will be no soldering the pipe to the aluminum. (live and learn... darn heat-sink works too well.)
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...otthinking.jpg

Here is my DIY rock in the ocean and laid out on my lawn.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...cksinocean.jpg
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...aulingrock.jpg
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...oatofrocks.jpg

The rock in her hands is the one she made :D

http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...awithrocks.jpg

It's looking good can't wait to see it in person ;) if you still need a hand to move it later give me a shout I'm just up in Comox by the Air Force base.

You bet... there isn't much to see at the moment though... I have a ton of work ahead of me. But I will definitely call you when I go to move the tank... a tank that weighs 1000lbs with about 100lbs of rock inside definitely needs many hands...(but they all need to not be underneath...)

lol want me to call on the airforce boys

ROFL... I'm going to jack it up and make it so you need as few people as possible... not much lifting mostly sliding from the jacked up rollers it's on to the stand then the hard part is lifting one side to take out the boards then lifting the other side. But I'll keep it in mind :D

Well this is me soldering the pipe to the aluminum plate (to fill in gaps and help with heat transfer) It's kinda messy but a little cleaning and it won't look too bad... plus it will be on the side nobody can see :D
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...ngHeatSink.jpg

How is your heatsink going to be set up? I maybe missed it but are you running tank water through the copper pipe? Or will it be attached outside somehow?

It will be on a separate closed loop system that will travel under the ground to dissipate heat... I may in the future branch off of the pipe and have it run through some plastic pipe and have tank water on the outside of the pipe to cool the tank on hot days.

320g build/journey/experiment :-)
 

Nice thread! Lots of great and original ideas.

Agreed some pretty hardcore stuff going on here. I dig your creativity.

Especially love the shot of you taking the rock out on the raft lol! Not something I've seen in many (or any) build threads.

Thanks I hope that with my "original ideas" (most are rip offs of other people just applied slightly different) I can do some things that have not been done that well in reefing (like a high bio load)

I hope with my creativity that I can create a very low maintenance set-up, but the set-up is hella slow.... I want my fish! oh well soon enough :D

http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...oreofstand.jpg

Tagging Along ! :smile:

I wondered if the ceiling above the tank would be staying? Is there much space above for access to the tank?

Simon.

Welcome aboard... There is not much space... it may be a problem in the future but for now it's staying the way it is... (I'll cross that bridge if I come to it)

I love a good build thread and this one is great. Have put any thought yet into livestock?

I can't take it any longer. I have to know how you soldered copper to aluminum.

Here are the fish in no particular order:

Bartletts Anthias
Yellow Spotted Anthias
Bicolor Psudochromis
Diadema/Purpleback Pseudochromis
Neon Dottyback
Orchid Dottyback
Flame Cardinal
Bangaii Cardinal
Spotted Cardinal
Ochre Striped Cardinal
Sankeyi Dottyback
Australian Black Percula Clownfish
False Percula Clownfish
Sunshine Chromis
Blue Mandarin
Target Mandarin
Flaming Prawn Goby
Orange Firefish Goby
Purple Firefish Goby
Yellow Clown Goby
Long Nose Hawk
Geometric Pygmy Hawk
Blue Hippo Tang
Hawiian Yellow Tang
Six Line Wrasse
Flasher Wrasse

I know this is a long list... This is my long, short-list... I will probably not be getting all of these.

It's not perfectly soldered but it's pretty good and it's filled in most of the cracks... I used a tiger torch http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...070#post535070

Wow, this gives DIY a whole new meaning!! Looking good.

Yes, I saw the pic of you working with the tiger torch. The solder will move the heat efficiently to the aluminum.
Are you using a special type of solder? It sticks to aluminum?

It sticks to the copper and the copper is screwed onto the aluminum so it is held against the aluminum... if you took out all the screws it would still hold but if you gave it a little tap with a hammer it would release... so it is kinda sticking to the aluminum but not a very strong bond.

yeah ok, I see. Thanks.
For where there isn't any solder, you could put on some of that thermal compound,,the type they use on cpu's (sparingly of course) But just by being in contact with the aluminum, heat will migrate from the Al to the Cu pipe.

I thought that maybe they finally invented some new solder.

I was going to use thermal paste to "connect" my pipe to the aluminum but then I did some math and I do not believe it is needed or will make more then 1-5 degrees difference. But to attach the LED's to the aluminum you bet I will be using thermal compound.

This is a cool acrylic top I saw on someone's set-up so I got some mesh from a guy in the states (if your watching this feel free to post a link to your thread).
I ordered my acrylic... and like my glass nobody wants to give me what I want (they say it's too hard/too much work/they can't do it cause it shatters at that width)... so I buy a saw and an 80 dollar blade and cut it myself (at 1/2" in width there was not even a chip). Then I put it all together.
The saw and the pieces I cut.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...ithacrylic.jpg

The first step is to make the bottom rectangle. If you notice the piece that I put on top of the box is the full width. Making the boxes staggered like that helps to avoid weak spots.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x.../Arylicbox.jpg

Then you stretch the mesh on the one side and glue/clamp the top piece on.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...tchingmesh.jpg

Then you pull the mesh tight to the other side and stretch it width wise at the same time (difficult to do solo without the right tools).
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x...osidesmesh.jpg

The you do either side pulling it tight (you may get some mild warping) then put the tabs on to make sure it doesn't fall into your tank.
http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/x.../Installed.jpg

have to agree......great build thread and a great job on all the DIY stuff!:biggrin: