Trouble maker! :)

Yes, I would use two Abyzz 420 pumps with a controller and call it a day ($4,800.00). You would do fine with two Abyzz 200s or even one if you tune it right. A couple $25 Eductors make it even more fun :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGASFHEWL8

Sorry, I don't care for the short mechanical wave action and I'm aiming for a more sustained water velocity of 15cm/sec in the mid and lower zones.

The wave video is just a gimmick to show the possibilities. I don't care for the waves either. You can use two pumps on the controller as a closed loop, return pump or drop them right in the tank. You can run them at 5% to keep water moving through the pipe and at the opposing end, run one at 100% for your five hour tidal flow.

Paul's adaptation of his Revolutions product to an inline solution for you is nothing short of pure genius. His best ideas are inspired from specialized requirements like yours.

Lexan will still warp. I have used lots of these lids over the years.

Remember those are the Seaswirl flow limits, not the limits of the Dart to push water through a Seaswirl.

I did a 600 gallon acrylic tank (96x30x48) a few years ago, using two darts on 2 OM 4ways, with a Blueline 100 return pump. Flow was excellent. Use an online head loss calculator to make sue you are getting the best out of your system.

Use threaded parts where you can so it is easier to adapt to change.

did you have that motorized valve on there

Huh? I had two Oceans Motion 4-ways. The two Darts worked, but since then I have switched to higher pressure pumps like Iwaki an Abyzz DC brushless if the budget can fit them.

I found that a Blueline 70, rated at 1750 GPH moves more water than a Dart with a potential of 3600 GPH, if you have significant friction loss and 1" PVC.

I also like the idea of a magnet coupled pump. Sequence are the best of the direct drive pumps, but even with silicon carbide seals, they can leak or cavitate after a few years of use.

Here is a picture of the 600 gallon tank showing most of the plumbing. There are two intakes with two strainers on each. Since then I have switched to the same Banjo strainers Mitch is using. The intakes are set up to draw incoming water from the opposing ends of the aquarium, so the left intake returns to the right and vice versa. There are six closed loop returns on the bottom in spiral upwards 45˚ angles. There are four more closed loop returns for a total of ten on the two OM 4-ways (two at the bottom of the end across from the end overflow, and one beside the overflow at the top, and one at the bottom beside the overflow.

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/a...t/IMG_6050.jpg

There are two closed loop ports to the left of the end overflow (top & bottom).

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/a...t/IMG_6047.jpg

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/a...t/IMG_6054.jpg

This is the end without the overflow. The two top ports are for the sump return (Blueline 100) and the two bottom are part of the closed loop. Water exiting here is drawn from the intake at the other end of the tank for additional mixing. The end to end flow across the top assures that there are absolutely no dead spots on the surface. A good test of your system is to add some flake food and see if it either sinks or gets skimmed within 30 seconds. If it gets stuck along the edges, you need to fine tune your plumbing.

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/a...t/IMG_6043.jpg

My needs were unique with this tank because it is 4' deep/high and as such there is a greater need for moving water to the surface air/water interface for oxygenation.

You learn with every tank. It's one of the rewards of the hobby.

As I'm not certain as to the success of my proposed setup, I think I'll see how the Dart pumps do before I start saving my pennies for $2000+ pumps.:smile:

I realize that the Seaswirl setup is limited by the Seaswirls, not the pump.

My biggest challenge is going to be adequately feeding whatever I keep in the tank for corals. Hopefully I can identify some zones where food will accumulate out of the circulation pattern.

Thanks.

Don't let me talk you out of your Superdart pumps. They will serve you well for a closed loop system. They just need large plumbing and short runs without nozzle restrictions.

Take an extra day or two to play around with the plumbing before you ad salt & rocks. You will quickly see how they perform with the Seaswirls. You will also see how much force you get out of one lone sump return, alternating sides. You have to strike a balance between flow that reaches the opposite end of the tank without blowing the paint off of the corals on the way there :)

Your sump return line will need some nozzles to diffuse the flow. I would aim for a maximum of 1,000 GPH out of any one return port, but that's just my personal preference.

I was thinking of 2" sump return lines with no nozzles and a gate valve to control the return flow.
How do you think the Dart would handle that?
The returns would be pointed along the back wall facing each other on opposite ends. No corals would be placed in the direct flow.

I agree 100% it wasn't designed to do that, just to show how using inlets and outlets correctly can greatly increase the flow potential, and to show that you do not need a dirty great big box in the tank to get far more movement than a wave box could ever achieve.

Plus the point that already having a Profilux the last thing I want to add is another controller.:wink:
They sound like great pumps.
I wonder if a Profilux could accomplish the same timing for someone that would want that type of water movement?

As stated before the reeflo dart golds are great pumps (from customer and my personal viewpoint) but I have never had any experience with starting and stopping them on a daily or hourly basis (really not recommended) . I would though recommend your return from your sump to be a constant. You should not need any more holes drilled to accomplish your required tasks. Mitch it looks like you have some options on your 5/1/5 flow pattern which is great.

Kevin

The Profilux can control a wide variety of pumps including the Abyzz. The Abyzz controller has pump temp, RPM, water sensor, and wattage draw which you can't get with aquarium controllers. Whether you need these features or not is another matter :)

Make sure if you have a variable water level in your sump that your skimmer isn't adversely affected. You can have it shut off on the same timer, if you go that route.

Oh I didn't know that. So you can buy these pumps without controllers. Also nice to know.

The pump comes with a power supply with alarms for power or water shortage. There is a rheostat to manually set the pump output/RPM.

The cool thing about brushless DC pumps is they use less energy at lower RPMs. When you turn the 420 watt pump down to 65% capacity, it only uses 94 watts. A cycle of 35% for 10 seconds and a pulse of 65% for 2 seconds uses much less energy and gives the same net flow (without waves).

I tested a DC pump out of The Netherlands recently. It;s half the price and almost half the electricity, but the magnet on the pump stated to show rust pitting after three months use.

There are a few companies working on brushless DC pumps. Wait 6-12 months and you will see them replacing Iwaki and Sequence etc. For now, the price puts them out of reach for most.

I like the faux rock ! I would mind doing something like that to the back wall of my next tank. Can anyone tell me what this is called and point me at a DIY thread ???

There are lots of threads on aragocrete, spray foam, and epoxy faux rock.

http://reefcentral.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1300282

Thanks, everyone.
With regards to the actual building progress, my work has taken up pretty much 100% of my building time for the past month.
I think I can get the stand built this coming weekend, but I'm not sure if I will get the actual tank on the stand.
I'm looking forward to designing the back wall that is going to accommodate the mechanical support system.

Ron Shimek's sand formula is a good one, but it leaves out one important factor... scratching acrylic. I use Special grade with some extra shells and coarse sand mixed in. This way you are less likely to stir it up and get it stuck in cleaning magnets and it won't scratch the bottom of the viewing panels as much when you use a plastic scraper.

This is my first acrylic tank, so I need to learn a number of techniques and maintenance schedules that I'm not used to. The special grade is actually too large for keeping a number of different organisms that I would like.

The longer I think about it, the less I want to put in this tank. I want to be sure that whatever I put in there, I want to be able to feed enough.
I'm in no rush to stock it.

I got the basic stand frame done today. I still want to put two joists with hangers in the middle, but LVL's need special hangers and nails. I would like to find someone in Calgary that stocks them. Home Depot wants 10 - 14 days to order them in.

I used 1-3/4 X 9-1/2 LVL for the beams (doubled up front and back) and 6 x 6 treated dimensional lumber for the legs. I'll be moving the tank into place using an engine hoist, so I needed clear floor under the stand to allow for the hoist wheels. With the strength of the beams, I won't need any other support underneath, but I may still frame up a wall under the back and sides then sheet it with plywood to prevent racking of the stand once the tank is loaded with water and rocks.
Alternatively, I could put in some knee braces to give it a timberframe look.

I like using engineered lumber for stands because it's simple, beefy and straight.


http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3681.jpg


http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3684.jpg


I used this laser level to level things:


http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3687.jpg




http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3686.jpg

Wow that's one simply way to do legs! Although I doubt I have the skills to cut posts like that myself.

Does Rona/Home Depot sell those LVLs right in the store? Good idea!

:smile:
With a pencil lay out the area to be removed.
Tools required to cut the posts are:
circular saw
reciprocating saw

Use a chisel and block plane to clean up the cuts. It takes about 10 minutes per post.

Rona or HD doesn't stock the LVL's. Go to the contractor desk and order them. I think they'll round up the size to the nearest 6" and give you about 1/2" extra length to square off each end. There are a lot of different sizes available.

Well it's been a month. What's up?

Got it on the stand, started on plumbing and it's filling with water. I had to stop the water fill until I'm back home for that.
Work has been crazy busy.
I've got some pics to post this weekend.:smile:

I got the hangers and special nails for the center joists and got those mounted:

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3689.jpg

put down some plywood and got the tank on the stand.
Here is a pic of the intake portion of the closed loop completed:

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3694.jpg

Here I've started the framing for the workbench behind the tank with the closed loop pump roughly in place:

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3696.jpg

I've started the filling of the tank with R/O DI. One thing that I'm not happy with is that the DI cartridge is already 80% exhausted and the tank is only 25% full so far.

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/IMG_3695.jpg

The RO unit is a 300 GPD from BRS. The RO unit itself is giving an output value of between 2 and 5 TDS.

I'm stalled a bit for setting up the sump at this point because I don't have a setup finalized for the sump return plumbing. I could set up two pumps and control the bidirectional flow pattern with my Profilux, but I've been in contact with Reeflo and they tell me that the constant on/off cycles would shorten the life of the capacitors and do no damage to the motor itself.
They have also told me that if my valving setup involves a total shut off of the output for any length of time that it would also not damage the pump. It would just result in a transfer of heat to the water trapped in the impeller chamber.

Another option that I came up with is that instead of the pump turning off for the rest cycle, the water could just be diverted back into the sump tank for the hour. That way the pump would run continuously and the sump would get a bit of a "super rinse" cycle.
Perhaps an existing OM unit could be modified with some timers instead of inventing a new setup.

The cycle would then be:

5 hours through output #1
1 hour sump recirculation
5 hours through output #2
1 hour sump recirculation

repeat.

Maybe that's something I can do myself. I haven't had time to sit down and think it through.

Well I'm on my third time filling the aquarium now.
About 1/2 full one of the bulkheads started dripping so I drained it and filed down some imperfections in the mould for the bulkheads because I thought that that might be the cause. It wasn't.
Drained it again and thought the problem could be from the way the manufacturer gave me a blue background on the tank.
What they did was take a 1/4" blue acrylic panel and glue it inside to the 1" clear back panel. It's hard to tell, but the water must have found a pathway between the two panels and made it's way to the threaded portion of the bulkhead, bypassing the rubber seal and leaking out the threads.
I took some methylene chloride (solvent for the acrylic) and applied it between the two panels, then clamped it together with the bulkhead.
The tank is about halfway full again and the bulkhead is remaining leak free.
We have low water pressure here - between 40 and 60 psi with an incoming water temp of about 10c, so the 300 gpd RO unit is only producing about 60 gpd.
When I needed to drain the tank I only have a spare 180 gallon old aquarium to transfer the water to, so the rest has to go down the drain.
Not the end of the world, but a little frustrating and time consuming.
Guess that what leak tests are for.

Water's in, plumbing's leak free, salt's in, sand's in.:smile:
I'm expecting the cloudiness to take a week to settle down.
I need to order some loc-line or something similar to drop the outlets of the Seaswirls about 1-1/2" because they are causing too much turbulence and noise at the top.
The closed loop is running fine, but I had to shorten the lower part of the workbench because I decided to use for a sump an old 180g aquarium I had instead of selling it and buying a plastic replacement. 4' of the sump will be tucked under the aquarium to save on space a bit.
Because I'm now using a glass sump, it's not as easy to drill and experiment with different hookups.
I don't have a final valving configuration for the bidirectional tidal flow yet. Hopefully that will be figured out soon, otherwise I'll be going with two separate pumps.
I would like to get the sump drilled and finalized next weekend.

...and here's a couple of pics:

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/DSCN1309.jpg

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/DSCN1308.jpg

Looks great Mitch! Bet you can't wait to see "stuff" in there.. :)

Like how you've mounted the seaswirls. One nice thing about these larger tanks is the increased elbow room. I thought my 280g was big until I started getting stuff mounted on the light rack. I want an auto feeder up there somewhere but I haven't figured out where I'll be able to shoehorn it in. I don't imagine you're going to run into a lot of the same issues. :)

Thanks, Tony.
Actually, up to this point I have had a thought in the back of my mind saying to me - what kind of a make work project have you gotten yourself into this time?..:lol:

Not until I saw the sand in it today have I really become excited about it!
Now I want to stay home from work and just keep working on it.:mrgreen:
Not an option, I'm afraid!

I see they now have come out with 1-1/2" seaswirls. I might upgrade to a couple of those in the future. We'll see how these do.

I have an auto-feeder planned too.
The top brace on the tank is 8" wide, so I had lots of room for it to sit.
It's going next to the front left sea swirl.
It comes with a tube that extends down below the surface of the water so it stops the food from going down the overflow.

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/w...m/DSCN1312.jpg

What is the output nozzle like on the seaswirls? I've been wanting to replace the outputs on my wavysea's with locline too but I think I'd have to switch the output from stock to 1" PVC elbow with a bushing to mount the locline and I kind of worry how bad that would look. Plus when I tried hanging Tunzes off them initially with a DIY bracket, I found that 1" PVC was just ever so slightly too large for a snug fit. I don't know if it's a metric size or what but it's not a standard 1" PVC coupling size for the output apparently.

It looks like it's a 1" male threaded to barb adapter.
Is your threaded or slip?

Glad to see the tank brought online in some form that thing's a beast!

looking good Mitch what is the tank mainly going to be .

Awesome. Most likely lol.

Slip, sort of. It's grooved to hold an o-ring. When I was playing around with the DIY mounts I tried larger o-rings to see if that could make it snug but it was either too big or too small, never "just right".

Threaded makes a lot of sense!!! Score one for Seaswirls in that case.

One of mine stopped working so I've taken it off and was going to crack it open to see if I could fix it, if that works out maybe I'll swap the pipe for for a threaded fitting (I have no idea how feasible the idea is, never looked inside a Wavysea before).

Thanks.

SPS in the top zone for sure.
I'm working on getting the sand bed set so that it can be as friendly as possible for a functioning DSB. I've learned that there are some animals in the sandbed that do not like living by large objects, like our aquarium walls or rocks. I can't do anything about the walls of the aquarium, but what I can do is suspend the rock structure above the sand floor. How I'm going to do that is still undecided. I could drill out some pieces of large PVC or I could drill some acrylic legs into the bottom rocks. On top of those bottom rocks I'll drill and peg or epoxy the rest of the rock.
I'm also kind of interested in what will happen with all the crud that the live rock sheds, like when you "cook" a tub of live rock. I'm interested in what will happen to that detritus as it falls to the sandbed.
I'm going to be ordering some detrivore kits from Indiana and Hawaii once the weather warms up in a few months. Before then I don't think they would survive the shipping process.
By then the sand bed will have matured so that those organisms can survive when I get them.

Once I have the rock in place, I'll try to determine where food in the water column is going to accumulate and I'll start placing larger polyp corals in those areas. I'm going to try various plankton and live brine shrimp.
I'm interested to see what happens when I get that bidirectional flow going.
Maybe build some caverns that will channel the water somehow.

If I can find some locally, i'm going to be starting the tank on ProdiBio this coming week.

In the Summer 2010 issue of the magazine Invertebrate Biology, there is an article - Effect of a fluctuating thermal regime on adult and larval reef corals, where the authors study the effects of a daily temperature fluctuation between 21 and 28 degrees celsius (70 - 82 fahrenheit).
They set up a number of 10g tanks where they controlled the temperature using a Neptune controller, heaters and chillers. The temperatures were forced up or down according to the natural temperature fluctuations at Nanwan Bay, Taiwan.
They found that the varying temperature environment made for corals that were stronger and more likely to survive incidences of high heat situations.
I wonder if that isn't the next step in advancing our keeping of corals; trying to even more closely replicate the environment where they originate? How may years ago was it that SPS were deemed impossible to keep?
I think we've got the "survivable" parameters down pat, I would like to see a lot more incidences of coral spawning reported and a lot less reports of "mysterious" coral deaths.

My analogy of how we keep corals now with rock solid steady parameters is like growing a tree in a nice, climate controlled greenhouse. The tree does fine while all parameters are steady and even, but bring along the slightest breeze or other environmental fluctuation and the tree can't take the stress.
Meanwhile, the same species of tree growing outdoors in the wind, rain, heat and cold does just fine.

I'm trying to come up with a way to incorporate this into my system.

The article is from my paid subscription, so I don't think I should post it here, but if someone would like me to shoot them a PDF, let me know.