Your plumbing looks awesome... I'm doing the plumbing ATM too... doesn't look as good as yours and I don't get the solitude... I get the kids wanting to "help" and the wife wanting me to do anything that doesn't involve working on the fish tank.

So, I filled my tank with fresh water this morning. Everything checked out and there are no real problems to speak of.

Ironically, we had a flash rain storm here this evening and one of the basement window wells flooded. I figure about 20 gallons of water ended up on the carpet. Oh well...

<New Content Posted>

Fresh water testing...........................Post 16

Concept built my tank as well, they did a very good job on it and I'm 99.9% happy with it. They did get a litte sloppy in a couple of places with the silicone, IE: when the bottom trim went on some of the silicone sqeezed out and above the trim and was left there. Other then that I have ZERO complaints, it was completed earlier then quoted, all of the holes were where they were supposed to be and I have A LOT of holes, 16 of em in my tank.

I would recommend them to anyone.

Great build, a lot of thought went into your tank!

We would love to take credit for building your tank but i am positive you are thinking about Concept Aquarium up in edmonton :redface: lol

Sorry Brad had to jump in too clear that up, back to your great thread you have going here, oh by the way give me a call when you need help setting up your rocks would love to see what you come up with

My apologies for making the mistake.

Swimming with the fishes...

http://owa.footit.ca/wwwimages/tn_merman.jpg

I can tell you that the water is cold. :smile:

Thanks Robb! - Your build is pretty spectacular too.

Whoa. Is it a jumper? :D

Very well thought out build. Will be really nice to see it all come together. I can't remember, but are you going to have automatic water changes on the tank?

I'd be interested to know the definition of an "automatic water change system" . I've heard it used to describe a fully automated system and I've heard it used to describe a mechanical system? - Just semantics I guess.

I am planning a mechanical system. Honestly, I don’t trust computers enough to automate this aspect of tank maintenance. The system I have in mind should allow me to change about 65 gallons of water in under a minute.

Anyway, this is the next post that I was planning to write, so I’m not going into detail here. I should have something ready to post in the next couple of days.

Thanks for the question…

Thanks for that. I'm having fun with the build thread. Not as much fun as I am with the tank, but still fun.

<New Content Posted>

Water Changes - Part I of II..................<moved to post 39 - changed status to experimental>

A week ago I had a totally different system in mind. I'd been planning this for months and had it completely figured out. I even had the updated content ready to post.

After reading some of the other threads on Canreef, I started wondering whether I had the best possible system for my application. In a nut shell, I've done a complete 360 from my original plan and have decided to go with a continuous water change system.

I would be very interested if anyone had suggestions for optimizing this system or can see potential problems. I'd also be interested if anyone is using a similar setup?

Today, I ordered 300 pounds of BRS "Reef Saver" Dry Aquarium Eco Rock.

The concept of dry rock was entirely foreign to me until only recently. Everyone uses “live rock” right? Well… Consider the advantages.

Live Rock
• Matures quickly and provides some bio-diversity.

Dry Rock
• Guaranteed not to have any pests (critters or algae).
• No water weight, so pound for pound you get more.
• Significantly cheaper.
• Much easier to aquascape as it can be done dry.

The dry rock can obviously be seeded with good quality live rock. I will not be using the live rock in my 90g as there is some pest algae that I don’t want in the new tank. I’ll either use this live rock in a qt setup or perhaps try to sell it.

I am actually really excited about this purchase. It is a big step forward in terms of planning and keeping this project on track.

Prior to making this decision, I ordered 20 pounds of the rock from BRS. I asked for an eight pound piece and a twelve pound piece. Here’s what it looks like.

http://owa.footit.ca/wwwimages/tn__ecorock06.jpg

http://owa.footit.ca/wwwimages/tn__ecorock03.jpg

http://owa.footit.ca/wwwimages/tn__ecorock01.jpg

Nice looking rock... I can't wait to see what you do with it :D

<New Content Posted>

Aquascaping - Part I of III...................Post 21
- Supporting the structure

Status Update

We've been renovating the basement, so work on the tank has been slow. However, things are starting to get back on track and I'm hoping to have salt water in the tank within the next 4-6 weeks. There's a ton of work to do between now and then.

nice Brad, cant wait to see what you do with the scape.

Really neat idea with the peg system. Can't imagine how long that must have taken you...wow! I think I'd give the peg leg thing a try one day but maybe forgo the slots due to laziness.

So what do you have planned for rock->rock stacking? Are you also drilling and pegging those?

I find the peg idea to be really intriguing. My only concern might be that once you put the substrate in (your plan if I read your build right) the sand will fill in the peg holes. Subsequently, I would think that this fill-in would make it really difficult to move the aquascaped pegs after-the-fact (as the sand would presumably fill in the holes). Have you given any thought to this?

Other than that little problem, I think this is a wicked idea for aquariums. It keeps the rock stable and protects the bottom from scratches. So long as algae and things cant slip underneath I could see people implementing this into their builds.

Thanks for the comments and feed back!! - It's was nice to hear from you.

Thanks John. Seeing what you've done with your tank has been inspiring.

I do plan to drill the rock where necessary, and to use acrylic rod within the rock structure to create overhangs and other such structures. I really can't say exactly what it will look like, which is percisely why I wanted a system that was flexible. I figure once I start stacking the rock it will become clear.

You are right about the substrate. Once the sand goes in, the whole peg system becomes fixed. I figure I will have to vacuum out the holes as I am working with the rock to get rid of any lose particles that break off. In any event, I will take the time necessary to get it right the first time.

- Brad

With that in mind though, you might only have a few pegs drilled into even the largest of your rocks. You seem to have enough pegs drilled in that, even with only a few minutes of substrate vacuuming (depending on the depth of your sand bed), you should have enough sand off to adjust your rocks. It might not be as tedious as suggested, but we'll have to see.

Looking forward to the rest of the updates!

Things are looking really good so far Brad ! I like the the two return pumps mostly if one should fail you still have one for some sort of flow. Also if I was to buy rock again I would most definitely use dry, I bought a piece of live rock awhile back and is now causing much grief which I'll explain on another post. Look forward to the aquascaping. Keep up the good work :)

Thanks Mike. Redundancy was important to me because I once had a return pump fail while I was away on vacation. Not a lot of fun. However, I really like the Eheim pumps and the only way I could get the flow I wanted was to use two of them. It also allows me to service one pump without having to issolate the sump. There's really lots of benefits.

I'd never had a 1262 before and found the 3/8" fittings on the smaller models frustrating. Another great thing about those pumps is you can use standard 3/4" threaded adapters from the hardware store.

I always use a mix of live and dry rock, but it think having a good amount of live rock is needed to seed the tank.

You raise a good question. How much live rock do you need to seed dry rock and what rock to buy?

It would defeat the purpose to buy live rock for seeding and then to introduce unwanted hitch hikers to the tank (bubble algea, aptasia, etc.)

I wonder if anyone with a clean tank would be willing to put some of my dry rock into their tank to seed it? Even smallish pieces should work?

It would probably be easier to buy a small piece of LR from a clean established tank to seed your new rock.

we currently have about 60lbs dry rock in the display tank of our 75....and 3 lbs cured live rock from an established tank. It seems to be doing the trick...I threw in some scallop and saw an ammonia spike, but levels have gone back to normal. I imagine as long as you slowly add bio load to the tank, a minimal ammount of actual "live" rock would be needed. When I ordered from Marco rocks, they said all that was needed to seed the rockwork was a cup of establish sand or a few lbs of good rock from a fellow reefer etc.

So, I've made some significant progress on the tank. Everything got put on hold while we were doing some renovations in the basement, but I'm back on track. I've added a lot of new content with lots of pictures. Pretty much everything after post 18 is new.

Details (Black, Floor, HRV, Screen Top).......Post 17
Tank Leveling.................................Post 18
Water Prep and Salt Mixing....................Post 19

Aquascaping - Part II of III..................Post 22
- Building the aquascape

I'm hoping to have saltwater in this tank by sometime next week. There is no urgency on transferring live stock, so I will take my time cycling the tank and getting all of the equipment operational.

I am for sure buying LED lights. The leading contenders are Pacific Sun, ReefTech LED and Vertex. If you haven't seen my LED thread, take a look at some of the things that are going on here (Next Generation LED Lighting).

Thanks!

The tank is filling with ro/di as of 9pm tonight. At a rate of 100gpd, it should be full by Sunday afternoon.

very nice Brad, any hints on the aquascape ?

Thanks John. There are pics of the aquascape here.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...t=66389&page=3

very interesting with the pegs, and the rocks look great.

cant wait to see water and live stock in this beast.

I've made some progress...

* Added two buckets of Instant Ocean Reef Crystals - This raised the SG to 1.024 - I had expected to need more salt, but I guess I'm not complaining.
* Tunze Wavebox is working - I am getting a 1.25" wave - Not sure if that is good? - The wavebox is noisy! - Everything seems to suggest that it will quiet down at around the 2 - 3 week mark. I sure hope so.
* Skimmer is online - This is the Tunze Master DOC 9440 - It's rated at over 1000G for a FOWLR - Closer to 400G for a heavily stocked SPS reef. First impressions are good, but it's a quirky skimmer. I will have to keep my eye on it.
* Plumbed in two vertex UF-20 reactors for bio-pellets. I have 2L of pellets soaking in RO/DI now and I will add them to the first reactor tomorrow. I will add another 2L to the second reactor in a couple of weeks. I'm using a 50/50 mix of Vertex and NPX.
* I've got the sand in transit now - should be here soon.

I'm generally feeling good about my progress. I'm at the point where little things take a really long time to get done. There's still lots to do...

I just took the time to re-read this from the start, it's a bit of mind blowing experience the way you have this thread set up. :lol:

Anyhow, just wanted to say:
1) Everything looks stellar, nice work so far!

2) Be careful about how you've drained your laundry tank. Since I gather you're not requiring permits (since it looks like this is getting installed in an already developed area of the house), this may be less of a concern for you than it was for me - but technically it is now against code to have a sink indirectly drain into a floor drain like that. I did for my tank room exactly as you've done and I failed the plumbing inspection. I had no drain line I could tie into on the wall so I had to jackhammer the concrete, cut the pipe for the floor drain and tie into that, and then pour new concrete down. And that was the easy part (!!) because the sink drain itself has to be vented so I had to run a line up into the ceiling and route that to the nearest drain vent up to the roof, and T into that. Well, maybe that wasn't harder than the jackhammering but it still took some creative head scratching trying to figure out how to vent that sink.

3) Lee Valley is awesome. I like the sink brackets instead of legs idea. I actually have to replace my sink as it developed a crack and now leaks onto the floor, so I might just go with the brackets for the replacement sink. I'm glad I didn't replace it out yet before catching up on your thread! So: thanks for the idea. :cool:

Wow what a weird thread. whats with all the pop up pages to show pictures.. the attention to detail is amazing thou.

That is a massive update, coming along nicely! However, no pictures?!? Booooooooooooooo!!!

@John - I took some tips from your aquascaping. I would have tended to put as much rock as I could fit in the tank. After seeing your tank, I used way less and really like the result.

@Tony - Thanks for the comments. I'm probably about a month behind your build. At the point where it's getting exciting.

I really had no idea about the laundy tank and building code. Ignorance is bliss. I guess at some point I will have to get around to fixing that. I don't think tearing up the concrete is an option, but the main drain may be reachable. Not a high priority, but something to do in the spring. I appreciate the tip.

@Skimmer_King - What pop up pages? - Just Kidding.

Two thoughts...

1) Most of the images in the thread are compressed for two reasons. Firstly to keep the page load times quick and secondly because the images are served from my Shaw connection and I don't want to overload it too much. I figure if an image is interesting, clicking for a high res version is reasonable.

2) If you were referring to the odd layout of the thread, well it seemed like a good idea at the time. In hind sight, it might have been more trouble than it was worth. I was really trying to set up the thread so that all of the content was in the first couple of pages. It can be frustrating trying to find things burried in some of the huge build threads here. In any event, it's too late to change it now.

Nice cabinets BTW - I plan on building pannels for my stand and using magnets to hold them in place.

@Kien - Thanks for the encouragement. I'll see what I can come up with for some new pics.

Neptune Apex controlling Tunze Wavebox
 

It would be great if the Apex had the granularity to control the wavebox directly, but it seems impossible to fine tune the wavebox using only the apex. The benifit is really to link the wavebox with the programmed feed cycles and night mode.

There's a trick to make this work.

I used the wavebox controller (6091) to set the wave and used the Apex controller to enable/disable the 6091 wave function.

The wiring diagram looks like this:

http://owa.footit.ca/wwwimages/tunze/tunze.gif

The Y adapter isn't strictly necessary but it makes things much easier because it serves as a gender changer for the cables. Both the wavebox controller (6091) and Apex have male ends whereas the Y adapter is female.

The second wavebox isn't necessary either. However, if two waveboxes are deployed in this configuration, they have to be on the same end of the tank running in synchronous mode.

The jumper in the 6091 controller needs to be set to slave mode to enable control from the Apex.

I haven't spent a lot of time experimenting with diffent voltages, but in the simpliest of terms:

10V from Apex = 6091 stops creating a wave. The pump shuts off.
0V from Apex = 6091 opperates in wave mode.

This seems counter intuitive, but it does make sense on one front. If the 6091 controller is disconnected from the Apex it opperates independantly and generates a wave. Therefore, it is not dependant on the Apex for opperation, rather it is dependant on the Apex to know when to shut off.

I plan on doing some more experimentation with this configuration, but for now I can confirm that it works.

This configuration is documented here:
• Tunze Wavebox (6215) and Powerheads.........Post 28

Outstanding build thread, and a well thought out build.

Question - I did not notice the tank drilled for a closed-loop system. With tank this size how did you decide this was not for you?

Hey - Thanks for note. That's a good question!

I ran a closed loop on my current tank (90G). It was based on two seperate loops (left and right) using an Oceans Motion Super Squirt 4-way on each loop. Each loop was driven by a Poseidon PS4 pump. The flow patterns were very dynamic and the system was silent. Overall, it worked perfectly but last spring I pulled it out and replaced it with Tunze powerheads.

There was really only one thing that I liked about the closed loop when compared to powerheads. When viewing the tank through the front pannel, it was barely visible. Aesthetically a closed loop wins every time, but that seems to be where the benefits end.

I pulled the closed loop out of my 90G for a couple of reasons. The first being the heat generated by the two Poseidon pumps. The second being the electrical consumption and the third being the maintenance of the pumps.

Here's the math that I worked through.

Closed Loop - 160W Power per pump - 1,200Gph per pump - Add 2-3 degrees F of heat to tank - silent
Powerheads - Max 48W per Tunze 6205 - 1,320 to 5,811 USgal./h - Doesn't add any noticable heat - silent

The 6205s are way to powerful for my 90G. I run them alternating at 30% power - I really bought them for this tank (300G).

The point is, a closed loop costs more money than powerheads, is either louder or adds heat (trade off for water cooled pumps), and can't match the flow rates.

Granted there are some cool things that you can do with a closed loop which aren't possible with powerheads, but the reverse is also true. Consider the various modes that a Vortex pump can opperate in.

I also like the fact that I can move the powerheads as the tank matures and corals grow. I can ramp up and down between 30% and 100% power. Cleaning is as easy as a vinigar soak.

All of these things were weighing on me when I envisioned this tank. When Steve Weast said that he wouldn't build a closed loop into his next tank because of the complexities and maintenance requirements, the decision seemed altogether obvious.

In my opinion, simple is always better. Although I completely agree that they are ugly, there's nothing simpler than a powerhead.

Well thought out.

For me both a closed loop system with powerheads make sense (then again I gave up on energy efficiency). I like the closed loop as it is essentially failsafe, requires little to no maintenance, is hidden, and can provide random "general" tank circulation. Powerheads are always required later on as the tank matures and as flow requirements increase. Nice to see powerheads getting smaller and moving more water.

Look forward to more updates.