5gluder's 55g peninsula tank
 

Hello,
I don’t normally post on here but frequent the forums a lot for information which I can generally find. Earlier this year I set out to build a 55 gallon peninsula tank. I previously I had a 33 gallon tank for 10 years, unfortunately a faulty heater cooked the tank. After a year I came up with a plan and decided to tackled it as my winter project….which continued into spring lol.
I choose to post this as a lot of my ideas came from tank journals so I figure others may benefit from viewing mine.

Day 1 decided this is the best spot to place the tank, the room is a bonus room above the garage.

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Cut off the top tier to have a flat deck to work with, opened us under to check and see how I can run the plumbing from the basement.

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I later decided that a 33 gallon was too small so I decided to widen the base…I also decided that the beige carpet was not complementing the tank enough so I ripped it out and installed hardwood everywhere :mrgreen:

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Following the electrical code I wasn’t going to splice into the existing wires(would have exceeded the number of allowable lights/ receptacles per circuit) to add receptacles for the tank. So I decided to run 2 dedicated wires from the panel

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I received my new tank, 3 sides with starfire glass. I built a stand in the basement identical to the one upstairs. I wanted to do leak tests and figure out the bulkhead/drains in the basement before moving upstairs.

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this going be an awesome build!

what are you going use for lighting?

Awesome planning 😃

Looks cool. I always love the first few steps of a build! As I was looking at the first picture I thought for sure you were going with a drop off tank. Second picture... not so much! Following!

So are you doing a basement sump? Or is it going underneath the stand?

Killer location for a tank!

From the looks of it it looks like the sump will be under the tank. By the way I love ur name I'll always have a sweet spot for preludes. 4th Gen srv are my favorite.

I have the sump under tank, but i built a stand in the basement to hold the RODI and mixing tank. I have a utility pump that pumps the water up to the sump, no buckets!

I decided to go with the Evergrow IT2080, reviews seem good so i thought i would give it a try.

lol yup i had my 5th gen for almost 13 years, love that thing and still miss it. If it didn't start rusting i would still have it.

Funny I almost bought a 96 srv. But i just loved the body style of the 5th gen.

I had some left over ditra from a shower reno that I decided to use. I figure this would help keep moisture in without damaging the drywall on the outside of the base.

I also ran a drain line to the basement, the drain line is split here, top one will be attached to the tank and the bottom is a just in case water leaks from the bulkheads or reservoir tank. Also added 2 fans to keep air moving.

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Doing some patching just so it looks clean :)
I also ran 2 separate water lines that would pump rodi and mixed saltwater.

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Attached the 14/2 wire and ran a network cable for the Apex. I decided to cover the base with a waterproof fabic, a lot of this is overkill but I couldn’t risk having water in the bonus room. Basically if water overflows from the sump, under the DT bulkheads or the RODI reservoir it will flow into the bottom drain without damaging the floor.

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hmmm base on what i see everything looks great except for the copper valves.

Your right, my problem is i needed a 3/4" pvc wall outlet. I could only find it in copper, which i then just ended up buying the brass gate valves with it.

I have an order for a plastic gate valve just waiting for it to arrive.

you should check out western plumbing they usually have a good stock. pricy but handy

Yeah great guys...but they are so far from me lol sometimes it's easier to just order online lol

Test fitting the doors

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I decided that I didn’t want handles, as this just gives kids a reason to open the doors and throw random items or unwanted food into the sump. So I decided to adapt the magnetic child lock system.

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The way it operates is once a magnet is place on the outside of the door it will cause the lock to open, at the same time I would push in the door and volia it pops open.

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Figuring out placements of the equipment.

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Copper/brass fittings are ok if they are before the RO/DI unit. Otherwise get them out of there for sure.

Good progress though!

Such a wicked location! Perks of owning a house!! Haha awesome progress. You have a live stock list?

I'll start out with the hardy basics, clownfish, royal gramma, goby...not sure after that

Test fitting the sump

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Starting to come together :mrgreen:

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Called a couple friends to help me bring the tank up

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Test fitting the canopy, the canopy has a vent on one side. Using blum hinges on the wall the canopy will pivot open. Don't pay attention to the hundred holes lol.

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Things are looking good, looking forward to seeing it filled

I decided to make a foam rock wall for the back of the tank. I had seen a lot of people using foam to create fake coral around the over flow, decided to give it a try. Got the light diffusers from HD and painted with Fusion black paint.

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Picked up some black foam from Lowes…I ended up using about 3 cans. And dumped some rock salt to create a more rough surface.

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Next using West epoxy from Lee Valley I covered the pieces with sand.

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I wanted to angle the pieces slightly, so I shaved all the edges to get a nice angle against the back wall.

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Once everything was in place using GE silicone I then filled the edges with foam. The extra foam pieces came in handy for keeping them in place.

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Starting to clean up the edges.

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Final product :biggrin:

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It's looking cool. Nice work hiding the back wall

Picked up some nice Pukani from Eli, decided to go with this design.

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A large portion of this project was trying to figure out where to place the RODI and mixing tanks. So I built this ridiculous stand to hold 4 containers. Top will be a roughneck 14 gallon for RODI and a 10 gallon QT tank. Middle with be the SW mixing container and the bottom is solely to reduce waste water. Basically the discharge line from the RODI goes into this container and will be plumbed to the washer and outside line. A little giant pump that I had laying around will pump the water out. The black containers I purchased from Reno depot. I had done some testing with leaching and didn’t find any phosphates.

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Added the Spectra pure 90 and a drinking water tank. I read some people had the RODI pipes/connectors fail, i had a floodstop sensor that i bought for the fridge. This sensor allows you to have multiple sensors so i installed one under the fridge and one under the RODI.

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I bought a high head pump to pump the water up two floors to the sump. My initial goal was to have 2 pumps one for salt and one for RODI. I may still do this but for now i will stick with the one pump.

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This is pretty much the final product.

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Figured out all the place of the equipment in the sump

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I had some led strips laying around so I decided to just stick those on, I’m waiting for a magnetic switch to come in, so the lights will turn on automatically when the door opens.

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So turns out i bought the wrong type of pump, i found the high head pump i bought started to rust so out it goes. I ended up ordering a Shurflo pump, hoping that will work.