75 gal Holy crap what have I done? Errr, make that 90gal.

[Beza]

So thought I'd mention a great tip for all you others out there who may have what you *think* is more general knowledge about the world than the average bear...

Calm down before you do ANYTHING and READ more about it! Ha ha ha.

Case in point:

I figured I'd start with the design of the 90gal I'm getting. Already traded the cichlids for 2 pumps, danners, 1200 and 1800. 75gal which I will use as a sump is all cleaned and ready for bastardization...

Moving the 90 is going to be a beyatch, so I thought I would begin my experimenting early by running a temp system in the 75, just to see how all the plumbing and everything performs. Plan is to move all the stuff from the 90 into a functioning environment in the 75, then transfer it back after everything is at my place.

As of right now, I have 3 pumps total, one will be used for CL, and the other will be used to run that massive beast of a skimmer I picked up (bullet 2). I am aiming at around 800-900gph on the CL, and I haven't decided if I will run the bullet with the danner 1800 or the pcx-40.

So of course I decide that I should waste like 50 bucks and build a temporary CL system for the 75, complete with 4 weird loc-line head thingies. This way I can run the skimmer and everything to see how well things perform. I can practice my chemistry on a plain old boring piece of water, too.

After getting my nose into a bit of reading that seems to preach on the benefits of variable flows and things like that, I look into getting a wave-maker or something expensive sounding. Research leads me to find that wavemakers actually ARE expensive... great. So the inventive wheels in my head start grinding. Slowly. What I come up with is that I should use a sprinkler controller, and maybe sprinkler valve systems with all those neat little solenoids.

What I find is that solenoids will NOT work. They all open directly to the water supply, as far as I can tell, and they all appear to be made of a plain old bi-metal disk that will of course explode into rust if I even mention saltwater in the general area.

So Shawn holds up a sprinkler itself, and peers at it in the light... slowly remembering his time as a valve technician, in addition to the job when he was younger as a golf course sprinkler mechanic. Then it hits: the idea. Of course those damn sprinklers run on water pressure, leeching a bit of the flow to turn that crap little mechanism that turns the head slowly... why not make something that uses all that pump flow that I so obviously will be wasting?

So I visit my dad that weekend, and tell him about my plan with subtle hints that he should lend me a copy of masterCAM so I can make a file that his machines can mill me the perfect sprinkler drive. I am rewarded for my efforts with a polite "no", and 2 old sprinkler heads that don't work.

After days of intensive research & development, I happen to be trolling the internet for any pvc valves I can find, when suddenly I come upon something called an SCWD... for 30 bucks. Oddly enough, it does exactly what the thing that I had designed does, albeit at a greater loss of flow, and with a lot less style - but it works.

So I throw away the sprinkler heads, and grab the SCWD from A.I.

...a bit of reading could have saved me this trouble. Why the hell didn't I look for some newb tank-building site?

I'll put some more pics up soon.