Help me plan under my tank

[kien]

Leave room for a fresh water auto top off reservoir. That is unless you are going to plumb your sump right into a RO/DI unit or something like that. I wouldn't mind doing that except that my tank is on my main floor and my RO/DI unit is in the basement. Anyway, a tank that big will evaporate A LOT of water. Evaporated water will raise your salinity over time because salt does not evaporate. My current 90 gallon tank (48" by 24" by 18") evaporates roughly 7 gallons a week. That's a gallon of fresh water a day almost that I had to manually dump into my sump before I got an auto top off system. Now I just refill my fresh water reservoir every sunday evening. When I did it manually it was easy to forget sometimes, or sometimes life in general gets in the way of tank chores.

K.

[Eb0la11]

Thats a good call Kien. I do have an auto top off kit that I plan on having running so I'll definitely need to leave room for a reservoir. Not gonna be much room left under my tank haha.

Lastlight, I am not sure I want my ballasts all that close to the tank so theres no chance of them getting wet.

[kien]

Just be sure to periodically check the float switch (assuming that's what you're using). If a snail or gunk gets in there the switch can fail and you will fill your sump (and the floor) with top off water :-) Hasn't happened to me yet, but I fear the day might come.. hehe. My top off switch has a safety switch too though so if it gets too high the second switch activates and turns off the pump.

The other setup hurdle that I ran into with the top off system was how to avoid a siphon. when I first set it up and tested it I accidentally create a siphon between the top off water and the sump. Because of this the sump would continue to fill with top off water even after the pump turned off. Yikes! To avoid the siphon what I did was make sure the outlet of the top off water was well above any water line. My top off line is 1/2 an inch (diameter) and I just inserted that into a larger 1.5 inch tube and inserted that into the sump. 1/2 inch outlet sits above the sump and shoots water into the 1.5 inch tube which directs the water down into the sump. I'm sure there are more glamorous ways to do this but it works.

You can get food safe garbage bins that are really narrow that will hold a lot of water. I got one from the superstore. it is only 8 inches wide by 12 inches long by 18 inches tall ( roughly).

K.

[mark]

a viewable fuge (Dez's old tank)