Steveg's Office wall tank

[steveg]

Electrical supply from mains board, it helps having a brother who can frame as well as being an electrical contractor!!!!!!

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The top up and water change will be carried out in the mechanical room with an RO unit plumbed into the mains supply, a bit more framing and the tanks were installed.




The display tank in the wall and the top up system are connected by a pipe in which all of the plumbing runs, it can be seen to the right and top of the frame holding the top up tanks:

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[steveg]

The overflow was fitted with a herbie style drain to keep the noise down.



The OM4 connected to a dart was installed beneath the tank, first major mistake! Having drawn out the plan on the floor in the early stages a 24" wide wall looked way too thick so it was decided to go down to an 18" wall. Problem turned out that it was extremely difficult to fit the OM4 and the plumbing in with such a narrow wall. With much scheming and far too many 90 degree bends I finally got it all in.....

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[plutoniumJoe]

Very exciting build. Can't wait to see the tank and the room. Tagging along.

[steveg]

Thanks, hope you enjoy.

Originally Posted by plutoniumJoe

Very exciting build. Can't wait to see the tank and the room. Tagging along.

[steveg]

Plus some rock, sand, sump, chaeto, return pump, plumbing and electrics and you get this:




I always liked the look of pinnacles and tried to make something similar in the tank.





Nothing quite like a bit of hair algae to make you feel good.......

[steveg]

[steveg]

Next major mistake turned out to be the same issue, too little space between the walls for any commercially available T5 lighting units that could offer more than 2 bulbs which as I hoped to keep sps would not be very useful.

My brother took me down to EECOL for a visit and I came away armed with commercial 48" T5 ballasts, 8 of them. It turned out that despite the fact that I only had about 10" of space between the walls above the tank I could fit 4 of the commercial ballasts side by side allowing a total of 16 x 48" 54w T5 bulbs over an 8' length.

Better still was the cost, saved a fortune! Bolted together on an aluminium frame and connect to plugs the light was ready to go.

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[steveg]

I had seen an amazing tank - http://www.underseadiscovery.net/ which used an ETSS skimmer, thought to myself, that looks good to me so I departed from the needle wheel skimmers I have used in the past and got the 900XR with a collection vessel. The recommended pump for this downdraft skimmer is an iwaki 55RLT, I was advised that an equivalent pan world would do the job equally as well and went down that route "saving" some money.

The skimmer did not perform as well as I had expected until the pump died. Kevin from Red Coral in Calgary offered to loan me a dart pump which is 3600gph, over 3 times more gph than is recommended. I changed the plumbing and fired up the beast expecting to have to make serious use of the ball valves I had installed to reduce the flow. What a difference, Kevin will have to surgically remove the dart from me!!!! Thanks kevin.

Anyhow the skimmer is now working like a dream and producing well, decide for yourselves...





The collection vessel comes with a built in shut off to prevent the skimmate from overflowing if it gets too full, it works too!

[andestang]

This is shaping up to be a really nice build. Looks great so far ! Just curious why you went with 18" wide and not just a little wider ?

[steveg]

Thanks for tagging along, I chose 18" as 24" looked very very wide in relation to the room and the wall. In retrospect it was the single biggest mistake I made in this build, still I have learned a lot and will be putting this in to use next time, assuming there is a next time of course.

If I did it all over again it would be at least 24" wide and perhaps even 30" wide, still I am nonetheless very pleased with how things have been going lately. I will post more pictures in the next day or 2.

Thanks

Steve

Originally Posted by andestang

This is shaping up to be a really nice build. Looks great so far ! Just curious why you went with 18" wide and not just a little wider ?