Martin's 180g Reef Build

[Coralgurl]

Looks good! As Lockrockie said, welcome to the 180 club!! Congrats!

We did the same thing with our plumbing, added in a valve off the return for water changes.

[martinmcnally]

Originally Posted by The Grizz

I would go with PC lighting

Tank looks great on the stand Martin, can't wait to see how the flow accelerators work for you.

If your doing a herbie you want one pipe ( with the gate valve ) to be about 1/3 up from the bulkhead & the other one ( emergency drain ) to be just above the water level when running. No caps on either.

I wanna try it out having the primary drain a little higher to see how it goes first. Only reason is the overflow box is pretty big and a lot of water heading to the sump from the overflow alone during a power cut if the pipe is only 1/3 up from the bulk head. That's not even thinking about the siphon from the return until it hits some air to break it. Gonna have to be careful with that, trying to avoid a check valve in the return. Hence the threaded bulkhead, I can yank (sorry Americans) it out and cut another inch off until I get silence

Probably gonna try some old incandescent bulbs haha. About all I can afford right now.... oh wait I just found 5000 LEDs sitting here, hmmmm that's a coincidence

I'm actually most excited about the inline water change tank. Picked it up yesterday 29g so I can change 16% of the water pretty much automatically by just turning some valves, dumps the water down the drain, RO/DI kicks in, fills it back up, mix with salt and reverse valves to get it back in circulation. I hate doing water changes so this is going to make the process easy I think.

[martinmcnally]

Got the sump and much of the plumbing done today. The sump is not 100% finished yet but I am pushing ahead anyways. I will drain and add baffles and such at a later stage as I need this thing going and my other tank shutdown.

The sump:


This is the return plumbing all completed. Knife shutoff valve from the sump to the pump and a gate valve on the discharge side. It then splits using a Y junction into some 3/4 flex pipe and back to the tank.




Below is how the overflow is going to work. Its not completed as you can see. I ran out of pipe

To the right eventually will be an inline water change tank that will flow back to the sump.

To the left will eventually go to the left side of the sump where the fuge will be

Black arrow shows the normal over flow and blue the secondary overflow or emergency



When its all completed the Normal overflow route will actually be closed most of the time. Water will flow to the fuge and to the inline water changer (and back to the sump)

When I want to do a water change I would open the normal in this picture, shut off the water changer value and empty and refill the water change tank.

The pump is a reeflow barracuda and it is currently so noisy I decided to switch it off for the night. I installed it using some spacers and rubber washers (a lot of them). I thought that would be enough however tomorrow I will try a rubber pad. I just read I have to let it run for 48 hours non stop before I am allowed to complain about noise haha :/

[gregzz4]

Hiya Martin. Nice build so far.
If you don't mind some constructive criticism ...
Black ABS is for Waste water and may leach some undesired stuff into your system. I'd suggest you do your best to replace it all with 200, sch 40 or sch 80 PVC. You don't want any crap causing surprises that you won't be able to figure out.

And about your Herbie, I have my main 1" pipe about 2/3 up and the Emerg 3/4" pipe just below the DT level. Same as you, I don't want too much overflow box water draining into the sump. Plus it makes for a quieter box with the level higher. And when the emerg kicks in during testing, I hear sucking in the tank long before I hear drainage noise in the sump.

[gregzz4]

And about your Barracuda ... use lots of Spa-Flex and I mean LOTS
The more the better. I found with my 1262 Eheim pumps, even just a small piece of rigid pvc caused noise.
I have since clamped my spa to the wall with spacers to keep the rigid away and all noise is gone. Except for the return line of course. That is not clamped to any walls and is quieter as is.

[martinmcnally]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

And about your Barracuda ... use lots of Spa-Flex and I mean LOTS
The more the better. I found with my 1262 Eheim pumps, even just a small piece of rigid pvc caused noise.
I have since clamped my spa to the wall with spacers to keep the rigid away and all noise is gone. Except for the return line of course. That is not clamped to any walls and is quieter as is.

Hmm I will have to see if I can use more flex once I get the rubber pad installed and the pump broken in.

Weird about the ABS never heard that. I've had ABS for 5 years on my other tank.

Thanks for the comments.

[gregzz4]

So ABS has never given you grief? No unusual amounts of algae? Slow growth? Deaths? And all that?
As long as you are comfortable with it, 'carry on my wayward son', just wanted to give you a heads up.

The spa flex may have saved my build as there was a time when the wife said ' No way, that is too loud', and I agreed. I changed a bunch of stuff and all is now good.
Use as much of it as you can between every fitting, even your closed loop.
It's amazing how much noise it takes away.
The biggest difference I found was to leave as much room as I could between the pump and the first mounting location.
You'll get the vibration sounds transmitting through your pumbing if you clamp anything rigid to anything solid, like a pipe to a stand.
In my case, I had a piece of Spa clamped to the wall behind our stand and it was humming downstairs. I had to re-position the spa after I un-clamped it to stop issues with the tank, but I got rid of the nasty hum by our front door.
Also, I have re-done my sump plumbing 3 times already with testing, so, because your tank is empty, you may want to fill it and test everything like I did, then think about it for a day or 3.
I am glad I haven't rushed it.

Keep up the posts and pics

[MMAX]

I was going to comment on the ABS also. Know a guy that had a 200gal reef and he lost everything. Couldn't explain it for the longest time but all signs pointed to the ABS piping leaching stuff into his water.

[martinmcnally]

Yea, I've never had an issue with ABS at all been using it as I said for at least 5 years. Was just doing some reading on it and a lot of people say its a myth.

I will be removing most of it from the return pump today to replace with flex however the stuff in the overflow is pretty much permanent and I dont want to rip out the bulkheads and replace them already since I am planning on moving some inhabitants in today.

That's one of those urban reefing legends that just doesn't seem to want to die. True ABS is not only safe, but used by many hobbists. Myself included.

[Bblinks]

Nice build Martin, can't wait to see it wet.