MitchM tank build

MitchM · #1 03-06-2011, 09:09 PM

Water's in, plumbing's leak free, salt's in, sand's in.

I'm expecting the cloudiness to take a week to settle down.
I need to order some loc-line or something similar to drop the outlets of the Seaswirls about 1-1/2" because they are causing too much turbulence and noise at the top.
The closed loop is running fine, but I had to shorten the lower part of the workbench because I decided to use for a sump an old 180g aquarium I had instead of selling it and buying a plastic replacement. 4' of the sump will be tucked under the aquarium to save on space a bit.
Because I'm now using a glass sump, it's not as easy to drill and experiment with different hookups.
I don't have a final valving configuration for the bidirectional tidal flow yet. Hopefully that will be figured out soon, otherwise I'll be going with two separate pumps.
I would like to get the sump drilled and finalized next weekend.

...and here's a couple of pics:

Delphinus · #2 03-06-2011, 09:42 PM

Looks great Mitch! Bet you can't wait to see "stuff" in there..

Like how you've mounted the seaswirls. One nice thing about these larger tanks is the increased elbow room. I thought my 280g was big until I started getting stuff mounted on the light rack. I want an auto feeder up there somewhere but I haven't figured out where I'll be able to shoehorn it in. I don't imagine you're going to run into a lot of the same issues.

MitchM · #3 03-06-2011, 09:54 PM

Thanks, Tony.
Actually, up to this point I have had a thought in the back of my mind saying to me - what kind of a make work project have you gotten yourself into this time?..

Not until I saw the sand in it today have I really become excited about it!
Now I want to stay home from work and just keep working on it.

Not an option, I'm afraid!

I see they now have come out with 1-1/2" seaswirls. I might upgrade to a couple of those in the future. We'll see how these do.

MitchM · #4 03-06-2011, 10:08 PM

I have an auto-feeder planned too.
The top brace on the tank is 8" wide, so I had lots of room for it to sit.
It's going next to the front left sea swirl.
It comes with a tube that extends down below the surface of the water so it stops the food from going down the overflow.

Delphinus · #5 03-06-2011, 10:25 PM

What is the output nozzle like on the seaswirls? I've been wanting to replace the outputs on my wavysea's with locline too but I think I'd have to switch the output from stock to 1" PVC elbow with a bushing to mount the locline and I kind of worry how bad that would look. Plus when I tried hanging Tunzes off them initially with a DIY bracket, I found that 1" PVC was just ever so slightly too large for a snug fit. I don't know if it's a metric size or what but it's not a standard 1" PVC coupling size for the output apparently.

MitchM · #6 03-06-2011, 10:47 PM

It looks like it's a 1" male threaded to barb adapter.
Is your threaded or slip?

lastlight · #7 03-07-2011, 12:16 AM

Glad to see the tank brought online in some form that thing's a beast!

Delphinus · #8 03-07-2011, 03:46 AM

Slip, sort of. It's grooved to hold an o-ring. When I was playing around with the DIY mounts I tried larger o-rings to see if that could make it snug but it was either too big or too small, never "just right".

Threaded makes a lot of sense!!! Score one for Seaswirls in that case.

One of mine stopped working so I've taken it off and was going to crack it open to see if I could fix it, if that works out maybe I'll swap the pipe for for a threaded fitting (I have no idea how feasible the idea is, never looked inside a Wavysea before).

Quote:

Originally Posted by MitchM

It looks like it's a 1" male threaded to barb adapter.
Is your threaded or slip?