40gal Beananimal Reef

[ReefOcean]

Hi, No, I have no valve installed in my return, but that is a mighty good idea. All my return plumbing is screwed in unlike my overflows which are glued, so installing another valve would be pretty easy.


I checked around several places and every place wasn't too helpful on getting a custom tank built. I guess really, unless it is a big tank, many businesses aren't to keen on wasting too much time in helping me out. Until I contacted J&L, and Jeff must have sent my upwards of 30 email back and forth, advising me and helping me design the best possible tank. After a couple of weeks, I settled on this design:






*** Note, there was a measurement discrepancy in those plans, as well as a few things were adjusted after Jeff sent the plans to the manufacturer. Teeth were added etc.

So special shout out to Jeff and the J&L staff. Definitely went above and beyond.

At this point, I have a shabby acrylic baffle that is slumped between my pump and drains, it is sort of doing the job for now. I started drafting a custom sump. With space in the stand being so limited, it is hard to find a pre-fab tank to be a suitable sump. Right now I am using a 10 gallon since the space I have to slide a tank in is only 21 inches.

The beananimal is awesome. Silent. It isn't hard to tune either. I read a few posts on reef central on how the overflow is finicky, but I had the valves set in about 30 seconds and haven't had to adjust them yet.

I just used 1 inch ball valves found at home depot for 7 dollars. I was reading that gate valves are probably better, but there valves I have are very heavy duty and seem to be doing a good job.

I had the pump running externally, but the micro bubbles were intense, like a sand storm in the display.again, due to the junky sump. The key is to maximize the flow from the siphon and limit the flow in the air injected overflow, that is the only trick to "tuning" the overflow. SO now I have the pump running submerged. The pump is a Life Guard Quiet One 3000, dialed down to minimum flow.

If you have any sump ideas, I would love to hear them. I was thinking of a 14 deep X 12 High X 20 Long which several baffles before the return and places to put filter media and whatnot. Since the tank drains about 5-6 gallons of water in the pump fails, I could only have the sump filled about half way.


FOr the plumping, you don't need to go overboard like the original beananimal did. No reed for all those extra plumbing doohickies, especially the ones you can't find at home depot. Both my siphon and air overflow are simply 1 inch. I use a T fitting. The pipe goes down, and there is a cap on the top of the T. The siphon has no hole in the cap, the air-driven one does. Easy. Both the Siphon and the air-driven have a ball valve, the emergency does not. I put the ball valve onto the air-driven because I can shut it off, and left the overflow box fill and let the siphon kick in a lot sooner. So I would suggest it.


Anyhow, I still need my lights, skimmer and I plan on running neozeo through a reactor.

Still much to be done