Hardscape

[Trevor W]

Well the time has come and the tank is now slowly filling. Its very exciting yet somewhat nerve racking, waiting to see how my plumbing skills and bulkheads stand up to the much anticipated leak test.

Given that all my plumbing passes, I will start the process of cycling. During the long wait for the cycle to complete I plan on working on my "secondary" or "satellite" cabinet that will be beside the tank and house on one half, my ATO resevoir and reactors, and on the other half (seperated of course) will be all of my electronics organized and easily accessed.

So my question is has anyone here built something like this and if so please share any tips or ideas or things you had learned and possibly would redo in a different way given the opportunity. As always everyone loves pictures so please feel free to post any photos you may have.

[Baldy]

haven't done one beside, but I mounted one to the wall above and hung my light fixture from it. It houses my doser, 3 jugs of supplements, and all my led drivers. I used wiremould from it to behind the tank and it looks clean with all the wires and airline tubing inside it. I don't see why one beside wouldn't work if you have the space for it

[Trevor W]

Originally Posted by Baldy

haven't done one beside, but I mounted one to the wall above and hung my light fixture from it. It houses my doser, 3 jugs of supplements, and all my led drivers. I used wiremould from it to behind the tank and it looks clean with all the wires and airline tubing inside it. I don't see why one beside wouldn't work if you have the space for it

Thats a great idea and its these little things that to me really make a huge difference in the over all appearance of a tank.

I definatly have the space. Something like a wire wrap or possibly a piece of pvc to thread all the wires through going to the cabinet was definatly a must. I am still juggling the idea of hard plumbing with pvc a supply and return line to and from the sump for my GFO and Carbon reactors so that is what made me think of possibly just having another horizontal run of pvc that all my wires will run through. Or just simply wire wrapping them and having them run along the floor behind the stand and secondary cabinet.

[Trevor W]

Well.....the tank is finally filled and the plumbing doesnt seem to have any leaks....BUT....I cant seem to get it running properly! I dont know if I am just an idiot or if I screwed up on my plumbing design.

So I started by filling the display to the point where it just started to run over into my overflow. Next I started filling my sump I began by filling the far left side which is my drain side then it overflows and goes through 2-4" filter socks than that overflows and fills my middle chamber or skimmer section than it goes through a set of baffles and into my return pump section. So I filled all the sections and than let the skimmer and return section fill about 3-4" above the height of the baffles. I plug in my return and the tank starts to fill, and fill and fill....water starts going through the drain but the display fills up to the point that its almost overflowing and than the return section starts running dry so I rush and unplug the pump and even though my drain was wide open, I didn't have a chance to start dialing in the gate valve because as my display was about to overflow the pump started running dry and I unplugged it. I have tried repeatedly with the same result.

Overflow:
Herbie style overflow with 2-1.5" drains.
1 gate valve on the main drain.
Emergency drain is unrestricted.

Return:
1-1" return line all the way till it is reduced to 3/4" loc-line in the display.
Quiet One 4000 (991 GPH).

I posted photos of the sump layout and drain/return lines on the previous page. What am I doing wrong?!?!?