Starting ~800 Gallon Custom Reef Tank Build

[ravi197699]

Hello R2R again, I got my Reeflo Gold Dart Pump and needle wheel impeller that I bought from Reeflo. I will be sending this impeller to my resource and we will try to make some enhancements on this design, I want to make this slightly bigger and add more needles. we will see how that goes, but there are the pictures of the impeller and pump that I am going to use on my redesigned DIY skimmer...

 

[ravi197699]

Hello GM MR and happy Monday!, Past weekend I had guest visiting us and I did not have any time to work on anything, I have few important items pending that I have started working since past Saturday, I have put together the skimmer yesterday and pretty much design is done, plumbing for pump, drain, air injection is in place, I have utilized white uni seals for the plumbing and then connection unions for easy disconnect, 1/2 "emergency drain is added on the bottom as well incase if I have to drain the skimmer, I have wired float switch wires for apex breakout boxes, I will be utilizing 2 float switches and 1 float valve for back up redundancy, I will be using 30 gallon blue container as ATO water holder and run the output to the sump which will connect to 1/2" float valve, I need to find cabinet which is 24" deep by 48" wide which will hold frag tank and under frag tank I will hide my ATO container and my RO system. I have drain pipe for my frag tank in place already and I will be using 1 of my manifold output to feed frag tank, I don't have any frags yet but it will be plumbed and ready for frags and light will be mounted on the tank as well. more pictures to come, here are some of the pictures of the skimmer that I have put together..

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

Any new updates on this build? This wasan awesome job.

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[TRUKINGNY]

yes updates please

 

[ravi197699]

hello guys, I have been busy taking care of the stand for my frag tank which will hide my big RO unit, DI filter as well as my ATO container and Booster pump for Ro, I have modified my skimmer which has been working better than I expected, Tank is going through cycle where I have green hair on spots and it is reducing, I have ordered v2 of impeller that I will use my reeflo pump, this needle wheel impeller is bigger and design is little different than v1, pins are thinner and pointier which will help churn water better, we will see how that works, I am done putting together my Co2 regulator, I bought all the parts from surplus and put together nice regulator, I have used parker 1/4" lab grade stainless steel solenoid which is 24v, I have my co2 tank ready to be hooked up, calcium reactor is running without co2 as of right now, I will post pictures that I have been taking for progress soon, getting close to wrapping up with plumbing and frag tank and next project will be setting my quarantine system so that I can start with live stock selection. I got my test kits as well, I have 3 different test kits that I will be using to test water parameters, as of right now I have no clue what my tank parameters are!!, I have Elos, Red Sea Pro and ExactIDip tester, I will be comparing the results and if they are in acceptable ranges and match with each other then I will be using Exact IDip for weekly water testing and other kits will be used as fallback.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

What size RO unit is that? Lol

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[ravi197699]

1200 GPD at 150 PSI, I know it is oversized but it saves money in long run, don't have to change the filters and DI resin as much, reading out of membrane is 003 and out of DI resin is always 000. I got deal on this unit that I could not pass..

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

Wow. That is a big system

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[ravi197699]

it is big system, I filled up the tank in 2 days that includes shutting off system at night, water comes out like it is tap water, my total volume is more or less 1100 gallons..

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

Wanna lend it to me when i fill my system lol.

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[ravi197699]

haha sure! lol

 

[ravi197699]

Made a lot of progress, finally I got my Ecotech Mp60 pumps connected to WXM module, It is sad that Ecotech designed this product and they did lousy job creating reef link to be able to control the pumps, not many options are there and it is not user friendly, it felt like never ending process while I was setting up reeflink, So I invested in WXM module from Neptune and I can say nothing but good stuff about the product, It is easy and I had some technical questions sent an email and got it all done and now I have all 5 MP60's connected to wxm and If I need to change the settings all I have to do is drag the graph and send the settings and done.. I could not be happier, I wish Ecotech could have spent more time to make this more user friendly and high tech just like their other products, OK enough said about that, I have connected my float switches to breakout boxes, 2 switches are for my Sump, 1 regular and 2nd as safety back up, 3rd safety is float valve in the sump which will shut water down if 1st switch, 2nd switch , pump and apex fail to turn the pump off. 2 float switches are installed in 30 gallon ato drum which will send me alert when it is empty or full, I have 3/4" 110v solenoid valve that will be controlled via apex that will turn on the feed water going to RO unit and my RO unit booster pump have safety switch which requires to have minimum 30 psi for booster pump to turn on , on top of this I have 1/2" 11ov solenoid valve that is connected to apex as well. I will be turning on the RO unit manually via apex fusion in the beginning but eventually they will be controlled via apex code. Stand is complete and frag tank is going to sit on the stand and plumbed this weekend and I will hang light on the system, I have dimmable ATI as well as Vertex Illumia, I have not decided what I will use on frag tank. My vertical refugium is plumbed and running with noting in it, I will install grow light on the refugium this Saturday, I will have 3 fixtures which are 48" long installed vertically on the refugium, size of the refugium is 48" tall x 12" in diameter, water comes in from top and goes down and it comes out of the 2" drain that is mounted on the side , so all the water has to go down and comes out of the drain, I will have my calcium reactor effluent line go through the refugium as well, co2 will be consumed by algae and plants, Skimmer is working better than expected, Very little bio load, it pulled out a lot in the beginning but since there are only 10 small chromis in the tank there is nothing much to pull out, I have my Voss 850ml bottle dosing mounted on the wall and my Jebao doser is mounted under the shelve as well, I am going to mount second doser next to this 1 and will dose elements if required,

here are the pictures of the progress...

 

[Bulldog5]

Wow!! Looks amazing!!

 

[ravi197699]

Thank you, I will post pictures when I plump frag tank.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

Looks amazing. Keep the pictures coming

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[ravi197699]

Hello reefers GM, getting close to finish line here, I was able to put the frag tank on with help of from my friend, he pointed out few items that we took care on the fly, Tank sits pretty good and I was able to get the plumbing done frag tank, I ran 1" drain which I installed sometime back and it was left on the back wall which I connected to the frag tank, return is 1/2" pcv that comes from manifold, I am going to keep low turn over since I will be installing Mp10 in the frag tank, I hope this should provide flow that this tank requires, size of the frag tank is 26" x 45" x 8" high and material is glass, I found this used and it was pretty good deal, I found place for my EB8 that will be controlling automation of ATO container, Kalk reactor and feeding or bypassing kalk reactor, I have tested the ATO pump coding and it is working as it should, I will be testing coding for ATO container since there is very high pressure booster pump involves and it produces a lot of water, as of right now I am controlling the RO system manually via apex fusion, I should have solenoid valves that will control the feed water to RO, this solenoid valve will shout off the feed to RO as well as booster pump at the same time, Vertical fuge is all done, I have installed 48" lights on the fuge, these are grow lights but I am no too crazy about the colors, we will see how this goes based on results on growing cheato, skimmer is working awesome, I am picking up 60 gallon cube that I will use to quarantine livestock and it will run at all the times, I might convert this tank to AIO tank, we will see how that goes, here are some of the pictures of what I was able to accomplish yesterday,

 

[ravi197699]

hello reefers, early this week I noticed something that was pointed out by my wife and she mentioned that your tank is very quiet and something is making beeping sound and I was ready to throw up when I heard that and this news is right before I had cup of tea and right after I was done taking shower and ready to go to work. After checking out I noticed that my battery back up monitor is 0% and all the pumps are off and tank is dead silent, spent some time analyzing and learned that my GFI was tripped and turned everything off, I thought something might have caused this and re-set the GFI and all came back to normal. Well 2 days later I am at work and I got apex alert that it is off, I took an hour off from work and went back home and GFI tripped again, I reset and everything came back to normal, well this was bothering me that why it is happening so I called my friend (certified electrician) and he came and I showed him the items that are on the circuit and after spending sometime checking all the wirings he said GFI is defective and it is tripping and good thing it happened while he was there, only thing that is plugged in the outlets is my Battery back up and everything else is plugged on the back of the battery back (bad choice) so he removed the GFI since that circuit is protected by 15 amp breaker, since this happened and it was very good scenario I wanted to change few things, all EB8's from removed from the back of the battery back up and they are plugged into the outlets, my sump closed loop pump can be on outlet and it stays on 27/7 and it runs my reactors, feed my skimmer as well as performs as closed loop pump for my sump via sea swirls, sea swirls can be on outlet and my jebao pumps in sump on outlets, heater on outlet as well as my 5 mp60's and twin Gyre can be on outlets, when I say outlets that mean connected to apex on EB8 but EB8 will be plugged on outlet, now my Vectra L1 is the only thing that I will plug into my battery back up and L1 runs only at 40%. I have very good reason for going this route, I have my generator to support my tank in case of power outage and time between my generator kicks on and gets everything going, my battery back up will keep everything live, but I did not think of this scenario that what if GFI trips and it happened and battery back up did its job but since everything was connected to battery back up it keep everything going for 15 min and it died, you might be thinking what happened to tank, well tank was off yesterday for more than 5 hours and since I have only 15 small chromis in the tank they all survived and noting bad happened, now that I have only L1 connected to battery back up it is capable of keep that pump going for hours since wattage is very low and apex brain is connected to battery back as well which will trigger alert if any of the eb8's loose power. I have learned in this hobby that we keep making things better as we face difference challenges and issues so that it does not happen again, I thought I had everything covered but I was wrong and I wanted to share this with you all. I am connecting my RO feed water solenoid tomorrow and test the automated ATO container that is controlled with apex with float switches with simple code. more pictures to come,

 

[ravi197699]

Hello reefers, this weekend was not bad at all since list of to do list is getting shorter by the week, I was able to connect my RO unit via apex and how I can turn my ro on or off manually and RO shuts off if ATO container is full, I added additional supports to the stand so that I can put my 60 Gallon cube that I bought used as quarantine tank, I will be converting this tank to AIO tank, I already bought the glass and bafflers are already cut out, I want to be able to quarantine 5 - 6 small medium size fishes each time, I had white granite piece laying in the backyard which was left over from the kitchen slab and it is perfect size, I laid down 1/2" insulation on the stand and put granite piece on the foam and tank will sit on granite, hopefully it will work out as planned and will be safe, I added enough supports but it is never enough. here are some of the pictures..

 

[FMF0331]

oh my gosh ... PSEG and Water Authority must love you

 

[ravi197699]

I hear you FMF0331, I love my solar system so all the power is generated by solar and water bill is not bad at all,