Phischy's Project-3days to start

[Phischy]

SCWD is rated upto 1400gph. Got that covered. I will have to buy a bigger pump. I just got the dimensions back from my tank guy, we're going to go with a tall tank of 20" so that'll put me just shy of 40gal. Bigger than I had wanted but otherwise I'd only have 12" viewable due to the stand construction hidng 3 to 4" of tank itself. No worries though. I should only have a 3' max head height on the pump and no 90d elbows.

So for a 40gal tank I should have 400gph movement at the nozzel, right? I may go with a larger pump since I do intend to split the scwd from2 to 4, maybe near 1000gph w/o any head height. This is goign to be interesting. At any rate, I've got time to figure it out, the tank won't be in for one to two weeks.

I think I'll stick to my origional diagram, but the temptation is there to add a sump, but then my cost will go through the roof as I fit everything into that! Since I'll have a 20" tall tank, I think I'll go with a 3" DSB, that's pretty much standard, right? Pros/Cons to it? How much live sand should I buy? I'm looking at 70lbs of sand total, but I don't think I need to buy 70lbs of live sand, I was thinking maybe 20lbs and it'll seed the rest.

thanks
e

 

[djconn]

I would do a 4" dsb just b/c I always seem to vacuum a little bit up by mistake everytime I do a water change, etc.

Do you have an extra small tank? It would be pretty easy to convert a small 10 gallon into a small fuge under the tank if you have room. Toss in some caluerpa, a small light and some hermits and you'd be good to go.

As far as 400 gph, I would think that is sufficient. Your pump/scwd configuration sounds interesting yet challenging.

Now the big question...what do you have for lights? What are you planning to do for lighting now that you have a taller and bigger tank?

 

[Phischy]

I was thinking of getting a 5gal tank to act as a fuge that'll go above my tank. I don't want to do a sump at this point b/c of cost. I'll maybe do a fuge in 6months or so.

I'm thinking of getting a 1000gph pump w/ a 3' head height, that'll go through the SCWD which splits the flow into two, and then split both of those into 2, so by the time it's all said and done I'll be way below 1000gph. I'm going to run it by my guys at the store to see what they think.

The tank I'm having built will be 35.5 x 12.5 x 20" tall. If I do a 4" dsb I'll have 16" in height which equals out to 30gal before rock of actual water. My lights on this will be 2 x 55w compact flourescents. The lights will probably be upgraded in a year but for now they'll have to do. I had saved a bunch of cash for setup cost but 60% of that is getting eatin' by the custom tank.

I still have some hashing out to do on the waterflow setup, but I've got another week to two weeks to wait.

 

[incysor]

I think a 1000gph with 3ft head, split 2 ways on each side of your SCWD will probably be about right. Which pump are you thinking of going with? Pumps differ greatly in how well they handle head pressure. I would think that if you can get it so that you're getting 400-500gph out of it you'll probably be in good shape, and won't feel the need to put any other powerheads in your tank.

I'm not a big fan of the DSB. Mainly because I don't like losing that much viewing space. There's still a lot of debate on how much a DSB actually helps in the Nitrogen cycle, and my tanks were very stable for a couple years with about 1-2 inches.

You're correct that there isn't any real reason to spend the extra money on 'live sand' buy regular aragonite sand and just seed it with some from other peoples tanks, or buy a few cups from one of your LFS.

 

[zipperton]

Phischy, make sure you check for leaks!

I was wondering what it feels like to plan something for 9 months then have it fall apart? Make sure you check your custom tank for leaks!

 

[Phischy]

I was blessed with a ton of patience. Besides, I've had a lot of time to learn what it is I want to do with this tank, what my restrictions are and how I screwed everything up so badly back in college. Setting up a tank like this takes alot of time anyway as you can't rush it. But damn if I don't want to fill this baby and start watching the show.

Maybe I'll go with a 3" DSB. my previous tank hand an 1 1/2" trim on the bottom so I had Pops cover that much with trim on the stand. Once you put the new tank in you won't see the lower 1 1/2" so I may go 3", either way it depends on how much cash I want to blow on sand. I may just buy 50lbs of sand and see how it looks and then seed it.

I will have to swap out pumps, I really don't think the one I have is going to push enough water to get the wave action I need. No biggie, just means I'll have an extra pump to use on something else or for sale.

I was going to use another Quiet One pump, unless someone can recomend a higher quality/lower wattage one to get me ballpark 800-1000gph.

And yes Zipperbutt, I will check the new tank for leaks!

 

[incysor]

The quiet one 3000 is $50 at fishsupply.com
They've got the velocity T1 for $150, which I've head good things about.
Customaquatic.com has the dolphin dp-650 which one of the guys here in town uses for his closed loop for $49.95.

Personally I'd try one of the cheaper ones first, and if it doesn't get the flow you want sell it, and get a larger one.

Brian

 

[djconn]

Custom Aquatic has recently become a sponsor of the site (see banner below). If you decide to try the dolphin, please use them. They have been nice enough to offer all registered members of Nanotank a 5% discount. That should at least cover the shipping. Try this link: http://www.customaquatic.com/customaquatic/coupon-nt.asp

If that doesn't work, I'll get the right one up later.

 

[Phischy]

Ok, I'll try the dolphin pump, but the 650 is on sale right now and so the coupon for 5% off doesn't apply. I think it'll still register as the sale coming from this website though.

 

[Phischy]

Not to sound too stupid, but I'm assuming the '650' means 650 gph. One thing I like about the quiet one brand is it shows flow loss per foot of head height. I rather liked that. I'll still have less than 2' of headheight but it would have been nice to see how many gph I'd be losing to rate their effiency at pumping in terms of psi.

 

[djconn]

Man, Phischy - you are a flow freak :thumb:

 

[Phischy]

I figure by the time it's all set up with head height, the SCWD, the total of 4 splits I'm going to need a higher rated pump to high about 400gph with a 650 pump, so basically that's 10x the total capacity of the tank (my tank will be 38.5 gallons but with a 4" sand bed I'm looking at 30gallons). So actually, I'll be right in the ballpark for what the Concentious Marine Aquarist recomends.

Plus on the rear I"ll have two drain bulkheads to prevent a clog, along with clear tubing so I can eval everything. I plan on connecting both the outs to a 'Y' but I can decide if it's better to have valves before or after the 'Y' for maintence purposes.

The other thought I had was to not have a 'true' sump for filtration purposes but on the SCWD it recomends using only filtered water so nothing jams the SCWD up. I can only assume a jammed SCWD can lead to nothing but problems. Crap, I've just come full circle to sumping my setup again. It just makes more sense.

 

[incysor]

I found the performance curve for the dolphin pumps here:

http://marinedepot.com/aquarium_powerhe ... .asp#DP650

I just didn't recommend the site because they're out of the pump. It works out better if you order it from custom aquatic anyway since they're a sponsor. I've bee researching pumps for a couple weeks now, and I just don't understand the sites that don't list a full set of specs on the pumps they sell.

From everything I've read about the SCWDs, if you get stuff in em, they generally break. They seem to be much less sturdy than your average impeller, and you can't replace a part, if it's broke, you have to replace the whole thing. You could just try putting sponge over your drain openings to help keep detrius out of the pump/SCWD. I'd suggest doing 3 valves on your Y, one on the main leg and one on each arm. As long as you have room ball valves aren't that expensive, and they make things easier to deal with if you need to take some of it down for maintenance or repair. I'd also suggest using screw-together unions on your pump, so it's easy to take it off the system. One on the intake and one on the outflow, and all you have to do is close your ball valves and unscrew the unions to get your pump off for cleaning/repair. Although this is only really helpful if you decide to go without the sump. If you're using a sump it's still nice to have one on the outflow, just to make it a bit easier to disconnect it from the rest of your plumbing.

As long as you're having someone custom make your tank you might ask them how much it would cost to build a small sump for you. it might be easier to have it custom made at the same time, as opposed to trying to find a standard size tank that'll fit. Also more water means more stability for the entire system, an additional 10 gallons of water doesn't sound like a lot when you're talking about a 100 gallon tank, but it's a ton when you're talking about a 40 gallon tank. Even if you left the sump totally bare except for filter floss you'd have more choices for pumps. I totally love mag pumps. They're dependable, powerful, and relatively inexpensive. They don't do a good job as external pumps though. Even though some sites will list them as external/submersible.

Brian

I figure by the time it's all set up with head height, the SCWD, the total of 4 splits I'm going to need a higher rated pump to high about 400gph with a 650 pump, so basically that's 10x the total capacity of the tank (my tank will be 38.5 gallons but with a 4" sand bed I'm looking at 30gallons). So actually, I'll be right in the ballpark for what the Concentious Marine Aquarist recomends.

Plus on the rear I"ll have two drain bulkheads to prevent a clog, along with clear tubing so I can eval everything. I plan on connecting both the outs to a 'Y' but I can decide if it's better to have valves before or after the 'Y' for maintence purposes.

The other thought I had was to not have a 'true' sump for filtration purposes but on the SCWD it recomends using only filtered water so nothing jams the SCWD up. I can only assume a jammed SCWD can lead to nothing but problems. Crap, I've just come full circle to sumping my setup again. It just makes more sense.

 

[Phischy]

Although I had my stand custom designed to include drawers, I do now sort of understand why stands don't have 'em. Not that it's a huge issue but it does make things a big more interesting.

The new (rev 145) plan for the tank. I am goign to sump that sucker. And it won't really be that much of a pain either. There will be only two tricky things to do. First, install an overflow box inside the tank and drill the bottom out. I'm sure I can find some acrylic, notch the top and then cement it into the tank properly. With the over flow box in place I'll be skimming the surface which will then go into the protein skimmer. This should increase it's efficiency.

I'll just get a plain 15 gallon glass tank, around here they sell for $1/gallon so that's pretty cheap. I'll have the drain hose come down and empty into a filter sock thus removing coarse material entirely from the cleaning and then the return will be a pump that can push 400gph at a 3' head height. I'm going to install one check valve between the pump and SCWD and then one ball valve for each of the SCWD outs, that should give me enough options to replace the SCWD if needed and I won't have to worry about pumping crap through the SCWD in the mean time due to the poly bag.

This way my protein skimmer/ pumps/ heater will all be out of sight and hopefully quieter. I'm also going to post a thread in the DIY section for working with acrylic. Looks like in the end I'll be sumping after all!

 

[Phischy]

Got my tank!

Woohoo! Got my tank last night! *do a little dance*

Nate came over to deliever it and I'm glad I went with the taller tank, else it'd look way out of whack, the stand is pretty beefy and this tank looks good with it. So my plan is for Saturday or Sunday to start getting the bulkheads, hoses, clamps and adjustable nozzels for water flow. Maybe I'll buy the sand as well. I've still got to look into this sump thing, the strainer is the big issue right now,I can think of two ways to do it and neither will require custom acrylic, not as ideal, but doable. Plus GFI, timers, powerstrip/surge protector and the electrical end of things...

And so I kiss my money goodbye...

 

[incysor]

As far as the strainer goes. Heres a link with a couple nice pics of a simple solution.

http://marshreef.com/modules.php?name=F ... pic&t=2573

When you're talking about needing the strainer you're still talking about a closed loop right? With adding the sump I just want to make sure you're not planning on using that drain system to go directly to your sump. If you have a power outtage, it'll drain your tank all over your floor.

 

[Phischy]

When I was thinking of the strainer I was thinking more along the lines of a polybag to eliminate all detritus from the water flow so that nothing enters the pump or SCWD to foul it.

If I sump, which it is looking like what I'll do, I'll change my flow patters as I realize having the drains in the tank will lead to a mess and loss of livestock should the power fail (and this being cali...who knows!). I'd put two 1" bulkheads in near the water surface w/ strainers to skim the water, drop that down into the sump directly into a 300 micron polybag and then have it protein skimmed before the return pump goes back to the origional water return system. I'd have a check valve between the pump and SCWD and then two ball valves between the SCWD and tank for when I want to do maintence. That should work to keep water from returning should power fail. I've got a shopping list a page long of parts I need...ouch!

 

[incysor]

Where would you get the check valve? I havnen't seen them here. although I'm not sure I'd use them anyway. I've heard too many horror stories of them failing. I just put slits in my return pipes just under the waterline. I did pin-hole sized holes in my last tank. I made the mistake of only having one hole, and lost about 5 gallons on the floor, when a snail covered it up. So then I drilled 2 extras and just made sure to poke a paperclip in them on a weekly basis to make sure they were clear. With the new tank setup I just cut 1/16 or so wide slits about an inch or so across the return line with a dremel. I don't like the larger snails so I don't think I'll have any large enough to block it up. Once a month or so I'll take a razor blade and run it though the slit to make sure it's clear of coraline.

 

[djconn]

Wouldn't your protein skimmer eliminate all the detritus from recirculating and going back to your SCWD? Is there really a need for a polybag?

 

[incysor]

I think he's probably more worried about small bits of sand and larger pieces of particulate that a skimmer might not be able to clear out.