My 220 gallon tank setup

[alexv]

I will be moving very soon and I won't be able to take my tank setup and equipment with me. So I decided to document as much as possible about my setup of fully automated 220 gallon freshwater tank on the main floor in our living room with filter/sump in the basement.

I have learned a lot tinkering with this tank and I'm sure this information will be very useful to some of you.

Everything started in early 2008 when I decided to build a large(er) tank that would look good but be rather low maintenance. As lazy as I am, I opted to go for a lot of automation to eliminate my sloppiness in doing water changes, or dozing fertilizers.

I would say, this is the thread that I started in the very beginning where I discussed original build ideas/designs: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=23824

Then in July 2008 I finally had the tank built (ordered through Ray). And I set up to build a solid stand for it. The build is documented in detail here: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=28948.0

So in December 2008 I filled the tank for the first time and started the whole journey.

Having the overflow and sump in the basement had some challenges with keeping CO2 in the water. Building a tight lid on the sump was very important.

The sump design/pictures are posted in this thread: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=34844.0

Then came the algae problems which I battled for several years. Some nasty cyanobacteria (like documented here: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=49466.0), diatoms and other nasties.

A couple of times I totally ripped apart the plants and decor and cleaned everything up (like here: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=55599.0) for the algae to return back.

The breakthrough came earlier this summer when I got a pair of dozing pumps and started automatic fertilizer dozing and also added Flourish Excel to my ferts.

Since then the environment stabilized and the algae completely disappeared. In fact, I haven't touched my tank in the past two months (only feeding the fish) and here is how it looks. The plants are a bit overgrown and need some trimming but I haven't cleaned the glass or anything.

[alexv]

A couple more pictures of the tank as a whole.

[alexv]

So, the tank is about 220 gallons (72" x 24" x 30") with 50 gallon tank in the basement for the filter/sump.

The main tank has two corner overflow boxes with Durso standpipe overflows that go directly to the sump in the basement. I didn't want to drill through the hardwood on the main floor, so I put the pipes inside the wall.

Here are the pipes inside the stand leading to the basement, and how they are coming out in the basement fish room.

[sanny]

beautiful tank Alex, sad that you can't take it with you 

[alexv]

The sump is a drilled tank that has a few sections for filter media, biological media and just pump return/water reservoir sections.

Here is how it looks like when I set it up in 2008:



And here is how it looks now, while operational:

[alexv]

The main pump is a Reeflo Dart. It has just enough head pressure to push the water to the main floor and still maintain good enough flow.

You can also see the drain overflow in this picture.

[alexv]

The sump overflow goes directly to the house sewer system...

[alexv]

I have also set up a continuous drip water change system. The water from the house water supply line goes through a 3-stage filtration system which includes activated carbon section and after going through a pressure regulator goes into the tank through a dripper at a constant rate of one gallon per hour. The excess water continuously goes to the drain at the same rate (minus evaporation).

[Aquaticfinatic]

Awesome!!

[alexv]

There is a minor closed loop that circulates the water through a 36W UV sterilizer and CO2 reactor powered by a secondary pump installed in the sump. CO2 is supplied by a pressurized CO2 cylinder controlled by a pH controller.

[alexv]

All the fertilizers are added automatically by Marine Magic dosing pump. I use dry fertilizers that I mix myself.

I use three separate 500 ml containers that contain different fertilizers and dozed at different times/volumes.

Container A - Trace elements
3.5 tsp of dry CSM+B
250 mL Flourish Iron
250 mL water
Dosing 5 times daily for 15 seconds on S4 (highest speed) which amount to about 8 mL per dose x 5 times = 40 mL/day.
Dosed at 6:00 am, 9:00 am, 12:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 6:00 pm

Container B
4 tsp KNO3
6 tsp MgSO4
4 tsp K2SO4
250 mL Flourish Excel
250 mL water
Dosed at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm for 30 sec on S4 (15 mL x 2 = 30 mL/day)

Container C
1 tsp KH2PO4
500 mL water
Dosed at 7:30 am and 1:30 pm for 30 sec on S4 (15 mL x 2 = 30 mL/day)

[alexv]

Here is the equipment room as the whole...

[alexv]

And here are some of the happy inhabitants....

[alexv]

And some more

[alexv]

The pair of upside-down catfish are really massive. Hard to believe I bought them as tiny babies just a couple years ago...

[lucius]

Glad I had a chance to see it a little while back. 

[fischkopp]

Thanks for sharing your setup and experiences with us! Glad the setup worked out for you after all.

I have a couple of questions:
What did you wrap around the plumbing underneath the main tank, and why?
How did you deal with chloramine in your continuous drip system? Did any of the stages take care of it?
Maybe you can add some lessons learned or "what would I do different next time".

[alexv]

What did you wrap around the plumbing underneath the main tank, and why?

It's mainly to reduce the noise of water coming down the overflow. It's described here: http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=28948.msg208848#msg208848

How did you deal with chloramine in your continuous drip system? Did any of the stages take care of it?

I really didn't do anything. One of the water filtration stages is activated carbon filter (one of the blue cylinders). And I'm not sure if it's doing anything for chloramines or not. But I'm not seeing any signs of stress or other problems in fish, shrimp or plants. But on occasion I do add some water conditioner to the water column when I'm doing sump maintenance. But this happens pretty irregularly. Maybe once every two months or so, on average.

Maybe you can add some lessons learned or "what would I do different next time".

I would have done a bigger sump. A 40 gallon tank is not enough water volume to restart the tank after power outage. Since some amount of water does get syphoned back and eventually goes into the drain through sump overflow and then there isn't enough water in the sump to refill the tank before the pump starts sucking some air. I did add a UPS to the pump, to somewhat delay the problem. So now my pump can run about 20 minutes after power outage which is enough for those infrequent power offs that we get in Barrhaven. Only on a couple of occasions I had to intervene and refill the system manually.

Another thing would be to get rid of the corner overflow boxes. They take off too much tank volume and very difficult to service since they are filled with pipes and if any creature gets there it's very difficult to get it out. I learned to ignore it and wait until the poor fishy or shrimpy makes it into the sump on its own.

That's really what comes to mind. Maybe having even a bigger tank would be nicer?

[BSmith]

That's a pretty wicked setup.  It's too bad you can't take it with you.

As for the question about Chloramine.  Activated Carbon will remove Chloramine but requires a longer contact time.

*edit* I just read that UV light also removes Chloramine.  So between the Carbon filter and UV light in this setup I would believe that all of the Chloramine is removed.

[sas]

Ah nice setup, thanks for posting the build.
Love those puntius denisonii!