DIY stand for my new 225 gal tank

[redbelly]

Nice looking setup AlexV!

Are those abs fittings heading into the basement?

I like your stand a lot too.

[alexv]

Only thing if it is not enough you can't add another later. 

That is very true. But my view of this is the following: many people don't do any substrate heating at all. The worst that could happen if I have not enough heating is that... well... I'd be like everyone else... But if I have too much heating, well, I think that could be quite bad.

[alexv]

The tank is in. It took 5 people to bring this thing inside and put it on the stand

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[Jeff1192]

Wow....this is the first time that I've looked at this thread. That's a great project. Your stand looks fantastic. What are you planning on putting in the tank?

Nice job.

Jeff

[alexv]

Wow....this is the first time that I've looked at this thread. That's a great project. Your stand looks fantastic. What are you planning on putting in the tank?

Nice job.

Jeff

First of all, I'll move all my fish from my three tanks into this one, so that would be:
- Tiger barbs x3
- Neon tetra x4
- Clown loach x1
- Yoyo loach x3
- Kuhli loach x1
- African glass fish x3
- Rosy tetra x2
- Dwarf gourami x2
- Oto cats x1
- SAE x4
- Red Line Torpedo barbs x4
- Amano & Cherry shrimp (x many)

Of course, I'll add more fish of these kinds (kuhlis, otos, neons, etc), to make those individuals more comfortable.

Then I was thinking to add:
- Rummynose tetra
- Harlequin rasbora

Then I'll see how everything goes and add some more fish. I think i'll have more fish of the same kind than a few fishes of many kinds, if that makes any sense.

The 55 gal that I'm freeing will ultimately host polypterus sinegalus and Potamotrygon motoro. At least that's what I'm thinking, not sure if I ever actually do it (never had carnivores like that ). But I surely love those fishes.

The 33 gal, 10 gal and 5 gal are going to go, so I'll be left with just two tanks... I will likely keep 10 gal as a Q-tank in the basement, but that's about it...

[audioslave_36]

nice setup, I have the same tank  buit into my basement wall. All your fish are gonna love the room they will soon have !  And as for the polypterus sinegalus, don't be afraid to get one, I have one and she is a great fish, you just have to remember, if it fits in its mouth it will wind up there!

[Adam]

Looks nice.  Only thing I'm concerned about is your freshwater ray for the 55 gallon.  It says they can get up to 90cm and need a 1000L tank at least. 

[alexv]

Looks nice.  Only thing I'm concerned about is your freshwater ray for the 55 gallon.  It says they can get up to 90cm and need a 1000L tank at least. 

I tend to agree I have looked on the internet a bit and they do tend to say that they grow pretty large... Maybe I mixed the species. I just read a book Jurassic fishes, and the ray species I was thinking of is told to be Ok in 55 gal... I'll double-check to see if I was mistaken...

[dan2x38]

Looks very nice in place. It is going to look so cool set-up.

I would be worried about the shrimp with the Tiger barbs they likely will eat them. I love the Tiger barbs I have a Tiger tank... how about some Odessa barbs they are so cool.

[alexv]

I guess it's time for some updates.

My light fixture I bought on eBay has also arrived. It's a 72" hood with 8x 80W T5 bulbs. The seller actually took good care of packaging it. It came in a wooden crate, well wrapped in Styrofoam and bubble wrap. I also bought additional 16 bulbs since the 80W T5s are kind of hard to find and at about $20 a piece it's a good price too:



It seems to provide plenty of light for my future plants (will have to see when I actually have substrate and plants in it). And the 12 blue moonlight LEDs look much better than in my other fixtures on 55 and 33g tanks.



I have finished the plumbing for the system yesterday, yay! Sniggir was nice enough to come to my place and drill the sump tank the other day.









Today I filled the whole system for the first time and tried it out.



There were a few things that went wrong though. For one, the acrylic baffles I installed in the sump all went to a better place... Note to self: using 1/8" (edit: actually it turned out to be just 1/16") acrylic on a 18" wide tank was a bad idea. It buckles even under slightest pressure. Another note to self: silicone doesn't bond too well with acrylic

Anyway, when I added water to the sump, the baffles started to buckle and after the pump was turned on they eventually gave way and detached from silicone and fell down... I also realized that my sump is on a smaller size... Even though I've been warned here before about giving proper volume to the last compartment where the pump takes the water from, and even though I gave almost half of the volume of my 40g sump to it, the pump would almost empty it and start to suck some air in before enough water comes down from the tank to begin the cycle... Here is my original sump design.



It's probably a good thing that my baffles failed... I will have to redesign the sump layout with my new findings in mind. I will remove the last baffle and eliminate the compartment that houses the heater. This will open up the volume of the last section to be up to the filter section. I will also play with the sizes of the compartments to maximize the volume of the last section...

Another problem was a few leaks that I detected in my plumbing. Most of them were in places where thread joints were used (like some ball valves, or the pump connections). I easily fixed that with more teflon tape. However one leak puzzled me a bit... It's at the 1.5" bulkhead that leads to the drain. Apparently the hole drilled was a bit too big for the size of the bulkhead I had. The rubber seal has two concentric ridges and the diameter of the hole was roughly the diameter of the innermost ridge (maybe even a bit bigger). This probably doesn't allow the gasket to seal properly and a slow leak occurred... I'm not quite sure how to fix it yet. I tried to re-seat the seal a couple of time... Maybe when I resolve all the other issues I'll use some silicone in there... I'd hate to do that, but I'm not sure what other options I might have...

And another issue concerns with the noise the water flow causes... I know that I have used ABS pipes that are supposedly the loudest. I will have to fiddle with some wrap-on insulation to see if I can deaden the sound... The tank has Durso stand-pipes on returns and I kind of thing they weren't properly made... They produce quite a loud hissing noise from the air sucked into the vent hole... I tried to play with the size of the vent opening but it doesn't help too much and when closed too much siphon effect happens and sucks water out of the overflow box with crazy speed I will have to see what can be done about that... Maybe I will end up redoing the stand-pipes...

Now, my question of the day... Any suggestions on where to get glass cut for baffles? I think using glass instead of acrylic on a glass sump tank would be a better choice...

[alexv]

Ok, I (almost) solved the noise issue. I bought some fiberglass pipe insulation from HomeDepot and wrapped the drain pipes. This cut down on the water noise significantly... There is still some noise but it is at an 'ok' level right now...





I will also wrap the return lines too. It produces no noise, but this should help with heat insulation of the pipes (should cut down on some water heating costs down the road). I also plan to use a spray-painted stryrofoam backing on the main tank. This would give the color background and provide insulation too...

I also had the glass baffles cut for my sump. I just called a few glass places from the Yellow Pages. Costed me $40 for 4 baffles...



Now I'm testing the whole system and cleaning it of dirt or any other contaminants that might have been on pipes, etc... After a few days I will drain the tank and it will be ready for the real thing...

I still need to complete the automatic water change drip system. And to attach a closed loop to my sump for UV sterilizer/CO2 injection... But that can happen a bit later...

[alexv]

The system has been running for a couple days now without noticeable problems. I resealed some of the threaded pipe connections at the pump to eliminate tiny leaks, but other than that it's Ok. It's insane how much teflon tape those threaded connections take...

Today I have also finished the waterchange system. The filter is hooked up to the water supply line and the 4 L/h dripper is attached at the other end. So my system will cycle about 170 gallons/week of water right now. That's a bit too much for my overall system volume (about 250 gallons). I might get a 1/2 gph dripper from somewhere (couldn't find anything locally, ended buying the 1 gph one from LeeValley). I wonder if B&B Hydroponics might have something like that...

Here is the filter hooked up:



I have also constructed the filter media holder for the sump (using eggcrate). Filled the sump with bioballs and added the heater... Now going to figure out how well the heater handles everything... So far it's been raising the temperature of the water by 1.5°C per hour. But that's my preliminary findings... Will monitor over time... And I'm sure more insulation on the tank and pipes will help as well...

[groupie02]

in order to use less teflon tape, get the pink roll which is much thicker than the regular teflon tape. Well worth paying a little extra for the good stuff.

[dan2x38]

in order to use less teflon tape, get the pink roll which is much thicker than the regular teflon tape. Well worth paying a little extra for the good stuff.

There is even a yellow one for large threaded joints.

[alexv]

Hmm, never saw any other type of the tape... That's definitely good to know for next projects

In meantime, I have mounted a piece of wood I collected last summer at a lake onto a piece of slate tile from HomeDepot... Ready to go into the tank... Right now it is soaking in the intermediate water in the tank (since it's not really a driftwood and it floats, even with the slate attached ).



I have more pieces of wood but I will see how this one works out before deciding on what to do with the rest of it...

[dan2x38]

Very nice piece of driftwood should look cool. Preston hardware carries them all & I've seen the pink at Home Depot not sure about the yellow. I use the pink often but the white is best for small fittings.

[alexv]

Well, today is the day! I have put in the substrate, driftwood and filled the tank with the water (the real one ).

Here are a few pictures of the set up process...

I started with laying out the substrate heater cable... One thing I don't understand is why they included only 14 suction cups for a 10 meter cable... I needed maybe twice as many... Had to get creative at threading it around the driftwood to minimize the usage of those suction cups...





Then I put some quartz sand to support the cables. I needed a bit more sand that I had but apparently you can't buy it at this time of year (HD has it in spring-summer time as 'play sand').



On top of the sand I put a layer of fine substrate (I have four 10 kg bags of those)...



Then three 7 kg bags of laterite I picked up at Big Al's during this year's Boxing Day sale:



To top it off, 6 more 10 kg bags of coarser substrate gravel:



And finally filling it with water:



Here is how it looks after putting the light fixture onto the tank:



The water is a bit cloudy but it's clearing up pretty quickly...

I actually put a few of the first inhabitants into it! Some plants to deal with the excess of ammonia produced after neutralizing chloramines...

[alexv]

By the way, here is my sump working hard to clear up the water:



And here is how the light fixture looks like (while I was mounting the legs onto it):

[dan2x38]

It's really coming together. I agree about the suction cups for the heating cable. I have the same one for my 75 which is 48" x 18" foot print and thought there were to few. But once installed with substrate it ain't going anywhere. Oh be careful moving heavily rooted plants you don't pull up the cable or snap it.

[Saltcreep]

Very nice piece of driftwood should look cool. Preston hardware carries them all & I've seen the pink at Home Depot not sure about the yellow. I use the pink often but the white is best for small fittings.

I believe the yellow Teflon tape is gas fitters tape rather than plumbers.