150g AO build thread

[liquidfunk]

I first purchased my old tank back in 2003, it was an acrylic tank with a standard 4� or so overflow box. I made tons of mods to it trying to get the flow I wanted. This led to other problems, micro bubbles, water noise etc.

Quick stats:
Aquarium Obsessed 150 gallon glass tank, custom overflow, euro braced, starfire 3 sides 48 x 30 x 25h
Custom oak furniture, doors on 3 sides stand and canopy, flip top canopy lid, 36� tall stand.
Closed loop with Dart and OM all through the bottom of the tank
Dart on return pump partially through 1/4hp PCI chiller returned through Wavysea
2 by 430w (HQI) radiums on SLS Reefoptics 1 plus
4 by 54w T5 URI acitinic with SLS new generation reflectors
H&S A150 skimmer
Koralin reactor
Aquacontroller III Pro with PX-1000
Ozone through ozone reactor
PM kalk reactor


The Tank and Closed loop: I was sick and tired of cleaning coralline off acrylic so I wanted glass. I also wanted to have the tank tight up against the wall, so I had to come up with a way to do the closed loop through the bottom of the tank. I like sand so I knew I couldn’t simply put bulkheads with screens in the bottom of the tank, I didn’t want to have riser tubes with screens because that looked tacky and it was going to be hard to cover them, yet make them accessible to clean. The result was a closed loop intake design integrated into my overflow box.

The overflow box is made of 3 chambers in a row. The outside two have 4 x 12 inch laser drilled square holes in the sides of the box. These square holes have acrylic covers that are perforated with 1/8 holes. In the bottom of these two side chambers are 1.5� bulkheads for the closed loop intakes. This way there is less suction (so I don’t suck in fish and anemones) yet it is clean looking and the covers are easily removed for cleaning. The center chamber is a normal overflow box, it has two 1.5� bulkheads in it for drainage to the sump. Water can enter this box through the front (surface skimming) or water can travel through the acrylic intake screens and go up and over the glass partition between the CL intakes, and the sump drain.











The intake join together into a 2� pipe and enter the Dart. The 1.5� output goes into a 4 way Oceans Motions device that alternates flow from the left side to the right side. The outputs are up through the bottom.

[liquidfunk]

The overflow drain pipes I used a modified herbie type of drain silencer.





One thing I chose to do was use gate valves to control water into my CA reactor, ozone reactor, and skimmer. So far this has been very very effective. I can fine tune the affluent rate on the reactor very well with a 1� gate valve.
As you can see in this photo, the herbie overflow in the front, and the closed loop plumbing in the back:

[liquidfunk]

in the bottom of the stand there is an acrylic drip pan with a drain. The closed loop has a true union ball valve used to attach some vinyl tubing for water changes. This way I can simply attach the tube to the bulkhead drain, screw on the union and open the ball valve.
I had to drill through 7 inches of materials to get into the crawlspace. I simply used acrylic solvent to fix the bulkhead into the hole. This way I didn’t need to put a bulkhead “nut� on.



I wanted to run Ozone but I wanted to do it 100% safely. To do this I decided to run a ozone reactor. So I used the old style 2littlefishes reactor with the “nipples� on top to run ozone into ceramic bio media through a air stone in the bottom. This ozone/water solution then travels directly into another Kent phos reactor filled with carbon, this will remove any residual ozone. Finally it runs through a phos reactor with ferric hydroxide prior to returning to the sump. The ozone is also controlled through my ACIIIPRO.

I also have a DIY auto top off system directly feed from my RO/DI unit. I know this is highly NOT recommended thus why I have multiple fail safes. First there are 2 float switches in series, this way if one of them gets stuck the system wont continue to fill.
I was also planning to drain my skimmate down the drain but after hearing Steve Weasts story about his skimmer overacting and running his sump dry I knew I had to come up with a different system. What I decided to do is run my skimmate into a DIY resevour that has a float switch in it. Instead of creating back pressure on the skimmer like the beckets with collection containers mine shuts off the air supply to the skimmer. An airline is connected to this collection continer from outside, then the air travels through the float switch and into the skimmer. When it fills up with skimmate the float switch shuts off the air supply to the skimmer. This box then has a ball valve drain that is directly over the floor drain. A flip of the valve and the skimmate is drained.

I built a probe holding system for the controller probes as well. I don’t have final pictures of it as the first round failed. I used a polypro material and it turns out not to be “floaty� enough to hold up the probes. I have since built an acrylic box to be the float with the probes attached to the sides of it with O rings. The first round photos:





Furniture, lights, and tank:

As you can see I built some aluminum racks to hold the lights. I wanted the T5’s to be at the same height as the halides, I also didn’t want the halides to be mounted directly onto the sound proofing material so they are mounted with a 1� gap using the aluminum.

I have since changed the back, I have added 2 more fans. I now run 4 fans in the stand and canopy.

I found some fans that are incredible, they are 72cfm at only 14db, they have a controller that controls 4 fans so no custom wiring is necessary.

The stand and canopy are both sound proofed. I used a closed cell sound proofing foam, covered by MLV (mass loaded vinyl)

[liquidfunk]

Rock: the tank is mostly filled with Vavau rock, Im able to get this rock in very large pieces with makes for better aquascaping in my opinion. I have one 54 pounder that is an “island� I plan on having anemones, ricordia etc on this island. This way they wont likely walk over onto the main structure and bother the acropora. I will not be having any zoas, mushrooms (other than rics) and may have a small patch of GSP on another island like a piece of branching rock.









I have added a couple more branching rocks in the middle since the photos. Im also changing out all the plumbing and loc-line with Oceans Motions Omni Flex nozzles.





More photos to come of the skimmer and skimmate collection container etc.

[liquidfunk]

broken images:

[liquidfunk]

rock images broken links above:

[liquidfunk]

well this was a big waste of time writting all this up. Guess no one cares.

[808-340]

No keep it up! Don't worry, just because there's no comments doesn't mean people are not interested! It's always great to see build projects.

[Purple Haze]

Looks good.