Taqpol's 220 gallon custom Miracles tank!

[Taqpol]

About a month ago I moved from Pullman, Washington all the way across the country to Durham, North Carolina for Grad school. Considering the average time to get a PhD in my field is ~6 years, my fiance and I bought our first house. As if this wasn't enough already I decided it would be a good idea to upgrade to the six foot tank I've always wanted, especially since the house we ended up with had a perfect location for a "fish closet".

I initially planned on upgrading to a standard 180 gallon, but due to the planned location of the tank I wanted to have an internal overflow and 24" wide did not seem large enough when ~6" of it would be taken up by an overflow box. I looked for a long time at the Marineland Deep Dimension 300, but decided that 36" front to back would overpower the room and make maintenance a real problem. After shopping around at a few of the custom tank manufacturers I decided to splurge and go with a Miracles in Glass tank from Canada. Derek was amazing to work with and I got exactly what I wanted: 72" long x 30" wide x 24" tall with three sides Starfire glass and an internal 30"x6" overflow drilled for three 1.5" bulkheads for a BeanAnimal style overflow!


Quick Specs:
Light: 360 watts of DIY LED goodness
Flow: 2x Vortech MP40w, 2x Koralia Evo 1050 (I'm already thinking I should have gone with a pair of tunze streams for more directional flow)
Skimmer: MSX250A
Misc:
2x ViaAqua 300w Titanium heaters
ReeFlo Dart Return pump
Neptune APEX controller
20 gallon frag tank
38 gallon dedicated QT tank
Water change station
Portable Air Conditioner



Here are some links for any who are interested in my past experiences:

Original 120 gallon build thread. Almost made it to 40 pages, I wonder if this one will be as active.

DIY LED prototype build. ThOTM nominee and my current plan for lighting of the big system.

[Taqpol]

Floor plan of my office with "fish Closet". To Scale.


All overflow pipes will travel along the wall behind the two tanks and through the wall into the fish room, terminating in the sump. The wall behind the tanks is an outside wall, so heat from the AC will dump straight outside. My desk is against the wall directly across from the 220.


Miracles guarantees their warranty with DIY stands, as long as the stand in question meets their requirements. I'm pretty sure mine will do the trick.

Based off of RocketEngineer's DIY stand template:




2x6 Base:


2x4s to hold the plywood floor off the ground:




All 2x6 Top:


Sealed with Kilz primer:





This stand was designed and built so that I could remove the legs and assemble it at its final destination. I had to do it this way as the stand is 30" wide and 36" tall, and the doorway to the office is only 29.75" wide.

[Taqpol]

Stand assembled in place:




No shimming required!


Insulation foam:


This build has been clipping along at a pretty ridiculous pace. For instance, all the cuts were made for the stand on one day. The next day the entire thing was painted and I finally got it assembled in the room at 11:00 that night. This is my tired face:



With the stand in place I was able to pick up the tank from the local freight depot, which was conveniently just up the street from me. That being said, if I had one complaint about Miracles, it was that they crated the tank TOO well. Even though the tank was only 30" wide, it would not fit in the bed of our truck. My father and I ended up going on a wild goose chase all over the city to eventually rent a U-haul just to get it home!


I just had to take a peek!

[Taqpol]

Its late, so I think I'm going to end with the somewhat obligatory mermaid shot!

My soon to be bride, what a sport!


Mer-Man:


Even a Mer-Cat:





My poor little RO/DI sure has its job cut out for it:

[Demonic]

Awesome start for the new build. After seeing your last one, I am sure this one will be just as exciting. What are your plans for a sump? I am setting up one as well, just not as pretty. Our equipment is almost identical, I just cant seem to take the plunge into LED's just yet. Maybe your build will talk me into it.

[tegee]

Looks Awesome.......tagging along. Good luck with your setup.

[strout]

Nice tank, along for the ride

[crvz]

Looks like fun. But in my opinion, you're making too much progress.

[reefman66]

Nice looking tank!!

[kudora]

nice tarqpol been wondering what you have been up to, congrats on the new tank

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by tegee

Looks Awesome.......tagging along. Good luck with your setup.

Originally Posted by strout

Nice tank, along for the ride

Originally Posted by reefman66

Nice looking tank!!

Originally Posted by kudora

nice tarqpol been wondering what you have been up to, congrats on the new tank

Thanks! Glad to have you all along for the ride!

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by Demonic

Awesome start for the new build. After seeing your last one, I am sure this one will be just as exciting. What are your plans for a sump? I am setting up one as well, just not as pretty. Our equipment is almost identical, I just cant seem to take the plunge into LED's just yet. Maybe your build will talk me into it.

Ask and ye shall receive!


This is a model, with the front pane missing, that I made in sketchup. I am trying my hand at acrylic fabrication and this thing will be made out of 3/8" cell cast acrylic. The chamber in the back is basically a really long bubble tower. All of my overflow pipes and skimmer outlet will enter this as close to the lefthand side so water will have to travel all the way to the right hand side of the trap before flowing to the skimmer. Next is the skimmer section, followed by an under - over - under baffle system which makes more sense to me then what i had last time. Lastly, oversized return section.

I am actually in the process of gluing all this together now and I'll take a lot of pictures of the progress!

Originally Posted by crvz

Looks like fun. But in my opinion, you're making too much progress.

Haha, in my defense all the pictures above were taken over a two week process, I was just too tired every night to actually make a post about them. I am pushing myself a little bit, but there is a reason. I leave this Tuesday to go back to Washington and get married! Immediately after that we will leave for our honeymoon in Bora Bora (I'm sure I'll take lots of pictures, both above and below water!). My goal is to get this tank running in such a way (flow, heat, plumbing, sump, maybe internet APEX so I can check it while I'm away) so that all the rock I had shipped over from Washington can be re-curing while I'm gone. That way the moment I get back I can take my fish and corals off the hands of the lady who has been nice enough to care for them this entire time!

[jb61264]

Subscribed...again Congrats on the move and the build so far...the tank looks amazing!Is the overflow drilled in the bottom of the tank or the side?...you mentioned the Beananimal overflow but I couldn't tell exactly where your overflows are. Love the width of your internal overflow...what are you doing for returns (noticed the holes drilled into the bracing)?

[reidcrandall]

UPGRADING ALREADY????

I'm jealous. I barely have my 120 going!

[Nate R]

hey alex did you end up getting all your live stock transported over there safe or did you leave them in WA?

[jjstecchino]

Congrats on your upcoming wedding and new tank!
What can you make you any happier?

Claudio

[mpoletti]

Very nice Alex

[Taqpol]

Originally Posted by jb61264

Subscribed...again Congrats on the move and the build so far...the tank looks amazing!Is the overflow drilled in the bottom of the tank or the side?...you mentioned the Beananimal overflow but I couldn't tell exactly where your overflows are. Love the width of your internal overflow...what are you doing for returns (noticed the holes drilled into the bracing)?

The overflow plumbing is plumbed through the bottom of the tank. This allows me to have the tank only 2" from the wall (the OD of 1.5" pipe). I will have a 1" return pipe that come up behind my tank and splits in two to go through the holes in the euro brace.

Originally Posted by reidcrandall

UPGRADING ALREADY????

I'm jealous. I barely have my 120 going!

I'll have you know in preperation for this build I went back through and re-read your entire build thread.There are a lot of good ideas in there, especially the fish room design and acrylic work!

Originally Posted by Nate R

hey alex did you end up getting all your live stock transported over there safe or did you leave them in WA?

I sold off about half the livestock locally, and shipped the other half including all my coral and live rock air freight to a local hobbyist down here. Unfortunately SWA crushed four of the boxes and delayed the rest. I can't complain because they settled right away, but i pretty much lost all of my SPS corals....

Originally Posted by jjstecchino

Congrats on your upcoming wedding and new tank!
What can you make you any happier?

Claudio

Even though everything that is happening right now is a good thing, I'm a tad burned out. Hopefully the Honeymoon will fix that!

Originally Posted by mpoletti

Very nice Alex

Thanks for stopping by Mark! Not much here to see yet, though!

[madmike]

nice! GO COUGS!

[Taqpol]

Because my "fish room" is in a small (6'x8') enclosed room I decided to be proactive about potential heat and moisture problems by installing a portable air conditioner. I went with this because I was able to get it at a local home depot:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1...atalogId=10053

Unfortunately, for any type of AC you need to be able to vent the heat and moisture somewhere. Upon CRVZ's advice I decided not to vent out to the garage and instead ended up drilling a 4.25" hole in my outside wall. It actually went much easier then I thought it would. We started by drilling a 1/4" pilot hole all the way through the wall from the inside to the outside. We then went outside and adjusted the hole up so that our vent cover would fit against the siding like it was supposed to. Then you just take a giant hole saw to your house!


Felt around a little bit, no pipes or wires hopefully....


Simple!


Dryer vent is caulked and screwed to the siding. Good thing we missed the piping for that hose spigot, but it looks pretty good to me!


Installed a dryer quick disconnect to the other end so that I would be able to easily change out to a different AC or some other method of cooling (simple fan, maybe?) in the future.


Directly underneath the vent I also installed a hose spigot drain pipe for my saltwater mixing station and 3/8" spigot to connect to my skimmer for sucking in outside air. I'd already drilled a 4" hole in the wall, these should be simple! Unfortunately it definitely did not turn out as pretty, but in the spirit of full disclosure here are the pics:





They are both so close to the bottom of the house i don't think it will be too noticeable!

[Demonic]

Originally Posted by Taqpol

Ask and ye shall receive!


This is a model, with the front pane missing, that I made in sketchup. I am trying my hand at acrylic fabrication and this thing will be made out of 3/8" cell cast acrylic. The chamber in the back is basically a really long bubble tower. All of my overflow pipes and skimmer outlet will enter this as close to the lefthand side so water will have to travel all the way to the right hand side of the trap before flowing to the skimmer. Next is the skimmer section, followed by an under - over - under baffle system which makes more sense to me then what i had last time. Lastly, oversized return section.

I am actually in the process of gluing all this together now and I'll take a lot of pictures of the progress!

Nice sketch up. I like the design, so much I may copy it.
Take lots of pics for me so it will help me in the theft of the design. Thats one thing I cant make up my mind on, mostly external or internal refugium. Keep the pics coming.

[sammy113]

Damn that tank looks so good. Congrats on all the new stuff happening. Can't wait to see this build finished. Enjoy this cause this is the most fun part of reefing I think I enjoy it even more than keeping it lol

[dragonfish_!]

nice work man

[Dejavu]

Alex the Miracle's tank looks great and you look like your have way to much fun! Keep up the good work.

[crvz]

You may want to think about a drain for the portable AC unit. Mine actually doesnt drain a lot of water, so I'm able to simply use a bucket, but if you get one with continuous draining (which almost any of them can be retrofitted to do, if it's not a built in feature) that may be a lot easier consider the amount of space you have (dragging an AC unit around for draining purposes may not be suitable).