55g Pictures

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Danielie21]

Just need to glue in two baffles and start on the plumbing. Should be running test water this weekend if all goes well.

https://plus.google.com/photos/104781491697304694382/albums/5688464774106342673

[Danielie21]

New video of the tank so far.  video-2012-01-02-18-13-40.mp4

And a couple more pictures of everything running.  https://plus.google.com/photos/104781491697304694382/albums/5693246375299858929

Any input would be great, I know i gota redo the coast to coast i didn't see that i was off about 3 inches in my water lvl in the DT.

[Nate C.]

Couple things I see:

1 - as you stated, the Coast to coast level needs to be brought up.  You should have the level INSIDE the coast to coast lower than the water level on the tank side.  The flow rate should be adjusted such that the water can be run through the fingers and the drains be able to keep up witt the flow.  It looks to me like the finger bottom is too low compared to the bulkhead/drain, so I would make a front piece with fingers that has shorter fingers so the water on the tank side can be kept higher than the drain.

2 - it appears that your bottom side of the drain is shooting water out above water line in the sump.  I'd recommend extending the tubing to below water line to minimize noise and salt creep.

3 - Not sure what your plan is with the tank returns.  I'm hoping you intend to have something that will allow the discharge to be below water level and not allowing free-fall through air into the tank.  This will create a lot of bubbles, noise and salt creep that will make you very unhappy in a short period of time.


Give me a yell if you have any questions or want any suggestions.

Nate

[Nate C.]

Oh, one other thing to mention that may help when you go to re-do the C2C....

If you can find a way to block the current fingers up to a higher point (scrap Acrylic maybe?) such that they are above the drains and functioning the way they should, try to take a measurement of the water depth in the fingers to get an idea of how tall you should make the solid section of the new front plate so that you can have running water level up inside the black band at the top of the tank.  That way you don't have the visual distraction of the water bouncing around due to flow at the surface - it'll be hidden behind the black border.

[Danielie21]

Couple things I see:

1 - as you stated, the Coast to coast level needs to be brought up.  You should have the level INSIDE the coast to coast lower than the water level on the tank side.  The flow rate should be adjusted such that the water can be run through the fingers and the drains be able to keep up witt the flow.  It looks to me like the finger bottom is too low compared to the bulkhead/drain, so I would make a front piece with fingers that has shorter fingers so the water on the tank side can be kept higher than the drain.

2 - it appears that your bottom side of the drain is shooting water out above water line in the sump.  I'd recommend extending the tubing to below water line to minimize noise and salt creep.

3 - Not sure what your plan is with the tank returns.  I'm hoping you intend to have something that will allow the discharge to be below water level and not allowing free-fall through air into the tank.  This will create a lot of bubbles, noise and salt creep that will make you very unhappy in a short period of time.


Give me a yell if you have any questions or want any suggestions.

Nate

1. I'm thinking of taking it out and just doing 1 foot box wide around the bulkhead instead of doing the coast to coast. This box front will be at tall as the fingers on the box now which would bring the water lvl just about an inch below the tank rim. From there I was going to put 1 1/2 fingers on to reach to the top of the tank. Inside I was going to have the elbow pointed straight up with a screen on it.

2. The drain was just to get water back into the sump for testing, i'm going to 90 it right into the tank with a 4" piece going down into the sump area.

3. Same with the drain it was just to get water moving for testing, i'm going to put a piece down with a 90 for lockline.

[Nate C.]

Sounds good Dan.  Think you are on the right path.  Also, based on what you said about not having the plumbing finished, do NOT go with my suggestion about determining water level above the fingers, it'd be off in the final design since you will have more restriction on flow coming in.  Also, with smaller area (boxes instead of C2C) you will have more water depth at the fingers for the same flow rate too.

If you are going to do boxes around the drains, I recommend fingers on the sides as well to spread the flow over as much area as you can.  Don't want to get a fish sucked up against it and not have them be albe to get away.  This is the one thing on my tank I wish had been done differently (and I'd actually asked for it to be done as desired, but they couldn't due to the eurobrace top).

[Danielie21]

Here is a picture of the new boxes i'm going to put in.

[Nate C.]

those should work.  If you didn't have them already built, I would have suggested black instead of clear to limit algae growth inside them, but it'll work for flow.

[Danielie21]

Is there anyway I can quite down the noise that i'm getting a lot of it from the 90s that are right next to the sump. I'm not getting any noise from the overflow box?

[Ed]

I would extend returns under water.   I think what you are hearing is air.   I am looking at nineties in overflow box.   Are the nineties sitting sideways in you overflow as shown?     I would make a durso. 

http://www.dursostandpipes.com/

[Danielie21]

Ed, but what i seen of the durso setups those are for bottom drilled tanks or at least all the sites i've seen they have been. For the 90s yes they are sideways inside of the box.

[Nate C.]

Ed, but what i seen of the durso setups those are for bottom drilled tanks or at least all the sites i've seen they have been. For the 90s yes they are sideways inside of the box.

The air tube that I use in my drain box and what I discussed with you in tapping the elbow outside and adding the gate valve are also basically the same thing as the durso.  Basically you just want something that injets enough air into the system to keep the water from going below the level of your drain (creating the gurgling suction sound).  Having listened to yours with the flow rate you had, it wasn't gurgling at the elbow in the overflow box.  If you don't have your drains submerged in your sump, you need to extend them, they have to be below water level or you are going to hear a lot of noise from them.

[Danielie21]

Nate,

I did put the elbows pointing down and drilled a small hole on the 90s in the back and it did help the noise but its still a little loud. I do have a little valve for air stone and i can't get it fined tuned enough to keep it from gurgling. With the drains in the sump i went ahead and made them longer into the sump and that seems to help as well.

[Danielie21]

Went ahead and did my first test since my diatoms outbreak is about half over.

[Sol2reef]

How is ur tank looking now?