My new fish room

How I got from this
to this

I would have posted the whole thing but it is to long. Beware it is pic intence.
You can find it here. Dngspots Tank and Stand Build. - Page 25 - Wichita Aquarium Club Forums
Thanks,
David

 

HA! theres never any such thing as too many pictures.....

 

incredible thread.. a cool read..

 

I finally received the goodies to finish the auto top off. The bulkhead for the 1/4 inch tubing came without a gasket, as expected. I brought home my hole punch kit, we use them for making gaskets, and made two rubber gaskets. The rubber was scrap material, if I did not have it, I would have used pond liner. One of the gaskets were used for the bulkhead the other for the screw that holds the float switch bracket. I drilled three holes, one 5/8 for the bulkhead, another 1/2 for the mechanical float and the last 1/4 hole for the screw that holds the bracket.
I spent some time soldering the connections for the float switches and testing. I ran out of time this evening and will have to finish tomorrow. What is left is the float valve in the sump.
Here are the pics.
The first are the tools for the gaskets, the bulkhead gasket and the bulkhead.

The second is the finished reservoir less the water, easier to see the stuff inside.

The last pic is the water test. I will be raising the top float valve.

 

My fish room is just about finished. I have added a 5 foot tall dual beckett skimmer to the system powered by a Reeflo Hammerhead pump. It replaced a smaller single beckett skimmer. I am still waiting on a valve to show up, it is needed to raise and lower the water level in the reaction chamber. I was forced to order it as there is not much to choose from here when it comes to pvc gate valves.
The skimmer is a diy unit made by a friend of mine. He had difficulty getting it to work. He started with a Panworld 150ps pump and felt that it was too small for the dual becketts. I cannot verify this but, I did find the cores of the becketts upside down and this will cause problems. I also had to build a new lid for the collection pump, my friend drilled holes in it, feeling that the skimmer was not breathing enough through the 1/2 inch drain line. I do not know if this is true with the Panwold but, with the pump I am using it was a problem. I went out and bought 1 inch thin wall pipe. I heated the pipe and formed a flange in it to be glued to the collection cup. Using a dremmel I opened up the 1/2 inch hole to match the flange. I used Weldon 14 to glue the pipe to the acrylic, did sand the pvc and am hoping it will be enough to keep it in place.
My friend also had the Hammerhead but it was in pieces, he was getting ready to reseal the wet end. As he was working through the skimmer problems, my friend, decided to get out of the hobby. I finished the pump and plumbed in the skimmer. This thing with the new collection cup lid, a half inch hole to breathe through and no drain return valve to hold the water up still made a half of a cup of dark skimmate. When I get this thing dialed in she should kick butt.
I had to build a table over the sump to set the skimmer and an algae scrubber on. The scrubber is going to be built from a 20g long aquarium. I think this is all I will need to build except for a carbon and gfo reactors; they will be attached to the edge of one of the tables. The table sits on the edge of the sump and is supported by two wood legs and a pvc leg. The pvc leg is inside the sump and the missing leg is the back of the sump as mentioned earlier.
The pics may help my weak descriptions.

Front view of the sump.

The skimmer from the side. You can see the drain line, it is directed into the utility sink for now. After I get the skimmer dialed in I will build a pvc line to the drain behind the uv sterilizers.

The flange I built for the collection cup.

A view above the sump. If you look in the water you can see the pvc leg. I also need to dress up the auto top off line; I had to remove it from its original location when I built the table.

 

I wanna see the main tank!

 

This is a quick shot just a couple seconds ago.

 

Looks nice!

 

Everything was swimming along wonderfully when this happened.




There was a 18uf capacitor in there but, it was burnt beyond recognition. It also burnt the 120v wires and some of the cap wires. This all happened last weekend and we have a great group of guys that I ended up calling a friend and he gave me a Hammerhead pump. I plugged it in and guess what, it too needed a capacitor. I remembered that a pump went down at a LFS that I do some work for and they had replaced it. I went down there and the pump was also mine for nothing. I only needed the cap, trying to find one of those during the weekend is impossible; I live in the tech black hole. So off to home I went and a couple of minutes I had a working pump.

I could not stand to keep looking at the broken motor on my work table so I went to work. I took the pump motor apart and inspected the rotor and field all looked great. The only damage was to the 120v wires and the capacitor wires. The original capacitor box was burnt to no return and I had a J-Box lying around from my swirler stein builds, it fit the top of the motor nicely. All I had to do was drill mounting and cord holes, how easy is that? I had to call Baldor to get the spec for the capacitor and was able to pick one up locally. This new cap is better built than the cheep plastic unit that burnt up, its outer housing is metal. I soldered it together and plugged it in and she hums along like a champ.
Here she is now in service. The bright spots under the cap box is dust from the box, it came with mounting tabs that were not needed, so I ground them off.

 

Looking good. Wish I had a fish room as I live in an apartment and everything is in my living room lol