bje's 75gal reef (finally)

Wasn't it Tonga that had that tsunami recently that destroyed the reefs around it?

 

hrmm not sure. i really like the look of tonga branch though...

 

ammonia: 0.25/mg

yay time for cycling!

 

so i need some advice. ive been running this tank now for a week to test things out. ya know, make sure the pipings all good, etc.

its been VERY VERY dry in my basement with it being winter and i can tell on my 55gal tank thats been up for 2 years now because i have to all of a sudden top off daily, quite a bit of water.

well, last night i marked a line on the sumps return chamber for the 75gal reef and i came home from work today and the pump was spewing microbubbles. checked the chamber and the water line had decreased by 1.5". by my calculation thats .39 gallons of evap. (return chamber dimensions are 12" height x 5" width) water line was at 6" and was at 4.5" when i got home.

so thats almost a 1/2 gal of water in a 15 hour period.

what to do? do i setup an auto top off of straight ro/di water? do i get a bigger mixing container (40gal or something) with a pump thats setup on a electronic auto-top off to govern the pump to top off with ro/di+saltmixed water?

im affraid to leave my house for a whole 24 hour period right now because that chamber could reduce its water level enough to burn out the pump.

relative humidity in the 'reef room' is 60%. i have a exhaust fan for the room, but its not even running yet because i havent finished piping it in. im affraid thats gonna make this worse too.

i have no fans or really any air movement in the 'reef room'.

(im calling the 8x6 room i built for the back of the in-wall tank, the sump, ro units, etc. the reef room. btw i finally got my utility sink back there plumbed in tonight)

 

That's about what my system is evaporating right now as well so I would not be surprised. If your return chamber only houses enough water that your pump will run dry in under 24 hours I would look at a new sump or moving that baffle so you have more volume in the return chamber personally. Even with an ATO that doesn't leave you much time to realize if your ATO stops working for some reason.

For now you'll need some type of ATO I think. I would not hook your RO unit straight up to the sump. That is very risky for floods, large floods, and tank crashes.
I would get an RO reservoir (maybe 5-10 gallons is all I would do) that you can hook up your RO unit to (with an auto-shutoff kit) and just fill that up once or twice a week by turning the RO unit on for a few hours (and then turn off the RO unit when it's full so you don't risk floods from the reservoir). Then get an ATO system of some sort (there are lots of options, I like the Tunze Osmolator personally) to move water from the reservoir to the sump. I like sizing the RO reservoir with only enough water so that even if the ATO sticks on it won't flood the sump or drastically decrease the salinity in the tank.

 

update: added 10lb more LR and 20lb more live sand to the DT

 

i wonder when my 50lbs of base rock from marcorocks.com is gonna show up....

 

fedex states that december 31st my rock is supposed to arrive. it'll be a good new years present!

 

built a diy-durso standpipe. working well. had to fix the piping into the fuge as it was too long and causing back pressure making for a weird up and down effect in the overflow chamber. stable now. i also plumbed in the 37 gal mix tank. ill provide pics asap

 

Way to keep busy.. sounds like good progress!