GoToSleep's 700g Build Thread (& complete remodel)

Why didn't you put all the equipment in the fish room??? Be a heck of a lot easier to work on and do maintenance. Guess we all like different thing, keep the build pics coming.

So have you thought about what your going to do with all that humidity you got coming???

 

These are the very best cleaning magnets around....The algaedozer will wipe a back wall of coraline in minutes, the single best reef product I own.
aquarium algae cleaning magnets

 

There are some rare earth cleaning magnets for thick Aquarium glass (Otty I believe you hve one?) They're expensive, but super effective. People who own them say they take a little extra muscle to get going, but you won't find anything better. If the two halves attach to each other, without glass or something in between, you have to send them back to the company to be separated. :

 

Sparky, thanks for the feedback and please keep it coming.

The packaging on these particular covers said wet location and in-use. They looked to me like they would provide a better level of protection then the other type of cover (and I have a few of those sitting beside my stand now). You are very observant to pick up on the fact that I installed these things upside down. I tried to mount them the other way round but I didn't have enough clearance from the bottom rail on the stand. I may look around a bit more and see if I can find something that hinges to the side but anything with a hinge on top has to be mounted upside down.
The reason that those don't look like GFCI outlets is because they are standard outlets.

Is it important to have GFI for outlets sitting in proximity to hundreds of gallons of salt water?

Thanks for looking out for me here. I was concerned that GFCI outlets can be prone to inappropriate tripping if a device with a high start-up draw is attached. I wanted to minimize the possibilty that my MH ballasts or a chiller could trip the GFI's and take town crucial elements of my system. Instead, I went with GFCI breakers in the panal. Each one of those outlets is on a seperate 20 amp GFCI protected circuit. Each circuit also has another outlet in the fish closet so there are 6 2-gang outlets on 3 20 amp circuits.

I remember from my childhood, having metal cover over the outdoor outlets that would protect the outlet from the weather but you had to have the door open (no protection) while anything was plugged in. That is not the kind of cover that I have on here. These covers have a tiny little opening at the bottom (er, top in my case:-[) to feed the cord out. the cover itself is an expandable rubber gasket that billows out however much you need to accomodate the plugs. The picture shows the cover opened up in the position that would allow you to insert the plugs.

 

I would have loved to put all my equipment in the fish room and I had originally hoped to do so. Unfortunately, I had to make some concesions to my wife as to how much space I could devote to the tank since this room has to serve multiple functions. I'm sure everyone here is sympathetic to how hard I have it when my wife won't let me have a huge tank and a huge fish room. I might still have gotten everything in the fish room but I decided to add the sink in there and the 200gal vat takes up a lot of my space. As the project evolved, I thought that it would be nice to have a big refugium and it was just easier to expand to the space under the stand than to try and cram even more stuff into that tiny closet.

Regarding the humidity, have I mentioned my motto "Better lucky than good"? Right now I've got my fingers crossed that my initial plan will handle things comfortably. If it does not, I'm mentally prepared to have to make some alterations to things. I'll have a much better idea once I have water and lights.

For all the kids out there, I'm compelled to tell you that there is a corallary to "Better lucky, than good" and that is that "Chance favors the prepared mind".

 

I’m not usually a night owl but my LFS owner (Joe) is a maniac. He works the store all day and then goes out to do installs after the shop closes. Wrapping up at 2 am isn’t at all unusual for him but last night we knocked off early at 1 am. Between my 3 previous tanks (70-125gal) I’d set up and torn down sizable tanks 5 times before and never had any help other than some muscle from friends and family, so it was really strange for me to get help from the fish store. That being said, it was good to have some skilled help with this project. For anyone who’s ever wondered, setting up a 700gal system is considerably more involved than setting up a 70gal. I really enjoy the planning and DIY of setting this thing up but having all the tools of a guy who does 1000+gal tanks on a regular basis brought right to my house really made things a lot easier.
After pulling the 135gal out from under the stand we drilled the back wall for the drain line to my main pump. The glass was 5/8” thick and the hole took about 30minutes to drill. The drill press looks like it came out of my grandfather's shop but it's only a couple years old. Cost of a serious glass drilling drill press -- something over $1500, Not cracking your custom 135 gal sump when you drill it -- priceless.

 

While the sump was being drilled we broke out the table saw for a little on-site custom sump fabrication. Here’s Joe cutting the weirs from ¼” acrylic.

 

New holes drilled through the back of my stand and through the wall between the tank and the fish room.

 

We’re still not finished plumbing and I have some really big things to go in this closet that aren’t on site yet: a 200gal water vat and a custom rack to hold several more tanks. They brought my ‘new’ return pump out and we had a little surprise. It looks like the distributor mistakenly shipped a used/returned pump to my LFS instead of a new one. The first time we opened the box was at my house and then it was pretty obvious that this was not a new pump. A brand new one should be here in a few days but they left the old one with me for planning purposes in the mean time. For those who haven’t seen a Reeflo Hammerhead before, here it is dwarfing the main return pump (a Mag 7) from my old 125gal tank.

 

Here I am making my 3reef debut. That’s me putting some of the return line pluming in.





I leave it to you to decide which is my better side.