Modular Design plumbing help needed

Thank you for the advice. Will do.

 

You will want to keep at least enough room for you bulkhead to fit and give another inch for safety.

You will want the flow through the fuge to be no more then 1X the fuge volume for the most effective job. At that flow I would not use LR in fuge as it will certainly become a nitrate factory.

Sounds like a very well thought out system. With continued research you will have it well dialed in and very successful.

 

No LR in the fuge? Even with an oversized alge scrubber running?
I will certainly take this into consideration and keep the LR in the display and species tanks. Perhaps I should build 2 fuge modules prior to adding my mantis tank into the system. I know they can be quite messy eaters

 

I would run one for cheato and one for the algae scrubber. You want to make sure you do not have any detritus that can get trapped in the rocks and generate nitrate.

 

Just a quick drawing of how things will be laid out.


Phase 1

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef, Nubcake. You have some interesting plans. Give me a moment to read it all and I will reply with answers to your questions.

 

I would not suggest water changes during the initial tank cycle. It sounds simple, but this is inhibiting the nitrogen process and could lead to problems later. Use a few pounds of live rock or a raw table shrimp to get it going. It will take about 6 weeks as you see your ammonia, nitrite and lastly nitrate levels spike and slowly decrease.

Don't use live sand, it's expensive, and isn't really worth the extra money you pay for it. I would opt for an aragonite substrate instead. It's a great pH buffer for saltwater. The brand isn't all that important, but I uses Carib-Sea and am happy with it.

If you have the money, Ecotech products are great. Battery back-up and the connection b/w pumps and lights is great too.

The only LED fixture I would say trumps the Radion might be Aqua Illumination's new Vega LED. It has 20 up to controllable channels for use with sunrise/sunset control, moon phases, cloud-cover, and storm effects. It should run about $500 when released; I do believe a few of our online retailers are taking pre-orders. A handheld controller can also be purchased separtely in additional to the included pc/mac software.

Your plan sounds pretty cool with different tanks for different species specific, environments. This will be fun as you become more experienced. The plumbing would be fairly simple...overflow box on the top tank, from which would the plumbing would flow to the next tank, and the next, and so on through this PVC (or flex tube). The same can be done for tanks that are side-to-side. Just raise one up about an inch or so so that it is taller than the other. All these tanks could be tied into a single sump/refuigum setup. You could upgrade this sump in the future if need-be, or add another to handle the load.

 

I'm expecting the entire build to take me a year or better start to well , till I run out of room on the space my wife has let me use for this project.

I'm using gorilla racks flex system as a stand/ shelving system to house it all. The dimensions are 41"x17x72 per kit. Will take me two more kits to complete the assembly. Each shelf has a weight limit of 1000 lbs for a total of 4000lbs per kit. This far exceeds the load I'll be putting on it. As a safety factor for seismic reasons it will be anchored to the wall via lag bolts.

 

Those racks will work nicely. We used to have some in our garage and they're plenty strong enough for an aquarium.

 

After a bit of reading I came to the same conclusion with the live sand. The AI vega looks like a very nice system however it is principal that I try my best to support my LFS. He carries the entire Ecotech lineup as well as Eheim / Eheim-Jäger products. However he did say he would try to carry anything I asked for. He's a good salesman, reminds me I need to do my homework prior to picking up livestock from him. Not sure if he's just out to make a buck. His shop is very clean and I didn't spot one sick or dead fish in the whole shop. Unfortunately he's the only brick n mortar LFS for 300 miles.
I will be getting the Carib sea sand , and a good portion of dry base rock to start. It will be seeded from hand picked cured live rock from my LFS.