Amba
Ol' Salty
Hello everybody. In the 6 months or so that I have been in the hobby I have learned a TON of stuff, so now I feel like I am ready to tackle what made me first want a saltwater tank. A 400 gallon long. I can't actually buy the tank until after taxes come in but a little extra planning time is good. I am looking for a lot of advice, especially from those who have tanks above 150-200 gallons. I have been planning this for quite some time, and as soon as I get through the holidays I am gonna get right on it. So here is my plan:
Tank
96 x 36 x 25 Tall Starphire Front Aquarium from Glasscages.com - Home. I will have to take my truck down to White Plains, NY but they only charge $120 to get it there from TN. The tank is just under 400 gallons, 380-390 something like that. I have really big windows in the room that it's going in, so I'll just take one of the glass slides and the screen out and bring it in through there. Windows are only 1.5 feet off the ground so if I get enough people (Tank will weigh several hundred pounds on it's own...) we will be able to get it in through there. Clear sealant, and starphire on the front pannel.
Where I'm putting it
I am putting the 400 gallon aquarium on the third floor of my home, which was built in 1931. :mrgreen:
Not really, but anyhoo... I have a sunroom that we built on to our home a couple of years ago, and it just sits on a concrete pad. I'm going to rearrange the furniture and set it right on the carpet. I am too poor for a stand so I am just putting the tank on my couch.
Stand
I am having the stand built by a professional carpenter, because while I could make one that would work just fine, I want it to be my dream tank, so I'd rather have a professional do it. Going to be standard Oak stand with several doors for easy access, although I won't really need it (you will see later on). I'm going to stain it a dark brown probably to match the room (I cannot find my camera cable, when I find it, I will post pictures of the area.)
Overflows
One of the only reasons that I need a sump area is because I need room for the overflows. I am drilling the tank 6 times. Two are for two drain lines in the two corners of the tank. I am getting sheets of glass cut from my local glass company and making simple overflows myself. Just two long sheets fused together then to the tank, both going in the corners. Two are for emergency drain lines, just in case this thing goes to hell and tries to flood my whole house. The last two are for electronics (mainly the light fixtures!).
Lighting Lighting Lighting
This is kinda a hard thing for me. I for sure want to do MH and T5 fixtures. I may end up doing power compact because I really like the fixture I am messing with now. I have tried every kind of lighting (MH, T5, T8, LED, PC, FR 50/50) and I can say PC are by far the best, except for putting out a bit of heat. I am getting simple 50lb rated cable hanging kits from Home Depot and hanging whatever fixture I choose up above the tank. The coralife 130w PC lighting I have now is really great, and affordable. I of course would try those Radions, but to light my whole tank I would probably need 5 of them, and $3500 for lighting is kinda a lot! I may get three of the 130w PC I have now, I hope it would be enough light. I'm also going to dabble with those stunner strips, mounting them on a strip lighting track (the kind people use in their kitchens). The American DJ power strips are nice, I have them on my 30 gallon, so I'll be using 4 sets of 8 for my power. If it gets too hot, I am using this really nice chiller: Aeration Windmill System, 20 ft. - 4204656 | Tractor Supply Company
:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:
Water
I live in the country, so getting lots of half decent water is no problem. I have an 80 foot well and a 100 foot well. I am tapping in directly to the plumbing that runs into my house, so I will have plenty of good water to run the system. Central Tractor has these great tanks to hold water: Water Storage Tank, 550 gal. - 2126933 | Tractor Supply Company
I will be using something like that, probably 550 gallons to hold freshwater and another 300 gallon to hold saltwater. I'll need a 50 gallon to mix the actual saltwater before pumping it through to the holding tank.
The water will enter through the tap in the plumbing in the basement. It will pass through an automated pump which will send it to my well water holding tank. There, I will have a set of three air pumps that will aerate my water for half an hour. This is because well water tends to have a high concentration of CO2 (but I don't need to tell you reef junkies stuff you already know :P) After the CO2 bin, water will pass into my RO/DI unit. The RO/DI is a six stage with an extra DI unit from bulkreefsupply. It will then be pumped into the 550 gallon freshwater storage bin. It will then pass into the mixing canister where I will have two heaters and a maxijet to swirl that water around. I am contemplating using a goat feed apparatus to feed salt into the tank. I have one in my barn that I use for my pet goats and it's really neat, basically an airtight mounted plastic jug with a timer and a little motor that lets a specific amount of food into their pen twice a day. I could just put salt in there and have it feed automatically when the pump kicks on. I think that aquarium salt is highly hydroscopic so I need to make sure that it is really sealed. It will mix in there for 24 hours. There will be another timer at this point that I will wire to my controller that will kick on only when the ATO says the tank level is low. The mixed saltwater will enter the main 300 gallon saltwater holding tank and be swirled around there with a couple of pumps and maintained by another set of heaters. I am going to have it set so that when the reefkeeper says my tank is a little low on water, it pumps water straight away from my saltwater holding tank, but also turns on the pump from the freshwater to replace the saltwater that was lost. This way, I will ALWAYS have enough water and will never have to worry about it. The water system is going to run on it's own circuit because there is going to be an intense amount of electricity in this system. There are three downstairs, one is being used only for the saltwater.
Chilling
I know many of you are :grumble: about chillers, but for a system this size, I need one. The good thing is, that my basement stays quite cold most of the time, as it is dark and unfinished. However, upstairs in the summer, it gets 90+ a lot of the time. So I am running a JBJ chiller JUST IN CASE things go south (no pun intended). This will be in the corner of the basement and have it's own pump of course. It will send the hot air through an old chimney that we don't use anymore.
Panic Panic Panic
O MI GAWD I WENT ON VACATION AND MY HOUS FLODED!!!1one
Okay so I realize that I am nowhere near pro at this whole business so I installed three ULTIMATE fail safes. This system CAN NOT FLOOD.
1 - There are two return pumps. Both of them have float switches, so if the water gets too high, they will turn off.
2 - I have a floor drain in the concrete. There is going to be two overflow lines for if my overflows overflow, and they run directly into the ground. This will cause my sump to flood, which does not matter because that will also run into the ground.
3 - Water alarms upstairs, to go off if any water hits them.
Plumbing
The only water that will be upstairs is the water in the display tank. If you are standing facing the side of the sunroom, picture the top right corner of the basement connecting with the bottom left corner of the sunroom. It is only about 3.5' from where the sump will sit to where the bottom of the stand is. The water will exit the display tank, enter the sump in the basement, then later on return back up on the other side of the display tank. All I did was move the sump into the basement, so if there is a flood, it won't be in my house. All the other plumbing is in the basement as well, so I will not have any noisy equipment upstairs, and no ugly plumbing to mess with. I will have one gate valve on each return upstairs so JUST IN CASE if something supernatural happens and all my failsafes fail, I can directly turn off the water. This is also useful because I can turn off the water (or on) to drain the system if I have a nuclear meltdown or spill molten metals into my tank.
This system is going to be pretty loud what with all the pumps and plumbing, and I wanted to maintain the serenity of the display tank as much as possible. I am hoping that it will be virtually silent upstairs.
Sump
I am building this myself out of a 125 gallon standard tank. Skimmer area, 4 stage bubble trap, equipment area for heaters and the chiller lines, and the return area. I am using a 29 gallon as my fuge, and putting that underneath the sump. Just using a little nano overflow and a maxijet for this. Reason being, is that I just prefer to have it outside of the tank. I think it looks nicer and I like being able to work on it without turning anything else off. Sump will have a regular 50/50 light over it, since I don't need any hardcore lighting for just water. The fuge will have it's own LED lighting. I will also be drilling a bulkhead on the drain side from the saltwater storage tank for my ATO.
Electrical
I am mounting all my electrical on a painted piece of plywood and mounting it in the concrete wall. I already run two dehumidifiers down there so that won't be a problem. On there I will have...
ATO
Using the same ATO that I have on my 30 gallon, the JBJ. It is simple and really works great. Using mode 1, I will have both float switches mounted into my sump, with switch 2 upside down to turn off the pump if switch 1 gets stuck. I am kind of debating using two of these instead of a timer system for the water. Honestly, if I really wanted to go the pro route, I could use a separate reefkeeper for it, but that is obnoxious.
Heaters
All heaters will have their own knob to adjust them. Digital thermometers will be mounted here as well so I can see the temps in the saltwater tanks and the main system.
Dosing Stuff
Using the reefkeeper and Tom's Aqualifters to dose my mag and alk. Standard setup, they come on a couple minutes a day and keep levels stable.
On to other things.. Reactors!
I will have 4 different reactor systems running...
Kalkwasser
Standard Kalk stirrer running into the second part of my sump. I haven't decided if I want it to run into my saltwater holding tank but I don't have to decide this right now.
BRS Carbon and GFO
I am running the BRS dual reactor out of the second chamber in my sump. I am not sure if I need two of these for this much water volume, what do you all think?
Calcium
I have done quite a bit of research on these things and it looks like you put media in, get the CO2 tank hooked up, and let it fly. Seems easy enough, I'll have a backup CO2 tank since they are pretty cheap. I can get them filled for next to nothing at the same place I get my paintball tanks filled.
Skimmer
Reef octopus. Hopefully the thing will do the job, I wish they made a bigger one.
Octopus Extreme 350 Protein Skimmer - English
This will go in the first chamber of the sump.
Powerheads
I don't have enough money to buy 4 MP60 Vortechs although that would be my first choice. The things are so insanely expensive especially if you need a few of them. I am going to be using one MP10 and one MP40, to supplement the Hydor powerheads. They are still really good and $100 is a lot better than $700. I still am using the vortechs for two reasons, their cool factor, and because they have the backup battery. They will also provide enough spread to give the Hydor the boost they need. These will be plugged into the reefkeeper.
The Tank Itself
Mixed reef, lots of sps. Some critters I would love to see are Tangs, Clowns, Lemonpeel Angels, and blennies! I want a Zoa garden in there as well, and tons of inverts. After having my 30 gallon go pretty well I feel like I really want to take the plunge and have the tank of my dreams.
Rock
I'm getting 250 pounds of Texas Holey Rock to use as base rock. The stuff is a dollar a pound which is within my budget. Then I will just have my LFS order me 30-50 pounds of live rock and I will seed the rest of it with that. I'm really excited, my 30 gallon has already began growing coraline on the base rock I put in there, such a cool thing to watch. The best part of this is that I don't have to pay ANY shipping which is good because that stuff is thru the roof to send on an airplane. I looked at TBS rock, and it's not for me. I would love to have some but I can't afford to spend $1000 on rock.
Substrate
I am using medium-fine grade aragonite for my substrate. Not too fine, so random stuffs wont quickly turn the sand bed a gross color and not too large so things won't get stuck down in there. I REALLY like the look of Brittany's dark sand bed, so I am thinking about doing that in the back of the tank a little bit for color. It's an experiment :p
Last but not least... Quarantine!
I think someone's signature on here is, "A QT is your best friend." I learned this the HARD way, causing some real headaches and heartaches for my critters. My QT is going to be no nonsense, a 55 gallon tank divided with acrylic sheets. Left side, fish only. Right side, larger corals only. I will have enough room to house two new fish for as long as I feel I need to before adding them into the main display. The larger corals will be housed on the right side. This system will have it's own sump/skimmer/lighting, but will share the main systems ATO (trying to save money). If it had it MY way, I would have this be an ENTIRELY separate system that has it's own Carbon reactors, etc etc etc but that is not within the budget so NOT HAPPENING! =D It still will have a lot of it's own stuffs and will be on it's own power supply.
FIN
Welp that is it, my 400 gallon plan. I have a bunch of drawings but I need to find my stinking camera cable so I can transfer them (I don't have a scanner). I have about a month to a month and a half before I get the solid tank and stuff in my home, so I have until then to finish planning everything. I really need the help of everybody on here to criticize every bit of this plan. Especially the veteran reefers, give me tips on how to make this system work smooth as silk. I think it's pretty solid. The whole system is going to cost a pretty penny, but it is a lot cheaper than several other routes I could have taken. I don't feel like I cheated myself by going cheap-o but I also feel like I got high quality things, and while some of the stuff is for aesthetics and the 'wow' factor, I don't believe I went overboard. I'll start with plumbing the water, which is a long project itself, then after I install the tank I can worry about the smaller things like the reefkeeper. I certainly cannot afford to do this all at once, but I did write down a road map for the first three months. I'll start with the essentials, then work my way down through things I just want. I do have a bunch of stuff already, which I will be using on this system. Here we go... :bounce:
Tank
96 x 36 x 25 Tall Starphire Front Aquarium from Glasscages.com - Home. I will have to take my truck down to White Plains, NY but they only charge $120 to get it there from TN. The tank is just under 400 gallons, 380-390 something like that. I have really big windows in the room that it's going in, so I'll just take one of the glass slides and the screen out and bring it in through there. Windows are only 1.5 feet off the ground so if I get enough people (Tank will weigh several hundred pounds on it's own...) we will be able to get it in through there. Clear sealant, and starphire on the front pannel.
Where I'm putting it
I am putting the 400 gallon aquarium on the third floor of my home, which was built in 1931. :mrgreen:
Not really, but anyhoo... I have a sunroom that we built on to our home a couple of years ago, and it just sits on a concrete pad. I'm going to rearrange the furniture and set it right on the carpet. I am too poor for a stand so I am just putting the tank on my couch.
Stand
I am having the stand built by a professional carpenter, because while I could make one that would work just fine, I want it to be my dream tank, so I'd rather have a professional do it. Going to be standard Oak stand with several doors for easy access, although I won't really need it (you will see later on). I'm going to stain it a dark brown probably to match the room (I cannot find my camera cable, when I find it, I will post pictures of the area.)
Overflows
One of the only reasons that I need a sump area is because I need room for the overflows. I am drilling the tank 6 times. Two are for two drain lines in the two corners of the tank. I am getting sheets of glass cut from my local glass company and making simple overflows myself. Just two long sheets fused together then to the tank, both going in the corners. Two are for emergency drain lines, just in case this thing goes to hell and tries to flood my whole house. The last two are for electronics (mainly the light fixtures!).
Lighting Lighting Lighting
This is kinda a hard thing for me. I for sure want to do MH and T5 fixtures. I may end up doing power compact because I really like the fixture I am messing with now. I have tried every kind of lighting (MH, T5, T8, LED, PC, FR 50/50) and I can say PC are by far the best, except for putting out a bit of heat. I am getting simple 50lb rated cable hanging kits from Home Depot and hanging whatever fixture I choose up above the tank. The coralife 130w PC lighting I have now is really great, and affordable. I of course would try those Radions, but to light my whole tank I would probably need 5 of them, and $3500 for lighting is kinda a lot! I may get three of the 130w PC I have now, I hope it would be enough light. I'm also going to dabble with those stunner strips, mounting them on a strip lighting track (the kind people use in their kitchens). The American DJ power strips are nice, I have them on my 30 gallon, so I'll be using 4 sets of 8 for my power. If it gets too hot, I am using this really nice chiller: Aeration Windmill System, 20 ft. - 4204656 | Tractor Supply Company
:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:
Water
I live in the country, so getting lots of half decent water is no problem. I have an 80 foot well and a 100 foot well. I am tapping in directly to the plumbing that runs into my house, so I will have plenty of good water to run the system. Central Tractor has these great tanks to hold water: Water Storage Tank, 550 gal. - 2126933 | Tractor Supply Company
I will be using something like that, probably 550 gallons to hold freshwater and another 300 gallon to hold saltwater. I'll need a 50 gallon to mix the actual saltwater before pumping it through to the holding tank.
The water will enter through the tap in the plumbing in the basement. It will pass through an automated pump which will send it to my well water holding tank. There, I will have a set of three air pumps that will aerate my water for half an hour. This is because well water tends to have a high concentration of CO2 (but I don't need to tell you reef junkies stuff you already know :P) After the CO2 bin, water will pass into my RO/DI unit. The RO/DI is a six stage with an extra DI unit from bulkreefsupply. It will then be pumped into the 550 gallon freshwater storage bin. It will then pass into the mixing canister where I will have two heaters and a maxijet to swirl that water around. I am contemplating using a goat feed apparatus to feed salt into the tank. I have one in my barn that I use for my pet goats and it's really neat, basically an airtight mounted plastic jug with a timer and a little motor that lets a specific amount of food into their pen twice a day. I could just put salt in there and have it feed automatically when the pump kicks on. I think that aquarium salt is highly hydroscopic so I need to make sure that it is really sealed. It will mix in there for 24 hours. There will be another timer at this point that I will wire to my controller that will kick on only when the ATO says the tank level is low. The mixed saltwater will enter the main 300 gallon saltwater holding tank and be swirled around there with a couple of pumps and maintained by another set of heaters. I am going to have it set so that when the reefkeeper says my tank is a little low on water, it pumps water straight away from my saltwater holding tank, but also turns on the pump from the freshwater to replace the saltwater that was lost. This way, I will ALWAYS have enough water and will never have to worry about it. The water system is going to run on it's own circuit because there is going to be an intense amount of electricity in this system. There are three downstairs, one is being used only for the saltwater.
Chilling
I know many of you are :grumble: about chillers, but for a system this size, I need one. The good thing is, that my basement stays quite cold most of the time, as it is dark and unfinished. However, upstairs in the summer, it gets 90+ a lot of the time. So I am running a JBJ chiller JUST IN CASE things go south (no pun intended). This will be in the corner of the basement and have it's own pump of course. It will send the hot air through an old chimney that we don't use anymore.
Panic Panic Panic
O MI GAWD I WENT ON VACATION AND MY HOUS FLODED!!!1one
Okay so I realize that I am nowhere near pro at this whole business so I installed three ULTIMATE fail safes. This system CAN NOT FLOOD.
1 - There are two return pumps. Both of them have float switches, so if the water gets too high, they will turn off.
2 - I have a floor drain in the concrete. There is going to be two overflow lines for if my overflows overflow, and they run directly into the ground. This will cause my sump to flood, which does not matter because that will also run into the ground.
3 - Water alarms upstairs, to go off if any water hits them.
Plumbing
The only water that will be upstairs is the water in the display tank. If you are standing facing the side of the sunroom, picture the top right corner of the basement connecting with the bottom left corner of the sunroom. It is only about 3.5' from where the sump will sit to where the bottom of the stand is. The water will exit the display tank, enter the sump in the basement, then later on return back up on the other side of the display tank. All I did was move the sump into the basement, so if there is a flood, it won't be in my house. All the other plumbing is in the basement as well, so I will not have any noisy equipment upstairs, and no ugly plumbing to mess with. I will have one gate valve on each return upstairs so JUST IN CASE if something supernatural happens and all my failsafes fail, I can directly turn off the water. This is also useful because I can turn off the water (or on) to drain the system if I have a nuclear meltdown or spill molten metals into my tank.
This system is going to be pretty loud what with all the pumps and plumbing, and I wanted to maintain the serenity of the display tank as much as possible. I am hoping that it will be virtually silent upstairs.
Sump
I am building this myself out of a 125 gallon standard tank. Skimmer area, 4 stage bubble trap, equipment area for heaters and the chiller lines, and the return area. I am using a 29 gallon as my fuge, and putting that underneath the sump. Just using a little nano overflow and a maxijet for this. Reason being, is that I just prefer to have it outside of the tank. I think it looks nicer and I like being able to work on it without turning anything else off. Sump will have a regular 50/50 light over it, since I don't need any hardcore lighting for just water. The fuge will have it's own LED lighting. I will also be drilling a bulkhead on the drain side from the saltwater storage tank for my ATO.
Electrical
I am mounting all my electrical on a painted piece of plywood and mounting it in the concrete wall. I already run two dehumidifiers down there so that won't be a problem. On there I will have...
ATO
Using the same ATO that I have on my 30 gallon, the JBJ. It is simple and really works great. Using mode 1, I will have both float switches mounted into my sump, with switch 2 upside down to turn off the pump if switch 1 gets stuck. I am kind of debating using two of these instead of a timer system for the water. Honestly, if I really wanted to go the pro route, I could use a separate reefkeeper for it, but that is obnoxious.
Heaters
All heaters will have their own knob to adjust them. Digital thermometers will be mounted here as well so I can see the temps in the saltwater tanks and the main system.
Dosing Stuff
Using the reefkeeper and Tom's Aqualifters to dose my mag and alk. Standard setup, they come on a couple minutes a day and keep levels stable.
On to other things.. Reactors!
I will have 4 different reactor systems running...
Kalkwasser
Standard Kalk stirrer running into the second part of my sump. I haven't decided if I want it to run into my saltwater holding tank but I don't have to decide this right now.
BRS Carbon and GFO
I am running the BRS dual reactor out of the second chamber in my sump. I am not sure if I need two of these for this much water volume, what do you all think?
Calcium
I have done quite a bit of research on these things and it looks like you put media in, get the CO2 tank hooked up, and let it fly. Seems easy enough, I'll have a backup CO2 tank since they are pretty cheap. I can get them filled for next to nothing at the same place I get my paintball tanks filled.
Skimmer
Reef octopus. Hopefully the thing will do the job, I wish they made a bigger one.
Octopus Extreme 350 Protein Skimmer - English
This will go in the first chamber of the sump.
Powerheads
I don't have enough money to buy 4 MP60 Vortechs although that would be my first choice. The things are so insanely expensive especially if you need a few of them. I am going to be using one MP10 and one MP40, to supplement the Hydor powerheads. They are still really good and $100 is a lot better than $700. I still am using the vortechs for two reasons, their cool factor, and because they have the backup battery. They will also provide enough spread to give the Hydor the boost they need. These will be plugged into the reefkeeper.
The Tank Itself
Mixed reef, lots of sps. Some critters I would love to see are Tangs, Clowns, Lemonpeel Angels, and blennies! I want a Zoa garden in there as well, and tons of inverts. After having my 30 gallon go pretty well I feel like I really want to take the plunge and have the tank of my dreams.
Rock
I'm getting 250 pounds of Texas Holey Rock to use as base rock. The stuff is a dollar a pound which is within my budget. Then I will just have my LFS order me 30-50 pounds of live rock and I will seed the rest of it with that. I'm really excited, my 30 gallon has already began growing coraline on the base rock I put in there, such a cool thing to watch. The best part of this is that I don't have to pay ANY shipping which is good because that stuff is thru the roof to send on an airplane. I looked at TBS rock, and it's not for me. I would love to have some but I can't afford to spend $1000 on rock.
Substrate
I am using medium-fine grade aragonite for my substrate. Not too fine, so random stuffs wont quickly turn the sand bed a gross color and not too large so things won't get stuck down in there. I REALLY like the look of Brittany's dark sand bed, so I am thinking about doing that in the back of the tank a little bit for color. It's an experiment :p
Last but not least... Quarantine!
I think someone's signature on here is, "A QT is your best friend." I learned this the HARD way, causing some real headaches and heartaches for my critters. My QT is going to be no nonsense, a 55 gallon tank divided with acrylic sheets. Left side, fish only. Right side, larger corals only. I will have enough room to house two new fish for as long as I feel I need to before adding them into the main display. The larger corals will be housed on the right side. This system will have it's own sump/skimmer/lighting, but will share the main systems ATO (trying to save money). If it had it MY way, I would have this be an ENTIRELY separate system that has it's own Carbon reactors, etc etc etc but that is not within the budget so NOT HAPPENING! =D It still will have a lot of it's own stuffs and will be on it's own power supply.
FIN
Welp that is it, my 400 gallon plan. I have a bunch of drawings but I need to find my stinking camera cable so I can transfer them (I don't have a scanner). I have about a month to a month and a half before I get the solid tank and stuff in my home, so I have until then to finish planning everything. I really need the help of everybody on here to criticize every bit of this plan. Especially the veteran reefers, give me tips on how to make this system work smooth as silk. I think it's pretty solid. The whole system is going to cost a pretty penny, but it is a lot cheaper than several other routes I could have taken. I don't feel like I cheated myself by going cheap-o but I also feel like I got high quality things, and while some of the stuff is for aesthetics and the 'wow' factor, I don't believe I went overboard. I'll start with plumbing the water, which is a long project itself, then after I install the tank I can worry about the smaller things like the reefkeeper. I certainly cannot afford to do this all at once, but I did write down a road map for the first three months. I'll start with the essentials, then work my way down through things I just want. I do have a bunch of stuff already, which I will be using on this system. Here we go... :bounce:
