Hello,
Joe from Denver here. Have experience with freshwater, but new to saltwater hobby. Just bought a new house with a 225 gallon tank built right into the middle. Will try to attach a photo taken about 6 years ago when the home was originally built.
Will have lots of questions on the newbie forum, I'm sure, but here's the short (or perhaps not-so-short) version of what I've done so far:
Tank is located on the main floor of the house. To the right (of the photo) there are two overflows and basically a chase to allow tubing to and from a sump located in the basement utility room. Unfortunately, the area directly beneath the tank is finished and the hoses must run about 8' laterally between the floor joists to an unfinished utility room. At the time the tank was originally set up, they used a small sump mounted on a shelf about 6.5' off the basement floor.
My intention is to locate a large sump/refugium in the utility room (about 20' laterally from where the hoses exit the space between the joists). Obviously, we'll need a pretty large pump to return the water that height and distance.
As a start, we found and purchased a 125 gallon tank with 40-50 gallon sump, wet/dry filtration, protein skimmer, RODI system, about 200lbs of live rock, and a handful of small hermit crabs and just got it all running in the basement. The tank was properly run, but the lights hadn't worked for at least a month before the move.
The plan is to properly cycle the tank and provide proper lighting while gathering and installing the plumbing and electrical requirements to run the 225 on the main level. We've already installed a utility sink, but still need to add an additional electrical circuit to run heater and pumps to run the larger tank. If I can figure out the plumbing, I'd like to use the 125 as the sump/refugium and get rid of the wet/dry existing sump.
I've been reading a lot and have just spent the last 3.5 hours reading this forum, but look forward to the opportunity to ask questions of the experts here.
Joe
Joe from Denver here. Have experience with freshwater, but new to saltwater hobby. Just bought a new house with a 225 gallon tank built right into the middle. Will try to attach a photo taken about 6 years ago when the home was originally built.
Will have lots of questions on the newbie forum, I'm sure, but here's the short (or perhaps not-so-short) version of what I've done so far:
Tank is located on the main floor of the house. To the right (of the photo) there are two overflows and basically a chase to allow tubing to and from a sump located in the basement utility room. Unfortunately, the area directly beneath the tank is finished and the hoses must run about 8' laterally between the floor joists to an unfinished utility room. At the time the tank was originally set up, they used a small sump mounted on a shelf about 6.5' off the basement floor.
My intention is to locate a large sump/refugium in the utility room (about 20' laterally from where the hoses exit the space between the joists). Obviously, we'll need a pretty large pump to return the water that height and distance.
As a start, we found and purchased a 125 gallon tank with 40-50 gallon sump, wet/dry filtration, protein skimmer, RODI system, about 200lbs of live rock, and a handful of small hermit crabs and just got it all running in the basement. The tank was properly run, but the lights hadn't worked for at least a month before the move.
The plan is to properly cycle the tank and provide proper lighting while gathering and installing the plumbing and electrical requirements to run the 225 on the main level. We've already installed a utility sink, but still need to add an additional electrical circuit to run heater and pumps to run the larger tank. If I can figure out the plumbing, I'd like to use the 125 as the sump/refugium and get rid of the wet/dry existing sump.
I've been reading a lot and have just spent the last 3.5 hours reading this forum, but look forward to the opportunity to ask questions of the experts here.
Joe
