DIY Tank Update – Cycling

[Flatfish]

Boy what a project. It’s about 95% operational. I must have pulled the sump four times for modifications. There was struggle to reduce the micro-bubbles in the system and plenty of leaks to fix. It’s finally starting to look like a tank.

I transferred the contents of my 30g to use for cycling. There wasn’t much for livestock. Just a few zoo’s and a very small cleaner crew. Should be fine through cycle since I’ve added plenty of active bio (LS/LR/ a little water). So here is sits with about 45lbs of LR. I’ll give it a few weeks to cycle then add the contents of the 55g. That should give me about 120lbs total of LR.

Today I will be washing the rest of the sand from the 30g and adding it. From the consolidation of the 30g and 55g tanks is should end up with a bout 1.5 more inches of sand over what’s in these pics.

Hope you don’t mind all the images. Here’s the setup:

[Flatfish]

I’ve got more work to do on the hood to seal the light leaking from the doors. For now it’s not bad.

[Flatfish]

Yeeeooowww! Two 400W Iwasaki 6500K. Probably should have gone with 250W. These puppies put out an enormous amount of heat. It’ll be an interesting summer. BTW – those fans in the back work well. 5$ each on sale at HD.

[Flatfish]

The guts. This setup went through a lot of changes from my first designs. I added baffles, filters media and re-routed the skimmer output to combat micro-bubbles. This was frustrating work, but worth it in the end. I learned a lot doing this part.

[Flatfish]

Here’s the skimmer side. At top center is a 3-output manifold (1”, ¾”, ¾”) to split the output of the Iwaki 55. It’s a pretty strong pump and I found that I was restricting its output on the return to slow the water movement in the sump. This made the pump a bit noisy. I figured that I could use the extra pressure to run the skimmer and any other temporary device like the Ocean Clear in the foreground. BTW the Ocean Clear is there only to accelerate the clearing of the water when I add sand. It will be replaced by an auto-top-off reservoir.

[Flatfish]

The skimmer design changed very little. The Beckett works great. The only problem was the injection of micro-bubbles to the sump that would then be pumped into the tank. That was solved by re-routing the skimmer output to the fuge side of the sump and adding bio-balls on top of the output drain. I know, I know, bio-balls are a sin. The skimmer is easily removed and disassembled for cleaning. None of the internal parts are glued so the bio-balls can be easily removed for a periodic wash.

[Flatfish]

Here’s the sump with the MH ballast tucked off to the left.. You can see that the input chamber has some LS and macro for a start of a fuge. Baffles were added along with grates for batting to add bubble filtration. The filter bag will stay, the sponge will eventually go. The two valves in the foreground are the return of the skimmer (large) and a drain with QD hose hookup for water changes (thanks Doug1).

Thanks for your help TRT!

[Doug1]

Hey Dont thank me its looking very good