|
11/11/2004
The idea has been in my head for quite some time about building an in-wall
aquarium in my living room and I have decided, as of today, that it is going to
be my major project for the winter. As always, it will be 100% DIY.
Once the tank is complete and running, I will dedicate an entire website
to it and this will become the "construction" section, but for
now it will all be here.
Planning is really the key to a
successful build, and by successful I mean that your stuff works right the first
time. Right now I am still in the planning stages and am starting to
gather together a final list of materials that I will need to complete the
job. So far, I know that I want it to be 72" x 24" x 24"
which is ~ 180 gallons for the main display, and I will use a 50 gallon
Rubbermaid stock tank for
the refugium / DSB, and a 70 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank for the sump. I am going to make everything myself including
skimmer, calcium reactor, tank, overflows, and light hood. My current 55
gallon FOWLR tank on the other side of the living room will donate it's
contents to the 180, which include a Flame Clown, a Desjardini Sailfin
Tang, and 30 pounds of LR. The DSB will eventually become a
refugium for my Headboard
Tank.
Since the tank will be open to my
living room, there is a good chance for excess light during the dark period, I
am planning an automated panel to slide in front of the tank at night, making
the in-wall tank look like a framed picture at night. I will use an old
garage door opener parts for the automation. Below are some
initial sketches.
   
11/13/2004
I have been doing some research over the past few days on Calcium
Reactors and Kalkwasser Reactors. I now understand that a Calcium
Reactor will tend to lower the ph in the display tank, and a Kalk
reactor will tend to raise the ph and the two can cancel each other out,
if adjusted correctly, while adding Calcium for the corals and clams.
I discovered a nice
website
of a guy in Oregon that built a very nice in-wall 850 gallon tank as a
total DIY. I especially like the cleanliness of his
installation. He has experimented with the concept of extreme
front to back distance like and am planning on using a few of his ideas
including a clean sump, a closed loop powerhead system, and the above
mentioned Ca and Kalk reactors.
This morning I went to JD's
Fish World in Schoolcraft Michigan, my LFS. There are others
around, but they are either not as close, don't have much of a
selection, or their prices are sky high. JD's prices are better
than average and the big thing for me, they are open on
Sunday.
I already have the refugium
done as it was to be for another project that ended up not going through
with. I chose the 50 because I wanted surface area and not
too much in the way of depth. I have a 6 inch Southdown bed in it
already and that will leave about 5 inches of water depth. That
will be enough for some LR rubble and some macro algae. I will
probably light the refugium with T-5's, but haven't purchased them yet.
  
11/16/2004
I got a chance to build the refugium stand this weekend under the stairs
like I had planned. A frame of 2x6's covered with a 3'x5'
sheet of 3/4" plywood will do nicely. I have priced out some
pumps for the sump return and closed loop systems and think I will go
with Pan World pumps. They are designed and built by the former
chief engineer of Iwaki. I will use a 150PS for the sump return,
and two 100PX-X pumps for the closed loop circulation system. The
only drawbacks to using the basement for the bottom end of my system
will be that I will have to take a trip down a flight of stairs to do
bottom end maintenance, and that I will have to adjust the size of the
return pump accordingly. Instead of a ~4 foot head height, I am
now dealing with a ~12 foot height. Lots of the pumps out there
have high GPM, but only at a 4 foot head height, but then they drop off
significantly for every foot after 4. Lots of horsepower and no
torque. The 150PS should still give me ~900 GPM.
   
11/18/2004
The existing floor joists would not be enough to hold up the 1800 or so
pounds that the display tank will weigh, so I installed some
support. Luckily they are not in the way for normal basement
use.
 
11/26/2004
It has been over a week since I have updated the blog, and there has
been some more progress. I have the hole cut in the wall and the
surrounding framing. I have finally settled on a sliding door
mechanism in my head and it will be located in the basement. I
have thought a little more about the light hood design and know that it
will be a closed-loop, air-cooled system that will bring in air from the
outside to cool the bulbs and send the heated air back outside. A
second ventilation system will be used in the tank room to keep the
humidity down.
 
12/2/2004
I brought the old garage door opener in and began work shortening it to
a running length of 22 inches. I cut the channel and reattached
the end sprocket, cut the chain and replaced the master link, and it
will now fit nicely between the floor joists and below the tank
base. I tested the operation and it works fine. The opener
is slow in terms of a garage door, but will be quite fast for this
project. Oh well, Tim Taylor would do it this way.
 
12/9/2004
The garage door opener has been installed and is ready for the
door. I purchased a 4x8 sheet of MDF, and will cut it to size and
glue it up this week. The aquaroom is nearing completion.
The stand is complete, opener is installed, and tracks are installed in
the opening. Next I have to make a bracket to attach to the opener
to push the door, and the door itself. The aquaroom needs the
ventilation system designed, fabricated, and installed, walls need to be
primed and painted, and electrical needs to be run. Here is what
it looks like with the base complete. Madison is inspecting my
work and seems to like what she sees.
  
4/19/05
It has been a few months since I have updated the blog, but that has
been because there hasn't been much progress to report. In the
past two weeks I have purchased the acrylic for the tank and skimmer and
have begun construction. The skimmer is a modification of a design
I found on Reef Central. Here are some pictures of the skimmer in
progress. I thought that making a rectangular tube for the
transverse tube would be easier than trying to mitre the acrylic tube
and having it actually line up right. This way proved to be easy
and watertight. Only time will tell if the overall design is a
good one.
 
Other updates: The garage door
opener was great on paper, but didn't work on in real life because a
garage door opener isn't really designed to hold weight when its not
actually lifting. The opener would lift the door, but it would
slowly slide back down. I ended up using the shortened opener
track and trolley with a 880lb cable hoist. It works perfectly and
holds the door forever at any height. I have also designed the
relay system for operating the door and have acquired the hardware.
More pictures to follow.
6/11/05
New pictures of the final tank construction and the beginning of the
plumbing. The closed loop system is done and I will do the drain
and return for the sump next. I decided on using external overflow
boxes so that I didn't take up any of the internal tank space. I
painted the back on the tank using a roller and believe it or not, it
worked just fine. The cantilever end was the most difficult end to
plumb for the closed loop, but with a little planning ahead, I was able
to get it done in an afternoon. I added ball valves and unions so
pump maintenance in the future is possible without draining the tank.
None of my local Hardware stores had single union ball valves, and the
least expensive I could find online were $22, so I found at Menards that
I could buy them separately for a total of about $8. I couldn't
wait to do some leak testing, so I filled it to 6 inches and am
currently running the closed loop pumps. So far, so good,
   
  
8/3/05
It seems like it has taken me forever to get this far, but today I
finally peeled the protective paper from the front of the tank and have
my first look inside from the front. So far, so good, but I still
want to get the actual lights on the tank and not just the incandescent
60w bulb in the room. The closed loop system runs well, but hums a
bit, so I will have to come up with a silencer. The picture frame
is in place but not painted. The bottom end of the system is also
in place and functioning properly. The live rock arrived late last
week and the tank was ready. I ordered 6 x 45lbs from
LiveAquaria.com ($89.99 each + s/h). In the end, I was pleased
with what I got, but didn't really get what was advertised. Their
website claims that the rock is hand picked and the boxes don't contain
any rubble. I found this to be highly inaccurate as every box
contained large amounts of rubble. I ended up putting the big
pieces in the display and the rubble in the refugium, which is OK.
The boxes did arrive on time and FedEx didn't damage the boxes that I
could see, so I am pretty convinced it was packaged that way and didn't
become rubble during shipment. The good news is that I emailed my
comments on the matter to LiveAquaria's customer service, not demanding
replacement or saying I wasn't going to shop there anymore, rather
stating that I didn't really get what I thought I was going to get.
Within 24 hours they emailed me back with an apology stating that the
rubble may have been generated during shipping, but either way they were
going to credit me $89.99 on my next order. They didn't have to do
this, and I appreciate it.
Here is the rock in the box and in the tank.
   
9/22/05
It's been about six weeks since my last update and I haven't really done
much with the tank besides let it cycle. For the time being I am
lighting the display with 2x40w fluorescent lights, one 10,000K and the
other Actinic. Diatoms are blooming and I added about 10 snails
and 10 hermits.
  
7/16/06
Wow, has it really been that long since my last update? I
guess so. I have been really busy over the past 9 months that
other things in my life have taken priority. I did a some tank
cleaning today and thought I would try to get a few pictures of my
Sailfin Tang. Here are the only two that are worth seeing:
 
10/5/06
One more picture for now.
| 
