Azoox Tank Build

[redbelly]

I am not sure if we should call this a tank build as its really a tank re-build.

We have been running a 24g Non-Photosynthetic tank for about 2 years now and have learned an absolute tonne!

The old tank is a 24g Current USA Solana with the following equipment:
Sapphire skimmer
Sapphire reactor for carbon and phosban
MP10's for flow
And a dosing pump for feeding.

Here is a pic:




As for lighting, this tank is an NPS tank so does not require any lighting for the corals to grow but you do want some light so that you can see the corals of course.
We tried quite a huge variety of LED lights for this tank and in the end our favourite light was the Reef Brite LED strip so after going through several other lights we settled on a single 24" 50/50 strip and a moonlight.

Before I get into the rebuild I will touch on why we are rebuilding the tank. With the existing system and the level of dedication we were able to give to the tank there were some great points but also some limitation to the old setup.

First off was the skimmer.
While the Sapphire skimmer work really well, we found that the foam impeller + the heavy bio load on the system meant that the foam impeller kept getting clogged. When the foam was clogged skimmer production decrease but every time you cleaned it fully you also lost some foam and so the foam need replacing periodcally. Ultimately what this meant was that for a tank that requires constant feeding, this skimmer probably was not the best skimmer. A needlewheel style skimmer that was HOB would have been better but as you can see in the pic if we had put a HOB skimmer on this tank we would not have been able to adjust the heat in the house
If we were to do it all over again I would use a skimmer rated to a MUCH larger tank.

Water changes.
As the sump for my main display has been in the basement for so long, I am very spoiled. While it is good to do weekly water changes on every tank, it is very important to do weekly water changes on an NPS tank. Azoox tanks require constant feeding and excellent water quality, two things that just do not go hand in hand. When Trina or myself missed weekly water changes you could definately see it in the corals. On my main system I have it plumbed so that I just turn a ball valve and the sump empties to a drain in the floor. For the 24g though we had to empty 2 buckets of water from the tank into a bucket then carry the buckets of water up to the next storey to dump it out. All the new water had to be brought up a full floor too from the basement. Kudos to you if you are ok with doing this weekly but both Trina and myself will admit that it did not happen as often as it should.

Place to hide equipment.
The cardiff is a fantastic looking tank and stand and it matches our display tank so we really liked it. But as the wood that goes around it is one solid piece there is nowhere to hide any equipment. We were thinking of putting a fridge in the stairwell to the left of the tank on a shelf that could onlt be reached from the second floor. In this fridge we would keep the foods chilled so that we could just refill the food container once a week for feeding as opposed to having to refill the food container every couple days. The feeding lines coming from the fridge we had planned to run through the wall and have them come out of the drywall and directly into the tank.

Tank Size.
Well thats obvious. Bigger is better.  Enough said.

So to sum it up these were the 3 main reason or rather excuses for a tank rebuild.
Water Quality
Cleanlyness of the tank setup
Size.

[redbelly]

Success with the 24g.
Obviously with this setup there have been some corals that have done very well and some that have not done as well due to the limitation of the system.

Dendrophyllia and Tubastrea;
As expected these were very easy to care for. We have several pieces in the tank some at the top and some at the bottom. The pieces at the top definately get fed more often as they are easier to feed. We feed these regularily with the FM LPS food and for any pieces that we have recently purchased we soak the food overnight in the Energizer. We did find that a few of the species that we purchased were a bit more picky than others for feeding. We rescued a Dendrophyllia that was in crazy rough shape it is well on the road to recovery but still to the day sometime it just doesnt want to open. But if you put some of the energizer on the pellets, feed a couple to the tank and next thing you know its open and ready for food! We recently purchased a Tubastraea micranthus (Black Sun Coral) from Fish Tails and it had some damage from shipping but we managed to get it eating in 2 days so I am positive it will fully recover.

Balanophyllia;
Very interesting piece! I had ready that these pieces tend to only open at night and its partially true. There are three in our tank, 2 in partial light and one in full darkness. The 2 in partial light will only open during feeding time if the light is on. When they do eat you can easily feed each polyp 8-10 pellets. The one is full shade is open 24/7 and rarely if ever gets directly fed via pellets so it must be catching some of the fine particle food in the tank as its been well over a year now and it is a very healthy coral!

Archohelia Rediviva




This piece is one of the very few corals that naturally is healthy and pure white at the same time. We have 3 of these in the tank as both Trina and I liked this coral so much. 2 pieces are pure white with a hint of purple where the polyps extend and the other piece is a purple base with clear/white polyps. For feeding these primarily eat part of the food mash that we prepare and dose to the tank hourly. Occasionally we feed them some of the pellets as well, but not regularily.
The pics above were taken in a coral bed before they were added to the azoox tank so the polyps were not open, sorry.

Diodogorgia nodulifera
We have had excellent success with this piece, probably better that any of the nps gorgonia sp.
I do feel though that at least in part this is due to the condition that the pieces arrived in. As they ony have a short trip here from the caribbean, when we got these pieces they were in amazing health. We have had 2 piece for about a year now and both are doing well. One piece is near the bottom and is in strong laminar flow and is definately the healthier of the 2. The other piece is closer to the top, and directly under the Reef Brite. If the water parameters are not bang on this piece will not open and has developed a light film of algae on the surface several times. This film need to be cleaned up and the water quality improved or it just wont open and feed. We will certainly be addressing this in the new tank.

Gorgonia sp.
Dont try to rescue piece. If a piece isnt doing well at the store just leave it be. Trust me, while they can be brought back its a long and hard road. I am not sure if any of these will make the tank trasfer as I am pretty sure I will be inclined to get some nicely shapped, healthy, large pieces for the new tank


Dendronephthya sp
We had excellent success with these species right up until the summer. Then during the summer we were gone for 10 days, then back for a couple weeks then gone for 30 days then back then gone... and expecting our tank sitters to replace the food for the dosing pumps every 2 days was just too much to expect for this long of a period of time. Again this issue is something that will be addressed with the new setup by putting a bar fridge under the tank. Prior to then we had 4 Dendrophyllia that were doing very well and since then 2 of them have come back and are a decent size again. The pieces that have come back were as down to 1-2 inches and now each of them are 5-6 inches. These feed exclusively off of the mash that we prepare and feed via the dosing pumps.





So to address these issues and still be lazy and not have to carry water up and down the stairs there was really only one choice, connect the new tank into the main system.
Water quality would then be maintained with a MR6 skimmer which is more than up to the task.
Already run carbon and phosban on the main system so thats covered.
Instead of running ozone on both tank and having to run 2 controllers now I can just run one large unit on my main system.
Water parameters are already being controlled via the balling method.
And the new stand will allow me to put a bar fridge right under the tank in which I can keep a good supply of food chilled and ready to feed to the tank at all times.

This system is ideal as the dosing pumps will supply a high food concentration into the azoox tank, the low flow rate going through the azoox tank will supply a low food concentration to all of the corals in the main system, and the main system will provide a continual supply of prestine water into the azoox tank. Its truely a win win situation.

[redbelly]

Ok, so that covers some of the basics.
Now lets get some more progress pics.

So with a game plan in mind it was time to run the plumbing.
I didnt get a pic before I started this mess and I should have but still. Currently I have 3 lines coming from my main display into the basement.
2 x 1.5" drains
1 x 1" return line

As the new tank would only have a low flow rate going to it I can easily tap into one of these overflow lines for the overflow from the tank.
And my return pump easily has enough flow to supply both system so I could tap into that as well, so thats what I did.



Adding to these lines sounded easy in theory but it proved to be a bit more difficult in reality. The lines that are curving up are the lines for the display tank. They swoop down through a vent opening that I made in the floor and travel to the left side towards my sump. The horizontal lines going to the right are the ones I just added and go to the new tank.

And here is where the come up and into the living room, through the cold air return from the furnace.

After taking this pic I replace the cardboard and sealed up the hole to the basement.


While I was at it, it didnt hurt to get a bit OCD and tack down the speaker wires and router and such to make things a bit cleaner looking.
The metal brackets worked perfectly here as you could just jam them under the base boards and they held the line down to make it nice and straight and tidy.

[Severum]

Nice looking rebuild! But you already knew that.

[Hookup]

very pretty work.... it takes a lot of effort to make something look simple like that... well done.

[redbelly]

Why thank you.
Did some mods to the plumbing as the fittings from perfecto did not make any sense, although that was not really a huge surprise.
Should have some pics up today or tomorrow.

[Rybren]

Looking good Patrick.

[salvini55]

great write-up, Im looking forward to the progress. If your in a pinch dont hesitate to drop me a line 

[redbelly]

Why thank you for the offer and if its needed i will certainly let you know!
I do actually have some good progress to post, just need to take the time to write it all out.

I had run into a fair snag with the bar fridge and what I was going to do but Shaun stopped by today and we got it all sorted out so it should be full steam ahead again.

[redbelly]

So the lines have been run and the tank is ready for installation but there was a snag.

The last tank was a half cylinder so it tucked into the couch very well and did not obstruct our stairs at all.
But this tank is square plus its a bit wider so it is going to stick out an extra few inches.
Plus now the tank will have plubing on the back so it need to be off the wall which means it stick out a bit further.

This tank was a custom order from Perfecto. The standard tank has a 1" drain in it which is a joke, its just too small. So we had a store custom order this tank with a 1.5" drain and a 3/4" return line from Perfecto. As the 1.5" drain is much larger inside the tank, it also mean that Perfecto had to make their overflow box indie the tank larger. Perfecto did a very nice job extending the overflow box into the tank and unless knew about the extention on the overflow you would nevern notice it.

Building my own tank was an option but If i did this it was going to be 36" deep so that I could have a 12" sand bed to keep garden eels but then as this tank is tieded into my display I didnt want to deal with the headache associated with a dsp attached to a primarily sps system... Plus if I was already building a tank it might as well be bigger... and next thing you know it would be a 180g or something

I had also considered ordering a custom tank but after the whole missing whole adventure on Hookups tank I decided against it.

Ok so back on track, the tank arrived and this is what we found:



So for someone doing just regular plubing this may not be an issue, but we need this tank to be as tight to the wall as possible and right now that 3/4" bulk head is way too long!



With the bulkhead that long, and with the 90 that I was going to use, if we did not mod the bulkhead, the 3/4" bulkhead + plubing would push the tank off the wall too far for where the tank sits.



So we measured twice and cut once.



We left enough material in the 3/4" bulkhead for a good bond and glued in the 90.



With the mods be got the total length of the plumbing off the back of the tank down to about 3.25"
We could have gotten the 3/4" line even closer if we wanted too by cutting the bulkhead shorter and tremeling out the bulkhead so the line could push in deeper but there really was no point as the limiting factor would now be the 1.5" plumbing below.

[redbelly]

Now its time for the drain.

Again as I needed the plumbing to be as tight to the tank as possible I needed a specialty 90.



As you can see in the pic above this is not a standard 90. This 90 has one side that is a female slip fitting and one side that is a male slip fitting. The advantage of this is that the fitting can be just a bit tighter to the tank.



As you can see in the picture, the drain line is sticking out just under 4" off the back of the tank but I would like it to be closer so its time for some mods.



A few seconds and a cop saw sure made quick work of that one. A word of warning though, you have to go crazy slow if you are going to try this as the plumbing piece wont touch the guide plate (on my saw anyways).



And now the pumbing for the drain and for the return line both stick off the back of the tank about 3.25"
I could have actually made the 3/4" line go tighter against the tank but I knew the limiting factor would the the 1.5" line and had done some quick math to estimate that the closes I could get this line to the tank was 3.25" so its nice to see that they both worked out to the same length although I suppose I should really have done the 1.5" line first

[redbelly]

I didnt snap any pics of the process here as it was just some basic plumbing, but here is a pic of the back of the tank with the plumbing complete



Not entirely sure who had the brilliant idea to put the 3/4" bulkhead right above the 1.5" bulkhead and so close but a 45 degree elbow took care of it quite nicely.

I did install a double union ball valve on the 3/4" like so that we could controll the flow to the tank from inside the stand. I didnt get a pic of this either, but I am sure it will follow in some later pics.

And as we were using a double union ball valve, we needed to come in closer to the stand which is wy I put in a dog leg right after the 45 degree elbow in the pic.




Now its time for the fun mods!

One of the main reasons for the tank upgrade was so that we could add a fridge to this setup.
Previously when we made the food mash it would only stay good for 2 days at room temp and then it would have to be changed. We have been changing the food every 2 days for what feels like an eternity and both Trina and myself have had enough!

Long ago I had planned to install the frigde in the upper part of my stair well and run the likes down to the tank. This would mean tat you either saw the lines on the wall (not what I want) or I would have to take the drywall off and feed the lines through the wall to the tank (again more work than I care to do).
So when we chose this tank we got a nice stand from perfecto that would easily house a fridge.

Now for the complication...
Before we could fill the tank we had to get the fridge installed as the foor on the front of the stand was decent enough, but not big enough to put a fridge in from the front. It just so happened that I had a small bar fridge left over from university that would do the job quite nicely.
So we put the fridge in from the back of the stand, elevated the fridge so the door would open and pushed it against the wall.
I didnt get a pic of this, but no matter how you positioned the fridge in the stand, when you open the fridge door it hits the door frame for the stand. It does open, but not enough to get easy access into the fridge. So if it is not going to be easy to get into the fridge, chances are it just wont happen as often as it should.

So Shaun stopped by and we did some brain storming and came up with a great idea!
And here it is:

This is a pic of of the top hinge for the fridge door



We decided to remove it.



And instead of leaving it on the top right side, we relocated it to the bottom right side of the door



So now if you are thinking about it I bet you have realized that there are 2 bottom hinges to the door and no top hinges, and you would be correct.



Thats the beauty part!
Now the front door sits on the 2 bottom hinges and the magnets hold the door firmly shut and in place.
When you want to open the door you just pull the top towards you



And lift the door off the hinges to remove it from the fridge entirely.



So while you are in there the door is a bit beyond completely wide open.... but as you only have to go into the fridge once a week to change the food mash mixture I am sure it will be fine.

Here is a pic of the fridge under the stand.
Once we modded the door, there was no need to raise the fridge so that the door would swing open.



Next up, time to drill the fridge to to run the lines in for the dosing pumps!

[redbelly]

For layout, the dosing pump would have to go on top of the fridge. I had originally been thinking of having the dosing pump in the fridge, but I want the extra space and flexability afforded by having the dosing pump outside.
Plus for this type of fridge, its the freezer that actually cools down the rest of the fridge. So if the dosing pump was very high up it might frees the liquids inside of the actual pumps...


Time to measure twice and cut once!

I got out the square and made my marks on the top of the fridge where the line would be going through for the dosing pumps. This too a few min and bit of sketching things out on paper as I wanted the dosing pump the be dead square about the fridge and I wanted the lines to be able to into the fridge perfectly straight.



To make sure the holes were perfectly lines up I punched the holes... yes with a scribe.... but still.



First the holes were drilled at 1/8"



Then the were drilled out larger



And a pic from inside the fridge



If you are going to try this yourself I think it is worth mentioning that the holes for the lines that we drilled were just slightly smaller that the diameter of the tube. Not by enough to pinch the line, but by just enough that Trina had to work at it for a while and twist the lines as they went in to get them to fit.



A decent interference fit should mean that you have zero air movement between the fridge and the lines. You will always have some temp lost due to the lines coming out of the fridge being cold and transmitting the cold to the outside, but it will be minimal.

Here are the lines installed through the top of the fridge.



And now finally with the fridge done we can install it under the tank and start to transfer the livestock over and fill the new tank!

[salvini55]

whoa, this is looking great! I like the hinge idea, very creative. Maybe a swanky acrylic case for the doser is in order?

[Severum]

Ok this tank build is seriously off the chain. I like the dishwater door on your bar fridge. Good idea!

[Hookup]

Not too shabby...

[redbelly]

I don't know exactly what I will be building for the dosing pumps, an acrylic box isn't a bad idea.
I need a little stand for the dosing pumps as they cant sit directly on top of the fridge.
Once i build the stand I will adjust the lines so that they only stick out of the top of the tank by about 1/4" so the dosing pump will have the be raised about 1.25".

Yeah the door worked out really well.
It is still kind of a pain to with all the stuff on the inside of the door. I may still mod the door of the fridge as the soda holder on the door makes it cumbersome to open. I would either have to dermal this off or install a new liner on the door. Not sure yet.

[redbelly]

Now its time to move the sectional for the last time!!
One more moving of our giant couch and the fridge is installed under the tank and we are ready to transfer the livestock!



I am sooo happy I don't have to re-arrange the living room anymore to move this tank and stand again...

Now with the fridge in place and the tank back against the wall, we removed most of the corals from the rock work and were ready to transfer the rock. When we put the Cardiff together we used a combination of the artificial rock that we make and live rock from Australia as the structure and diversity are like nothing I have seen before of since. The artificial rock was great as it raised the live rock well out of the sand bed. And the Aussie rock was great as we could create some real cliff hanger structures. This of course did require the assistance of epoxy and for this we used the Two Little Fishies Pink epoxy. In hind sight the pink probably was not the best choice. As this is a NPS tank there just isn't enough light to get coraline growth so the pink is still clearly visible... But as there is only one piece of live rock and 2 pieces of artificial rock at least there are only a few joints.
K.. back on track..
Trina and I went to move this rock and after all this time the epoxy is still rock solid!
The entire structure lifted up in just one piece which was just awsome as it made the transfer crazy easy and crazy fast.



One of the biggest issues with the last tank was that we really did not have the space for the azoox gorgonia as they grew out. So for the new tank with a much larger foot print we decided to keep the exact same rock structure and just enjoy the extra space that I am soon would soon be filled in with corals



You can see in this picture the piece of Diodogorgia nodulifera growing on the side of our rock structure. This piece has been in our tank for over a year now and growing quite well. Hopefully it doesn't mind the transfer as it is one of my (and Trina's) favorite pieces.

Time for some gravel!
We picked up some of the Carrib Sea, special grade reef sand locally and I left Trina to rinse the gravel
She added 2-3" of gravel in a bucket at a time and rinsed it as best as she could but it never goes perfectly clear...
After washing about 30 lbs we added it to the tank.





And now for a part we can all truly appreciate.
To add the water to the tank I just opened the ball valve on the 3/4" line and let the water start to flow!
You can see the ball valve that controlls the flow to the tank in the first pic in this post, just above the fridge.
All the splash on the front glass was because I had the water pouring onto the rock and it made a bit of a mess which doesn't really matter anyways since its inside the tank... but still..

[redbelly]

Now while the tank clears we started to run the wiring. I am crazy fussy when it comes to running piping lines or wires or anything. I really like all the wires to run in line and be nice and clean looking. Yes the end product looks simple, but that's the beauty of it. In the end if the lines look easy it was probably pretty tricky to put together but IMO well worth it.

I am not sure if I will run a controller on this tank yet. I do have an old RK2 sitting around the house somewhere that I might use but for the time being I am going to use an individually switchable power bar.

Here is the cabinet inside that we are starting with



Here you can see the ball valve that controlls the flow to the tank. The fridge and the lines coming out of the top are tight to the left side of the stand. This should give me enough space to always be able to reach the ball valve and install the power bar on the right side and always have decent access to it.

I put in a couple screws, and attached the power bar to the inside of the stand



It may be hard to see in the pic but I used the cable staples to attach all the lines to the side of the stand and keep them in line.
The plug on the far left of the power bar is for the fridge.

So for this power bar to have the switches on the bottom for easy access the cord had to be at the front side of the tank. To keep the lines clean I left a bit of space above the power bar and ran the power line to the back of the tank up here.


Now with the power bar installed and clean, we need some flow.



On the Cardiff we had been using 2 of the MP10's. We were not sure if this would be enough flow, but before we replace them with some MP40's we might as well give them a try and see if they will cut it for flow on a azoox tank. If they are enough flow we will probably upgrade them to a pair of MP10WES's but again we want to be sure first.

But to install the MP10's the holes were a little too small for the screws that we had on hand and well... I didn't want to make the trip to Home Depot..



So its time to break out the drill again!



And sure enough they fit just fine now



I didn't want the cables to be in the way of the ball valve so I installed the pumps on the left side of the back of the stand.



I zip tied the lines coming out and down from the controller and the line going back up to the tank together so that it looked clean.
For the power supplies I didn't want a birdsnest behind the stand so I zip tied all the lines together and stuck them on the back of the fridge. With the tank against the wall and now full of water I couldn't get a pic of this but I can fill in more details if anyone is interested.

Ran the power lines to the switchable power bar and tacked the lines down.



Here is a full shot from outside the stand

[Rybren]

Excellent write-up and very clean looking install.

Please feel free to drop by my place any time to clean up the birdsnest of wires behind my tank.  I'll supply the single-malt (after the job is done  )

[NanoSF]

Sorry to back track on this post but it's my first time reading it. I wanted to know what you used to glue the white (PVC I assume) elbow joint to the black plastic bulkhead that you had to shorten?

[redbelly]

Shaun and I were at Ross's house the other day to give him a hand with the plumbing. Not much was getting done but after some baileys it started moving quickly

As for glue I just used the standard clear PVC solvent. Oateys brand I believe.

[NanoSF]

As for glue I just used the standard clear PVC solvent. Oateys brand I believe.

But a bulkhead isn't PVC right? I thought you couldn't use PVC solvent on plastics? Doesn't PVC solvent melt and weld two pieces of PVC?

[redbelly]

So the tank wasn't quite clear yet but my lack of patients got the better of my and I turned the system on. I figured on a system with over 500g of water volume in total, the dust from a 45g wont make much difference.

I ended up removing the Diodogorgia nodulifera while we were filling the tank as I was worried about how long it was out of water + if the dust would causeit any damage. You may or may not have noticed, but its actually missing in the last few pics.



The glass is still a bit hazy, but in the pic above you can see one of the two firefish in the tank and in the center of the rock work you can see one of the dendron

In the pic above you can see an orange azoox coral in the center of the rock work. This pieces has orange polyps.
In the pic below you can see another orange azoox coral, but this one has white polyps.



These 2 pieces have a few things in common.
They were both shipped as Dendronephthya sp.
I am positive that neither of them are Dendronephthya sp
I suspect the bottom one may be a Alcyonium glomeratum.
And both of them have proven to be quite hardy!

Here is a list of the current tank inhabitants for fish and inverts:
2 Firefish (Nemateleotris magnifica)
1 Yasha Haze Gobie (Stonogobiops yasha)
1 Blue Stripe Pipe Fish (Doryrhamphus excisus)
1 Cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
3 Peppermint Shrimp (Lysmata wurdemanni)
20 or so Nassarius
1 Caribbean Serpent Starfish

Now with the tank water cleared up we will start to transfer the corals over and should have some pics and a list up soon.

[redbelly]

But a bulkhead isn't PVC right? I thought you couldn't use PVC solvent on plastics? Doesn't PVC solvent melt and weld two pieces of PVC?

Some bulkheads are ABS and some are PVC.
I always use just the standard PVC solvent and it works just fine. I have neven had a leak or even salt creap, ever!
Sometimes I will use the PVC primer, like when it is right in front of me or if the bonding area is small, or if I have had to use my bench grinder to make custom fitting pieces or if it is in a higher pressure situation (like pumping up from the basement onto the main floor).

[Hookup]

Pat, this looks pro.  It's at least 10lbs of awesome in a 5lb bag. 

I am looking forward to seeing the dosing pumps in action. As I'm sure you are as well.  Very nice build.  And I'm looking forward to this summer when we add the 250gallon fish-only system in line.  You might just break the 1000g club yet... 

[NanoSF]

Thanks for the replies Redbelly. Tank looks awesome. Very nice rockscape too.

[ataller]

Love the fridge mod. I thought about doing something similar myself to feed my anthias all day long, and try and mimic how they would feed in the wild.

I saw someone with the same idea on RC, and he used an air stone to stir up the contents in the containers before dosing the tank. Just something you may want to keep in mind if you are going to be feeding some larger foods that would settle to the bottom of the container.

Excited to see the rest of the build.

Adam

[redbelly]

Pat, this looks pro.  It's at least 10lbs of awesome in a 5lb bag. 

I am looking forward to seeing the dosing pumps in action. As I'm sure you are as well.  Very nice build.  And I'm looking forward to this summer when we add the 250gallon fish-only system in line.  You might just break the 1000g club yet... 

Thanks Tim,
Its only a matter of time until my personal system is over 1000g.
I currently have permission that if we decide to stay in this house for another year I can put in a bigger tank. Since you wussed out and went with a nano I am going to have to step up to the plate. I am pre-approved for for a 8' x 3' x 24" tank, well not by the bank.... but by Trina. I tried for 10' but apparently Trina wants t be able to walk up the stairs.... I think they are overrated though.

Thanks NanoSF.

I had been thinking about using an air pump actually adam, but I was worried about the "splash" from th bubble at the air surface. One of the azoox pros on RC just had his tank featured in advanced aquarist magazine and he used a magnetic stirer. This seems like a way better idea to me which is actually what the project has slowed down for. In order to fit one of these inside the door, I would have to dremel parts of it out or replace the liner on the door with acrylic. I have just been too busy recently to figure out which one I will end up doing but I am going to try the piece of acrylic first as it will really open up the inside of the tank with extra space.
I too had actually been thinking of doing this on my main display as well for all my fish. Currently I feed small amounts about 5 times a day and they just love it! But its a lot of work... The tank is on a reverse photo period so the lighting is on outside of peak hours which means the lights are on until about 3 am so its easy for me to feed them over the course of their day but still.

[Aquaviewer]

But a bulkhead isn't PVC right? I thought you couldn't use PVC solvent on plastics? Doesn't PVC solvent melt and weld two pieces of PVC?

To add to Pat's point.  If the bulkhead is ABS, as I understand it, the manufacturer will put in a thin PVC sleeve to accommodate gluing to PVC pipe - if you look closely you can usually see the slight difference between the two materials in the bulkhead.

[Aquaviewer]

Great build by the way - I would like to do a tank like this someday as well.  I'm following with interest.

[salvini55]

Not sure about the sleeve of PVC on bulkheads but Oatey sells ABS to PVC glue as well 

[redbelly]

Its been a while since I posted on this thread but there has been some progress so here we go.

Now that I am finally back and settled a bit after Indo and LA then catching up on mountains of work, I set to installing my new Fauna Marin Dosing pump. These units are crazy sleek and clean looking.



Now I could easily just sit the pump on top of the tank or just build a little riser or shelf for the pump to run the hoses under the unit and up to the tank but I wanted it to look clean so I decided to build a black acrylic box. The input lines to the dosing pump will go straight down and into the fridge. The output line from the dosing pump would would disappear into the box and come out the back all neat and tidy.

As it was the Easter weekend I was limited to building this box to the scrap acrylic that I had sitting around as pretty much everything was closed. I did have enough acrylic though and a decent supply of Weld On 16 so it wasn't long before I had the basic box built.

Now it was time to get out the pen and paper and start blue printing the design. I wanted the pump to be centered on the box, and for the lines to go straight down then make a 90 degree turn and go into the box / under the pump. After a few min of sketching I had the layout and started marking where my holes would go. I used a punch to make sure the holes would be in the right spot, just like I did earlier in this thread on the fridge and I made my pilot holes at 1/8"



Now with the pilot holes drilled I had to address how the lines would make a 90 degree turn into the box. Luckily Home Depot was open on the weekend and I found these there.



The tubing I decided to use of the lines required that one side of this barbed fitting remain as it is, but the other side was far too large to squeeze into the tubing on the Fauna Marin Dosing pump. After a few second on the bench grinder and an extra few second with some sand paper to clean it up this is what I had.



I will admit here that at first I tried to use a file to clean the barbs off the fitting put after about 2 min my patients got the best of me and the power tools came out

I had to drill the hole slightly larger for the barb to fit through the acrylic box and here is the test fit.



Originally I tried to use Weld on 16 but it did not stick to the barbed fitting at all.
So out came the Ecotech Glue and 2 seconds later it was attached.

Once the glue dried I attached the output lines of the Fauna Marin Dosing pump to the black box.



Now I needed to build my wire loom for where the output lines would come out of the box. After all, what is the point to building the box if the lines will come out in a big mess all over the place.



This is a little trick that we used to use when I worked building stock car motors in days gone by. We used to use this for keeping the spark plug wires properly spaced but it works very well for making your dosing pump lines look nice and clean.



I attached my line loom in the box and was ready to install the pump over the fridge.
Now the true test would come, does everything line up perfectly?



I would say that everything seems to line up just about perfectly

I did do all the work so that I could add a forth pump in the future. The FM dosing pump currently has 3, but you can add a forth one down the road. As it would be an absolute nightmare to try and drill more holes in the fridge and drill more holes in the black box I just did it now. Maybe I will add a forth pump, maybe not but either way its ready for one.

Here is a zoomed out shot where you can see the pump on top of the black box, and the lines running into the fridge.

[redbelly]

It did just occur to me that I have not included a pic of how I built the little contraption below how inverting the pop bottles, sorry. Its pretty simply though really and again it was just made out of some scrap acrylic that I had sitting around.



I used an inverted pop bottle with the steepest neck possible. The idea being that with a high angle like this the phyto of foods would not really be able to settle out onto the pop bottle.
I installed 2 airline nipples on the pop bottle cap by drilling a hole and gluing them in with the Ecotech Glue as well.

One nipple I cut down shorter and an air pump could be attached to it to help keep the particles in suspension in the bottle. Unfortunately my variable speed airpump seems to need some service so I just glued this nipple shut for not and will drill it open later.

The other nipple is where I attached the input to the FM dosing pump.
I hit the manual over ride button on the dosing pump (that's the big red button next to the pump) until the phyto was pulled from the bottle and pushed all the way up and into the tank.

Now with everything all finished up I could close up the fridge and admire the finished product.





Still to come:
1) Finishing the lines above the tank.
They didn't have enough barbed fittings at home depot when I was there so I had to just kinds end the lines like this for now above the tank.



2) Adding a second bottle so that I could start feeding the Fauna Marin AzooX feeding line

3) The third line will be used to dose Fauna Marin MinD for now and I would like to add a forth pump to dose oyster eggs.

[redbelly]

I do have some pretty cool pic too.

Here is a black suncoral that I picked up from Fistails





And a close up of one of the polyps



This is a close up of one of our Aussie Dendros


And the Aussie Balanophyllia

[redbelly]

I have to admit that I am a little shocked at how well the following piece is still doing.

Even without the dosing pump this pieces is still a decent size and open 24/7 for feeding.





Its hard to get a good pic of this piece as its kinda under/behind some of the rock work but still.

[Hookup]

10lbs of awesome in a 5lb bag... as always.

[Thunda]

Really looking great

[Severum]

The attention to detail in this build thread is great! Thanks for sharing!

[redbelly]

Thanks guys!

I should have some more pics up this weekend with the other foods that I am feeding plus I should finish up the lines at the top of the tank.

Also I have been playing arund with the reef brites and will get some pics up of that too.

[redbelly]

Sorry I have been letting the pics slide here, I have just been too busy recently.
I do have some sweet new pics of some of the new additions to the tank that I will try and post up.

I came across a decent article on azoox corals though for anyone else that is interested in testing their reef keeping skills:

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/93795-attraction-darkside-reefkeeping.html

[Hookup]

I love that you can get crazy color.. Well beyond SPS and photoshop and you don't need to invest a tone in lights...  Big skimmer a reactor or two and big water changes.. A feeding dosing pump or two and you're 99% of the way to an amazing azoo system and ridiculousness

[zoom111]

Congrats on the awesome setup ! Not sure if it was mentioned or not but where did you pick up your powerbar with the multiple power switches ?

[JetJumper]

I found this on in my research

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4823710&CatId=1284

[Rybren]

I have a couple of those powerbars - they work well.

[salvini55]

update? Im becomming a gorg nut