Ricwilli's 215 upgrade

[ricwilli]

How is everyone doing? I've been working on this upgrade for the past few months and still not done. This is a "baby steps" upgrade, so I'm sure some of you will get tired of waiting for updates. I'm posting pics of what I have done so far. LOTS OF PICS.......

This is the drawing plan that I started out with.

This is how I would like my sump area to look like.

Here is my 215 Gallon Oceanic tank with Starfire front pane surrounded by junk.

Here is a 100 gallon tub filled with over 200lbs of Marco rock. The skimmer is a Royal Exclusive Vertex Alpha 250.

For lighting, I have the 72" Aquatinics Constallation.

So I started with the sump stand and this is what I got done.

This is a 65 Gallon sump made by Melev.

The manifold set in place but not glued.

Manifold with True Union Valves

My sump has three compartments and I decided to drill a hole in each compartment. Now I will be able to drain each compartment for water changes. This will also allow me to move all the crap on the bottom of the sump into the holes while draining the sump. I'm guessing that I should be able to drain about 40 gallons for a water change. Not including the water that I will remove from the frag tank.

 

[ricwilli]

These are the valves under the sump that I can open to drain the sump. The water will drain underneath the sink into a drain pipe. I have not finished this as I still have to connect the frag tank to this drain pipe.

I had to reinforce the floor.

Here are the wood beams waiting to be put up.

Beams that need to be sistered.

Here they are, put up and bolted.

I wanted to sister 5 wood beams but one of them had electrical wires next to it and I did not want to go through the trouble and start cutting wires. So hopefully 4 sistered wood beams, will give me enough support for the 215.

Plumbing work

The Parts

The drain and return pipes

Pipes going to the first floor.

 

[ricwilli]

Drain pipe from the sump. I still have to connect the Frag tank drain to this pipe.

Pipes on the first floor. They will be in the stand

The pipe with the black handle on the valve will be the drain pipe. The left and the right will be connected to the drains on the tank and the middle connection with the black handle will be for cleaning the tank. All I have to do is connect a hose to it, open up the valve and start siphoning out all the crap from the tank.
The connection with the red handle will be the returns. Left and right will connect to the returns on the tank and the middle connection with the red handle will be for a 3/4in Sea Swirl.

I picked out the rocks that I wanted to use in my display. Here they are being cured.

The skimmer being used to cure the rocks.

Royal-Exclusive Vertex Alpha 250

This is 5min after I turned it on.

Sump area with all piping glued.

The intake and return from pump. I'm not to happy with that hard 90 elbow on the return. I might change it.

The return pump - Reeflo Hammerhead Pump

Another sump pic

I will post the other half of the build tomorrow.

 

[taichimaster]

Wow,
I like this awesome build....The siphoning option on the drain is a great idea. Look forward to additional pics

 

[ricwilli]

The 90g moved to the other side of the room for the 215 to take its place.

I found my Bartlett Anthias behind the tank. I always wondered what ever happened to it.

Here is where I put some of the corals. There is another bin full of corals some where.

This is the spot where the 215 will go. As you can see, the return for the furnace is at the bottom of the wall. I will be moving it.

Here is the stand in its place. If you notice, I took advantage of the opportunity and installed crown molding. I would have had a tough time putting it up if the 215 was set up. I was going to finish it, but my wife suggested I finish putting up the tank first, than finish the crown molding around the room. She is tired of seeing her house full of bins and fish tanks.

I also took advantage of the furnace return and routed the pipes from the basement up through it.

Here is the tank in its place. I would like to THANK my father in-law, my wife, and mother for helping me bring the tank in the house. My father in-law and I usually move the tank around, but he wasn't feeling to good that day, so the ladies helped him out. I have some strong women living in the house. Sorry, no pics of this as all hands were on deck.

The plumbing under the tank.

Filling/testing day. My wife asked if i was going to use that water and I turned around and walked away. LOL

Filling

Filled

Sump filling

Sump filled

AND WHAT I FOUND

The leak was not that bad. It was just dripping very little. I emptied the manifold and put more glue on the joint and it stopped.

 

[ricwilli]

I've always had a bare bottom tank and just got tired of it. So now I'm going to try the sand thing. I had 3.5 gallons of bucket full of used sand in the garage for a couple of months. I thought cleaning it was going to be difficult, but doing a search on-line, I stumble on Meleves website. His website is very informative. I suggest visiting it Marc's Hidden Treasure. I used his suggestions on cleaning used sand Melevsreef.com - Rinsing Sand. It does take allot of water to clean. I guess it all depends on how much sand you have to clean. I forgot to take pics of this process. Oh well.....

Tank with sand, rocks and a shot at aquascaping.

MP40W AND Korilia 4

Closer look of rocks with the weired large rock. I have no idea what made me put that rock like that. I like it and I don't. Lets see what happends.

Side tank shot

So I realized that I was going to need another manifold to connect more equipment with a lot less demanding water flow. So, I decided to build another manifold. This manifold will be attached to the 3" manifold.
Intorducing the MINI MANIFOLD....
Starting from right to left connections:
- Brightwells Zeolite Media
- Calcium Reactor
- Carbon
- TBD
- TBD
- Aclimating fish and filling test kit vials.(OH I LOVE THIS ONE. No more water in the mouth to start a syphon)

Here it is connected to the 3" Manifold

You can see in this pic that I had a pump running a Fluval 203 canister filter. The Neo rocks were in there. This is a BIG NO NO. I am trying to run only one pump in this setup.

Equipment that will be attached to the MINI MANIFOLD.

Equipment attached to the MINI MANIFOLD.

Connection. I will tidy this up later on.

 

[ricwilli]

The big mess.

Here is what I will be using for lighting.

The 72", 14 Bulbs Aquactinics Constellation. I love that its low prophile and that I can sit it right on the tank.

Here, I need to replace the old bulbs with the new.

Bulbs from front to back starting from the top. (Didn't want to type it all out. lol)

The PITA center brace. The only thing I hate about this tank. It must be like 16" wide. I'm sure it will defuse the light a little with it being wet from the humidity.

Here is a FTS with the lights.

Some of the corals that I lost in the transfer

So this where I'm at right now. I will start with the updates soon.

 

[taichimaster]

I like the idea of having the third black valve on your drain for cleaning the tank. My question is : When you connect the hose, are you just sucking the junk from your tank down to your sump? When you are cleaning the tank, do you reroute the drain water to another outlet?

 

[ricwilli]

It goes to the first compartment in the sump while the valve under the sump is open. I did that since I still have to clean the bottom of the sump anyway.

 

[m and m]

How did you lose that many coral in the transpher?

 

[revhtree]

Wow bro sweet build! Sorry about your losses, been there done that.

 

[rng_pw]

This an awesome build. I love the rock by the way, make sure to keep us all updated. Thanks for sharing

Ricky,

 

[jcom]

How did you lose that many corals??

 

[ricwilli]

Thanks everyone. I honestly do not know how I lost that many corals. Everything was automated and once I moved the 90 to the other side of the room, things just went down hill. I had to detach allot of corals and remove lots of rocks to move that tank. It took a while for me to set up the 215 as I was working long hours and taking care of a 1 yr old and a 3 yr old. As of today, none of my corals are doing good. I am trying to bring them back though. The corals that I have are alive but all browned out. I will take pics of it soon. I finished moding my skimmer a couple days ago. I will post that up soon as well.

 

[ricwilli]

Oh, one more thing. I was dealing with phos. over 1.00 cause of the used sand that I used. Apparently, I didn't clean it good enough. I have since removed the sand and got the Phos down too .11. I am using GFO to bring it down more. Once I get it down to about .03, I will buy and add new sand (which I should have done in the first place). I'm sure my corals will stay brown untill I bring the phos down.

 

[madrussian79]

**** - you must be a plumber. Nice set up!

 

[ricwilli]

So after having my skimmer flood my floor with 40 gallons of water, I decided to mod it with a float switch. The way I have my skimmer in the sump, the skimmer cup overlaps the sump about an inch. One day my skimmer out of the blue, decided to overflow. While it was overflowing, most of the water from the skimmer cup was spilling out of the sump
where the skimmer cup overlaps the sump. As this is happening, my ATO kicks on which is connected to a 55 gallon drum filled with RO/DI water. Luckily I had enough water in the drum or else the sump, would had went dry. Well, it took that incident for me to take action.
This is a very simple mod and should not take long to do, if you decide to do it. It is not proffesional looking as you see on other skimmers. I just put this together with the least amount of $$$. Here is how I did it.

The items that I used. ATO, Plastic pen, Electric wire, Wire clips and interlocking connectors.

This is the cap of the collection cup. I was lucky the it already had holes. You can easily drill one if yours does not have any.

I cut a piece of the pen. This will be used to route the wire through. Make sure that it is plastic.

I made four cuts on it and bend the cuts back to make it look like helicopter blades.

This is why the pen needs to be plastic.

Insert it in the hole and glue.

I cut the float from the ATO and marked one of the wires.

Pass the wires attached to the float, through the glued piece of plastic on the collection cup cap and glue.

This is what it should look like all glued.

 

[ricwilli]

In this pic you can see that I extended the wire attached to the ATO switch and also connected the interlocking connector to the other end.

The interlocking connector on the float.

Here it is in the collection cup.

Wire clips to hold the wire.

ALL DONE!

 

[foxyb]

sweet mod!

 

[gnoles]

Great mod, my attempt is drying right now in the garage. Thanks for the guide!