Jacob’s Blog

To recap the plumbing on Project 360 there are essentially 2 systems:

1) The in-house plumbing. This consists of the piping between the display tank and sump as well as the piping, electrical conduit, and ducting through the walls and into the crawlspace. This is part of Phase I (see below) and is now complete.

2) The water room plumbing. This consists of the piping between the water storage tanks, dosing system, auto top off system, and the display tank. This is part of Phase II and is partially complete.

In case I have not mentioned it already I have split the project into 2 phases as well. Phase I - get the tank up and running under manual control, and Phase II - integrate the automation components. Below are some photos along with descriptions of the Phase I plumbing.

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After taking heat from just about everyone in our local reef club for the good part of the last year I’m happy to announce I finally have water in the tank! I started filling the tank with RO/DI water on Christmas day. My goal was to start filling on the 20th… so really I’m not that far behind schedule [wink]!

Here’s the last look ai it while dry

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Project 360 has found new life these holidays I’m making a push to get the plumbing, air exchange, stand, and canopy complete before Christmas. Everything has been on hold for so long I needed to go back and refresh myself with my own designs. This included checking my sump design, so I decided to throw this together…

The tool below will help you determine how much the water level in your sump will increase when the power is off. There are some notes on use below. DISCLAIMER - Use at your own risk! I’m not responsible for any losses you may suffer from use of this information.

Notes:

1. 1) Since return lines are below the surface they will cause a siphon when power is lost. A typical solution is to drill a small (1/16 to 1/8 inch) hole in each return line somewhere below the water surface to act as a siphon break. For instance, if the hole is drilled 1 inch below the water surface, then the water level will drop 1 inch then the hole will be exposed to air and the siphon will stop.
2. 2) The volume of water in the piping between sump and tank is most likely less than 1 gallon. For reference the following are gallons per 100 feet: 3/4″=2.8g, 1″=4.5g, 1 1/2″=10g, 2″=17g
3. 3) The sump operating water level is determined by the height of baffles in the sump and by how high above the baffles the water is filled to (by you). Running at the maximum sump water level is not recommended. Allow for as much ‘head space’ as possible to deal with the unexpected.

This is a side-track from the usual “Project 360″ post. I just wanted to share a little about a spreadsheet that I developed for modeling a piping system and determining the optimum pump to use. This is a very useful tool for designing a new process line and understanding the system curve (flow vs. pressure drop in the system). The program is driven by Excel and custom written Visual Basic routines. The limitations of this system are:

- Calculations are for Newtonian Fluids only (in a nutshell a fluid who’s viscosity is independent of shear forces)
- Pump suggestions are limited to those in the database of the program (which can be expanded upon as time allows)

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Not much progress to report on the tank, “real work” and other projects at home have been keeping me busy. I did change my mind on the lighting setup. I was planning on running all T5’s but decided to go with halides at the last minute. My bulb choice was the Iwasaki 175w 15k. I’m running them on the new model Icecap 175w electronic ballasts. The spectral data and PAR numbers can be found on Sanjay Joshi’s site here.

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Happy New Year!

It’s been busy around the office lately; between the holidays and everyone wanting to deplete their ‘07 budgets I havevn’t been able to do more than think about the tank project lately. Today a friend came over to help me run some of the piping. With his help I managed to get the water lines and electrical conduits run from the office closet to the water room.

Let me just say, working in a small crawl space, on the dirt, sprawled out on chunks of concrete remnants and other odds and ends is not my idea of a good time… and I have to go back down there at least a couple more times (to finish gluing and to run ducting).

Here are a couple of pics of what we got done today, at least what was done above the floor, no shots from the crawlspace - the less I see of it the better!

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I need some fresh air!

Salt water aquariums tend to evaporate water quickly due to the constant water movement, warm water temperature, and large surface area exposed to the air. In my experience it’s not unusual to evaporate 1-2% of the total water volume per day.

My system will be about 400 gallons total water volume including the sump) which equates to about 6 gallons of evaporation every day. That’s over 2100 gallons a year of evaporated water. In order to remove all the moist air I decided to build an air exchange system. It’s fairly simple:

1. Make the stand and canopy as air tight as possible.
2. Using ducting create an loop from outside the house, through the stand and canopy, and back out of the house.
3. On the outlet side of the loop install an inline fan to pull fresh air through the loop.

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Pushing Forward

It’s been too long since I’ve updated so here’s the latest. When setting up an aquarium in your office it does help to actually have the tank IN the office… not outside next to the garage. With the help of some friends the tank is now inside! Prior to moving it in I spent 2 weekends polishing out the scuffs and scratches from the previous 6 years that the tank was set up. I used a Micromesh HP-100 kit. This is a hand sanding process that takes a lot of time, I don’t think I’ll ever do it again (at least not on a large tank) but the results are to my liking.

Tank In The Office

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The Water Room!

It’s been awhile since my last update. I’ve been wrapped up with work, but also with getting the water room together. This room is actually more like a built in storage area on the side of our house, it was the result of an addition. When complete, the water room will hold (2) 65 gallon drums, (4) 5 gallon totes, a 55 gallon quarantine tank, my RO/DI filtration system, and several pumps. Plumbing will run from the water room, under the house, and up through the floor to the display tank (this is not installed as of today).

Here are a few pictures of what I’ve been working on. I should have taken one when the room was just bare frame work and full or yard tools, but it was pretty scary and I didn’t want to frighten anyone!

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