Saltwater & Marine aquarium network
Profile Information
- Hometown:
- Tacoma Washington
- Occupation:
- Engineer
- Tank Size:
- 300gallon Starphire DIY tank with stainless steel frame
- About your tank:
- I built my tank myself. I welded together a 1.5" angle 304 stainless steel frame. I cut a sheet of 3/4" ACX plywood to fit down in the frame. The frame had 122 holes drilled and fully counter sinked into it to enable the plywood to be well secured with screws to the frame. The plywood was coated with a special design of polyurea coating in a 140mil thickness. The coating is extremely durable and contains no VOCs or other dangerous chemicals. I ordered 1/2" thick sheets of starphire glass to be cut and have the top edge pencil polished. I set the sheets in while the polyurea coating was still wet on the bottom of the tank to enable the coating to bond to the glass. The seems were sealed with GE silicone II. 15" bulkheads were mounted into the plywood bottom along with 4 3" bulkheads to be used as closed-loop and sump returns.
Plumbing the tank took much more time that I expected due to the huge amount of returns that needed to be plumbed, and my self-imposed requirement to have a union and valve for every inlet and outlet on the tank. I also had very limited space to plumb those large pipes, which caused me to be very creative with the routing of the lines.
The closed loop is a conventional setup useing a Sequence Dart to pump from the sump tank into 4 of the 1" inlets. Each inlet is fitted onto locline with an eductor nozzle featureing a 0.375" orifice. The overflows drain into the refugium which overflows into the sump before being circulated back to the display.
The closed-loop system is more creative. Each of the 10 outlets is fitting with a 0.375" orifice eductor nozzle on locline. The pump is what makes it neat. I removed the factory Sequence baracuda single phase 120V baldor motor and replaced it with a 3-phase 230v baldor motor. This motor is powered by a very clever design of programable VFD (variable frequency drive). This enables the flow rate of my pump to be controlled by whatever frequency the VFD sends to the motor. I have the VFD programmed to pulse between 10% pump flow and 80% (if i go 100%, the water splashes out of the tank!) every 10 seconds. It makes a very smooth change in frequency which takes the whole 10 second interval. This provides current similar to a wave sweeping over a coral, along with cutting the power consumption of the pump by more than half.
The lighting is provided by 12 x 54w T5HO bulbs with very good reflector designs. I built a stainless steel frame to support them over the tank, and this frame freely piviots on 1 corner to enable unrestricted room to reach in and mess things up in the tank. I've never liked having a canopy, so on this build I didn't make one.
The tank is mainly an SPS reef, but also holds any species of coral that I enjoy to keep. This includes zoa, rics and anemones. The tank contains a large school of many species of anthias, a few tangs, many blenny/pistol shrimp buddies, and most anything else that i enjoy seeing in my living room. The tank has a deep crushed coral sandbed, as I've never been happy looking at my tanks when I used bare bottom designs. I have a perforated 3/4" hose running in zigzags under the DSB with medium strong current blowing out under the crushed coral everywhere to avoid dangerous oxygen low areas that could cause problems for the tank over time.
To maintain elements in the water, I use a large calcium reactor with chunks of coral skeletons as the media. To maintain always undectable NO3 and PO4 levels, I've tried many different methods including Phosphate absorbing chemical chambers, elaborate and huge protien skimmers, along with a host of other "must have" equipment. The system I found works best for me is to simply grow the macro algae Chaetomorpha in my dual fuges which are lit by high pressure sodium HID bulbs. As the algae grows, it traps NO3 and PO4 inside its own biomass, and this mass is harvested in large amounts between every week to two weeks (this replaced the dumping the skimmer jug process, and smells much better ;)).
I've been actively keeping a reef now for 6 years, and this tank and the reefkeeping methods are a refinement of how my reef design and reef keeping process has greatly changed over the years. Fortunately, through the ups and downs, I've always managed to have fun, and I've always kept learning. I owe a LOT to a man named Mike O'Brian and a fellow with the psudoname Boomer. They have taught me loads of valuable info about reefkeeping and helped me in so many ways over the years. Thanks guys!
Best Wishes,
-Luke
- Trade Frags?
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- reeffrontiers
- Favorite Music:
- pink floyd
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