With my very limited experience so far my first choice for QT/hospital tanks would multiple smaller tanks rather than 1 large tank. I have 2 - 20 longs and a 50. I've yet to use the 50 gal. If something went south and you had to move and house fish somewhere, it would seem better (again in my limited experience) to put aggressive-ish that don't do well with others in a smaller but longish tank (e.g.. tangs) by themselves and happy schooling, peaceful fish, in another tank or 2. Smaller tanks are easier to perform water changes in, so if the tank transfer method is for you, then that's a bonus. Smaller water volume makes it easier to treat with meds, you don't need as much. If 1 fish needs a rest/hospitalization, you're not running a 70 gal when a 20 would do.
Downside is, it's a smaller tank. Ammonia needs to be watched closer than in a big tank. And it would be hard to house fish that get a bit stressed with other fish in a confined space, therefore I'd opt to put them by themselves. Now if you had 30 Tangs in your main display, that could be a problem :)
Anyway, that's my $0.02
Hadn't seen it expressed yet, maybe there's a reason....

Here's an idea for you have custom built or find a 5' long 15 to 18 wide tank only run a couple aqua clear hang on back with heater. Have it sit low enough that you can build a table/lid over the tank for your workspace. Have the lid able to be hinged upwards and tethered out of place when adding treating removing fish. Put on two or three t5 strips on the underside to light the tank. This way you are utilizing all the space as you need you lose a bit of storage space but in the grand scheme your fish will thank you for it. I can try to roughly draw it up for you if you like. Oh and add Formica to the top of table area for easy cleanup. The qt tank doesn't need to be at eye level it just has to function for its purpose. Doesn't mean you can't multi purpose the area too

Read the whole build. Im sure you have heard this lots but this is my dream build, just as your setup. As far as quarantine thats a toughy. You are optimizing your space pretty well already. The only thing i can think of and im not sure i even like it because of what needs to be done but, could you find a decent sized tank that fits inbetween the posts of your bench. Notch the lower shelf and set up a tank on a nice sturdy wood base with some locking casters? Have a place to anchor lights under the bench and if you really need to get in there or clean it you can unlock the wheels and wheel it out. Pending the tank is not too large. I dunno just throwing it into the pile. I just dont like losing shef space. Plus tank on wheels is kinda ehhhh.

Thank you to everyone for the suggestions! I knew I was in the right place to get some ideas. I'm leaning towards building a simple table on the right along with a short platform under it to allow for the 70 to go underneath. I agree that the larger tank has both merits and disadvantages. I don't have the room to make the table fold up but I'll try to find a way to be creative with the build. One of the challenges is that the floor slightly slopes to the drain and I will have account for that in the design. I plan to keep the the 20g as the main QT for now though.

Been working on the tank when time allows...amazing how many jobs come up when you move. New Vertex RODI is up. Great little unit but noisy and I can't figure out why. QT tank is up. Salty but nothing in it except for water and pumps to circulate.
Today I started making my first 100g of water. No leaks so far...but we'll see in the morning when I go to move water from the fresh bin to the salty one.
My plan is to fill the sump and then both bins with fresh water, then start moving it through the setup to get it upstairs to the display. I haven't finished plumbing upstairs yet, but I'm not too far off.

What silicone is best for the odd plumbing fix..ie...at apvc joint you can't get to

if it is a pvc joint i would be more inclined to hit it with some more pvc glue the with some silicone. Unless you have already tried more solvent or if the gap is really big.

option 2 is: get you kids with their tiny little hands to get in and cut it apaart and re glue it for you :biggrin:

haha...it's joint where the PVC screws into my fresh water barrel. It drips every now and then when the pump is pulling water from the barrel. It doesn't when it's just sitting under the water pressure of the tank itself.

I also now hate unions. Is there a perfect way to know they are good. Two of mine leaked and they couldn't be in worse locations to reach. I've redone them and they are fine now but I put a union into everything...go knows how many leaks I will have!!!! It scares the bejesus out of me and all I've got going is my water change station.

With unions on plastic storage tanks or anything non breakable i just tighten them real tight(like until rubber bulges on gasket and plastic looks all distorted). On glass i just go hand tight then a couple wrench turns. Generally if you have a deceint quality union it should be pretty well sealed at slightly past what you can do with your big strong hands.

or you could just order a can of flex seal from the infomercial and coat everything. Did you know that they put a screen door on the bottom of a boat and flex seal made it float :)

I need advice on a plumbing issue. I just don't seem to be having much luck with plumbing lately so I think its better to ask what people think.

On my return, I divide the 2" line into a closed circuit 1" run that goes over my eurobrace. T's then push the water down through holes in the bracing at the far end from the overflow. I have put unions on both sides of these runs in case I need to remove them. Herein lies the dilemma....where the holes go down, I would like to glue in 90's with threaded ends so that my educators can screw in and help push the water back towards the overflow. If I glue these in, I will not be able to get the "loop" off via my unions anymore...in fact they will be permanent.
Is this the right thing to do? Any alternatives that make more sense?

Already tonight I over tightened the the threaded PVC into my blo-hole pump and cracked the union at the pump. Aaargh!

Can you not use bulkheads that are threaded instead if slip so you can remove them?

Can you just use all threaded fittings from the bulkhead on so you can unscrew starting at the end an work your way back to the bulkhead from there?

Okay...thank you for the ideas. I don't know if I can incorporate them without the return lines really dropping into the viewable space in the tank badly. I will try to dry fit some different options and see if any can replace the glueing.

I'm afraid that I have no advice or suggestions to offer - just my empathy. I'd rather work with live electrical current than plumbing. Electrical either works or doesn't work - plumbing works . . . then leaks. I had to call my plumber brother in law to fix my multiple leaks. I hope that all goes well.

I just slip fit my 90s in. I applied pvc primer to the short piece of pipe in the 90 and the outlet of my manifold. this created the perfect amount of friction to hold them in tight.

For your leaky unions, have you tried silicone lube on the o-rings ?

For your enductors;
Are you going to use 3/4" enductors on 1" pipe ?
If so, what about 90s threaded on both ends
If your eurobrace is wide enough, you unscrew the enductors, then spin out the 90s
You'd need a spig x fipt reducer bushing and a close nipple for each fipt x fipt 90

If not, all that comes to mind is adding 4 more unions.
One on each side of the Ts and 90s that sit on top of your eurobrace.
It'll cost you some money to experiment with it, but a dry fit will show if you can wiggle them out or not with the outflow 90s in place

Absolutely! What I did.

Looks like this is a good solution
Quick and dirty and no more buying and chopping

So if I get this right...you just used primer? That made it gummy enough to hold tight...but loose enough that if you needed to break it, you could.

If this works....I will be dancing a jig tonight!!!

I thought I should do a quick update on the tank thread.

I've been desperately trying to prep my old house as a rental....meaning that the work on the tank has suffered...but some things have gotten done.

Water in the storage tanks, prepping to be transfered over to my sump and up into the display.
http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-27220700.jpg

The plumbing from my overflow, just dry fitted so far.
http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-27220648.jpg

Tonight I worked on putting the dry-rock that I had into the Display. Never a task I look forward to as I just always feel that it could be better. Sorry about the crappy phone pictures.

Anyways, the thing to remember when you look at the pics is that I have about 75 more lbs of "live" rock still in a tank at my old house waiting to move over and fill out the "look". Although the minimalist look has become more popular lately, I feel that this needs to go higher and so hopefully the other rock will eventually accomplish this.

The "live rock" has been in a tank about a year with a couple Chromis so although it has very little Coraline algae, it should be alive enough to help me jump start this tank. I will also be using a 30 pack of Prodibio Startup to get things rolling.

Here's the pics.
http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30215735.jpg

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...30215904-1.jpg

I personally like it as is :-)

Thanks! That's cool because I love the look in your tank!

Both piles at either end of my tank actually had rocks higher up when I first scaped but I quicky realized that viewing corals so high wasn't as interesting to me so I lowered both ends and am much happier with it. There is more opportunity to look down at corals and fish have more room to cruise the reef top I find.

I am also a fan of an open looking reef
With my 75g I am limited, so I had to make some taller 'berbs', but I am liking your open look

Can't wait to see what it looks like once you add the rest of your LR :smile:

Is that some of the rock I gave you?

Hey Leah, there is a few pieces of that against the overflow wall. It was a base type of rock and that's what I've tried to use it for. I drilled a bunch of holes in it to allow for frag pegging if it ended up being visible. The rest of this comes from eco-reefer and marco-rocks.

looks good mark! i personally think it looks a little more natural if you build overhangs or use rock crevices as fish shelter rather than a set of caves on that one end but minor stuff. i'd keep it low and leave your sps lots of space like you have it.

any jig-dancing lately?

Mark that's it for the pictures



WOW COME ON as Kein would do

:drinking::pop2:

you won't even bite wood for us anymore i wouldn't talk.

Haha...well I have more lousy phone picutures....but they all show the same thing.

Just cause you asked for them though.

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...30215854-1.jpg

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-30215759.jpg

Mark I really like the low laying rock. Im looking at doing that to my Cube once its stops being -47 here in Manitoba. Are you going to be running the Tunze that low to the ground

Here is one of my problems...the house builder made some cosmetic changes to my stand design and one of them included a double wall on the overflow side of my tank covering most of that side up. In doing that, I asked him to cut four 3 1/2" holes out of the wood so that my pumps could go in before the tank went in. He did this but when the tank was installed, I noticed that the bottom two holes were very close to the tank bottom.
The true issue didn't rear its head until I put those pumps in while aquascaping yesterday. They are only 1/2" from the bottom. I am probably going to have to place a rock below them in order to avoid sucking up sand.

Yikes, there's no way to enlargen the holes to let them sit a little higher?

I had a pair running 24V jumpers really close to the low in the back of my last tank with no issues. With new sand though you might have issues for a bit. mine were both aimed slightly upwards and there were no wide flow shrouds available then either. Not sure which ones you're using.

Mine have the 24v jumpers but only the original shrouds. I bought them about 1 1/2yrs ago from one of the guys in Calgary who had just started a tank and then got transferred and had to sell them. They've never seen water for me.

I can't make new holes...the wood is right up to the glass and there's 1 1/4" of wood to get through.

you have an advantage with the original shrouds. aim slightly up, typical tunze jet stream forward with little collateral damage.

but you can totally make new holes so long as you have access to the non tank side of the plywood. just score and chip away with a solid utility blade and a small screwdriver. I patented this process and called it the scribe technique when I added details into my old stand =)

you could abandon the low holes and mount them on a couple sea sweeps higher up in the tank. I even know a guy that that could hook ya up with them :)

or make it one of those artificial sand beds in the corners by gluing sand to a piece of acrylic and dropping it on each side under where the pumps are.

or point them down and turn them on full and see what happens.

Haha...thanks Nick...2 of those ideas don't seem to bad. I will have to think about the 3rd for a while before I get back to you. :)

Hey Mark, if you can't find a solution that works for you, what about 2 of these?

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/tunze-...-6025-250.html