65g FW Journal

[Delphinus]

I have a couple clownloaches who are outgrowing their current tank so I'm in the process of setting up a 65g for them. They are currently in a tank I affectionatly dub "the abomination" due to its ability to grow algae better than any plant I've ever tried.

The plan is to use a sump with bioballs, hide the heater down there, and down the road hide any CO2 equipment down there (since I hope to keep this as a planted tank).

I bought the tank, stand and hood from Impreza who previously used the tank as a reef. It cleaned up pretty nice. First step is to drill a hole in the back for the overflow box.



The overflow will have a small box made of smoked glass, there will be a Durso-style overflow but with the standpipe on the exterior of the tank.

Here's the overflow being slapped together:



The box is just large enough to cover a 1" bulkhead and contain a 1" 90 degree elbow for the Durso intake. I measured this out as 4"x4"x5" (5" high).

I got lazy and just ordered glass pieces from the Glass Guild at 2 pieces of 4x5, and 1 of 5x5. Actually I made a mistake (well, two actually, but more on that later), I ordered 4 pieces of 4x5. I meant to order 3, just in case I elected to put the overflow box in the centre of the tank. In the end I decided to put it right up against the right hand side so one extra panel was not needed. Now I have two extra pieces of 4x5 4mm smoked glass. Even with the extra pieces though, the cost for the overflow box glass was a fairly thrifty $18.

The second mistake was to not compensate for the width of the glass. If I were to do this again, I would make it so that the bottom piece reaches out past the side edges. Right now I had to get a little creative to make sure the pieces all line up nice.

Next, was to find a way to mount my Coralife 30" unit in the hood. I have a 24" unit and a 30" unit just lying around as "surplus" (technically the 24" isn't surplus "yet" -- it's in use over my 30g right now -- when the 65g goes online, it will be surplus).

The real killer on these Coralife units is their resell value. So selling the 30" unit and buying a 36" unit instead works out pretty close to the same as just buying the 36" unit. So for now, I'm going to try to make use of the 30" unit.



I used 2" corner brackets to slide into the rails of the Coralife. These "just fit" (maybe with a little wiggling) into the rails. Then I used angle brackets to screw into those corner brackets, and then screwed those brackets into the hood.

I used nylon screws with wing nuts to make removing the unit somewhat easy for when it's time to replace lamps. Unfortunately to replace the lamp means to take the whole canopy off the tank, but at least it shouldn't be too bad to do that.




That's as far as I got today. Tomorrow I hope to get the overflow box installed on the tank and some of the plumbing started to the sump.

[Dale]

Tagging along!
Interesting to use a sump on a FW - something I've discussed many times before with others.
Hah I've made the same glass mistake too (forgetting the width). It's one of those "never do that again" things.
Very inventive with the brackets, I'll store that away in my mental filing cabinet (if I can ever find it).

[Delphinus]

Rough fitting of the overflow cup in place. I tried to make the top of the overflow flush with the bottom of the trim of the tank, that way the waterline should be above the trim.



I'm sure Michaelangelo didn't have to pretape his work, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess he never siliconed in an overflow into an aquarium..



And some black eggcrate, and now just need to let the silicone cure..


I went with black eggcrate because I thought, that combined with the smoked glass, would look really keen. In retrospect I might have gone with thicker glass and that might have been less translucent. Oh well.

Also in retrospect, black eggcrate is expensive ($15/sheet) and hard to find. If I ever run out and need more, I'll just use white and use that Krylon Fusion spray paint.

[Delphinus]

Kind of let this fall wayward, but got going on it again this last week.

One holdup was that I wasn't sure how I was going to make the external Durso overflow and be able to get the tank nice and close to the wall behind. Bulkheads are large and I want it to be modular in case I ever need to take it apart.

So I figured out how much threading I needed on the bulkhead and hacksawed off the excess. Sanded out the hacksaw marks with some medium grit sandpaper. Then, because the bulkhead was now so short, there was not enough room to have a threaded 1" close nipple for the 90 degree elbow AND for the "T", so I cut a close nipple down to size, threaded it in just enough that there's enough clearance leftover for the T to thread on fully, and then welded the two with some Weldon-16. For the T, I wrapped teflon around the remaining nipple about 6 or 7 wraps and got the T on. Smeared a little silicone around the edge for good measure. What I'm left with is a external Durso and low-profile enough that I should be able to get the tank to within 4" of the wall in behind.



The Durso here is 1" with a 1" bulkhead, minus some nominal radius for the close nipples holding everything together on the inside.

For the air valve I used a bushing to threaded 1/2", a close nipple, a 1/2" ball valve, another close nipple, into another 1/2" bushing back up to 1", then into a 1" coupler. On top of the coupler just sits a 1-1/4" cap. It just sits loose and has been drilled out on the top to let air pass. The open part of the coupler inside has a little bit of filter floss to act as an air muffler to keep the thing silent (hopefully). It has not yet been water tested so I don't know how gurgly it sounds yet.

[Delphinus]

The finished plumbing. Enough time had transpired that I looked at all the PVC bits I had amassed and I could not figure out what I had in mind anymore. I know it made sense at one point, but these ideas I get only seem to last so long before evaporating I guess.

6 or 7 trips to the hardware store in the last week, and at least 3 more "um what was I thinking again?" moments, this is what I've come up with.

I went with flex 1" on the drain because I wanted the Durso to drain vertically. The pipe then bends over to where the hole I had to drill in the stand to get to the sump.

The sump return, on the other hand, is rigid 1" PVC so that I can use conduit strapping to secure it to the stand. I want the output on the corner and I don't want it moving around. I'm through with suction cups, I'm hard plumbing this all the way.

Everything is modular so can be taken apart if need be, and reused, without cutting anything.




The 1" pipe goes to an elbow then a bushing to 3/4" threaded, and then Locline with a 3" flared nozzle.

[Delphinus]

Here's a view of the sump in the stand.

The bioball chamber is a glass box that can be removed if need be. In theory this is nice but in practise due to the height of the sump, it would have to be slid out of the stand in order to get it out. So this may be a luxury that doesn't get fully utilized but at least it's there.

Sump return is slated to be a Mag5. Additional flow in the tank will be from a Tunze 7025.