DIY 55g Reef

[Manos]

Hello, guys, i am an old aquarium owner, i have already built a large (for my standards) freshwater aquarium and now i am ready for a small reef.
I want from you guys help me out about the whole process, what i have now is only some drawings, a lot of search on the internet and a new top with LED lights from croci (aquarium makers from italy).
I took the top just to make the glass aquarium with the top in mind.
I want to use a sump filter with refugium and everything in it, skimmer, heater etc...
I am searching and i have many many plans but i want your help just to make sure that everything
will be fine for the livestock first of all and after that for my piece of mind.
Thats all from me now, I will have a lot of time here and i will give info of the things i am doing after your precious answers.

Thank you and i am glad i am here.

 

[ngoodermuth]

Welcome to R2R and the salt life! There are TONS of knowledgeable folks here, and some really great stickies at the top of each forum section to get you started. Also, feel free to peruse the other member tanks for ideas, equipment lists, and inspiration. Any questions - just ask!

 

[Manos]

Thank you ngood!
So, for starters, i am planning about the glass tank, having two holes on the top of one side, one for the overflow and one for the return.
For the overflow i was thinking making an acrylic box which im gonna glue on the outside of the tank and then have 2 or more tubes
go down to the sump, one will be the main and the other for situations where **** hit the fan!
For the return i am considering a tube with many holes on it like rain, i dont know how you call it...
My concerns are about places where the water wont recirculate. Maybe make the return of the water
in the middle of the base glass? And then put all the live rock above and of course use a one way valve?
In this scenario i am worried about the one way valve! Is there something that will go on forever? Or at least for a good amount of time hassle free?
Or one day i am going to find all the livestock on the bottom of the tank dead and then i will commit suicide!!!
Sorry for my english, its not my native language, hope you understood what i am talking about!

Thank you in advance.

 

[burnetb1]

There is no real need to make a fancy outlet for your return. A simple pipe into your display tank will work fine. Most of your circulation flow inside the display tank will come from power heads and not the return pump itself. What you have described sounds kind of like a old under gravel system where your return is plumbed down to the bottom of the tank. I would advise against this. I would have the return line be near the surface of the water so if a siphon starts when your return pump is off, you wont drain the whole tank. Check valves can be an extra level of assurance to stop the siphon but should not be fully trusted. The best method is to plumb the return line close to the surface and have enough room in the sump for the water being siphoned from the display.
If you are building your own overflow box, you might as well put 3 drains to your sump. Its called BeanAnimal style and is the most quite and safe while not having to be adjusted all the time. Building your own overflow has 2 main options in my opinion: build a separate box and attach it using bulkheads (similar to drilled overflow box systems you can buy like the ghost overflow) or you can use glass and silicone it to your tank creating a box, then drill holes to your display and silicone in a overflow weir in the tank. I am currently about to do the second option. I feel this is better because bulkheads tend to leak and by not using bulkheads I can have a larger flow area between the tank and the overflow box ( I only have a 1.75" hole saw for 1" bulkheads, so by having 1.75" holes instead of the bulkhead reducing them to 1"). Realistically I will never need this much flow in a 50 gal tank, but this is to ensure nothing will get stuck and block the water flow.
If you have trouble understanding what I'm saying I can upload CAD photos of my current design.

 

[dantimdad]

Welcome aboard!

Can you post some photos of your tank?

 

[Manos]

Burnet my friend, I can understand some of your sayings but a picture is a thousand words! It would be great if you could send me over something!
I wanted to avoid power heads, because if you have them, there is another thing to consider maintenance, clean, replace etc.... You think that they are one way thing? I mean for the circulation...
I also think that the bottom return could easily be a huge problem in the near or far future of the tank...
You think that the overflow box should be from glass or from acrylic? Can acrylic be glued to the glass? I don't know that info...
I will do a search for the beananimal style, as for the overflow box, i was thinking doing a hole to the back glass and then put a bulkhead with tubing going upwards so it can do
surface skimming as well and on the other hand nothing could make it go stuck by something and block! But i am thinking about the noise of this scenario...
Is this a wrong approach of the subject? I should have an inside overflow box with some short of grille and an outside box as well?
Danti my friend, there is no tank at the moment, i am in the plans at this point, i want to gather all the info and then proceed making it!

Thank you guys!

 

[burnetb1]

It sounds like you want to only use one pump for all the circulation in your tank which isnt really possible. The turnover rate in your display tank needs to be much higher than the flow through your sump. In other words, the flow of water moving around in your tank is higher than the amount of water going through your sump. To achieve this, extra pumps must be added to just the display tank that dont circulate water through the sump. The smallest size option for this is powerheads inside the display tank. For example, I have one return pump circulating water from my display to my sump at about 5-6 times turnover (i have a 65 gal total and the pump is roughly 350 gph). In addition to that I have 2 powerheads in my display tank pushing around 1500-3500 gph giving me closer to 80 times turnover in my display at full power. Please note that these powerheads are on random and wavemaker flow patterns, so they are not operating at 100% power all the time, making the flow in the main tank probably closer to 50 time turnover.
If you want to avoid the look of having pumps in your display tank, the only real way around it is having pumps running in a closed loop. This would mean drilling yet another hole in the tank, adding a bulkhead, then attaching the pump to the bulkhead (outside the tank) and having it pump the water back into your display tank. There are many ways of doing this, but essesially you are going to have to add another pump somewhere.
As far as the overflow goes, I could send you some hard to understand CAD images of what im designing right now, but you can find this information in much easier to understand formats from other people. https://www.glassreef.com/basics_overflow.php This is where I got my inspiration. I like the "coast to coast" idea of surface skimming but didnt want the entire back of my tank to be an overflow box, so i made mine coast to coast on the end. I also wanted a taller overflow box, so I extended mine the whole height of the tank. The only other main difference is his weir is made my drilling slots in the back of the tank while mine has a small overflow box siliconed into the tank and two holes drilled to let water pass.
Here are those CAD images anyway. Hope this helps

 

[burnetb1]

I do glass for everything. Not a huge fan of acrylic, scratches too easy. You cannot silicone acrylic to glass. You'll hear a lot on this subject from other people but as far as I'm concerned, this will not work long term and every tank you build should be designed for long term. People have had success using acrylic for baffles in a glass sump. This works only if the acrylic is silicone on both sides and this only holds it in place and should not be considered "sealed".
Also, use thick glass. I have broken thin glass baffles in the past and its not fun. I use .25" glass for everything.

 

[Manos]

Ok, this post was at least great! So, let me tell you guys where I am at this point.
As I told you, the tank will be 55 gallons. The sump/refugium will be at about 20 gallons, the final
size will be determined when I will have all the necessary equipment such as protein skimmer etc.
I will go with the beananimal method for the overflow, which means that I will have 2 holes on the back
of the tank and in the middle of it, from these holes there will be tubes/bulkheads (?) passing to the outside of the back
and there will be the syphon box with 3 tubes, as per the beananimal method.

Now for the return of the water to the tank, I should make one hole or two holes, left and right the back of the tank,
I was thinking of using two pumps, for the scenario where the pump at some point will break, so I can have the other
running... At the other hand I will have two points of freshly filtered water entering the tank from the sump/refugium.
Your thoughts on that matter???

I will use powerbeads in the tank, I didn't understand the method with the pump and it seems a little bit trouble for me...

Now for the sump/refugium, I have read and found some articles on the internet, I have made some drawings, the plan
I the same as I saw to every application, but do you have something in particular from your experience that I should follow
or not follow at all?

Water changes? From the main tank or from the sump? something that will make my life easier on this subject?

Also what about the protein skimmer? Any good advice for a good brand out there? Easy maintenance, parts, hassle free running etc...

Other thoughts? As I told you, nothing is yet ready, all are just plans and drawings, so your help on this stage is really really like the bible for me!

Thank you again guys, your help is precious!

 

[Manos]

Hey guys, I want as well your opinion on this : skimmer/refug/return or skimmer/return/refugium???

 

[burnetb1]

I would have the return in the middle. Try to isolate that fuge light so it doesn't turn your sump into a mess

 

[Mjrenz]

I have a 55 gallon tank, I used an eshopps eclipse overflow so I would take up as little space as possible in the tank and only had to drill one hole for the overflow and one for the return. I also saw some comments about an overflow in the bottom, be very careful because most 55 gallon tanks use tempered glass in the bottom that will shatter if you try to drill it

 

[burnetb1]

My old tank was a 55 and the front and back were tempered as well. Really have to check any glass before you drill cause the tank companies use whatever they have lying around to fill orders. The bottoms are pretty consistent on whether its tempered or not but the sides are a gamble. I use polarized sunglasses and a computer screen to check if glass is tempered.

 

[Manos]

Thank you guys for the info, I'm not so good at drilling glass, so the glass panels will come already drilled from the glass maker. I will stick them with silicone and just make all the necessary things after the cutting and drilling of the glass panels so I can have the best I could of an aquarium.
As for the refugium part, why do you think that I must isolate the light? Many photos and YT videos that I have seen, none had isolated the light of the refugium... Your personal experience has shown you something that needs to be considered?

 

[Mjrenz]

Thank you guys for the info, I'm not so good at drilling glass, so the glass panels will come already drilled from the glass maker. I will stick them with silicone and just make all the necessary things after the cutting and drilling of the glass panels so I can have the best I could of an aquarium.
As for the refugium part, why do you think that I must isolate the light? Many photos and YT videos that I have seen, none had isolated the light of the refugium... Your personal experience has shown you something that needs to be considered?

You'll get a bunch of algae growing in the sump, it's best to keep that part dark. I guarantee that every photo you saw was right after they finished building it and before they had an explosion of algae

 

[Manos]

You'll get a bunch of algae growing in the sump, it's best to keep that part dark. I guarantee that every photo you saw was right after they finished building it and before they had an explosion of algae

So, how am I gonna achieve that? Use some short of film on the baffles? For the light source? How to hide the rays from the rest of the sump? Any photo so i can understand would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[Mjrenz]

So, how am I gonna achieve that? Use some short of film on the baffles? For the light source? How to hide the rays from the rest of the sump? Any photo so i can understand would be appreciated! Thanks.

This is the setup I have for my sump, I used a 20 gallon long tank. For my baffles I used colored acrylic to block the light and I also used a peice of corrugated plastic to block the light that went over top of the baffles

 

[Manos]

That is great my friend, i will do the same with your setup! As i can see, you have the refugium on the opposite side of the overflow, how do you feed it with water? With another hose? We need big flow of water, like the one from the overflow, or slower flow? Thank you man!

 

[Mjrenz]

That is great my friend, i will do the same with your setup! As i can see, you have the refugium on the opposite side of the overflow, how do you feed it with water? With another hose? We need big flow of water, like the one from the overflow, or slower flow? Thank you man!

It's set up with three chambers, all the water from the overflow drains into the refugium on the right and flows over the blue baffle, then goes through the filter media in the middle chamber and under a 3/4 inch gap under the black baffle to the sump

 

[Manos]

Oh! I didn't get that! My question is, all the micro organisms from the refugium don't get sucked from the skimmer? Because I have seen on the internet that there is a debate about the position of the refugium on the sump!
Many hobbyists have the refugium not on the main flow from the DT but on one side of the sump that takes water from another hose and overflows on the middle department!