Meredith's 180 In-wall happy place

Brew12 · Nov 14, 2016

melypr1985 said:
Thanks guys! It's really coming together. The pressure is all on me now since most of the rest is up to me to put together, like the plumbing, the rock, the sand, pumps, filling it. OH man!!! It's a lot and I really want to get it wet by thanksgiving if I can. That would be ahead of schedule since I originally set Christmas as the fill date. My husband has to have the electrical box done by the time I start filling it though. Hopefully he has the time to get it finished soon.

I brought home the sump today after letting it cure over the weekend at the shop. It looks pretty darn good. I'm going to make a homedepot run tomorrow for plumbing supplies and purchase the return pumps on wednesday. I'll be placing an order for sand and rocks on friday and hopefully have that pretty quick. Then it's all about getting it filled! The rest of it can be done while the tank is cycling.

Fantastic! Gotta love it when things in this hobby go ahead of schedule!

melypr1985 · Nov 14, 2016

Brew12 said:
Fantastic! Gotta love it when things in this hobby go ahead of schedule!

We will see if I can keep it that way. (fingers crossed) Most of it will depend on getting the rocks and sand in on time along with my husband finishing the electrical. I only need one circuit to be complete for me to get it started. The second circuit won't be completed until we take down the 75 since it's currently occupying that circuit.

cameronh · Nov 14, 2016

Oh nice title by the way!

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Well..... I got my pumps (2 mag 9's) and I'm mid way through plumbing the tank (no pictures because they wouldn't make any sense yet anyway) and I have to put that on hold so I can get a tool from work tomorrow to tighten the bulk heads. It's not a wrench or anything, it just allows me to reach up into the hole that was drilled into the top of the stand and reach the nut. I can't reach them well with my fingers so it's not even hand tight. So that's on hold -again. Also not going to be able to hard plumb every bit of it. I'll need to use a flexible hose for part of the return lines because the angles are off and I really wanted to avoid a 90 degree bend in that part of the plumbing.

For now, I have 200 lbs of sand coming to the store next week and I've ordered 100 lbs of rock from marco rocks. Hopefully I can get the beast up and running soon so I can focus on thanksgiving and christmas!

Brew12 · Nov 17, 2016

melypr1985 said:
Also not going to be able to hard plumb every bit of it. I'll need to use a flexible hose for part of the return lines because the angles are off and I really wanted to avoid a 90 degree bend in that part of the plumbing.

You get quite a bit of head loss when switching between soft and hard piping. Any chance you can use two 45's instead of a 90 to do what you want like what I did here? You can do some pretty nice offsets this way. You can't really see it in this picture, but the green pipe gets moved 3" closer to the back wall along with the 90 degree total turn.

melypr1985 said:
Hopefully I can get the beast up and running soon so I can focus on thanksgiving and christmas!

I thought this WAS Thanksgiving and Christmas for you!

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Brew12 said:
You get quite a bit of head loss when switching between soft and hard piping. Any chance you can use two 45's instead of a 90 to do what you want like what I did here? You can do some pretty nice offsets this way. You can't really see it in this picture, but the green pipe gets moved 3" closer to the back wall along with the 90 degree total turn.

I was afraid of that. BUT I think I could actually do that. Just requires one more trip to HomeDepot to get 6 more 45's. I'll give it a shot real quick and make sure it will work before I make it permanent.

THANKS!

dbl · Nov 17, 2016

melypr1985 said:
I was afraid of that. BUT I think I could actually do that. Just requires one more trip to HomeDepot to get 6 more 45's. I'll give it a shot real quick and make sure it will work before I make it permanent.

THANKS!

+1 on @Brew12's suggestion. Although I didn't use any 90's at all (I used all 45's) the trick about being able to make slight alignment adjustments with them works very well.

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

dbl said:
+1 on @Brew12's suggestion. Although I didn't use any 90's at all (I used all 45's) the trick about being able to make slight alignment adjustments with them works very well.

Thanks David! While I have you here, maybe you could help me with a problem. I'm wanting to be able to just turn a valve and drain some water from my tank without drilling the tank at all. Everything I can think of is either convoluted or not going to drain enough water for a change. Got any ideas?

dbl · Nov 17, 2016

You could tee off a return line with a valve but you'll be limited to the amount of water in the return section of your sump before the pump would go dry. Conversely, if you tee off the drain lines, you'll be limited by the size of your overflow box, which is likely even less. I actually put a valve on my return manifold for water changes, but my return section was so small it didn't work out. Either the overflow box or the return section dried up way too early! :mad: Let's just call that newbie planning!!!

What I did end up doing is actually putting a valve on my closed loop system with a hose bib connector. So I just shut off the flow to the CL outlets, open the "extra" valve and pump out up to nearly 30 gallons of water for a water change. I say 30 because at that point the intakes for the CL get exposed. But I don't think you're doing a CL so that's all for naught!

If your return section is large enough, I would be looking there. Either through a manifold or just a T'd valve that you'd only open during water changes. That's just my thinking out loud.

Brew12 · Nov 17, 2016

dbl said:
You could tee off a return line with a valve but you'll be limited to the amount of water in the return section of your sump before the pump would go dry. Conversely, if you tee off the drain lines, you'll be limited by the size of your overflow box, which is likely even less. I actually put a valve on my return manifold for water changes, but my return section was so small it didn't work out. Either the overflow box or the return section dried up way too early! :mad: Let's just call that newbie planning!!!

I did the exact same thing with my return pump. It's good for a 10 gallon water change on my 55g sump before I have to worry about the return pump going dry.

dbl said:
What I did end up doing is actually putting a valve on my closed loop system with a hose bib connector. So I just shut off the flow to the CL outlets, open the "extra" valve and pump out up to nearly 30 gallons of water for a water change. I say 30 because at that point the intakes for the CL get exposed. But I don't think you're doing a CL so that's all for naught!

This is brilliant! Wouldn't work for me but love the idea!

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

dbl said:
What I did end up doing is actually putting a valve on my closed loop system with a hose bib connector. So I just shut off the flow to the CL outlets, open the "extra" valve and pump out up to nearly 30 gallons of water for a water change. I say 30 because at that point the intakes for the CL get exposed. But I don't think you're doing a CL so that's all for naught!

We did this on the display at work. it's so easy and all I have to do is turn a valve and it drains away into a drain underneath. Unfortunately I don't have a closed loop and will not drill this tank. I'm too chicken.

I guess I'll just get another pump that I can drop into the tank and turn on for water changes. That should speed things up some and it's only one more pump lol. Can never have too many of those!

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Brew12 · Nov 17, 2016

melypr1985 said:
We did this on the display at work. it's so easy and all I have to do is turn a valve and it drains away into a drain underneath. Unfortunately I don't have a closed loop and will not drill this tank. I'm too chicken. I guess I'll just get another pump that I can drop into the tank and turn on for water changes. That should speed things up some and it's only one more pump lol. Can never have too many of those!

Which reminds me.. I really need to get a another pump myself. I can get water out of my tank fairly easily. Getting it back in is a pain!

Brew12 · Nov 17, 2016

melypr1985 said:

Looks great so far! You can tell I haven't touched it!

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Brew12 said:
Which reminds me.. I really need to get a another pump myself. I can get water out of my tank fairly easily. Getting it back in is a pain!

Yup... going to be getting a good sized pump for the mixing station so that it's easy and fast to pump water back to the display. I have a real small one right now that is sooooo slooooowwww. I hate that.

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Brew12 said:
Looks great so far! You can tell I haven't touched it!

Im working on it. Hubby just got back with about 40 more elbows lol. I think I can finish it now

Ljaus · Nov 17, 2016

Didn't think I would see plumbing getting done this soon into the build. Seems @melypr1985 is following the eat, sleep, reef, repeat process

dbl · Nov 17, 2016

melypr1985 said:
Yup... going to be getting a good sized pump for the mixing station so that it's easy and fast to pump water back to the display. I have a real small one right now that is sooooo slooooowwww. I hate that.

I just realized another way you can handle it if you design your mixing station correctly. I happen to know someone that recently wrote an article on mixing stations (wink, wink). Go and read post #43 of the thread below for another idea that might work.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/l...nd-using-a-water-mixing-station.270585/page-3

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

Ljaus said:
Didn't think I would see plumbing getting done this soon into the build. Seems @melypr1985 is following the eat, sleep, reef, repeat process

lol. I got a tight schedule. I want to get water into it by thanksgiving -if possible- so it can be cycling over the holidays. The rest of the fish room will go pretty slowly, but that's something I'm going to work on while the tank cycles. It's a lot easier to get these things done quickly when you have connections

melypr1985 · Nov 17, 2016

dbl said:
I just realized another way you can handle it if you design your mixing station correctly. I happen to know someone that recently wrote an article on mixing stations (wink, wink). Go and read post #43 of the thread below for another idea that might work.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/let’s-mix-it-up-designing-and-using-a-water-mixing-station.270585/page-3

Yes!! I totally read that whole thread and the article. I made my husband read it too and told him "make it happen" lol. I remember reading that post but forgot about it until now. Thanks for reminding me! I'll have to start drawing up my mixing station pretty soon so I can get all these plans down before I forget again. I'm just waiting to see what kind of mixing containers I can get through work. I'll find out saturday for sure what I can get, then I can start designing it.