Thank you!!!!!
Up Date:
Well…. It’s been two hours and SHE HOLDS! The extra pipe running back into the sump because the pump was a little too much seems to be doing it’s job well! The tanks been running for about an hour now and all seems to be well!!!!!!!! So let me ask you… Did you enjoy the drama? LOL I didn’t. It took over six hours for me to fill this time, and my feet hurt from pacing back and forth! But who cares about me… I took a few pictures so we can go step by step through the saga of filling…
In this picture you’ll see that I’ve got the spray bar plumbed in. I decided in order to force myself to slowly fill the tank that I would fill the sump, shut the water off, then use the pump to pump the water into the tank. Then while the sump was filling from the tap again it would give me time to inspect everything. Then with one final inspection after the sump was full I’d plug the pump in adding 150 ish more gallons to the tank. It took eleven times in order to completely fill the tank.
Here are the spots where it leaked every other time it was filled. These were the spots where I closely inspected about five times after every time 150 ish gallons was put in the tank. The white line that you see in the pictures is the ¾ decking of the deep end, water would slowly dribble out from the top of it:
Now here’s the spray bar in action giving the tank a nice shower every half hour or so:
And here’s Max coming to inspect my work! LOL Future county building inspector! LOL
And here’s a slide show of the fill:
Then when the tank spilled a tiny bit of water into the sump tank I stopped filling it and started to just fill the sump tank. When both containers were at maximum then it was sitting at what I call “Idle” This mimics a power outage or when I unplug the pump to do a water change.
Somewhere in the middle of filling the tank I completed the plumbing return lines and the overflow line back to the sump:
Here’s the “overflow” line:
Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the line that feeds the under gravel jets. But it’s nothing exciting really, and hopefully you tube will let me get some videos up to night… You’ll see it then…
Since everything was plumbed and the tank and sump were full it came time to fire it up, and fire it up we did. Everything seems to work well, the water level has stayed the same though I did have to tone down the spray bar a bit. My theory is that once all the jets are in place it might slow things down enough where neither return line will have to be toned down.
The water level is holding steady at about an inch and a quarter down from the top. I wanted and inch and a half but what’s a quarter amongst friends? LOL
p.s. I did and have been shooting video so hopefully some day you tube will remove it’s head from it’s rear and allow them to get uploaded! I will not cheat anyone of the videos! BUT I’m considering making DVD’s of the whole process and selling them for like $5 to help fund the project and MFR. Think they’d sell? Of course there’d be bonus content of the fish room and videos I didn’t upload… Like my little rant about Sanitred LOL
Sorry about the massive post and tons of pictures taking forever to upload. Some sites only allow five pictures per post so on those sites I’ll be making multiple posts! Thanks again for looking… And oh, in the past hour or so the tanks temperature has gone up FIVE degrees!
TFG, MFR, JJS
I'm not too sure about the flaming genious one though... LOL As for keeping the thread going... You can bet your a$$ I'll keep it going, now the fun stuff like the filter and decor and fish can be done! As for FBF's I considered it but we often lose power here out in the middle of nowhere... 
Not to good for FBF's and I'm not setting up a battery back up for them either... I had a small confrence to go to this morning but when I got home I got this incredible burst of energy... I went out back and cut the top off a tree I cut down last year and put it in the tank! LOL It's 9' long, and the picture isn't all that great because of the bubbles on the glass... I couldn't find my magna sweep 
I've got a bad case of jealousy here. Well done sir; well done.
