My Diy Frag Tank

[Alex Brown]

I plan to add a small tank above my current tank, which is a 55G reef. I intend to use the return from my external filter to fill the new tank, which will also be drilled with an overflow pipe (just like a drilled display tank overflowing into a sump in theory). The water will return into the display tank through this drilled pipe hole.

Few questions to ask you guys, and would love any thoughts or ideas you may have.

- If I filled up the overflow pipe with live rock rubble, would this reduce the water trickling sound? Or is this somthing I need to experiemnt with?

- only planning on soft corals in the next 6 months, so will be running a shallow tank on 2 T5's with reflectors. Tank would be somthing like 1-2ft long, by 1ft wide and tall.

- the return from the external is fairly strong, but planning to add a nano korilla for some more flow.

- I currently run a small bag of carbon, which is situated in my skimmer bubble stop in the display tank. Whats peoples thoughts on moving the skimmer to the frag tank? Also leads me to next question;

- I have lots of macro algea in my display, that I would like to thin right down by moving it to the frag tank, in a seperate chamber (simply made by a sheet of glass). I use this for nutrient control right now, how much macro is needed to prevent brown algea feeding from excess nutrients?

- Lastly, by adding more softies, will thiss change the chemistry of my tank drasticly? Should I add coral food? Right now the only maintanence my tank needs is a fortnightly 25L water change and 1/5 of a cube of brine shrimp for the fish every 3 or 4 days. Everything is thriving right now.

Display tank:

I bought my frag tank today, an 18x10x10" clearseal tank. Can anyone recoment me some good lighting for this size tank. Im going to keep soft corals lower in the tank and hard corals right up at the surface. Any advice?

 

[SkiFletch]

Some thoughts

First off, while the external return is certainly strong drawing off the tank and pumping back into it at the same head pressure, canister filters are NOT designed for pushing water up against head pressure. The engineering design behind their impellers is for flow, not pressure, a tradeoff if you will. As such their flow is high and electrical use low when just moving water through the canister. You'll be better off getting a small pump like a maxijet 900 for this application.

If you want to lower the slushing sounds, put a right angle fitting on the bottom of the drain where it returns to the display and have it so its almost completely underwater, but a very little bit of the opening still in air. If using hard PVC, don't glue that right angle fitting, so you can adjust it a bit.

No reason not to move the skimmer

How much macro is really different for each tank. Can't really reccomend this, you'll probably have a better "feel" for it than any of us could give you

Don't worry about adding softies, should be fine

And lastly lighting, I might go with either the new high power LED's, or some name-brand PC's. The shallow depth is helpful, meaning little light really required. If you wanted to, you could also try a 70watt clip on halide

 

[Alex Brown]

Awsome, great stuff Ski. I think for now I must use the canister return, I know its not appropriate but funds dont support a new pump just yet! I have checked out the returns capeability of pumping the extra 10 inches up into the new tank and it looked just as powerfull as when it was in the display tank. Im sure if I cut 10 inches off the tubing, and raised the outlet up 10inches, it would surely counter each other out right?

I think I might keep a very harvested section of macro in the display, I actually like the look of the section covering the skimmer and powerheads in the top right. This would also give me more room for frags, and for this reason I plan to leave the skimmer in display also.

I have pretty much decided upon 2 T5 compact units, one blue and one white for the time being. Looking at interpet or similar.

Got some more questions if you dont mind.

Some thoughts on posistioning the small tank; I wanted to put it right ontop of my display tank, ontop of a piece of wood that sits on the rim of the tank going left to right. However, the weight of the tank with water is just under 35kg, will this weight add any strain or dangerous compression to the tank causing problems like a crack from the downwards pressure? As you know, right now the pressure on the tank would be the water pushing outwards on the glass. (I do have a factory fitted cross support that pulls the front and back of the tank togther).

Maybe I build a left to right support from wood, that sits on top but has lipped edges to stop the tank pressure from left to right? (still doesnt solve downwards pressure though).

 

[SkiFletch]

Actually raising the canister filter and causing it to try and lift water up through increasing negative pressure will be an extreme detriment to it's performance. Centrifugal pumps do NOT like negative pressure, so restricting an inlet like that will REALLY kill performance. You can try it, but finding a used small pump like a maxi 900 would really be more suitible

As for mounting the tank, 35KG is certainly a decent amount of weight, but if it's evenly distributed downward force, you should be OK. Remember, in most tank construction, the side walls sit on top of the bottom pane, so downward force on the side panes is not the end of the world. I wouldn't worry about breaking the glass, like most materials glass is very strong in compression forces. My own hood probably weighs 15-20KG and hasn't caused me problems. The real key is having the tank level and the weight evenly distributed.

 

[Alex Brown]

My tank is probly 1 or 2 degrees off level.

I am now concidering some heavy load shelfs. I have found some brackets that support a rating of 250kg each at my DIY store. What are your thoguhts on this? The wall the shelf will be on is an external cavity wall, and I will be putting in extra long wall sockets. Defently not your standard book shelf.

I have also thought about joining two of these 18inch long tanks together for the shelf, and have a local glass cutter joint the tanks and cut a slot out the middle so the tank becomes one. This will then allow me to either extend the frag racks, or move my macro algea out of the display. I was also concidering adparting some space for phos remover, carbon and my skimmer.; more things I can remove from the canister filter and replace with live rock rubble for example.

 

[SkiFletch]

Great idea on the shelving. Just make sure you screw into studs, or use wall anchors that can support the weight

You could work two tanks together. Do remember, when the glass is that thin, fixing them with bulkheads can be asking for a crack...

 

[Alex Brown]

I have been a little bit slow on this project. I picked up the heavy load shelf brackets and bolts today, cost just under £20 so not too bad. The wall I will be drilling into is breeze block. Anyone got any experiences with heavy load shelfs in breeze block?? The bracket supports up to 200kg individually, so two brackets with a nice thick piece of wood for the shelf should offer suitable strength for the 70kg of water weight and glass this tank will weigh.

OK so my plan so far is to join two 18x10x10" tanks so it becomes a 36x10x10" tank. The middle will have a section cut out to allow water flow. I am not sure whether this will be clear or have wire mesh covering the gap yet. Mesh would stop macro algae growing out and would stop any livestock getting through. It would also slow down the flow rate, one section will be a refugium, one will be a frag tank with powerheads. I think I would like to put a little fish or two up there, with some crabs/snails for cleanup. However, this would also limet said fishs' swimming area. Still in two minds about this. Taking into concideration growing pods, macro algae, working are/refugium/sump whilst still making it look decent as it will be on prime display.

Return to the display tank

I plan to corner the return pipe off, to prevent algae entering the piping. I am going to have the glass drilled and insert a 1.5" downpipe which will be the return back to the display, this will also act as a surface skimmer for the frag/refugium tank. The pipe will be empty. This will return into the tank with either a right angle piece of tubing coming from the downpipe, or flow into a bubble stop cup to reduce noise and air bubbles.

I cant belive that I couldn't find a picture online of this, so instead, I had to draw it. Hope it resembles what I am intending!

 

[SkiFletch]

If you ahve an open-topped drain like that, you'll get some serious gurgling/slurping sounds. You need to install Durso style plumbing if you want to avoid those problems. Creative/judicious use of powerheads will create enough surface agitation in the tank(s) to not have to worry about surface skimming.

As far as the brackets and the drilling goes, the trick is just to use some well rated anchors. When you buy the anchor, they should have a weight rating on them, just make sure you choose ones with a big enough rating, the brackets are more than strong enough

 

[Alex Brown]

OK not done much with this yet. Shelf goes up later today

I am wondering what to do about lighting. The two tanks when joined together measure 36x10x10 inches. I want to keep any level of coral, so need to pick lighting acordingly. The tank will have an upper and lower level of racks. The higher level (intended for hard coral) would be about 5" under water. Would I get away with 2x39W T5 tubes over this size tank? Or maybe some power compacts?

 

[SkiFletch]

dual T5's might be a little under what you'd want... If you could stick 3 or 4 over there you could keep just about anything you wanted

 

[Alex Brown]

OK thats not so bad, you dont think the softies on the lower shelf (around7/8inches deep) would get bleached do you? Just to confirm, you think the softies would suffice under 2 t5's?

Also, what colours would you go for?

Im also wondering if to light the tank in the reverse of the display tank, one side of this tank will be the refugium with caulerpa.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, it's a little tough to say Alex. I'd opposite light it for sure. As for the softies under dual T5's, it could probably be done especially since the tank is shallow. You may in fact bleach them with quad T5's, but you can always fix that by altering the photoperiod a little. If the purpose of this frag tank is to grow coral fast, sometimes you have to tolerate some initial bleaching to get the ultimate fast growth out of the frags that you want...

 

[Alex Brown]

Finially got it all together! What do you think so far?

 

[TigerIssey]

Looking pretty good.

Interesting use of Drumsticks though

 

[seffieuk]

Looking real good can we have an fts of your tank - we haven't had one for a while and I really want to see your rbt nem

pleeese

Seffie x