15gal tall stand and custom build

[Jeeptree]

The tank below is my 15gal set up as fresh water but after reading a post from Carinya Carinya's 15g Seahorse build I have decided to build a custom sump under my stand so I can run a similar set up to hers. as you can see there isn't much room for one under my current stand. I have a total of 2.1Ft3 or 15.7 Gal.

The pictures following my current set up, are designs I have put together using Google's SketchUp7. "by the way some awesome freeware"

Im am hoping get some insight on the two layouts I have come up with and or a way to design the sump setup. here is my biggest problem I am building this on a tight budget measure six's times cut once kind of budged. Oh and did I mention this will be my first go at a salt water setup and sump set up. Before everyone starts to yell I have done a ton of research and have talked to a bunch of people. I know it will cost money I know I will sink a lot of time in to it. In the end I know I can make this the center peace of my living room ( the living room also has a 55gal set up that my gf had to have lol). and that if I do it right the first time my family will be able to enjoy it for years to come. please let me know any thoughts concerns you may have.. I can use it.

 

 

 

[Jeeptree]

So I but together a quick sketch of what I have bouncing around in my head for the sump. After play around with this Idea I have come to the conclusion that if I lay it out a little diffrent I can get more room and better flow what do you think?

[Carinya]

Hey - thanks for the compliment of trying this.

 

If you are considering making a new stand (one of your layouts looks like this), I would highly suggest adding as much space as you can while still maintaining the overall aesthetic. (tall, narrow, clean)

 

Just MHO but I think your sump design looks overly complex. I had some complex plans initially but just went with one simple chamber with carbon, a skimmer, a heater, some live rock & a return pump. Works just fine. When you get into complicated chamber designs on a sump this small you end up with a very small chamber where your pump resides. This is the chamber that will see the effects of evaporation. So if the pump chamber is (for instance) a half-gallon total volume and you get a quarter-gallon of evaporation, the pump chamber is going to be half empty and your pump could be close to running dry.

 

One other sump consideration is that the sump needs to be big enough (or the water level low enough) so that if the pump were to stop for some reason, the volume of water that is in the return pipe and any water that'd drain backwards from the tank will be able to fit into the sump comfortably. Said another way, if you are sucking on a straw & stop sucking, the water in the straw goes back down into the cup. If the cup was already very full, it might not be able to hold the water that's in the straw.

 

Per your PM you asked me about making your return into the tank about about halfway up the tank. If you do this & you were to lose power, the tank would drain into the sump all the way down to the level of the return. That'd be no good. You might be able to work out some type of air break / air hole higher up in the plumbing so that it doesn't happen.

 

My flow out of the tank is from an in-tank overflow box that empties into a drilled bulkhead. When the power goes off, water from the display drains into the sump until the level of the top of the overflow box. My flow from the sump to the tank is returned via a spraybar that's shaped like an "L". One part goes deep into the tank so I get flow throughout and the other side of the "L" is near the top surface so I get good surface agitation for gas exchange. (could possibly be an issue on a tank with so little surface area). If I were to lose power, the water flows back into the sump to the level of the highest hole in my spray bar. It's about at the same level as the top of the overflow box, so I'm not sure which breaks the siphon first, but as you design yours, be sure you take this idea into account with your water flow.

 

Lastly, also per your PM, my water flow is pretty LOW because it was designed as a seahorse tank. It could be made into a higher-flow tank if I increased the size of my return pump and increased the size/amount of holes in my spray bar and made it so water flowed more readily over my overflow box teeth. (I have a couple of the teeth areas blocked currently). All three of these water flow areas need to be in synch. If the pump is strong but the spraybar holes are too few/too small, you'll just get backpressure on the pump & wear it out. If the pump & spraybar are high-flow but the overflow back out of the tank is too small, you'll flood water over the top edge of the display tank.

 

Sorry to write so much, but I wish you luck.

 

C

[C-Rad]

There's a design principal called "K.I.S.S" which stands for "Keep It Simple Stupid". I've build several stands and sumps, and it's easy to fall into the trap of making things more complicated than they need to be. More precisely, the trap is that sometimes the "best" design is only 10% better than the 2nd best design, but costs three times as much time and/or money.

 

The way to avoid this trap is to clearly identify your priorities up front, order them, and try to quantify how important each priority is to you, so that you can make trade-offs. Your design is really complicated, and will be expensive and time consuming to build and maintain, which contradicts the "low budget" priority you've alrady stated. That's ok if your highest priority is "The stand must have a close to tank-sized foot print", but is a small stand really that important to you? One of the big advantages of a sump is that it gives you plenty of space for gear (heaters, pumps, skimmers, ATO devices, etc.), and so a cramped sump sort of defeats that part of the purpose of a sump. you have a "fuge" section, which will need light, so the whole sump will get light and grow algae, even inside those 17" deep 1 3/4" wide sections around the outside. What a pain it will be to clean those little spaces all the time. Building that sump will be a little like building a ship in a bottle. I would guess that it would be both frustrating to build and have a high risk of leakage, in addition to the expense of the custom cut acrylic, and the time to put it together.

 

Simple and affordable are high on my priority list, and if I were in your shoes I would go onto Craigslist and try to find two things:

1) A used sump big enough to comfortably hold the gear I already have in mind, plus whatever I decide later I want to add (You might discover down the road that you need a larger skimmer or another pump to feed a chiller)

 

2) Now that you know the dimensions of your sump, find a piece of used furniture that would look nice in your living room, has doors on the front, is big enough to hold your sump, and is strong ehough for you and a friend to sit on with no danger of collapsing (15 gallons of water only weighs 120 lbs).

 

Sure the end table or cabinet you get will have a larger footprint than your tank, so put a coffee table book about sea horses or a hand blown glass bowl full of seashells next to your tank and, presto, you're an interior designer! (and you just saved yourself dozens of hours, dozens of dollars, and lots of cursing trying to deal with a cramped sump.)

 

If you really want to go ahead with your original design, the stand drawings look good to me, but the sump has too many little chambers (what's the need for the 1 3/4" channel around the outside of the sump?). Do you want to view the tank from a sitting position, or a standing position? If standing, maybe you could make the stand a lot taller (42"?) and put two "sumps" under there, one above the other? One could be a lighted refugium, and the other could be a dark sump (no algae problem). Each would be simple to build, and relatively roomy. Just be sure, if you go tall, to bolt the top of the stand to the wall, otherwise this top-heavy balancing act will be a lethal threat to any child, and a big mess waiting for a single good bump.

 

K.I.S.S

[Jeeptree]

WOW.

First Thank you both for your input.

Second NO more 2 Am post from me. Before I post something like that I need to sleep on it. as I laid in bed last night I thought of all those little BIG problems I would have with the sump setup. like you said C-Rad cleaning it would be a big problem, every wall are peace of plexy I put in takes away from the over all volume of the sump .

 

C-Rad: I am asking myself Why didnt I stay with K.I.S.S WHY!!! My very first design was a stacked sump but I was afraid that it would be noisy, but I may have something up my sleeve. as for taking the sump tank and putting in something placed next to the stand, I dont have the room for that in my apt.

 

Carinya: who said anything about a novel I didn't realize how much I missed or over looked im sorry I didn't think this out more before I posted. C-rad cleared it up when He reminded me about K.i.s.s I may keep it a little complected by doing the build in return I may not. I think it would be a pain if it ever broke or clogged to fix

 

over all I thinkim im going to bring the bottom part out a little more all around its at a 2" lip but im thinking of taking it to 4 or so. and I will raise it up a little as well it sits at 28" high right know but Im think taking it to 35" would be very doable it would bring the top of the tank to about 5ft and with a base of 21".

 

I will be pulling the design I had of the sump and putting up a new one a little later today.

ps I will be using the Kiss principle on this one. and once I make the final design for both the sump and the stand I will also make one that shows the pluming I will be doing and how it all will fit together. or so I hope.

[bitts]

this may help, wow ive brought this up like twice in a week.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...=103386&hl=

[Carinya]

this may help, wow ive brought this up like twice in a week.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...=103386&hl=

 

 

Ahhh, I remember that one. Been a while.

[bitts]

yeah, makes me miss icy. learned a lot from him.

[schgr.cube]

My design isn't exactly simple, but I was working with a very limited amount of space as well for my sump / setup. You might want to at least check out my thread for options (thread is in signature) as I figured out how to overcome a few of the problems, while still being able to access things with out a ton of difficulty.

[Jeeptree]

well here is the second design.. still a little complected. i am trying to figure out a better way to get the water from the top tank to the second any idea's?