Neanderthalman's 40 Breeder

[Lalani]

Looks great, and I like that blue.

[neanderthalman]

Looks great, and I like that blue.

 

Thanks Lalani!

 

Should be some wet pics later today!

 

 

 

After I repair a power cord that one of the rabbits shredded....

[Lalani]

Should be some wet pics later today!

After I repair a power cord that one of the rabbits shredded....

That should be somebody's sig.

[jerzsky]

sweet setup! i wish i drilled mine befroe setting it all up! gues its hob overflow for me. cant wait to see some more progress! good luck!

[ash71089]

Not sure if anyone has said this, but i would cut the teeth on the overflow deeper. In the picture it looks like with just a tiny evaporation it would quit working.

[winterparkmg]

Nah, he'd have to have his entire sump empty before the overflow would stop overflowing, but even then, the biggest concern would be an electrical fire from the pump having no cooling action from water flow. The major concern with too shallow teeth in the overflow is overfilling your tank and the overflow can't keep up with it, but even then, the water line would just completely overcome the teeth in his box and little fishies would get sucked in. But the catastrophic index of that situation is fairly benign.

[neanderthalman]

My water is really wet Lalani.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm getting some strange noise from the OM squirt. It seems like it's sucking air somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. No water is leaking when the pumps are off, so I can't find it that way either. I even closed the outlet valves with the pump on to try to overpressurize the system, to no avail. I also ran a bead of silicone around the threaded inlet, and it did nothing.

 

This weekend, i'll pick up a mechanics stethesope and see if I can't narrow this down a bit.

 

 

 

jerzsky, your story, and the thousands just like it, are the reason I always recommend drilling a tank. It's not too late - you can put your livestock in buckets, drill and plumb the tank, and then put everything back together....all in one day if you get everything ready ahead of time and keep it simple.

 

 

ash - winterparkmg has it correct. Any evaporation will reduce the water level in the pump chamber of the sump, which in my case holds about ten gallons. The pump chamber is intentionally large, as is the small size of the overflow teeth. Evaporation will not affect the water level in the display.

 

The idea is to best accomodate the AWC with the additional volume in the sump. Most sumps run about 1/2 full so that any extra volume can be contained on power loss. I'm running about 3/4 full so that I can do a 5 gallon water change without the return pump drawing air. The smaller teeth and large pump chamber mean that only about 2 gallons will drain on power loss.

[Lalani]

My water is really wet Lalani.....

 

Hope you can find out where the air is getting in, I know that noise would drive me nuts. It looks good though. When do you plan on adding the rocks?

[neanderthalman]

 

Hope you can find out where the air is getting in, I know that noise would drive me nuts. It looks good though. When do you plan on adding the rocks?

 

 

Well, i need to find this air leak first, before I can move on. Gotta fill it up with good ol' saltwater.

 

But, that's really it before rocks.

 

Oh, and I need to cut another hole in the stand for the electrical to pass through. Maybe I'll do that today.

[SeeDemTails]

Wow looks great neanderthalman!!!! Cant wait to see corals in it, very nice job on the over flow too!

[neanderthalman]

Wow looks great neanderthalman!!!! Cant wait to see corals in it, very nice job on the over flow too!

 

Thanks SDT - it's amazing what a plastics shop with a CNC router can do for $40.

[jerzsky]

sweet!! thats some really wet water! i am still trying to decide where to drill it if i do, casue this 40b will eventually be my 90gals sump. so if i can figure a way to drill it, and be functional, but also work for when its a sump. cant wait to see the rockwork!!

[glennr1978]

looks sweet!!

[neanderthalman]

sweet!! thats some really wet water! i am still trying to decide where to drill it if i do, casue this 40b will eventually be my 90gals sump. so if i can figure a way to drill it, and be functional, but also work for when its a sump. cant wait to see the rockwork!!

 

 

.....well.

 

 

 

what you could do is do a corner overflow box, and drill it for the same size of overflow pipe you'd need for the 90. What....1-1/4"? 1-1/2"?

 

Do the return and closed loop (if any) HOB.

 

Then, when you move the 40B down to be the sump, drill the 90 the same way (same corner). Then, instead of taking the drains through the top of the sump, you take them down to the bulkheads...bottom bulkhead to bottom bulkhead. The bottom drain is supposed to exit underwater, and the top drain is not. Well, the top drain can exit anywhere, but if it's out of the water, it will make noise when there's a problem with the bottom drain.

 

Essentially, the 40B drains become the inlets to the sump.

 

looks sweet!!

 

 

Thanks Glenn!

[Jenna]

Sweet looking tank so far. I love the blue!

[travisurfer]

Wow, awesome!

[neanderthalman]

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

 

Picking up our new car today.....

 

That'll make it much easier to get to the LFS to stock this thing....thus relevant.

[travisurfer]

Get a fast one in case you need to get frags home asap.

[winterparkmg]

Oh man that looks really nice. Great job on getting it all together. I am jealous of your turbulence! Even now I'm putting a setup together and I'm drooling over yours... Does that mean I'm cheating on my unborn tank???

[SaltyVT]

Picking up our new car today.....

 

What are you getting?

[neanderthalman]

Thanks for the comments guys. We got an '09 Mazda 3 Sport GT.

 

Will post pics once it's acclimated....

 

I believe I have located the air leak using a stethescope. It's loudest at the 90 degree hosebarb to the OM squirt, so I'm focusing my efforts there. I just hope it is actually sucking air and not cavitating at the inside corner. If it does, I have no choice but to throttle back the pump a bit.....and I am not exactly interested in reducing flow.

[neanderthalman]

Well, I have good news. I have eliminated the noise and air ingress.

 

The bad news is that it wasn't air ingress at all. I encased everything in silicone and it did nothing.

 

It wasn't likely cavitation at the elbow, but degassing due to the lowered pressure at that point. If it were true cavitation, I'd hear noise, but no bubbles should make it to the tank. They'd be water vapour that would re-condense almost immediately (meanwhile wearing through the plastic elbow). The fact that they are sticking around is telling me that it's actually dissolved gases coming out of solution, like opening a shaken bottle of pop. So I've throttled the closed loop pump a hair, and the noise and microbubbles have stopped. I'm going to possibly redo this section of the closed loop if I can find a way to replace the 90 with two 45's, or even a threaded elbow then a straight hose barb - the larger elbow diameter will increase the static pressure and reduce/eliminate degassing.

 

I also throttled the return a bit to reduce some of the overflow noise. The tank is now about as loud as my typing on the keyboard.

 

Of course, there's no skimmer running yet...

 

I'm going to let this run for a few hours to flush the new plumbing parts, then drain the tap water. I need to mark the levels for the AWC floatswitches, manufacture the brackets, and glue them in place before refilling the sump. I'd better get started on the brackets so I can do this quickly.

[Lalani]

^That's a totally different language to me.

But 'grats on the new car.

[Rocket]

It's how engineers talk.

[IPv6Freely]

Well, I have good news. I have eliminated the noise and air ingress.

 

The bad news is that it wasn't air ingress at all. I encased everything in silicone and it did nothing.

 

It wasn't likely cavitation at the elbow, but degassing due to the lowered pressure at that point. If it were true cavitation, I'd hear noise, but no bubbles should make it to the tank. They'd be water vapour that would re-condense almost immediately (meanwhile wearing through the plastic elbow). The fact that they are sticking around is telling me that it's actually dissolved gases coming out of solution, like opening a shaken bottle of pop. So I've throttled the closed loop pump a hair, and the noise and microbubbles have stopped. I'm going to possibly redo this section of the closed loop if I can find a way to replace the 90 with two 45's, or even a threaded elbow then a straight hose barb - the larger elbow diameter will increase the static pressure and reduce/eliminate degassing.

 

I also throttled the return a bit to reduce some of the overflow noise. The tank is now about as loud as my typing on the keyboard.

 

Of course, there's no skimmer running yet...

 

I'm going to let this run for a few hours to flush the new plumbing parts, then drain the tap water. I need to mark the levels for the AWC floatswitches, manufacture the brackets, and glue them in place before refilling the sump. I'd better get started on the brackets so I can do this quickly.

 

^^ Dude, big words. Stop it.

 

BTW - Nice tank, looks like there's lots o' flow.