whats the paintman been up to???????????

[paintman27]

Yea, I would just put a black lid on it, or paint the top piece of glass black. That way, you can view the overflow box from the back to make sure nothing escaped your tank and is hiding in there (fish, snails, etc.)

Where does that emergency drain go? To the sump? Or, to a sink drain or something?

Yea that's what I was thinking.......The overflow box has a cover that came with it from the builder. I know my current tank has crazy algae growing in the boxes from the residual light of the tank. I guess I'll try it with just painting the top for the time being and see what happens.

The center pipe (1 1/2") on the overflow will be connected back to the sump. I doubt that pipe will ever even get wet with the other 2 overflows being 1 1/2" But that depends on how much flow i loose on the Dart pump with all the elbows in the plumbing return lines.

 

[paintman27]

So I got a big ole box from Savko today with a bunch of black pipe and fittings. Now I bet you guys thought I was going to do the final glue up all ghetto like with a mix of black and white pvc.

So today I started mocking up my closed loop. Orginally the plan was to use the 2 holes in the back of the tank for my return lines and just use some other system (such as Vortechs) for circulation. Upon further review. I decide to use the 2 holes as my return from a pump and an Oceans Motions set up. Since I like to go barebottom.........its crucial to keep as much of the gunk in suspension so it has a chance to get to the skimmer. Problem is a lot of the stuff lays behind the rocks where you can't get to it. Soooo as I did on my current tank, I plan to have the closed loop terminate straight down towards the bottom of the tank and blow the crap out from behind the rocks. Oceans motions has some pretty trick true 1" Wye fittings that I plan on using inside the tank (more on that later).

Now since the tank only came with 2 holes in, I plan on feeding the pump for the CL with a Melev over the back style system hidden in the rock work. I use this style of feed on my current tank and it works great! I know your probably going to ask why the hell didn't I just get another hole drilled in the tank for the CL supply. My thoughts are this.......Why would anyone spend a boat load of money on a perfectly good tank and blow a hole in it (that's not really needed), and then hope some .02 thin piece of rubber made in china will hold the water in it. I laugh at all these people with big tanks that have 10 holes drilled in the bottom for nozzles. They're only looking for trouble. anyways here's some pics.

Before I do the final glue up I am planning on painting the perimeter of the eurobrace so that the pipe will not be visible from the front side of tank.

From the front side.

took the ghetto out of the return lines.

And just a pic from the upstairs tank for your viewing pleasure.

 

[paintman27]

Now before you guys go and flame me.......Yes I know there is one fitting that is still white on the closed loop. Problem is I forgot Savko only sells black pipe in 5ft. lengths. Now the cheap side of me says just hit it with some black paint and be done with it. The anal side of me says call Savko and have them put a $1.50 fitting and a $5 shipping charge on my credit card. Now what should the importedpaintman do????????????????????????

 

[NyteGTI]

If you're gonna claim anal retentiveness you know even painted wont satisfy you its at most 8$ on a tank this size with this much $ into it.. just do it lol

Sent from my DROIDX

 

[paintman27]

If you're gonna claim anal retentiveness you know even painted wont satisfy you its at most 8$ on a tank this size with this much $ into it.. just do it lol

Sent from my DROIDX

If I really wanted to be cheap I could just wrap it with electrical tape

 

[NyteGTI]

There you go! But you'll rip it off in a week lol

Sent from my DROIDX

 

[paintman27]

The paintman is still lurking about! No more 6 days without power for me

I wanted to hide the unit so it wouldn't be seen or heard from the house. So we decided to go the extra mile and put the unit up behind our garage. The power from the generator will run into the garage, through an existing under ground pipe, and into the basement. Only problem with that is its not cheap to run a 4 gauge wire 160 ft. to the breaker box inside the house.

 

[Tazmaniancowboy]

VERY nice, I am jealous!!

 

[Baxreefs]

Now that's the ticket! Very nice!

 

[downbeach]

Really nice. How is it fueled?

 

[paintman27]

Really nice. How is it fueled?

The imported paintman makes a triumphant return! Unfortunately with propane. Out here in the boonies that"s all we got. Sorry for not posting more often but sometimes life just gets in the way of the hobby. Its been a loooonnng summer of aggravation with getting the generator up and running. Anybody who is considering doin a whole house generator be for warned.....DON"T USE SUBURBAN as your fuel provider! What a bunch of pains in the back side they are. It took nearly 3 months to get them to do what they needed to do. Total time they actually spent at my house, about 2 hours max but yet 3 months of jerkin me around. Any ways the generator is finally inspected and up a running. In fact we lost power twice yesterday during the storms and the damn thing kicked right on, yea me!

 

[paintman27]

Now onto the tank. got a little bit done over the summer. After doing what I think was about 50 different plumbing layouts I finally decided on one and did the final glue up of everything. As we speak I am filling the tank with tap water to do a leak test. I figure why go and pop about 1K down on new lights if the tank is going to burst. The plan is to turn on all the pumps and se what happens this weekend.

 

[paintman27]

One of the things that been holding me up is what I wanted to do about circulation in the tank. I'm not a fan of power heads! They are the biggest waste of money. My original plan was to do a closed loop with an oceans motion unit as my wave maker. Unfortunately Paul is having some issues with his suppliers and his health, and has temporarily shut the business down. Soooo, I had to come up with another plan. Again....power heads......take them out of the box and throw them in the garbage, there only going to break or not turn on when you want them to. Then I considered Eco techs but I'm not convinced there any better then a standard power head. So what I did was for now just hook up an over the back siphon system like Melev's. It easy, trouble free and 1/3 the price of Eco techs. And the best part is it will run trouble free forever.

 

[paintman27]

Here's how I did it.....
It just a simple pipe with a strainer hung down into the tank with a feed line running to the pump. Sorry for the crappy pic.

Here's the feed pipe running over to the pump. I'm not sure yet what pump I'm going to use the Iwaki in the pic runs like a horse but its a power hog and a little to noisy.

 

[paintman27]

Once I choose a pump its just a matter of running a "Y" off the pump with 2 feed lines back to the tank where I had 2 holes cut in the back panel. On the inside of the tank there is a double nozzle set up on each bulkhead. I figure any kind of pump around 1'500 gal per/minute should give me more than enough circulation.

 

[paintman27]

And for all you gear heads out there......This is the other thing thats been keeping me from my tank build. I made some progress on my truck! When we last saw the truck it had an old worn out AMC Pacer front end in it.

Fast forward about a year and I have installed a brand new independent front suspension based off of Mustang II geometry custom made for a 46 Chevy pickup by Scottshotrods.com! in California.

 

[paintman27]

Houston...........We have no problems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No runs, no leaks, no errors. Sometimes things just seem to work out. For whatever reason It looks like I won't even need to use stand pipes in my overflow. Damn thing is nearly dead silent without any pipes. As far as the Reeflo pump is concerned, if you didn't see the water flowing down through the pipes to the sump you wouldn't even know it was running. Quiet as a mouse I tell ya! Only problem now is....what kind of lights to buy. Leaning towards all T'5s

 

[mnat]

Looks amazing. The only problem I would see with T5s is the replacement cost of the bulbs each year. You are going to need a ton of bulbs over that monster.

 

[paintman27]

Looks amazing. The only problem I would see with T5s is the replacement cost of the bulbs each year. You are going to need a ton of bulbs over that monster.

I was thinking along the lines of something like this (2) 48"x 8 bulbs. Either buy them or just build 2 retro's myself.
http://www.reefgeek.com/lighting/t5-fluorescent/ati/dimmable-sunpower-fixtures.html?p=2

 

[mnat]

Figure 16 bulbs a year times roughly 20 bucks you are at 320 a year in bulb replacement plus 1540 for the initial cost. You could probably buy leds at this point for that price and not have to worry about bulb replacement. I still love T5s and have the dimmable sunpower for my frag tank, so I think it is a solid fixture. Just throwing some ideas out there.