matt_longview

I've been planning my SPS Aquaculture Rack System for several months now. I have all of the equipment now and I'm beginning to put pieces together. Here's the list.

Tanks - All tanks have drilled returns and are placed on metal rack systems.
8' tall rack system with three 48"x12"x12" 33g tanks.
5' tall rack system with two 48" long x 20" wide x 16" tall 56g tanks (the bottom tank will be used as the sump)

Lighting - Each 33g tank will be lit in the center by 18 Cree LEDs from RapidLED... the ends of the tanks will have powerheads and live rock. This will give areas of high light directly under the LEDs and lower light for birdsnests, digitatas and monti caps towards the edges. The top 56g tank will be lit by two of these 18 LED fixtures. Frags will be placed 8-10" below the water surface with live rock below the frag racks.

Filtering - Biopellets via NextReef SMR1. Precision Marine Bullet 1 Skimmer run by an Iwaki WMD40RLXT 1200gph pump. Will also have a fuge with macro in sump & run carbon.

Flow - Reeflo Dart main return. In tank flow provided by K3 & K4 powerheads on wavemaker from Reef Angel controller.

I made a few graphics today to give an idea of what I'm looking at.

I'm designing these using Google Sketchup... which is free but was honestly quite difficult to learn and is a bit quirky to work in. Hard to argue with results though.

Not everything is perfect to scale... the skimmer I know is 1 inch taller than shown, but it's pretty darn close. Next I'm adding in plumbing (which is why I'm going through the trouble) and asking for input and advise.



Here's the sump... a few interesting things to note:
1. The dry area to the right. I'll house two external pumps in this dry area. The Reeflo Dart return pump, and the Iwaki 1200gph pump for the skimmer. The three holes are for the bulkheads.
2. Biopellet Reactor and Skimmer. The biopellet reactor will get water right after the filter sock and will feed into the skimmer intake. The skimmer intake will suck in some more water of course, but will get all of the water from the biopellets.
3. Skimmer output is going to have a bulkhead through to the other side, skipping the fuge. This means that the fuge will get only water that was not processed by the biopellets and skimmer, and... it'll have reduced flow. :-)


Thanks for checking it out. Offer any input you have, but I already know a few things... such as that's less lighting than each tank needs. I'm not trying to light the entire tanks currently, but I built them for future additions.