75 gallon tank

A very busy work week and cooler temperatures have slowed progress to a crawl this week.

On Monday I got the top on the stand frame and lifted the tank into place for a trial. I wanted to confirm the height would be about what I'd thought and get the wife's approval. Here's a picture of the tank on the frame with my wife (5'2") standing next to it. I thought I'd also gotten a picture with the sump in place once I'd completed the lower platform, but I can't find it now.



It took a couple of hours to cut the plywood, screw in the sleepers and screw down both platforms. Due to my early cut off (8pm as discussed in a previous post), this took up my work time on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday evening on my way home from work, I stopped by Lowes and bought some floor and utility enamel. The instructions stated to thin the paint with mineral spirits for the first coat on unpainted wood. With lows in the upper 30's and highs in the upper 40's I thought I'd be okay to get some paint on the stand. So I poured out some paint into a smaller container and thinned it (about 3:1) with mineral spirits. Unfortunately, with temperatures this low and the normal Pacific Northwest weather returning this week (drizzle, drizzle and more drizzle) the enamel didn't dry to the touch until today. Today (between bouts of being sick) I flipped the stand over and put the primer coat on the remainder of the stand.




On Thursday my order from Bulk Reef Supply came in. I didn't see in the user policy anything about specifically mentioning suppliers and couldn't find if this is a sponsor of the site or not, so if I'm not supposed to mention non sponsors, let me know and I'll edit the post. With that being said, I was quite impressed with the quickness that this order was filled and shipped. The free shipping was via UPS ground and got here in basically 4 business days. In my opinion well worth paying the little bit of extra money over ebay or Amazon to get quick service and shipping.


Reef Octopus BR-70 biopellet reactor

BRS bio pellets.

Bulk Reef Supply's website recommends approximately 1 cup (236ml) per 50 gallons. I figure the total amount of water in my system will be between 80 and 100 gallons. (78 gallons in main tank minus sand and rock plus around 25 gallons in the sump. (I'm guessing about 1/3 of the 40 gallon sump volume won't be usable due to the baffle heights to make the skimmer work correctly. This should work out fine as I need a minimum of 7.5 gallons open space for drain back from the main tank assuming 2" of the tank's volume will be sucked back into the sump when the return pump is turned off. The tank is approximately 48" x 18" with 2" draw down (0.167' x 4' x 1.5' = 1 cubic foot & 1 cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons).

With the above stated I figured I will need to run the entire 500 ml in the reactor. So I checked to make sure the reactor would hold all 500 ml.


The 500 ml only fills the reactor about half full so I'm hoping there will be enough room to fluidize and tumble the pellets.

I also got my return pump (Mag 12).


I also bought some of the plumbing parts. I forgot to bring the hose barbs from the bio pellet and carbon reactor with me, and I couldn't remember what size they were for sure, so I didn't get the hose barbs and ball valves for the manifold.



That's a 1 1/2" union screwed to the top of the Mag 12. I knew what the measurements were for the pump, but I was still surprised by the size of this pump. It's beefy and heavy.

Last but not least I got two 150 watt heaters. I was a little disappointed with the length of the leads on these finnex heaters. There's no way I'm going to be able to put the temperature sensors in the display and have the heaters in the sump. So I guess once the tank is up and running, I'll have to see if I need to run the water in the sump slightly higher than the display to keep the display at the desired temperature.

My 29 has had a 100 watt heater in it that seemed to be running quite a bit lately (maybe just my perception, maybe because it's been a cooler than normal winter or maybe because we ran out of firewood already (usually burn a cord and a half in 6 months, this year we burned a cord and a half in right at 4 months) and have electric heaters running). At any rate I figured, since it'll still be a little while before I need the heaters in the 75, I'd test one of them in the 29. It has held the tank steady at 75 and only seems to run a few minutes at a time a couple of times a day. Yeah, I know it's 5 watts per gallon in this tank which is almost twice the recommended 3 watts per gallon, but it's working so well, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have gone with (2) 200 watt heaters rather than the (2) 150's for the 75. I guess atleast I didn't spend a huge amount for these heaters so as long as they work okay for now, I can decide if I want to buy a couple of 200 watters when I'm able to get an Apex controller down the road and and switch the control or the heaters to the Apex.





Couldn't resist including my Ocellaris, who was very interested in what I was doing in her tank, in the picture. ;-)

So that's the weak update for this week. Didn't get much done and unfortunately it's taking so long for the paint to dry I'm not sure how much will get done this coming week either. I want to wait until I have the plumbing figured out to put the baffles in the sump and I can't finalize the plumbing until I can set the tank and sump on the stand and can't do that until the paint dries. So hoping for a warm spell this coming week. Both so the paint dries and so I don't have to run these electric heaters. I hate running the electric heaters but I really hate buying firewood especially this time of year. No one up here seems to store the firewood they're selling inside and by this time of year, even if it's cured, it's soaking wet from rain and burns very sooty after I've spent an hour trying to get it to burn, if I can get it to burn. Guess I need to start putting up more than I think I'll burn so that I have enough for cold years like this year.

Hope you enjoyed the update and thanks for following along. As always, all comments are welcome. I'm here to learn.