Update!
The tank is..... still backordered... le sigh. This was to be expected though, if the original timeline remains then sometime in the next 2 weeks it will actually ship to me.
Meanwhile I have not been idle. Probably the biggest change is to the stand. I had a poured concrete top on it that I did myself and frankly liked quite a bit. BUT, I had previously been planning a plywood vivarium on it, not a rimless aquarium. That top was not dead flat, and worse, it bulged upward slightly in the middle. How much exactly? Around .5 to 1 mm in the center compared to the edges. Would this have been a tank shattering experience? I don't know. These tanks comes with a 'leveling' mat for a reason but I decided my peace of mind couldn't handle the situation so I needed to replace the top. Rather then try to pour another concrete top I opted for a more professional route.
I called around to several granite supply companies and got quotes. Those quotes ranged from 250 to 500 dollars for a granite top 22 inches x 51 inches. I went with the cheapest option at 250. The folks I bought it form loaded it into my car and I used a hand truck to get it out of my car and onto the stand itself. Actually tilting it onto the stand was a bit of a hairy moment but it found its way there safely enough. Here is how it looks now:
I still like the look of the concrete top but I feel much happier with the stand as an aquarium stand with the granite top.
Next up was work on the engine room. This tank needed a reactor, a heater, a temperature probe, and I decided, a dosing pump, and all of it needed to be done inline.......... Because .. aesthetics.
Granted this is all just my aesthetics but I have decided the only equipment in the tank will be a stainless steel lily pipe inflow with built in skimmer and a stainless steel lily pipe return. Nothing else.
The easiest I did first, the reactor. I have built at this point 5 different reactors, this one is my 6th. When I first built reactors I tried to be ...clever... and made weird reactors. I'm kind of over that phase of my life ;P I realize now that reactors should be kept simple not because my weird reactors didn't work, but because dissolving co2 into water is simple and my reactors were needlessly complicated, costly (by comparison) and overly large.
So this is what I built for my 6th reactor:
Next up was the regulator. I actually had purchased a 2 stage regulator about 2 years ago but lost it at one point only to rediscover it in time for this build. I bought a post body kit from
@Bettatail and one evening put it all together. As an aside, Bettatail did an awesome job packing this post body kit up. Here is how the post body kit looked when I opened the box with everything individually wrapped:
My parts all laid out:
Everything back together:
I was told by folks on this forum (years ago) that my regulator is for relatively low pressure (I think 15? psi from memory) but that's fine for my purposes. For a reactor setup I doubt I will need more than that.
This is the first time I will be using a regulator with a bubble counter attached and check valve built in. My current regulator has a bubble counter inline and seperate check valve. Do folks install another check valve closer to the reactor? I'd hate to need to wait for the co2 to fill the whole line past the bubble counter, plus check valves fail etc.
Meanwhile I went to work on my various inline pieces. The heater I ordered from amazon is 300watt Ista inline heater. My research showed only 3 different brands for inline heaters. There is Hydor who is kind of the name brand but uses a spiny wheel dial for controls. There is Ista, and there is a random chinese brand that sells under different names the most popular of which is Datoo. Anyway I got the Ista because it had the least number of horrible reviews. Unfortunately the heater I got was either deliberately mislabeled or Ista changed their design because my 5/8" 16/22mm heater has an outside barbed diameter of 5/8" and an inside diameter that at most could be 1/2". This.. will probably be a problem. I'm going to just suck it up and go with it for now since I already own it, but I will likely replace it when/if it fails to produce the desired results.
For the temperature probe I drilled a hole in a pvc plug just large enough for the probe to squeeze through, then backfilled it with silicone. The plug then got screwed into a pvc Tee.
Of everything though my weakest link will be the fertilizer dosing. I searched through old posts on this forum for people dosing ferts inlinine and found a handful of threads on the subject. It seems that folks have made this work before... but there weren't many people claiming to have done it long term. It seems the biggest weakness are the check valves. They can clog so ferts can't make it through. My plan for dealing with this is to 1) over dilute my ferts to hopefully cut down clogs, 2) mix in a little excel with my micros and macros to stop clogs and mold, and 3) use better check valves. Specifically I will be using Harsh Chemical rated check valves I bought from
www.mcmaster.com. I tested them with my dosing pump and it is powerful enough to push open the valve so I 'should' be ok there. Time will tell whether it works or not
Anyway I am as of now planning to go with pps-pro method of ferts. It failed for me once before but I'm hoping a much better attention to detail will get me in a better place this time.
On the cool techie side of things, at least one of my light bulbs is a
smart bulb, my
power strip is a smart power strip, and my
temperature controller is wifi enabled as well (so it will create push notifications to my phone if it detects temperature irregularities). Not bad for off the shelf stuff and someone who doesn't code with a darn ;P
Anyway I spent a few days trying to figure out how I could fit all this stuff NEATLY in the stand. I started with the idea of using a free standing bit of 3/4" melamine and then attaching everything to that. I moved things around on this for a few days until I ended up with this:
It still needs the line leaving the fertilizer manifold and going into the tank but otherwise it's not..uh..horrible. It is not nearly as tidy as I envisioned it either but space became an issue and I didn't want to hard plumb everything together with lots of 90 degree pvc elbows.
As for filtration, well I already own a Polar Aurau (rebadged Sunsun 704b) which is rated for 525gph. On paper its likely not enough power but I already own it, so I'm going to at least hook it up and see how it goes. If its not giving me enough flow (or ends up being too noisy) I will switch it out for either an FX4 or a Sunsun HW-3000. Speaking of which, anyone have any experience with either of those two filters? Specifically interested in how noisey they might be?
And that brings me to current. HOPEFULLY, my next update includes how I used two sets of these
gripper things to move a UNS 120P onto that stand.