basement fish room - finally!

[seawillow]

Well it's starting to come together...finally! I have always wanted to put all the plumbing for my 75 in the basement right below the tank. I have a friend who has a set-up like this, and it is incredible. Progress is being made! The walls are all studded in and the bench for the tanks is made. Today, I'll be painting and hopefully putting the sump together. My plans are to have a bigger sump (going from 20 - 30 gal.) I actually would like to go bigger, but I have the 30 gal. I'll also have another refugium, a QT tank and a Mangrove Garden. I'm taking pics along the way and will post soon! If anyone has any suggestions as to what else to incorporate into this set-up...please let me know!

[Birdlady]

Man, I am sooo jealous.....
Sounds Great!!!!!! Have fun with it.....

[Matt Rogers]

Sounds great!
My only suggestion would be to think about ventilation...
Mr. 4000 (size of his tank) found that out the hard way!

PICS! PICS! PICS!

[seawillow]

Good suggestion!! I'll have to put that thought into action before I close up the ceiling...thanks Matt.....As far as progress, I'll resize pics and post...but, I can say that the sump is all put together. I put the last coat of silicone on the baffles last night. Hopefully, it will work as planned! I had some peg board given to me, so that's what I'm covering the walls with. I have one small portion done and painted, it's gonna look good. Off today, so more progress will be made....

[seawillow]

A couple of pics...

[seawillow]

another...

[seawillow]

will add more later...plumbing is gonna be fun!!

[Matt Rogers]

Wow! Looking good.. That's going to be great Cindy, how exciting!

I am so jealous, I could use a sump room for my 20 hex!

Look forward to the next update!

Matt



_{(By the way, since you've become a member, I've added some code to automatically resize photos, so you don't have to worry about it anymore! )}

[seawillow]

okay...another update...finally got the plumbing done! Only had a few minor setbacks. The first was that my return pump wasn't strong enough. I did have my doubts, but when it was put to the test, it really bombed out. There was barely any water being returned. But, we did have no leaks Fortunately I have an awesome reef store about 35 minutes away, so I headed down there and another $160. later had a nice Sedra pump that has a 20' head with a GPH of about 1900. Glad we had installed a shut-off so we could back down that water some...otherwise my little fishies would be blasted right out of the tank The only problem with the Sedra was that it is really large and the area in the sump where I wanted to put it wasn't big enough. Had to do a little re-arranging and I ended up putting it where the skimmer was going to go. Anyways, at this point all is working well with the sump and the return. I will take some pics today and post them so I can tell you of my next dilemma and hopefully get some ideas....thanks guys!

[dx7fd2]

Sw ,I would suggest that you tee off of the output of the sedra and put in a gatevalve back into the sump so that you don't put back pressure on the pump. That way any of the excess water just goes back into the sump and the pump can run wide open.

Drew