New guy with first Reef Aquarium

looking awesome man. Keep it up.

 

The overflow set-up was made public by beananimal on reefcentral. If you google bean animal his personal website will pop up and you can look at the design. I modified it a little by leaving the 3rd ball valve off on the emergency drain, and putting the ball valves on the other two at the bottom rather than the top.

Basically the center drain acts as a full siphon allowing you to drain a lot of water silently through a small pipe. I'm draining over 1000gph through a 1" pipe with the ball valve only open 70%. His was set up to drain 1500gph through a 1.5" pipe.

The other down turned elbow is a secondary drain with a hole drilled in the cap to allow air into the pipe. You attach an air hose to it and secure it above the waterline in the overflow box so that if the main siphon becomes clogged somehow the water rises and covers the airline turning it into a siphon.

The third pipe with the upturned elbow is an emergency drain so that if the water rises that high it will drain out of that as well.

Basically it a tripple redundant system that would be incredibly hard for all three drains to fail causing an overflow.

The best part is since it's a full siphon type drain and both the intake and exit of the drain are submerged it's completely silent.

I used all 45` elbows to aid in flow rather than 90` elbows.

The return is 3/4" tube out of the pump to a 3/4" to 1/2" Y fitting that runs to two u-tube nozzles on either side of the overflow box.

Hope that made the plumbing make sense.

 

Wow! looks like you did your homework! Very glad to have another dedicated reefer on here! welcome!

 

Great Job

 

Managed to get it the rest of the way filled and salt added. Just waiting for the water to clear up. I'm gonig to go tomorrow and pick up some of the tonga branch rock at a LFS and some live rock with christmas money and get things started.

 

You got the idea. Looks good. Maybe get some live sand to mix with yours. Good luck!

 

Picked up a few pieces of the branch rock and a few pieces of live.



I wasn't going to start putting coral in yet but a friend broke me a few pieces off to just throw in and see what happens.

My first coral.

 

Cycle complete and new corals today.