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Cube tank build


NoobtoSalt

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Sooner or later this may become yet another nice little setup but for now I am focusing this to be a frag tank. I want to get all of my frag racks etc. out of the main tank and just get it to start growing like crazy in there without having the fish interupting the growing of the zoas. I seem to get great growth and don't want to mess it up.

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Alright so I think I've got this all figured out on how I'm going to plumb the two tanks together thanks to Robert (Reefit) heading over last night and helping me out.

 

Going to run 2 pumps, keep my current sump and run a fuge under the new 27 gallon tank. The returns from the sump will go to the small 27 gallon, and the fuge return will go to the 75 gallon setup. This way I have a cycle all the way through both tanks. Once I pickup some more parts this week it will make more sense but I'm looking forward to getting this going!

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Gonna be a sweet tank!

 

Can you explain your plumbing a little more? It sounds like you are going to rely on 2 pumps, which i would strongly advise against. But i might be interpreting it wrong. You cannot have 2 pumps that push the exact same GPH. It just doesn't work that way. One will push a little more, it could even be fractions of an amount, but it will add up to disaster at some point in the future. You need to use 1 pump and the remaining flow needs to be gravity fed.

 

If you could mount the fuge under the cube a little higher than the sump in the 75 sits, you should be good to go. Overflow from 75gal goes to sump under 75gal, return goes to 27gal cube, overflow from 27gal cube goes to fuge under 27gal, fuge under 27gal overflow to sump under 75gal. That is how i would suggest doing it if you can.

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He is crossing the flow of the return pumps. the 75's sump goes to the 30 and vice versa.

He's going to have two pumps sized the same with ball valves to control the flow rate. The sump in the 75's stand will be all mechanical filtration, the sump / fuge in the 30 will be biological. its not a very complicated setup but will work considering his limitations of his setup, the fact that he does not want to maintain two systems individually with dosing, etc.

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If your sumps are designed right with proper volume and levels setup, you can't overflow. One pump may run dry if levels are not watched. Its not hard to dial in a pump with a ball valve, set your sump levels with a marker and watch them making the necessary adjustments as needed and top off up to the appropriate levels where marked.

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If I understand correctly there will be a return pump from the display sump into the 27g tank and then it will drain into the fuge under it. Then there will be a return pump in the fuge going to the display which will drain into the sump under it. If so then the sump and fuge both will individually need to be capable of holding the drain volume from both tanks plus the volume of their counterpart (fuge would need to be capable of holding all of the sump volume in addition to the drain volume if the power goes out). Using this setup one pump or the other will eventually outperform the other one no matter how much adjusting is done. All it would take is a difference of one gallon an hour (Which isn't much when we are dealling with flows that are at least a few hundred an hour) to overflow a 20 gallon tank(fuge) in less than 12 hours (figuring it starts out half full already).

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yes your understanding is correct. The sumps will be baffled controlling the waterlevel leaving about 1/2 gallon of water in the final chamber for the pump so we are talking 1 gallon of water between the two sumps that could be pumped into the other sump on top of the water that is in the tanks that returns to the sumps below which is about 2 gallons for the 30 and about 5 gallons for the 75. i don't see it being a problem, also matching pump output is not that difficult, you do it with herbie style drains and flow restriction to match a pump nearly exact. It just takes tweaking. Once the sweet spot is found, its a set and forget. If it doesn't work out, its as simple as moving the two plumbing lines to their own tanks for emergency or maintenance issues between tanks.

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If there is only 1 gallon of spare water between them then evaporation will be a problem I know mine evaporates more than that in a day. Forget taking off for a weekend.

 

Good luck if you try to do it this way. I can't see how it will work and be safe without creating another set of problems to deal with.

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I would never leave town without having someone checking the tanks daily anyways. But within the next month I plan on setting up an auto top off for both tanks

If there is only 1 gallon of spare water between them then evaporation will be a problem I know mine evaporates more than that in a day. Forget taking off for a weekend.

 

Good luck if you try to do it this way. I can't see how it will work and be safe without creating another set of problems to deal with.

 

 

 

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

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Sorry but you will never, ever ever get them exact. There are just too many variables. Its like rolling 2 snowballs down a hill, at the bottom one will be larger.

 

You will be adjusting this forever. You might get it close enough, but it will change in just a day or 2. Then you will be adjusting again, and again, and again and again.

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Sorry but you will never, ever ever get them exact. There are just too many variables. Its like rolling 2 snowballs down a hill, at the bottom one will be larger.

 

You will be adjusting this forever. You might get it close enough, but it will change in just a day or 2. Then you will be adjusting again, and again, and again and again.

 

I agree 100%.

 

The herbie overflows can't be used as an example because they are self correcting to some extent and do not require anywhere near the accuracy as this will. I.E. If the flow increases by 5 gph then the level in the overflow will raise slightly and increase the drain pressure and therefore the drain will flow more volume. As the level in the overflow rises and falls it represents a change of several gph in the flow rate though.

 

BTW, when I mentioned the evaporation I completely left the issue of an imbalance out of it. I.E. While there may only be a gallon a day of evaporation it also will increase the frequency that adjustments will be necessary by a huge amount. Now you no longer have 10 hours before a difference will catch up but instead only have an hour with only one gph of difference between pumps.

 

Don't put an ATO in if you do this setup. Flooding will be an even greater risk if you do and will render the purpose of only allowing a gallon of difference useless.

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