The House of Orange

[Sean Clark]

Johann needs more gear and sticker merch.

 

[Fish Styx]

Okay, back to business... Where was I? Oh, yes... In one of the previous pictures you saw the sitting room prepped and ready to receive the tank. Before we go any further, let's talk about the two cabinets that flank the sides of the DT. We'll start with the setup for the display refugium, which lives to the right of the tank. It is a 20 gallon long and plumbed to the sump below the DT. It is fed from a manifold off the main return. The cabinet below was purchased from, you guessed it, Amazon, and painted and modified to match the rest of the setup. The back was removed and cut, so that the bottom portion allows for passthrough of cables and such and is placed directly over the passthrough in the wall. Here are a few pics of setting that up. Sadly, I can't find the video of me destroying the tank while drilling for the overflow. I really would have liked to include it, because failure is a key component to success. Anyways, here are some pics:

 

[Fish Styx]

Johann needs more gear and sticker merch.

 

[Sean Clark]

Johann would have quickclot and tourniquets in my mind plus stickers and flair.

 

[Fish Styx]

To the left of the DT is the controller cabinet. For this, I used some pieces from Ikea and naturally painted and modified them. Clearly. I mean, are you even paying attention here? tsk. tsk. tsk. Anyways, I installed a recessed panel with some passthrough bushings. Electronic components get mounted to the front while APEX EB8's, backup batteries, and wires go behind, out of sight. Here are some pics of the process and the finished product:

 

[Fish Styx]

Johann would have quickclot and tourniquets in my mind plus stickers and flair.

He is, after all, his father's son.

 

[dstockwell]

Colorful to say the least.

 

[Fish Styx]

Colorful to say the least.

 

[Reeflix]

NICE! that blue really compliments the orange!

 

[Reeflix]

I forgot to say I'm followinggggg!!!

 

[Fish Styx]

NICE! that blue really compliments the orange!

Thanks!

 

[Fish Styx]

I forgot to say I'm followinggggg!!!

Welcome aboard!

 

[Reeflix]

Yeeeehaw

 

[Reeflix]

this is gonna be funnnn!

 

[squidarcher]

I LOVE THE COLORS lol

 

[Fish Styx]

Okay, after a brief respite to eat and spend some time with The Dainty Dictator, let's see if I can crank out a few more posts here before I unplug for the night. Let's take a peak under the hood, shall we?

Note that some of this setup and gear has changed since initially starting, but I'll start from the beginning and update later on.

- Dual 7" filter socks
- Skimz Monzter DC Skimmer (don't remember offhand the particular name / number, but it was a big boy)
- Ecotech Vectra L2 return pump
- Geo's Reef CaRx with effluent run to a 2nd chamber for magnesium and
Powered by a Carbon Doser regulator. Fed by a Kamoer Peristaltic pump
- Geo's Reef Ozone Reactor w/ secondary Carbon chamber for offgassing
- Ozone Reactor powered by Ozotech Poseidon 200 with air dryer and dessicant media reactor
Fed by a diaphragm pump
- Aqua 57w UV sterilizer
- Icecap Kalk reactor w/ magnetic stir plate
- BRS media reactors (3): biopellets, carbon, GFO
- Bashsea 10 gallon ATO res
- Kamoer F4 Pro dosing pumps (x2) <8 heads>
- and a partridge in a pear tree

 

[Fish Styx]

Let's take a look at the layout and then we can get to the plumbing. Remember how I mentioned my OCD? So... If the gear didn't fit my color scheme of blue and white, I modified it using Krylon designed for plastic. I also added some mesh baskets, shop towel dispenser, assorted hooks, and a nitrile glove dispenser / box holder to the inside of the doors. You guessed it- also modded. Here are some pics of the stuff being painted, the gear, and the layout. Note the DIY "block and clips" I crafted for mounting the UV sterilizer. Since I went with the larger sump, it's original, planned location would no longer work and I had to shift things around a bit. I wanted it raised off of the floor of the stand for ease of changing bulbs. You'll see it's placement in one of the pics.

 

[Fish Styx]

I LOVE THE COLORS lol

Thanks!

 

[Fish Styx]

Now that everything was in place, it was time to plumb this badboy up! Here's a look at the wares, if you will- and, yes, a lot of them were modified too:

 

[Fish Styx]

Okay, there's a lot going on here and a lot being run off the return pump through manifolds. If I had to do two things differently, I would have split the load between two return pumps for redundancy and plumbed the return from the display refugium into the fuge section of the sump instead of before the filter socks with the main returns from the DT. Lessons learned, and the return from the display fuge later corrected. Here's a look: