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matt_longview

SPS Aquaculture Rack System

Rating: 2 votes, 5.00 average.
I've been planning my SPS Aquaculture Rack System for several months now. I have all of the equipment now and I'm beginning to put pieces together. Here's the list.

Tanks - All tanks have drilled returns and are placed on metal rack systems.
8' tall rack system with three 48"x12"x12" 33g tanks.
5' tall rack system with two 48" long x 20" wide x 16" tall 56g tanks (the bottom tank will be used as the sump)

Lighting - Each 33g tank will be lit in the center by 18 Cree LEDs from RapidLED... the ends of the tanks will have powerheads and live rock. This will give areas of high light directly under the LEDs and lower light for birdsnests, digitatas and monti caps towards the edges. The top 56g tank will be lit by two of these 18 LED fixtures. Frags will be placed 8-10" below the water surface with live rock below the frag racks.

Filtering - Biopellets via NextReef SMR1. Precision Marine Bullet 1 Skimmer run by an Iwaki WMD40RLXT 1200gph pump. Will also have a fuge with macro in sump & run carbon.

Flow - Reeflo Dart main return. In tank flow provided by K3 & K4 powerheads on wavemaker from Reef Angel controller.

I made a few graphics today to give an idea of what I'm looking at.

I'm designing these using Google Sketchup... which is free but was honestly quite difficult to learn and is a bit quirky to work in. Hard to argue with results though.

Not everything is perfect to scale... the skimmer I know is 1 inch taller than shown, but it's pretty darn close. Next I'm adding in plumbing (which is why I'm going through the trouble) and asking for input and advise.



Here's the sump... a few interesting things to note:
1. The dry area to the right. I'll house two external pumps in this dry area. The Reeflo Dart return pump, and the Iwaki 1200gph pump for the skimmer. The three holes are for the bulkheads.
2. Biopellet Reactor and Skimmer. The biopellet reactor will get water right after the filter sock and will feed into the skimmer intake. The skimmer intake will suck in some more water of course, but will get all of the water from the biopellets.
3. Skimmer output is going to have a bulkhead through to the other side, skipping the fuge. This means that the fuge will get only water that was not processed by the biopellets and skimmer, and... it'll have reduced flow. :-)


Thanks for checking it out. Offer any input you have, but I already know a few things... such as that's less lighting than each tank needs. I'm not trying to light the entire tanks currently, but I built them for future additions.

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Categories
Tank Entry , ‎ Plumbing

Comments

  1. blennyman's Avatar
    I might suggest removing the "dry area" from the sump and drilling the end of the tank instead. Gives you more sump area and you're less likely to submerge your external pump in the event of a leaky seal / bad joint. I have a frag tank in a stacked system like you describe above and it's a pain in the rear to work in because I'm always bumping my head and have a hard time taking pictures because of space and lighting issues. Maybe you've already calculated for such things, but I thought I'd throw my 2c in...

    Looks like a nice plan though!
  2. matt_longview's Avatar
    Thank you very much for the suggestions blennyman. I really considered drilling the sump. It would be better for the pumps, but would cause my tanks to either move right in front of a door or a window! Lol... I still considered it! I decided to put the pumps up a few inches and install a sensor on the floor of the tank to detect any water through the reef angel.

    The fragging and pics will be done in a separate 2'x2'x10" cube off to the side in the same room. That tanks lighting will be dimmable LEDs, so I can change the color temp as needed over each coral for pics.

    Thank you very much for the input! :-)