12 Foot Monster Acrylic Setup

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Here's a terrible half upside down video. It shows a some of the plumbing and sump before it was all tuned so it's pretty loud and there's a mess of wires and stuff everywhere. It's tough to get a full tank picture because you can't get too far out in front of the tank.
 
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Before I stocked the tank I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be in danger of popping a breaker. I had a friend help me run a dedicated 20 amp breaker and we added 13 outlets along the length of the tank. I decided to make the pump outlet switched for easy Maintainance.
 
jandb said:
Before I stocked the tank I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be in danger of popping a breaker. I had a friend help me run a dedicated 20 amp breaker and we added 13 outlets along the length of the tank. I decided to make the pump outlet switched for easy Maintainance.
Click to expand...
GFCI breaker?
 
Here's some more under tank shots of the plumbing and stuff. I also have a 20 long and 40 breeder grow out under there. The best thing I did was buy a fish room air pump. I can throw a temporary tank up basically anywhere.



My wife complained about all the humidity so I bought a 4'x8' sheet of Acrylite. It was real easy to work with and double paned. It feels like it also helps keep the heat in pretty well too.
 
I wanted to cut back on maintanance and had heard good things about The Filter Guys on the forum. I called Jim and he made getting a drip system real easy. I initially purchased the Carbon Drip 40 gpd. I've since added the drip to my 340 gallon so I added an 80 gpd regulator and split the drip into each sump.
 
One of my concerns was heating this much water especially if I was going to drip 40 gpd of cold water into it. I decided to build a heat exchanger to warm the cold water going into the tank to help offset this. I read a few threads on it and gleaned some ideas from all of them.

I took the 6 gallon bucket that the Matrix came in and put 2, 1/2" uniseals in it. The one that the tank water will flow into a little higher than the one that will expel the old water into a floor drain after the drip water is heated. Tough to explain but a real simple idea.

Here's a shot of the used water from the sump flowing into the heat exchanger. The dry line is the overflow into the floor drain. This was taken when I was testing it. The working water level is at the bottom of the horizontal pipe.
 
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Here's where the water is coming from. I added this 1/2" drain at the level I wanted to keep the sump. It flows 80 degree used water into the heat exchanger.
 
This is the 100 feet of 1/4" line that runs from the carbon filter. I stuffed it all into the heat exchanger. I haven't measured how much it elevates the temp after slowly running through the 100 feet submerged in warm tank water but it feels significant. I thought about using something like copper because it's a better heat exchanger but this was cheap and easy to work with.

On the top left you can see the 1/2" PVC coming from the sump into the heat exchanger. I put a ball valve on it in case I turn off the pump I wouldn't lose a bunch of water down the drain.

The 1/4" line leaves the heat exchanger and ends in the sump right by the pump intake. I figured it's probably marginal but running it immediately through the pump my even heat it a little more before it get's to the display.
 
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