New 600 Gallon set up

[Berts46ers]

Go my new tank for my Mangrove Jack a few months ago. Thought I may as well post a thread about it…

Tank is 8ft x 4ft x 32”, sitting on a powder coated steel stand and black cabinetry.
Sump is 6ft x 3ft x 15”
Photo of tank, strapped onto pallets before being shipped to me.


The tank and stand got delivered to my garage initially whilst I tried to work out a game plan on moving it to its final position inside my house.

Thought I would hire 2 x 350kg pallet jacks.
Place 1 at either end of the pallet and roll it along the path past the side of my house, around the back and then ultimately through my back sliding door and inside.

The plan worked pretty well. I initially used a car jack to lift the pallets up then rested them on pavers until high enough for the trolleys to fit under.
I don’t have a lot of photos of us moving the tank and stand but it was all done just by myself and the Mrs.

The only lifting was of the pavers and large wood boards that I bought to lay across the lawn so the trolley wheels did not sink in.

In the photos below you can see us moving the tank through the doorway and the pavers stacked up under each corner so we could adjust trolley position.
Was the same process for both the stand and tank.

Placed a 17mm plywood board under the stand to try and spread the weight in hopes that it will not destroy my hybrid flooring, but whether or not this worked remains to be seen. All good at the moment, but the floor is most likely to buckle or anything in summer.

Stand in place


Tank in the house on dolleys, then myself jacking up the tank so we can place the trolleys under and lift it onto the stand.

Don’t have any photos of us 2 sliding the tank onto stand, but to say we were nervous is an understatement!
In the end it all went well, just needed lots of soapy water on the foam and lots of perseverance as the foam kept sliding off the stand as we were sliding the tank on. Got there in the end but.

Tank was now on stand and in position.

 

[Berts46ers]

Now time to set up the plumbing and sump etc.
Plumbing was done by builder as I have never had a sump before and wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted.

Corner weir in back right hand side. 2 x 2” drains, 1 as a durso and 1 emergency drain.
2 x 1” returns.



Sump set up with coarse sponges, then fine sponges, biological media, aragonite media to buff ph then final sump area housing the heaters and return pumps.

Returns are 2 x Jebao MDP15000, running at 50% each and throwing a lot of water.
Heaters are Schego 600w titanium, hooked up to an inkbird controller.




Have put 50kg of 2-3mm aragonite sand in the tank and plan on adding another 20kg and also adding 20kg of large aragonite chunks like what’s in the sump. The large pieces will go around the bottom of the weir. Thinking this may prevent sand getting kicked in the bottom intake by my Jack.

I know a lot of people would probably just go bare bottom but I am not too fond of that look and adding substrate helps with a stronger beneficial bacteria build up. Also my fish loves doing a bit of digging around, and just kicking sand up when he has the ****s haha.

 

[Berts46ers]

The main drain is running nearly fully open. The ball valve handle is maybe 2mm closed.

Sump drains are dead silent but still playing with the return pipe angles and config. The flow of water coming out is pretty strong and creating little vortex’s that suck air into the water flow and create a bit of a racquet. This just happens periodically. Maybe once every couple of mins and last for like 5 seconds, so it’s not a big deal.
I can’t lower them into the water much more or it drains too much water if the power is off, so still tinkering.
This is 1 part of the plumbing I may make some changes too over the next few weeks.

All up it is nearly dead silent, then just makes some noise from the returns periodically. The set up is quieter than my 125gallon with the 2 AC110’s and a wave maker though, so I am pretty happy with the noise level. Mrs is very happy as she was expecting it to be quite noisy.

So now just cycling tank and doing a little tinkering before Terry (Mangrove Jack) goes in.

Water is a bit cloudy from the Ammonia bloom.

 

[Berts46ers]

Bought a “smart” power socket so I can get an idea of power consumption.
We are nearly in winter in Australia, so the heater is kicking in pretty regularly through the day.
At the moment I am using around 7.5 to 8.5 kw’s per day.
That is running the lights for 4 hrs and water temp at 24.0c

Note the big spike on the 2nd day, which was heating the water up to temp.


So around $2 Aus a day. I don’t think it’s too bad, and I know that the heaters will hardly need to be used for around 6 months of the year.

I should note that I have a 6.5kwh solar system on the house, so some of the power during the day is free.

 

[Berts46ers]

Will be adding some driftwood also once I find a decent large piece or 2

 

[Backfromthedead]

Impressive tank, very bold to go with glass on this size. The sump and straightforward approach to the plumbing couldnt be more agreeable to my tastes. I dont usually like baffles but yours look wider spaced than most and the design allows for a lot of versatility. Love the energy efficient approach to the whole rig. The jack-and-block operation for lifting the tank is my favorite part though, made it look easy.

Those pumps should work well for years, ive had two dcp-10000 running around 5 years now they havent gotten noisier or lost any efficiency at all. They really are a great pump for the price. What power setting are they on with the drain wide open like that?

Thats an interesting issue with the return noise. Are you saying its making noise right at the nozzle in the display tank? Ive only had this happen once and it was with an RFG nozzle under a lot of flow, the air sucking in from the slots on the back of it. All i did was position it a bit lower in the water, but i had to carefully flood-test because of sump space like you said. Other idea maybe hang some driftwood or something else right above the return so it cant suck from straight above it?

 

[Berts46ers]

Thanks for the compliments Backfromthedead .
Acrylic is really expensive and not very common in Australia so glass was my only option really besides a plywood tank which I was not keen on at all, or a fibreglass tank which doesn’t look too flash either. It is heavily braced top and bottom so hopefully it holds up long term

Using the “Jack and block” method and those hydraulic trolleys did make installing the stand and tank pretty easy. All my friends can’t believe that just the Mrs and I moved it into the house and onto the stand. I was surprised and stoked that my plan actually worked haha.

Both the pumps are on 50% power, so using 60w each. Good to hear that you have had success with them, they cop a lot of hate. For the price compared to some competitor pumps, I had to try them out.

Yes, the noise is coming from the return nozzles, which are just plain old pvc pipe at the moment. It doesn’t constantly happen, but sporadically it creates a vortex like pull of air into the flow of water, I assume because of the quite high flow.

I am thinking of increasing the size of the return nozzles to try and lower the water pressure coming out. I don’t really want spray bars, but I haven’t bought any duck bill type nozzles to try either. Maybe 1 of those may stop it.

The idea of driftwood or something else above the pipe is pretty good idea. Easy enough to give it a try with some hard plastic etc.

 

[Backfromthedead]

Thanks for the compliments Backfromthedead .
Acrylic is really expensive and not very common in Australia so glass was my only option really besides a plywood tank which I was not keen on at all, or a fibreglass tank which doesn’t look too flash either. It is heavily braced top and bottom so hopefully it holds up long term

Using the “Jack and block” method and those hydraulic trolleys did make installing the stand and tank pretty easy. All my friends can’t believe that just the Mrs and I moved it into the house and onto the stand. I was surprised and stoked that my plan actually worked haha.

Both the pumps are on 50% power, so using 60w each. Good to hear that you have had success with them, they cop a lot of hate. For the price compared to some competitor pumps, I had to try them out.

Yes, the noise is coming from the return nozzles, which are just plain old pvc pipe at the moment. It doesn’t constantly happen, but sporadically it creates a vortex like pull of air into the flow of water, I assume because of the quite high flow.

I am thinking of increasing the size of the return nozzles to try and lower the water pressure coming out. I don’t really want spray bars, but I haven’t bought any duck bill type nozzles to try either. Maybe 1 of those may stop it.

The idea of driftwood or something else above the pipe is pretty good idea. Easy enough to give it a try with some hard plastic etc.

Yeah its kinda funny to me when someone will start a thread on here querying how to move a big tank and people chime in "get at least 9 people!", presumably to have them all surround the tank, deadlift it up in unison, and carefully shimmy the monstrous tank through corridors and doorways. More often one man, a dolly, and half a brain will get it done much more efficiently.

Interesting, that used to be the the case here in the states, but ime glass has now eclipsed acrylic in cost by a wide margin. I just purchased an acrylic 330g for about half what a glass version would cost shipped to my home.

Yeah the duckbill nozzle might work to spread out the agitation across the surface. I didnt bother mentioning it before but if i had one gripe its that i wouldve gone with larger return lines, 1.25" probably being perfect for those pumps imo. But running at 50% the 1" lines are probably fine and probably very quiet like you say.

The jebao hate comes from elitists who have to justify to themselves buying a ridiculously priced pump that is at best marginally superior in quality. That or people who hate chinese everything for whatever reason.

 

[jjohnwm]

I love the application of ingenuity and common sense you used to get that thing into your house. Taking your time and using the correct equipment always trumps a dangerous session with a half-dozen drunken buddies manhandling a big tank into position. Bravo! Your whole set-up looks very well-planned and thought-out.

If the noise is being produced by the return nozzles sucking air at the surface, could you not simply extend them down another couple inches beneath the surface? As long as you drill a tiny hole in each one just at the surface, to break the siphon in case of a power outage, it wouldn't impact the water level in the sump at all.

I like the simple addition of the power-metering equipment as well; I have toyed with the idea of using similar, but then my wife would also be able to see how much electricity my hobby consumes and that would be a bad thing...

I'm looking forward to seeing the progress of this tank.

 

[Berts46ers]

Yeah the duckbill nozzle might work to spread out the agitation across the surface. I didnt bother mentioning it before but if i had one gripe its that i wouldve gone with larger return lines, 1.25" probably being perfect for those pumps imo. But running at 50% the 1" lines are probably fine and probably very quiet like you say.

The jebao hate comes from elitists who have to justify to themselves buying a ridiculously priced pump that is at best marginally superior in quality. That or people who hate chinese everything for whatever reason.

I agree, that slightly larger return lines would have been better. I had no experience with a sump so took the advice from the builder, but we live and learn. I may increase them from the first elbow up the top of the return pipes.

So much stuff we buy these days come from China, so it doesn’t bother me giving them a go.