Another exciting day in the aquarium gallery because this guy's tank
And these guys tank is now completed although today was another short week out here
I didn't have a lot of time to get much done you see I'm actually filming this video today on a
Thursday first thing tomorrow morning
I head to new York so while I technically only had a couple of days to get things done out here in the aquarium gallery
I certainly did get quite a bit done including
completely finishing the aquarium the filtration as well as all of the plumbing to summarize all of the bar clamps embracing that was holding the
Acrylic panels in place as they cured was all removed all the protective film was also removed from the acrylic and now you can
See just how clear this acrylic is going to be even though it's 1 in
1.6 inches thick you wouldn't be able to know it you see with acrylic
regardless of thickness based on the fact that it doesn't have any
impurities in it it remains the same
Clarity we also got the Lid supports installed in the aquarium as you can see the entire perimeter is now lined in
Scrap acrylic from the front panels taking a concrete drill bit drilling them into the side of the aquarium and silicone it all into place
Now I can add all of the lids
the lids i'm using are these
Polycarbonate greenhouse panels and clearly you can see that these are see-through
I use these for a number of reasons one I've used them before for example on my 540 gallon aquarium
Where we use them to cover that entire span that was six feet by 6 feet? I like them because they are cheap
They are extremely clear. They're indestructible
Yet, you can cut them with scissors
They're very light as well as being flexible plus the fact that they do not bow over
Long spans of distances these lids are only going to be in place when we're not filming or working around the aquarium
however
I did make sure that they were flush with the top of the tank
Removing them is extremely simple I can essentially just keep piling them up one on top of the other
Until I get a space or however much I need or I can go ahead and remove all of them
Now those lids all combined when they're laid out like that are actually quite heavy since they interlock
It's very difficult for a fish to jump and lift them up and happen to get out of a corner for example
But jumping up straight in the middle of the tank. There's no way, they're breaking it. There's no way they're getting through it
however what I was thinking of doing was installing small latches into the cement that can swivel out by a few inches and
Cover the Acrylic just just a few just a few of them
So maybe eight in total and that will easily secure them in place on the inside though
I also installed the corner compartments for the wave makers those ecotec MP 60s
Essentially, I just silicone those in place like I said I would and the wave makers fit nicely behind them still
Now all four of these combined is going to give me about
30,000 gallons per hour of
Circulation alone that does not include the return pumps. So that sounds quite powerful and truly it is however these are
Controllable as well as wireless and I can do so with their controllers now one of the things about their controllers is.
Ι noticed that their cores were quite long
And I didn't know where are we going to install them they're not long enough to go into the filtration room and not long enough
To kind of stay in the office area they kind of have to go on the backs of the tanks
and that's what I would prefer not to have any cords showing anywhere of course I'm going to have to have a couple over the
top so what I did was take a piece of that scrap acrylic that I was using on a
Filter one of the panels broke so I'm only have one left
I decided I'm going to drill that into the side of the tank and use the sticky
Velcro that comes with them to attach all four of the controllers to the sides of the aquarium
and I think it turned out really nice in terms of
Functionality of course I can remove this as well as if I need to but these are Velcro in place that come off quite simply
And it looks really good luckily though. These are all going to be wirelessly controlled a lot of the times
I won't be even be touching these I'll just be doing it digitally I also got all of the plumbing
Finished and this looks like a bit of a mess right now, and it kind of is simply because none of it is
Cemented together yet. I still have to work on that
But I was leaving cementing until you know I get back from my trip because I want to make sure this is exactly
How I want it plumped, but to give you an idea we've got three return pumps
Or this is what would typically be the returns at the top of the tank
this one is a return and this one is a return, but this one here is actually going to be an
Overflow system for my drip system, you see I'm going to be adding a constant drip to this aquarium meaning
I'm going to have constantly fresh water being added to the tank and as that
Fresh water dilutes in the aquarium all that older water stagnant water is going to overflow
Out of here and down into a drain in the sink now this isn't going to eliminate water changes
But what it will do is prolong them
Significantly instead of needing to do water changes every other day or once a week or whatever the case might be whatever this
Aquarium Depicts, I don't know it yet
I got to get to know this tank first
But I could estimate that I'll only have to do a water change once a month or once every couple of months
The bottom of the aquarium are all pipes leading to pumps all of these are on ball valves to be able to shut
Water flow completely off from the aquarium as well as union so I can
Close the ball valves and remove all plumbing if I'd like to. Now one thing you're going to notice is that all of these pumps
Have barbed fittings on them because I will be using
Hose instead of hard plumbing that's only because I'm going to be upgrading the pumps here shortly, but not soon enough
So I have to start out with some smaller size pumps doubling them up, and then eventually I'll be able to increase their size
So I want this to be extremely flexible until I do so you'll also notice
The expansion pump down here or the expansion tank I guess you call it. This is for the radiant floor heating
So I've got all of this installed with the pex pipe
And this is a tiny little pump that's going to
Run it and we're going to take a look at how all of this works in a minute
but this pex pipe is leading to a water heater over in the next room and
That water heater is going to constantly heat the water in the aquarium
Underneath the tank you see if you guys remember these pipes lead into underneath the aquarium and kind
Zigzag throughout in fact it kind of goes like this those pipes come in one comes this way
And it keeps going like this all the way through it
And then zigzag all the way back hot water is going to be pumped through it at all times
Dependent on the temperature of the aquarium which I'll show you in a minute, but as the aquarium temperature rises
This is basically just radiant in-floor heating it's going to raise the temperature of the aquarium. I'm using a little thermostat here
which is going to... Its a digital thermostat with a thermometer attached the little probe is going inside the aquarium and
The pump will be attached to this now when the aquarium temperature drops it turns the pump on
when the aquarium
Temperature gets to the proper temperature it shuts the pump off this little tankless water
Heater is actually what's going to be doing all of the work. However this is only a
1500 Watt Heater I went with this because it just simply plugs into a wall
Anything bigger than this and I have to hardwire it into my breaker box so based off my calculations
This is definitely going to be big enough
I do have to fill this with water and all of the piping up with water first and in order to do that
I installed a couple valves up here. I can just open one open the other for a breather
Pump water in through here that's going to pump and fill this up
it'll go through all the piping fill all the piping up and
All the air will kind of gas out through here
Then kind of close them off
Start the pump up and this will do its job and of course I could set the temperature here. There's no actual
Temperature reading there, so I'm going to have to kind of get to know this as well and see what happens now
I'm going to give you guys a much more
Detailed look at all of the filtration and plumbing once it's up and running and I can truly explain
and show you how it all works
But until then I'm just going to give you guys a basic overview of what I've got done
So the main filtration sump is completed at this point
You'll notice the baffles are in place, and they are drilled all the holes are not drilled very
Lined up very nice. I just needed about eighty
Ten millimeter holes for the water to flow through it
And I just did that with a regular drill bit. Acrylic is extremely simple to use this tank also has
Corrugated lids as well very easy to cut up and put in place
so this here
is interesting you'll notice that there's no pipes coming out of it again
Everything needs the hoses to connect, but the hoses didn't get here in time
So I'll most likely have them on Monday or Tuesday, and that's no problem
So the way, this is going to work is one of these pumps actually this pump specifically, which is a vectra M1
It pumps around 2,000 gallons per hours by Ecotec you guys remember that unboxing,
That's going to be sucking water from one of the intakes of the aquarium, and it's going to pump water up
through this pipe through the bulkhead and that water the standpipe is only there temporarily I'm going to be taking it off
Filling this with mechanical filtration water will then flow through these holes and this entire sump area will be filled with
fluidised media. Water then overflows to this side and down through here the standpipe on this side will most likely stay
Because I always want this area to remain filled with water because in case this isn't enough
I've got a couple thousand watts of heaters coming that are going to be placed in here that will allow me to
Supplement the heating of the aquarium just in case. As you can see though the heat pump is at 25 degrees Celsius
And I've kind of been
Experimenting with the temperature out here, and what's most tolerable, it seems as though
24-25 degrees Celsius is about as warm as I can go out here before it's no longer
Comfortable; again that will be much different once there's a bunch of tanks out here
But they will remain well covered and this place is well circulated with air
And there's dehumidifiers and whatnot so
The point is though is I'm trying to heat the room as much as I can so that the heaters
Don't have to work as hard. So we'll see what happens however. I believe that the in-floor heating should be enough, but again
We'll see when the time comes, then we have the canister filter here as well and two pumps
we'll be feeding this, these are kind of just on a wide connection and
They feed the pump again this isn't connected to the tank
I still need the hoses, but that's going to literally take maybe 20 minutes to all connect all of the M1 controllers
are attached to the side of the sub stand and these come out
Relatively simply really enjoying these
Really really enjoying these pumps absolutely loving it, and then of course you have a 25 watt UV sterilizer down here
I don't have lamp in it just yet. It's not actually held up
I'll do that last cause you never know you might drop one of these things
But... I'm not sure where I'm going to place this just yet
So it's just kind of sitting there until I get my hose
and then I'll put a clamp on the wall or maybe clamp it to the the
sump stand and
Install it properly that way
But again, just waiting for the hose and this will be ready to get started up and running.
Now I know a lot of you are wondering how long is this going to take to get up and running and the simple answer is
It's going to be able to start running immediately see I already have over a hundred liters of cycled
Fluidized media ready to go so as soon as I set this filter up and the tanks filled and brought up to temperature
I can add fish. So in a day or two either Monday or Tuesday?
I'll fill the aquarium up for the first time as long as I feel as though everything is cured properly
I don't want to rush that process cause if it's not cured
I'm going to have leaks so on Monday or Tuesday
if everything's going well
I'll fill the tank up, test it for leaks and then wait a week to make sure that it's not going to leak
Now not having the hoses for the filtration isn't the problem
They'll probably be here on Monday or Tuesday, but in the meantime. I can just close those ball valves that
I showed you and continue working on everything until I'm done
There's a couple of little other things that I have to do like do the inputs and outputs of the tank
But those are minor things that I can do in minutes as opposed to you know focusing entire days on them
I'm not worried about the small stuff at all. I just simply ran out of time this week, but I still feel as though
We got a lot done
Anyways I hope that you guys enjoyed today's update in the aquarium gallery
I hope you guys are as excited as I am and if you join me this coming Tuesday
I should be going live here on Youtube , but if not, I will have a new video for you guys on Thursday