90G Lee-Mar with basement sump

I think I'm pretty happy right now with the aquascape given the rock that I have to choose from.  We'll see what sort of criticism I get here first though.

The corner view is what you see from my front door and entry way into the office.  The intent there was for it to be more open sand bed.  The left hand side is what I see from my desk.

Phase 1 will be to finish the plumbing for the overflows.  They'll have ball valves on the underside so I can shut them off.  Then I'll fill it up as is now and work on turning that dead rock into live while I build out the plumbing and sump.



Edited by sunflashx - February 06 2011 at 3:41pm

This has great potential, and I think you are right on track.

So when I originally bought this thing I think I originally intended to drive a lot more flow through my sump to avoid having powerheads all over my display.  Right now the plan is to have 2x Tunze Turbelle 6105s which are lightyears better than anything that was around when I bought it.

Right now I have 2 overflows with 4 total 3/4 holes.  The plan was a Herbie style system, 1 siphon per overflow 1 gravity per overflow the like drains together and heading down to the basement.  Return comes up the back of the tank.

I don't think I really have the need to run that much flow through the sump.  I can probably push 700+ gph through it with the combination of two drains.  Would I be better served ripping one of them out and blocking off the holes and picking up some tank space?

I think it would also eliminate a possible poorly flowing area between the two overflows.

Less flow thru sump downstairs=less noise. Herbie method is one way to go for basement sumps, but be prepared for a couple trips up & down the stairs to adjust the water level in the overflow.

As you can see that 32 watt PC isn't going to cut it.  I've got a new LED light fixture in the works.  Currently I'm thinking it will be 1 of 2 I use over this tank.






I'm using 2 meanwell 60-48D drivers.  The blues are wired in parallel as there are 16 lamps which puts me over the voltage limit of the drivers.

Ultimately I'd like to drive the plain blues separately from the rest so I can use them as moonlight and keep the place free of the clutter of an additional lighting system.  That will make my strings too short on lamps though, so I'll have to rewire them again into 1 string.  There's also the fact that driving that few LED's doesn't work with these drivers, I'll have to hunt up a different model Meanwell driver.


Edited by sunflashx - March 25 2011 at 2:06am

The blues are currently all wired in together.  They're all wired in on the same driver/dimmer.

During normal daylight hours I'd like to run the blues at probably the same output as the Royals, I'd just like to have the capacity to run them low output during the night for moonlights.

That's more of a someday when I buy a controller that can dim the lamps variably throughout the day sort of plan though.

Also, there's no CW.  Strange as it is, all my whites are Neutral White by design.  Mixing in some CW could be good, but it's a struggle to include more colors and still be able to get decent color mixing without using a cost prohibitive number of lamps.  I really like the color this arrangement should provide.  I probably won't know for some time though if it works for me as well as the pictures I'm basing my decisions off.  I don't anticipate having anything that will really show off the colors for a while yet.

Sumpbench just before being painted.  12 cut outs on the back panel for electrical boxes and individual outlets, perfect for clock timers or DC adapters.  The top row and the bottom row will be on separate circuits each chained off of a gfci outlet.

it would free up some space but you say no powerheads for flow and 700 gph is a bit low for a reef, unless you looking at LPS and softies. also 2x3/4 drains i think 800 gph max. i have 1x1" & 1x3/4" and run a mag 12, if i close the 3/4 drain the tank will over flow in about 4-5 hours. just my thoughts.

sunflashx wrote: Right now the plan is to have 2x Tunze Turbelle 6105s which are lightyears better than anything that was around when I bought it.

The low flow is just for the sump.  Primary circulation is a Tunze 6105 on a 7096 Controller, and I'm planning on adding a second 6105 to do a back and forth interval or wave generation.