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42 Gallon Hex Tank Build


n2585722

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Thanks, there are a lot of angled cuts, but once you have your saw setup you can do all the cuts for all the like parts at one time. It took awhile to do this. I started on it in 2008 and added water for the final time 3 years ago. My saws are in the garage. It doesn't have heating and cooling so that limits the time I had to work on it here in Texas. 

That looks like the Kreg jig I have. In fact Lowes may have been where I got it. 

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Stand Continued

Below are two photos of the pass through as I call it. As with the other items the white area is the areas that may get exposed to water and the black is the electronics side. The paint transition is not visable when it is installed. The item to the right is the upper outer frame assembly. I will get to that later.

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Below is the partition and bulkhead for the conduit from the front panel.

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Below are a some photos of the cabinet assembled.

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The photos below are after installing the pass through and bulkhead. I used RTV to seal around both just in case I need to remove the pass through later for some reason. 

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The photo below is a top view of the pass through before adding the top trim to the cabinet. The top trim overlaps the top of the pass through to prevent water that is spilled from getting into the electronics cabinet. In the final install there are two holes in the side of the pass through for conduit that connects to the canopy. The wire between the back cabinet and the canopy are run through the conduit.

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Below is a photo of the top with the trim installed. I took this photo when I had the back cabinet off doing some modifcations.

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Below is the cabinet view from the back after completion. One of the 1/4 inch bulkheads is missing. It is being used to couple the ATO tubing while the cabinet was off the stand.

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In this side view the hole in the pass through is visable. The block at the bottom is the mount for the outlet. Also the 15 degree slant on the top and bottom rail slant down toward the outside of the cabinet. This will hopefully prevent any spill down the outside of the cabinet from entering the inside of the cabinet.

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Below is a view of the other side. The sump side of the back panel is visable here. The flap is installed on the hole for the power cords for the pumps heater and other devices that hook to the power bars.

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Below are a couple of photos with the doors closed.

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Below is a close up of the pass through and bulkhead from the sump side. The pass through also allows air flow out of the sump area. More on this later.

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Below is photos with the power bars and other items installed in the cabinet. In the bottom photo the wires were just stuffed into the hole for the conduit to get them out of the way for the photo. 

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Stand Continued

Now to the lower outer frame assy and upper outer frame assembly. Below are the parts for the lower outer frame assembly. It is similar to the lower frame assembly for the canopy with the exception that it has the lower frame assembly for the cabinet attached.

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Below is the top view of the lower frame assembly assembled. The sections inner sides are trimmed to fit over the bottom of the inner frame assembly.

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Below is a bottom view of the lower outer frame assembly. Each of the six sections have two pocket holes used to attach the lower outer frame assembly to the bottom of the inner frame assembly. It will be attached using these and glue. All the pocket holes will be plugged on final assembly.

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Below is the parts for the upper outer frame assembly.

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Below is a bottom view of the upper outer frame assembly.  The upper outer frame sections inner side is not trimmed as far as the lower outer frame assembly. They were trimmed so the assembled frame would fit over the tank easily. There will be some more trim pieces added around the opening in the cabinet trim part and along the cut for the back cover. These will be to make sure any water spilled will travel either off the tank side of the section or down the hole in the cabinet trim.  

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Below is a top view of the upper outer frame assembly. The cuts in the top of the upper frame of the cabinet is where the back cover assembly will sit.

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Below is the bottom view of the upper outer frame assembly. On this side the trim is around the hole to make sure that the water does not run to the edger of the frame.

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Below is a top view of the finished upper outer frame assembly. The trim on this side is around the edge of where the back cover goes. There is trim on the back cover that matches this trim to prevent water from getting out. 

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I did not get any photos of the lower outer frame assembled before attaching it to the inner frame. So I will use the photos with it attached to the inner frame assembly. These photos were taken when the back cabinet was removed for some modifications After some testing. The first one below is of the back section and lower cabinet frame assembly. Originally I had the outlet boxes attached to the lower cabinet frame. This made it a little difficult to get plugs into the outlets. While modifying the cabinet I added a block to the partition at a slight angle that made it easier to plug into the outlets. The rectangular holes in the bottom allow any water that might ever get into the inside of the cabinet to escape to the floor.    Also each section has two holes that have a soda straw glued inside and trimmed level at the top and trimmed just a little lower than the bottom of the section on the bottom. This is to prevent water from pooling in the cutouts of the sections. The inner frame assembly has no carpet underneath it but the lower outer frame has a gap between the bottom of it and the floor to allow carpet to slide under the outer frame. 

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Below is a view from the side. Sorry for the blurry photo. 

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Below is a photo of the other side. 

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Below is a view from the front. This also give a peak at the modules mounted to the front panel.  More on the controller later. Also you can see the two fans that are used for air flow through the front cabinet.   

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But while we are on the subject the mounting hardware for the modules is in the photo below. This allow for the modules to be mounted at a angle.

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Stand Continued

Below are some photos of the project assembled for testing. At this point nothing was glued yet. It was still bare pine. Everything was moved to the garage and the tank was filled with water and allowed to run for a month before dissassembly for final assembly. This gave me a chance to improve on any issues found during testing.

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The back cover and back cabinet were not finished at this point. 

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Below are some photos of the stand during construction. The two outside PVC pipes are the conduit for the wires going from the front cabinet to the back cabinet. The smaller middle one is the return manifold. The return manifold was repositioned above the bracing between the two conduit pipes. It still clears the bottom of the tank and is a little more out of the way there. The top trim was not on the side panels at this point.

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In the photo below you can see the conduit going from the front cabinet to the back cabinet. 

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Back Cover 

The back cover is used to hide the overflow and piping. There are also two MP10's that are behind the cover. I also have a biopellet reactor stuffed inside the back cover. There are two doors one on each side to gain access without removing the cover. The canopy has to be lifted slightly in back to remove the cover so it will not get accidently knocked off. The back cover also has the ventilation fans for the stand and canopy. Below is a photo of the parts for the back of the cover. This is the configuration during testing when the photo was taken. In the final assembly the upper and lower rail was replaced with two sections cut to fill the complete space. I decided a solid back would be better.

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Below is a photo of the parts for one of the sides. The extra section on the side is to fill in the gap between the back cover and the tank below the canopy.

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Below is a photo of the parts for the remaining side. Basically the same parts just configured for the oppisite side.

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Below is the photos of the sides assembled.

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Below are the parts for a door. The doors were too narrow for a raised panel so a standard panel was used.

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Below is an assembled door. 

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Below is the parts for the fan assembly. I have since changed the fans to different style which required the replacement of the guard to a steel guard to allow them to fit in the space. I needed more flow than these fans would deliver to maintain the temp. 

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Below are the sides and back assembled ready for assembly.

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Below is the top frame assembly.  The corners are notched at the ends to clear the columns on the canopy. 

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Below is the bottom view of the top frame. The cut fits the top of the back and sides when they are assembled.

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Below is some photos of the back cover assembled for testing.

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I'll just say it again - crazy woodworking skills!

Thanks again, it turned out good enough that my wife wants me to make her kitchen cabinets. So that is the next major wood working project. I have to complete them before I start on the canopy and stand for the 110.


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Back Cover Continued

Below is a photo of the finished back cover. The current fans are installed in these photos. These fans were modified to help withstand the exposure to water vapor and salt spray. I removed back cover a while back to get these photos. So it is a little dusty.

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Below is a view with the doors open. The inner door panels were not installed in this photo.

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Below is a top view.

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View from the back with doors open.

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View of the back doors closed. 

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Below is a view from the bottom. 

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Below is a view of the trim that overlaps the trim around the cabinet upper outer frame.

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Below is the inner door panels at various steps of construction.

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Below is the completed inner door panels with completed hinge covers.

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Below is the inner door panels and hinge covers installed.The dark spot on the back left below center is where the feet for the recirculation pump on thr biopellet reactor are against the back. 

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Canopy Electrical Connections

Below is a photo of the tank in place. No water is in the tank in this photo. The sump is running though. The room has carpet squares for flooring so I just trimmed the squares around the stand. The stand sits on the concrete slab. We do plan on replacing the flooring since it is getting old. I was just waiting a while to make sure there were no incidents.  It has been three years now so it can be replaced anytime now. 

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To get power and control signals to the electronics compartment of the canopy two conduit sections are used. Below is the bracket that is used to connect the conduit sections to the canopy. Top view.

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Bottom view of bracket.

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Below is a view of the bracket installed. The keystone couplers on the left are the 24 and 12 volt power for the lighting and cooling fans in the canopy. The two keystone couplers on the right are the controller buss and a signal cable. The signal cable is used to provide two of the PWM control signals for the lighting. There are eight wires in the cable to that connector so there are some spares for future use.

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Below is a view of the bracket from the bottom.

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Below is a view with  conduit sections hooked to the bracket. 

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Below is a photo of the conduit sections attached to the sides of the pass through in the cabinet.

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Below is one side of the cabinet where the conduit is connected to the pass through. This one has the 12 and 24 volt cables and an extra 8 wire cable. 

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Cooling Fans

The Fans exposed to the area with water were modified. The first fans I did not modify and one only lasted 3 months before it had a meltdown. Below is a photo of the circuit board of the fan and the fan controller that also went out because of it. The 12 volt supply did shut down but not before the fan took out the fan controller.

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i modified the fan itself and also added a 2.2 ohm 1/4 watt flameproof resistor in series with the 12 volt supply as a fuse in case of a fan failure. Below is a photo of the cord and connector for one of the new fans.

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Below is a photo of the 12 volt supply wire cut and the resistor and heat shrink used to add the resistor.

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Below the heat shrink is sliped over the cut wire before the resistor is soldiered im.

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Below is a photo of the resistor soldiered in place.

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Below is a photo of the fan after resistor was added.

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I got the fans at Fry's for around $9 each. They also have a removable blade assembly. This is a must to do the next modification. I sealed the pc board assembly with aquarium sealer. Below is a photo of the fan with the blade removed.

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Below is a photo with the bearing hole plugged with some paper towel. This was to keep the RTV from accidentally entering the bearing.

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Below is a photo of the fan from the top after adding the RTV.

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Below is a photo of the back after adding the RTV.  I have got over a year on the fans so far after doing this.

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I have two fans that are used to cool the water in the sump using evaporative cooling and two fans in the back cover that have these modifications.The fans in the back cover exhaust air out of the stand and canopy via the back cover. So moist air has to past through the fans. The fans cooling the electronics area blow air into these areas. This little bit of positive pressure will hopefully keep the moist air out of the electronics compartments. These fans are not modified.

 

 

 

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Tank Leak Detection

I have discussed having any water leaking being confined to the  bottom of the stand. It would not be much good if there were no way to act on water filling the bottom of the stand. So I decided to use two float switches as leak sensors. I built two brackets to mount the float switches on. Below is one finished bracket and the parts for the other. They are made out of 1/4" acrylic.

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To get the holes drilled I used some painters tape to mark where to drill. The double marks are to each side of center. That was my fast way of getting the holes centeredIMG_0747.JPG

Below is a photo of a float switch installed in the bracket. This will be placed in a corner so only one side was needed for protection aganst things getting into the float accentently.

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Below is one of the brackets installed in bottom of sump.

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With the float switch it requires a certian amount of water to actually trip the switch so minor limited time leaks will not  trip the switch. The switches are sealed so that will protect the switch from any spills that occur. I am still using the original two switches. I used two just in case of a single failure. These are attached to two seperate switch inputs on a controller. The controller shuts down everyting it controls except for two MP10's. Those will continue to run. The controller will also send an email if the switches are tripped. It is set to trip if the circuit opens so if a switch gets disconnected it will trip the alarm. To test it occasionally all I have to do is lift the switches with my finger and make sure everything works as planned. I decided to test it with a real simulated leak before adding water to the tank. I used the RO output from my RODI unit to do this. The input of the RODI has a solenoid on the input that is also controlled by the controller. So it will sutoff if there as a leak detected. I made a crude video of the test. I was trying to hold the water line from the RODi along with the camera so excuse the shaky video.

  

 

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2 hours ago, Jimbo662 said:

That is amazing work!

Thank you, I had a tank setup in the 90's. With that experence I am trying to add in things that will prevent the issues I had with the past tank. Since I was building my own canopy and stand I was able to try some things to help prevent issues I had with that system. The most common was leaks from equipment. These usually did not get noticed until they became a major issue.

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Lighting

I originally started this build to experiment with using LED's on a reef tank. At that time there were just a couple of off the shelf LED fixtures. I decided to use my own so I could change the configuration as needed. I started with 6 blue, 6 Royal Blue, 6 Cool White and 2 RGBW LED's with three drives. The drivers were Meanwell ELN-60-48D. It has been so long ago I don't remember which channel each LED was hooked to but there were originaly 2 control channels that were 0-10 volts. Below is a photo of two of the drivers used in the original configuration.

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In addition to the high output LED's there were two lunar pods with two LED's each. One was white and the other blue. The High power LED's were placed in multiples of three. Each cluster had one blue, one royal blue and one white. In the center were the two lunar pods with a RGBW on each side. I believe that all the blues were wired together with the whites seperate. Since the RGBW LED's were 700ma I think they were wired together on the third driver. The original configuration would draw 118 watts at full brightness. 

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Below is a photo of the PAR reading of the original configuration at full output. That was with the sensor palced at the bottom of the tank without water. 

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Below is a photo with the lights on during testing without water.

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The main issue with this configuration was that the light did not come on until the control voltage was at around 1 volt. At this point the lights would light but at around 10%. This was already quite bright. So I decided to try PWM drivers. This required the use fo some type of converter from 0-10 volts to PWM. The controller output had two 0-10 volt outputs and an output to control a AI fixture. So while I was at it I decided to convert this serial data into a PWM output. Thie required that I come up with my own converter. I decided to use a Microchip controller for this that had 5 PWM outputs. I used a serial input and two 0-5 volt inputs to convert. Below is a photo of the main screen of the display. I never got past the breadboard with it but it did work for what I needed at the time. Below is a photo of the home screen that displays the intensity in percent of the 5 channels. On this the atinic was the royal blue LED's. There was a 5 button keypad not shown to navigate through the menus.

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Below is a series of photos of the display of the converter in different modes.

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I chose to use Meanwell LDD drivers. I was able to get into a buy of someone having some PC board built.  Below is a photo of the front and back of a completed board. With the controller I have now I need to go back and add the pull down resistors to the boards since if there is a power failure or the controller is rebooted they will be in full on state if it is a time span when the lights are normally off. 

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Below is a photo with three drivers installed in one of the boards. The photo below was taken at later date. At the time the LDD-1500L was not available. I modified one of the boards to accommodate the 1500L's. This happens to be a spare board with spare drivers installed. I have two spare boards. The configuration using the coverter never left the garage. By the time I installed the tank in the house I had a new controller that had two PWM outputs. More on the controllers later on. I will get to the current configuration next.

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Lighting Continued

In the current configuration the six blue LED's were replaced with royal blue 1.5 amp LED's. The six white LED's were replaced with 3 amp netural white LED's. Even though the white LED's will take 3 amp the largest driver is only 1.5 amps so these are run at a max of 1.5 amps. Four UV LED's were added along with a deep red LED and cyan LED. These are 750 ma LED's. The white and royal blue LED's were Cree LED's. I am not sure on the others. Also two red moon pods were added next to the other moon pods.

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Also I got a chance to beta test a module for the controller manufacturer that had four output channels that could be programmed as either 0-10v, 5v PWM or 10v PWM. I will get into the controller at a later time. This increased my channels from two to 6 for the 5v PWM outputs which I need for the Meanwell drivers. Now there are 6 seperate control channels. red, green, blue, white, royal blue and UV. The deep red is with the red LED's and the cyan is with the green LED's. Each channel has it's own timer, ramp time, max output and min output. At the moment they all have the same ramp rate 4 hours and min output at 0. They do have seperate timers but have the same timing so one timer would work in this case. The timers are set to come on at 10:00am. They are out by 8:00pm. At 8:00pm the moon pods are on. The amount of light depends on the moon cycle. The difference is the max output between the six channels.  These are currently set at percentages below.

Channel               Output

Red                          25

Green                      25

Blue                         25

White                       45

Royal Blue               50

UV                            35

I only have LPS and zoanthids at this point.  Below is a photo of the array at 2% on for the LED's. This was taken with a iPad and the light from the LED's caused the striping. The two closest to the center are RGBW LED's. The Cyan is to the left of these and the deep red is to the right of these. The six with the large lenses are the netural white. The six blue with the brightest output are the royal blue with the 1.5 amp driver. The other six blues are royal blue with 1 amp driver. The four singles between the clusters of three are the UV LED's. If I remember correctly all the lenses are 80 degree lenses. The RGBW's have no lenses but they do have the lens holders to use like a reflector.  The RGBW's are mainly for viewing if I shorthen the time on for the LED's that are used for the high output I can still keep a longer viewing time. 

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Below is a photo of the module with the four programmable outputs with the wire harnesses I made to connect the outputs to the driver boards. Each wire harness is color coded there is one black wire for ground and one colored wire. The color of the wire matches the color of the LED's.  The white channel goes to two boards so it has two connection points.

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There are two boards in use. One board is supplied with 24 volts and one board is supplied with 12 volts. If the LED string has more than 3 LED's then the driver is on the 24 volt board. If it has up to 3 in the string then the driver is on the 12 volt board. The photo below has the 24 volt board. This has the drivers for the netural white, both royal blue and the UV LED's. The outputs to the LED's are on the left. The control signals and power input are on the right side of the board. The outputs from both boards are hooked to the terminal strips on the LED fixture on the left side of the photo. The 24 volt supply is capable of up to 5 amps and the 12 volt up to 3 amps. The 12 volt supply also supplies the power to all 9 fans used in the stand and canopy.

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The photo below has the 12 volt drivers. Just like the other board the terminals on the left are the LED outputs. The terminals on right are the control inputs and the power input. The larger black wires are the wires from the four moon pods.

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Below is the control module for the moon pods.  

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Below is a photo of the control module for the red, green, blue and white channels. The royal blue and UV are controlled from two PWM channels from the main control unit in the front cabinet of the stand.

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Below is a photo inside the lid of the canopy.  The terminal assembly just above the LED fixture has the two signals from the main controller. That terminal assembly is fed from the keystone coupler just under the lid next to the left hinge. The keystone coupler to the left of that one is the controller buss to the two modules.

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I still have not got around to cleaning up and mounting the boards or modules yet, but then again I may be changing it in the future. It just depends on if I find something better. I checked the outputs with a PAR meter at various points in the tank. One set is with outputs at 50% and one set at 100%. Below is the charts along with a photo of the tank. The top is at top center just above the surface of the water. The ledge was one just above the lower blue damsel. The bottom was between the rock work on the gravel. The corner was the far left corner at the bottom.

50%        Blue      White       Both
Top         544          297          820
Ledge     227          118           335
Bottom  137             78          220
Corner     55             49          100
 
100%     Blue      White       Both
Top        895          493        1427
Ledge    383          200          597
Bottom 222           127          344
Corner  102            83           180

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The Sump

After browsing Marc's website http://www.melevsreef.com/. I decided to try and make my own sump. Marc has excellent direction on how to build a sump. Below in the two photos is what I came up with.

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After running it in the stand in place for a few weeks I was ready to add the drain manifold and add the places for probe holders and float switches. I also made a fan holder for the cooling fans. In the photo below it shows the sump ready to go. I slowly removed the media out of the corner boxes after the tank cycled. I also removed the corner boxes but still have them if I ever need them again. The skimmer is a SWC 120 with a Swabbie from Avast Marine installed. The return pump is a Sicce 3.0. The float switches are mounted to 1/4 PVC. The PVC is held in place with probe holders I purchased from Avast marine. The switches can be raised or lowered to set the level that they are triggered. The bottom one is used for low sump level alarm. The upper one is used for the over full alarm. The middle one is just to alert the controller that the sump is full. I eventually added 2 more float switches. One can be setup to replace either of the other three float switch in the event one goes out on me. So the sump can continue to operate until the bad switch can be replaced. The other is for a pump used to pump from the overflow down to the sump in the event the return pump stops. This is to ensure there is enough water in the sump to restart the overflow siphon when the pump turns back on. Unfortunately there is not a lot of room under a 42 gallon hex tank for a rectangular sump. This was the biggest one I could fit in the stand. It is close to 10 gallons if completely full. In fact a 10 gallon tank will fit in place of the sump. The scotch tape with the mark is the water level needed to restart the pump and start the siphon in the overflow.  The probes  in the photo's are there just to show the probe holders. They are either temp or salinity probes in this case.

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Below are a couple of other photo of the sump ready to go.

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The auto water change draws water from the small refugium area which is on the right in the photos. The fresh salt water is added to the return section. The two fans are for evaporative cooling. They are set to come on at 78.1 and turn off at 77.9.  So far the only issues have been a impeller failure on the return pump, a few float switches and a couple of fans. 

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Sump Continued

I made a probe holder that sits in the baffles between the skimmer section and the return section.  Below is a photo of the completed probe holder.

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I did manage to get some photos during the build procees on this part. Below is a photo of the parts for the holder. I drilled more holes than I planned to use. At this point I have a temp probe in this holder. 

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Below are photos of one side being glued to cross part. I used double sided tape with a square to tape down two triangles and a space fixture. then once glue was in place I used the square and another straight edge to get it attached properly. 

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The process was repeated for the other side. I also made a assembly for the cooling fans and a assembly for the float switches with a probe holder. This is also used for bulkheads for the return for a reactor and auto water change lines. Unfortunatly I don't have any photos of the build process for these. The fan assembly was made to fit across the sump. I have it placed to straddle the skimmer and return section. 

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Below is two photos of the float switch mounting assembly. This fits above the return section with the probe holder section over the refugium section. There are eight larger holes that allow the mounting of the probe holders that Avast Marine sells. These will clamp around a 1/2" tube. I used 1/4" schedule 80 PVC pipe for most of the float switch extensions. The schedule 80 has an outer diameter of 1/2". I just drilled and tapped one end for the float switches. The other holes are 1/2" holes that will allow the guest style bulkhead connectors or a probe. With the bulk head connectors the white insert has to be removed. I was using the inserts to help stabilize the probes. There were glued imto place with a pliable glue and be removed as needed. In fact I think most of them have came loose at this time. 

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That just leaves the corner boxes which are currently not in use. I did get a few photos of the build. The previous parts were made with 1/4" acrylic. The corner boxes were made with 1/8" acrylic except for the base wich is 1/4". Below are two of the sides and ends of the box. The acrylic triangles in upper left corner of this photo are used to aid in the assembly and are not a part of the boxes.

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The two shot sides are ready to be glued together in the photo below. The triangles are used to get the right angle on the joint.

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The photo below is the two pieces glued together. The overlap will be trimmed with the router once the glues is dry.

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In the photo below the assembly is ready to be glued to third side on the long side. The triangles are used here to keep the two side straight during glue process.

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Below is a photo of the assembly and the last side to be attached. 

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Below is the assembly with all sides glued. It just needs to be trimmed. 

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Below the assembly is ready for the ends.

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Below the bottom has been attached. It just needs to be trimmed with the router.

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Below the top is ready to be attached.

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Below the top has been attached. It just needs final trim.

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Below are photos of the assembled unit with base attached.

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Reactor Stand
 
I got a recirculating bio pellet reactor awhile back, but when I installed it behind the back cover the water temp would start to climb. It was obstructing the pass through  opening too much. So I just abandoned that project until a few months ago. I decided to make a stand to lift it up away from the pass through opening. Below is a photo of the pieces cut and ready for assembly.
 
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The back side is shown below assembled with the pocket holes plugged.
 
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The back side assembly from the other side. This was scrap lumber that was used for this project.
 
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Below is the back side sanded and ready to go.
 
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Below is the other side of the back side sanded and ready to go.
 
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Below is the front side sanded ready to go. This side is missing the bottom rail so that it can straddle all the return and drain lines along with the power cables and conduit.
 
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Below is the other side of the front side.
 
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The photo below shows a bottom cross brace assembled to the front side.
 
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Below is a bottom cross brace attached to the back side.
 
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Below is the front and back attaced by the bottom cross braces. All the pocket holes were done with a Kreg pocket hole jig. That kit was well worth the money I spent on it.
 
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The top braces are attached and ready for the pocket hole plugs.
 
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Top braces plugged and sanded.
 
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In the photo below I set the reactor on the stand to check the fit. It looks good, so ready to paint.
 
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Below is the stand painted and ready to go from the front.  This reactor stand has the same rubber coating as the inside of the tank stand.
 
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Below is the stand from the back view.
 
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Below is a photo of where the reactor stand will go. As you can see if the front side had a bottom rail you would have to disconnect the return and drain lines along with the conduit to get the stand in and out.
 
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Below you can see the stand in place ready for the reactor.
 
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With the reactor in place and running the temp can be held at 78.1. So it looks like this project is a success.  It has now been operating for awhile now without any temp issues. Below are two photos of the reactor in place.
 
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Dosing Pump Stand

I had a tube split on one of my dosing pumps which allowed saltwater to get into the motor since I just had them laying on a table. So I decided to make a stand to mount them on to keep them in a vertical position. Hoefully this will keep the soultion out of the motor and electronics in the event of a leak. I also put trim around the base to pool a leak so I could add leak detector. Below is a photo of the start of the project. The back board for mounting the pumps along with the base or tray with trim added to one side.

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I made a template to use in making the end pieces.  The end piece is made of two boards glued together.  i used a router to trim away all excess except for what was under the template.

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 Below is a completed end piece along with the completed backboard and tray assembly. In the lower right corner is the board for another end piece.

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In the photos below is the completed stand ready for paint. 

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In the photos below is the painted stand with the pumps mounted ready to go.

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Power Supply Holders

I had four power supplies that were in the back cabinet. they were just stuffed in. So I decided to make some holders for them and also a holder for the fan speed controller which would also hold a couple of modules for the controller.  Below is a photo of the power supply holders assembled and ready to install. The back cabinet is behind the holders laying on it's side. I was also making changes on it when these were done.

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Below is a photo of the power supplies with the holders. The top one on the left is the 24 volt supply for the lighting. The one below it on the left is the 12 volt supply used for the lighting and fans. The two on the right are the supplies for the MP10's.

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Below is a photo of the fan controller holder. On one side it holds the fan controller and on the other side It can hold two of the standard size controller modules. 

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Below is a photo of the side that has the mount for the two modules. It only has one module installed but could have another just below the one that is there. There is one holder barely visible to the left of the left power bar. The other is mounted to the right of the right power bar. Both of these were power supplies for the two MP10's. The back cabinet was off the stand when this photo was taken. 

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Below is a photo from the other side of the cabinet.  This is the side with the fan controller mounted at the top. The holder to the left of the power bar has the 12 volt power supply. The holder to the right has the 24 volt power supply. 

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I am thinking of building a cabinet and placing it behind the back cabinet to house these supplies. This will free up some room in the back cabinet, but would cause more cables outside the stand. Not sure yet on this idea.

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