The orginal plan was to use the west life support system from the west tall tank. This way I could still use the east tank. The big tank had only one pipe that ran from under the tank to the back rooms. Each tall tank also had one of these un-used pipes. My plan was to use the pipe under the big tank as the return, and one of the pipes under the tall tank as the feed. But it turned out that the one pipe under the big tank only went to the east system room (the one I was using for the east tall tank). So I was forced to turn that system over to the big tank. Before I discovered this I had already repaired the pump for the west system, and started working on the chiller that had quite working. The pump on the west system was a reck, it looked like someone put sand through it or something. It had completely self destructed. All parts except for the motor and the large housing had to be replaced. I designed the plumbing so that you could switch the east life support system between the big tank and the tall east tank, if anyone ever wanted to use that. I met with Chris Paparo to go over what the plumbing should be in the tank, as far as positioning of return lines. He said that it would be good to have four outputs to keep the water moving in most parts of the tank. We also figured out how to construct the bio-filter, which I'll explain bellow.
Since the east system wasn't quite strong enough for this tank (mind you it flows at 60gpm) I used the existing pump that was on the big tank. I'm going to call the east system: System 1, and the system that is in the same room as the tank: System 2. This pump had been installed for pumping water over rocks to make waterfalls. The plumbing wasn't right for a fish tank. So I completly dismantaled this system. I was able to salvage a good amount of the pipe
work, but a good part had to be replaced.
So here is the plumbing scheme. Starting with the bio filter: This filter is essential a sump inside the tank. It maintains part of the nitrogen cycle in the tank. Water flows from the display chamber over a bulkhead into a chamber (the bio-filter). This first chamber is filled with bio-balls (see photo). They're specially designed to have a huge amount of surface area. All this surface area harbors bacteria which run the nitrogen cycle. Specifically it converts Ammonia to Nitrite to Nitrate. This fitler didn't exist, I built it myself. I was lucky to have some big sheets of plexiglass and made the chambers. And I got the school to purchase the bio-balls.
After running throughout the bio ball chamber, the water goes under another bulkhead, over another bulkhead and then to the feed pipes. The point of the last little maze is to prevent air from getting into the life support systems.
There are two feed pipes in the last chamber, one goes to system 1, and other to system 2. In system one, I ran the pipe along the floor, around the door, (photo to the right) under the tall tank, and connected it to that un-used pipe under the tall tank. Making the connection under the tall tank was one of the more stress full moments. The pipe was so short coming out of the cement floor I had to get it right the first time. There was no room for error. Luckily it worked out. If it had not cemented correctly I wouldn't have been able to cut it off and start over. This un-used pipe runs to the back
room. In the back room I Tee-ed in the new feed pipe, and set up the new return. In the photo on the right, the red highlighted pipes are the old pipes for the tall tank, the yellow is the new pipe for the big tank.
In system 1, the water goes through the pump, sand filter, charcoal filter, UV filter, chiller, heater (which is bypassed) and back to the tank. System two is just a sand-filter and a pump. Both systems return the water to the tank through two return spots in the tank. The UV filter is also bypassed - Chris said it just kills thing that you don't necessarily want to kill. They don't use any over at Atlantis Marine World.
I also created an auto-fill device. This keeps the water level in the tank the same as evaporation occurs. I fill the tank with fresh water because when the water evaporates the salt stays in the tank. If you look at this photo to the right, you will see that there is a little rod that pushes a switch (the black thing highest in the photo). When the water goes down the switch is released, a delay timer is triggered (blue box) and a electric valve is opened to fill the tank through the closest PVC pipe. The point of the delay timer is to slow the cycles of filling.
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