Habitat - Indoor :: 120 Gallon Build Questions

[Gugs Jr]

Upgrading my turtles from a 75 gallon reef ready tank to a 120 gallon reef ready tank and just had a few questions.

I knew the 75 gallon was going to be a temp tank so I just made it good enough to get the job done. Now that I'm setting up their final home I'd like make sure I do it right and ask a few questions.


Here is a list of the equipment I have from my 120 Gallon Reef Setup that I'll be reusing.

1. 120 Gallon Reef Ready Aquarium (pre-bottom drilled)
2. Ehiem 5000 Return pump
3. 30 Gallon refugium
4. 4" filter socks
5. 300 Watt adjustable heater

So far I've removed the internal overflow, and have prepped all the equipment so it's ready for a freshwater setup. Below you'll see my progress so far. My goal is to get everything ready by the end of day tomorrow so I can bring them home this weekend.

120 Turtle Idea.jpg (69.37 KiB) Viewed 8361 times

Here is my idea right now.

I'm going build a new overflow box out of flat red slate, this will lead into the filter sock which is the first chamber of the 30 gallon that will be under the tank, which will go into the refugium section that will have a flourite base with plants, and finally the carbon filter pad which leads to the final chamber with the return pump.

The return pump will lead a pipe back into the overflow box and the return pipe will go thru the slate where I'll have a 1' drilled out hole so I can run a pipe along the bottom of the tank. To go up the opposite side and have a waterfall as well as a return on the bottom to move the water around.

Then to make sure that their waste doesn't accumulate on the bottom I'm going to have egg crate on the pipe making sure that it's below the black border of the tank. So that the return from the waterfall and at the bottom can make sure to move the water around.

On top of the egg crate I'll have river rock, driftwood...etc

Left side of the tank will have a basking area.

This should turn over 700 gallons per hour.


So my questions is will this work well enough to keep the water clean enough for 3 turtles? Would you recommend any changes?

[ljapa]

I'm not sure you will get much input here. I believe I'm the only member with a refugium, and that's on astandard 55 gallon with a CSR overflow.

I do have a few semi-educated but uninformed comments. If your refugium is the only filtration, I get how a waterfall and large flow right at the surface will help suspend waste, but will it get it high enough to make it down the durso?

How high will your water level be? 120 gallons, plus the refugium, seems small for the bioload of three turtles. If the plants in the refugium are fast growing, that will help. Floating plants in the refugium will help even more.

[Gugs Jr]

Thank you for your input. About 2/3 water level.

I'm hoping that the water fall combined with the second return at the base of the tank will be enough to push the water that high.

I wasn't going to use an over flow box, but then calculating the amount of water that would go into the refugium changed my mind.

[ljapa]

You don't really need to worry about the inflow rate. That's governed solely by your return pump rate.

My concern was more they turtle poop wouldn't get stirred up enough to make it in. I have a canister filter to grab stuff from the bottom and the overflow lets me grow plants and shrimp in the refugium, add more water volume to dilute waste, add more space for biofiltration. And the best is keep my main tank water level above the plastic rim. I have no water lines in the tank and I feed the plants and shrimp to our turtle.

[Gugs Jr]

Do you feed them ghost shrimp?

I've actually changed my plan a bit. I'm not using the eggcrate so that I can siphon the water out, during water changes, as well as waterless changes (where you siphon the water back into a filter sock.

If I'm going to do water changes on my reef tank it can't hurt on the turtle tank.


Here is my progress so far.

Would have had more done if the hardware store sold a 45mm diamond hole saw. That way I can cut thru the ceramic tile, for the bulk head fitting.

[ljapa]

Red cherry shrimp because they can breed in fresh water unlike ghost shrimp.

Your pictures aren't showing for me.

[Gugs Jr]

Think I fixed the first picture.

I was able to complete the over flow since my diamond hole saw arrived yesterday.

Tonight after work is to finish the piping and then Tuesday try and complete the refugium and plumbing.

[VeipaCray]

I too have a reef ready tank and sump but not for my turtles. Again the problem with reef ready and freshwater is that turtle waste sinks in freshwater. It doesn't float in the water column where it can be skimmed off like waste in a marine tank. You can certainly get great results with a setup like this but you'll need to stay on top of cleaning the waste from the bottom of the tank manually. The eheim powered gravel vac does a good job at that .

Since you're doing a waterfall anyway why not use both drilled holes for a herbie drain? They're silent and have a failsafe unlike a durso. Durso = noisy. You can then just plumb your return line up the back and over the rim to whatever height you want for the waterfall.

120 x 5 = 600 GPH = your desired turnover rate for a tank that size with 3 turtles. We say 3-5x per hour, but with 3 turtles I'd imagine you'd want 5-6x per hour. The nice part about the sump is you can put a TON of bio media in there and filter socks are great mechanical filters. It should do a great job assuming your sump is large enough and you stay on top of keeping the bottom of the tank free of turtle waste.

A decent flow rate calculator:
http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/hlc2.php

Nice work so far. Looks great!

[Gugs Jr]

I didn't do a Herbie because of the way I wanted to do the plumbing. I didn't want it to go up and over the back tank. The waterfall is just an extension off the return pipe, which will should serve as a waterfall as well as a siphon break if the power goes out.

Since I only have a 30 gallon refugium, I needed to make sure I had a siphon break.

If I notice that this setup isn't working the way I want it to, I'll end up getting a canister as well more then likely.

I'm a member of reef central as well. This tank was my old mixed reef tank. When I'm done with this build I'm going to start my 93 Gallon Reef Ready aquarium with basement sump room. I just need the 75 gallon reef tank the turtles are in now since that's going to be part of my 93 gallon build.

Thank you for your input. I'll have more pictures up tomorrow since I should be done with everything, since it's my day off.

[Gugs Jr]

Here is my test run to make sure the waterfall would work.

After filling the tank halfway the waterfall exit wasn't a good siphon break so I added 3 different siphon breaks with airline tubing.

Here is a picture of the Sump. I put a T in with a cap so when I complete my Carbon reactor I can just plumb it in.