This Marine Aquarium is currently built into the wall of my finished basement. I have been an Aquarist for about 12 Years, but I have neglected the hobby for the last 8 because of a hectic life style consisting of a job with heavy travel, building a home, and two young children. This tank is more of a science project than an aquarium.
As you browse down you will see what I mean.

I am trying to implement a reef system loosely based on the Berlin Method (A.K.A. Sump Method) of filtration. By this method, the filtration is done mostly by microorganisms in the Live Rock, various cleaner animals in the tank, and a high efficiency Protein Skimmer. Most modern Berlin setups have a bare aquarium bottom, but I added a thin layer (1/2") of crushed coral and shells because looks are important to me.

First off, I believe that there are two things that you should not skimp on in an aquarium - the tank and the lighting. There is probably nothing that will increase your chances of success like a good lighting system.

The tank is an oceanic 120 Gallon Reef-Ready tank. I chose it because it is the largest off-the-shelf tank that will fit into a 48" wide area - as you can see in the pictures - 48" is all I had to work with. I also like the 24" depth (front to back) which gives me the ability to pile rock up and still have lots of open space in the foreground for fish. A Reef-Ready Tank is very sturdy to support all of the rock and has corner overflows and bottom plumbing to minimize the chance of accidental overflow or siphoning empty.

The lighting system is a purchased hood retrofitted with a twin florescent bulb & twin Metal-Halide bulb unit using surplus ballasts and good quality 250W/6500K HID Aquarium lamps. Still, the hood cost around $400 to build. The twin 50/50 Actinic/Day bulbs will run from about 7:00AM to 9:00PM to light the tank during viewing hours and the Metal Halides will come on from about 10:30AM until 6:00PM. I have thought about a true Dawn/Dusk controller, but I am betting that it is not a necessity, and therefore it's not in the budget.

The aluminum stand was made to my specifications by Lynn Kane - a great guy I work with who is handy with a MIG welder and can make almost anything. I went with this option because looks were not important behind the tank, and commercial stands for this size tank are very expensive and not really appropriate for a built-in setup.

The sump in my system is a sturdy (50 Gallon?) Rubbermaid storage bin ($8.00). It has two purposes - to stabilize the system and to provide a reservoir that can vary in level as the wave system operates. Another neat thing about this sump and the basement environment is that the flat thin bottom of the sump rejects heat into the cool basement floor. With a heavily lighted system, cooling is very important to prevent overheating. Without the system fully operational yet, I am not sure if it will be enough. If not, I have a cool idea for additional cooling without using a chiller (but I'll keep you in suspense).

The sump contains a bunch of pumps: One SEN 900G for the wave system (see below), two RIO 2500's for the Oceanic built-in water jets, a RIO 1700 to drain the tank, and the pump that came with the Red-Sea Protein Skimmer (can be seen sticking out of the sump). It also contains a 300w titanium heater (externally controlled), and two float switches (discussed later) 

Since there is so much electrical equipment in the sump, I have decided to put a titanium grounding probe in the sump and the tank to prevent the fish from getting lateral-line deterioration which has recently been associated with electrical current leaking into the water (shocking!).

Above the tank to the left, you can see the 10 Watt UV Sterilizer which I believe will help keep parasites and algae to a minimum. I have it mounted in-line with one of the water jets.

Lastly, the return water from the tank is dumped into a home-made acrylic box containing more crushed coral (to buffer the PH) and activated carbon which the water must run through before getting back to the pumps.

What is currently shown in this picture is a test setup. The water in the tank is fresh water, and the garden hoses will eventually be replaced with PVC pipe. I set the system up this way to allow me to test everything without taking the chance of spilling 200 gallons of salt water on my basement floor, or dumping it down the drain. You can also see the electrical boxes on the wall behind the right side of the tank which will eventually be the outlets that all of the equipment gets plugged into (I like a neat installation).

Part of the problem with a mini-reef is the need for all kinds of peripheral junk. In this picture, you can see the utility sink that I have installed to prevent the need to drag slimy wet things of all description through the living room to dump or clean them. With this installation came the need for a sink pump system (seen next to the sump in the previous picture) to pump the drain-shmoo up to the sewer pipes in the ceiling.
Can you say "There goes two weekends"?.

You can also see the Kent Reverse Osmosis filtration system on the wall above the sink this will be used to fill a plastic 55 Gallon Drum (not installed yet) and some water bottles that we will use for drinking water. The local water is not too bad, but they tend to over stroke on the chlorine sometimes and the normally present heavy metal content can mean reef tank difficulties - so its best to filter them out.

Also not installed yet is a second 55 gallon drum which will contain pre-mixed salt water to enable rapid water changes. I believe in frequent small water changes, but I really don't like mixing water every week or so. This will give me a few months of water changes without all of the dirty work.

This is a pretty lousy picture of the electrical boxes for control the system. I am currently working on this.
Being relatively lazy, and a Controls and Software Engineer, I figured that I would try to take as much monotony out of tank maintenance as possible. Eventually, all of the functions of the tank will be controlled by a PLC and PC system which will publish Aquarium system statistics to this web site (and page me if a problem arises). But for now, I will be using simple timers, relays and switches to do the dirty work. I have tried to follow NEC codes in the wiring, but there is not much in NEC to cover residential Aquarium Logic Control.

Here's what it does (or will do when I'm done):

EVAPORATION MAKE-UP
While the wave system is off, and after enough time to allow drain-back, another timer will come on, causing a make-up pump (in the fresh water drum) to refill the sump with fresh water until a "sump-full" float switch is tripped in the sump. This is purpose for one of the float switches in the sump.

WATER CHANGES
One of the great pains-in-the-butt of reef keeping. This took some time to figure out because I certainly do not want to do anything that will cause animals to die if a control malfunction occurs. So I opted here (at least to start) for a manually controlled system. When it comes time for a water change, I will throw a switch that will initiate the evaporation make-up cycle (above). When that is completed and the water has had time to mix, I will throw another switch which will cause a pump in the sump to pump water down the drain until a low level float switch in the sump is tripped (dumping about 8 gallons of water). When that is complete, I will throw another switch which will turn on a pump in the salt-water 55 gallon drum to refill the sump until the sump-full float switch is activated. After returning all switches to their normal position the water change is complete - safe and accurate!
I know, its elaborate, but I'm a geek and therefore it had to be done.

DRUM REFILL
Each 55 Gallon drum has a high-level switch. When the fresh water drum is low, the RO system will turn on to refill it (you can see the solenoid valve mounted to the side of the control box). When I want to make more salt water in the salt water drum, I turn on a switch and a second pump in the fresh water drum pumps water into the salt water drum until it is full. 

SUMP CONTROL
Finally, each electrical item in the sump will have a switch on the control panel - no stooping to turn off the Skimmer, Wave system or Water jets. I probably spent more time running wires that I would have stooping to unplug things, but that's OK because I understand that, and I don't care.

NEW! See Page 2 for a Schematic Diagram

This is a "Ted Guarriello original" which occurred to me as I was reading up on all of the latest techniques in Reef Keeping. Studies show that Corals and other filter-feeders do best when there are water direction changes in the tank that mimic the waves of shallow reefs. Most Aquarists use multiple power heads or pumps and expensive controllers to add water direction changes to their tanks. 

Being a mad scientist at heart, I, of course, could not do it that way. 
Here is my solution:

If you look on the shelf, you will see two black waste-paper baskets ($3.79 for two). The white plastic piping is 1-1/2" PVC DWV (drain, waste and vent) pipe available at any home improvement store. This, and associated fittings cost a total of $15.00. If you could see inside the trash can, you would see that the pipe goes through the wall and turns down to end right at the very bottom. The pipe on the inside is cut off at a 45 degree angle where it meets the bottom to allow water to flow into it. It is hard to see in this picture, but the outside pipe drops into the aquarium through a sanitary tee which has a hose fitting in the top. There is a hose that goes back up into the waste-paper basket and ends about 1" below the maximum water level.

HOW IT WORKS
A SEN 900G pump moves water from the sump up to the waste-paper baskets (the green garden hoses). The baskets fill slowly, and eventually get up to the point where water begins to run through the large piping to the Aquarium. The small hose at the top allows air to escape the pipe, and soon the water flowing through the pipe creates a siphoning action that empties the waste-paper basket into the Aquarium in about 5 seconds. Finally, the water level drops below the bottom of the pipe and the siphon is broken, causing the process to repeat. 
NO MOVING PARTS! 
I have the water regulated into the two baskets to make one side go off about 2-1/2 times more often than the other. This creates a great random water movement in the tank that is very vigorous (in fact, I am having a little trouble with it blowing my crushed coral around - I'll fix that somehow).

This system is not for everyone. First of all it's ugly so you can't put it in a living room. Second of all, it dumps A LOT of water into the tank in spurts which has to go somewhere. Lastly, when it goes off, it creates a blast of air bubbles in the tank that may offend some people - I think its really cool! The picture of the front of the aquarium was taken just as both wave systems were finished going off at about the same time. If you look closely, you can see a white pipe hanging down in each corner and you can see the air bubbles coming out of them.

I am very happy with this system so far. I have not put any fish in the tank yet, so it remains to be seen if they will be able to handle the water movement or will be dashed to oblivion against the rocks (I think I'll try a Blue Damsel first, since nobody actually likes them anyway). The cool thing is, if you put your ear to the tank you hear the same sounds that you hear when you are snorkeling or shallow reef diving. If the fish can't handle it, maybe I'll just leave them out, put on a mask and stick my head in every so often to pretend I'm snorkeling. 
Believe me, I can use the vacation even if it's a pretend one!

The last thing I should mention about a system like this is the amount of attention that must be paid to piping. Every single pipe run must be evaluated for its ability to syphon something out if the power fails or a pump dies. I know this from experience, but I'm sure that it is not immediately obvious to all of my readers that I will have to devise a way to keep the hoses from the pumps in the 55 gallon drums from siphoning water into the sump when the pumps stop and prevent the pump that empties the sump from siphoning the entire sump down the drain when it turns off. There is a lot of attention to detail that has to go into this stuff if you wish to keep your floor dry. I have been very lucky so far on this project and have not spilled a drop (not that it would matter in the basement), but I can tell you stories about past installation attempts that would embarrass me thoroughly (so I won't).

I plan to get a better camera and continue to update this page as the project progresses. What you see here started about 12 weeks ago so please be patient if you have continued interest.

Thanks for visiting.

email me: ted@guarriello.net

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