Mille's system

Joined
7 May 2007
Posts
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Location
Just south of Durban
I have decided to take down my sps dominated tank and build another one in a better location, but is seems like a waste for me not to share some info and pics of how this tank evolved.
I have a 3 bedroom flat next to my house, which I have turned into my headquarters for my marine aquarium business. At the time I was forced to set the tank up in the only space I had left, the kitchen. I completely gutted the existing but small kitchen to make space for the tank.
You can see the old kitchen through the doorway.

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I have ripped out the cupboards, sink, stove etc. The tank is to be set up where you see all that junk sitting.

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Doorway bricked up.

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I wanted to utilise the other rooms to house the refugiums, water change system electrics, chiller etc, so I needed to drill some 50mm holes through the walls. I got my mate Marc (Reefed Up) to help me with the drilling and laying a new concrete floor. The walls are thick and the work bloody hard. Reef Nudi had to keep us hydrated with many a black label.
Marc thinking he’s back in the army with his LMG

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Getting my back into it (ha ha)

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We did 7 holes in all.

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The evil eye

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We had to lay a new concrete floor as the existing floor was waaaaay out.

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Layed plastic down and pushed the galvanised stand into the wet concrete until it was perfectly level.

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Removed the stand and plastic to let it dry.

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Epoxy coated the floor, repainted the walls and added a small basin in the corner.

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Tank in place. All glasswork was done by yours truly.

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Durso’s in and plumbed through the wall. At this stage my intention was to have the tank overflow into a 1000-liter plastic container in the next room, which would overflow though the wall again and into the sump under the tank. The 1000-liter container was meant for two reasons. Firstly to simply increase the total water volume of the system in order to make water parameters more stable, but also for something I believe all tanks should have, or would benefit having. A detritus settlement area. This is basically a tank or an area in your sump designed to catch detritus in order to allow it to be very easily siphoned out the system. I ended up not going this route because I wanted the space behind that wall for the water change system, so I redid the plumbing straight down to the sump area.

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I then built my sump and installed an external Eheim return pump

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I then added black abs sheeting to the inside back and sides. I purposely bent the corners to allow a space behind as I had a plan for the space. Notice some of the holes that we drilled earlier.

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My ¾” Sea Swirl ready to connect to the return pump. I imported a lot of the equipment I wanted from the states and Europe.

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Damn :/ Awesome thread... Look forward to the rest of it :)
 
Its about time we see this system, looking very good so far, glad to see Mark working for a change.
 
Geez talk about a cliff hanger. Thats rude Andrew. Give it a spin and then drop the ball. In anticipation
 
WOW nice mille, when you do something you do it properly dont you.
 
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Atlast!...we see milles system.
Excellent work there mille!
 
Great thread !!!!!!!!!!!
Been dying to see how this all came together - Good on you Mille :)
Can see this wasn't a 2 day job, lots of planning and thought went into this setup.
 
Well if I remember correctly to stop trapped air from expanding and bursting the pipes during the plating process.
 
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