RC 75 DIY Stand and Sump

Here are the finished pictures of the stand. With a taller stand, the extra space in the cabinet is nice, but it will be needed when it is stocked.

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The stand with the equipment tray doors open. The equipment tray ended up taking almost as long to build as the stand shell itself. It was a project inside a project.

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The stand painted and finished.

In hindsight, I wish I would have used a clear spar urethane finish on the birch plywood inside of the stand, instead of gray paint. It would have been a nice natural look inside, while keeping it a light color. As it goes, I literally thought of this in the middle of priming the wood!

Nice job!!! keep the pic's coming.

Awesome progress!

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Originally Posted by choir

Thanks Tom - I agree and wanted a bigger sump too! I made this actual size layout to determine what would fit. That was all the room there was to fit all the gear.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...psc3261eda.jpg

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As for a bigger sump... A 20H is only 12 inches wide... Could you fit something with a 24x18 footprint?

Tom

If it is not to late, I would go with as big of a sump as you can fit. A 30 long would be the same width, and give you a foot more length to account for skimmer and refugium.

Not sure that having to 2 layers of ply would be enough for a large sump though. (I have no science or math, just a gut feeling.)

The equipment and stand do look fantastic!

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Originally Posted by rfgonzo

Nice job!!! keep the pic's coming.

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Thanks rfgonzo - have more on the way.

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Originally Posted by Tom@HaslettMI

Awesome progress!

As for a bigger sump... A 20H is only 12 inches wide... Could you fit something with a 24x18 footprint?

Tom

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Tom - The width of the stand and tank are 18 inches. The cabinet style gives me 16" inside to work with. Never even thought about going wider, but now you mention it, I wish I would have. I'm keeping track of all the "should have" things like this. There is likely to be more :]

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Originally Posted by Poseidon

If it is not to late, I would go with as big of a sump as you can fit. A 30 long would be the same width, and give you a foot more length to account for skimmer and refugium.

Not sure that having to 2 layers of ply would be enough for a large sump though. (I have no science or math, just a gut feeling.)

The equipment and stand do look fantastic!

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Thanks Poseidon - I am too far along with the sump for now, but it's nice to know I have that option.

20 Gallon DIY Sump

The sump design has four chambers; a drain, filter sock, skimmer and return pump. Although I would have like to go bigger, I used the smallest size I thought I adequate, to allow room for other equipment in the stand.

Baffles not so simple

I thought baffles could easily be done. I read about those buying glass baffles from Home Depot. They would even cut it to size. I found stores only carry picture glass (1/10” thickness). Glass from glass shops were well over $100 polished. I even went to a thrift store and found glass that looked old, which turned out to be tempered. It exploded into hundreds of pieces when I tried to cut it. I finally found 3/16” plate glass on craigslist.

My first time cutting glass was not that difficult. Now that I had the pieces cut and edges sanded, I wasn’t sure how to how best to hold the baffles in place and square while caulking. There were all kinds of bracing methods online. The easiest one I found was by RocketEngineer, who turned the tank on end and used spacers. Gravity kept the glass panels square and made easy access for caulking.

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Starting the baffles using wood spacers and caulking with GE silicone 1.

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This is more tedious than expected having to wait for the each baffle to dry each time.

Baffles on the other side of sump

This side was not quite as easy. Two pieces of glass required a square notch cut out at the corner. The filter sock baffle and a glass cover over the filter socks. For the first side of the notch, I used a grinder with a diamond blade to wet cut (one of my kids spraying water). That was the most delicate part. Using the glass cutter on the second cut of the notch was easy in comparison.

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Notching the filter sock / skimmer chamber baffle.


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Filter sock cover with notch for drain pipe.

The last baffle divided the drain chamber and the filter sock chamber. My thought was to keep the drain pipe separate from the filter socks to make changing them out easier.

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The last baffle, dividing the drain and the filter socks.

All the baffles caulked in place. The 4 chambers are the drain, filter socks, skimmer and return pump.

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The drain chamber (the smallest section at the top right corner) is sealed to the bottom on all 4 sides.

Filter sock holders

I made the filter sock holder with two layers of 3/16” acrylic sheet. There are two different size holes in the top and bottom plate. The top hole to keep the edge of the sock level with the top plate. The bottom plate supports the sock.

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You can see on my first try, the holes do not match up. I had to cut the bottom plate section in half, then realign the holes before gluing.

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Although the bottom plate was cut, its not seen - an unintentional good result.


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Ended up caulking the sock holder in place.