Joe's Wet Dream, A 600 Gallon Work In Progress

[rbtwo4]

heres a good question....do u do water changes?

[Jobiwan]

I'm not sure about the price of the stand, Jason never really broke the prices down.

I've got a somewhat automated water change system, the basic components consist of a vat in the garage, a drain in the sump connected to the sewage system, and a pump and plumbing to move the water from the mixing vat to the sump. I've done 100 gallon water changes every couple of weeks, not so much cuz I need to, although it can't hurt, but just because it's so easy it's kinda fun. I'll post a few pictures of it now, hope you're not getting sick of boring plumbing shots...
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Here's a couple of shots of the plastic mixing tank, it's 5 feet tall and holds 105 gallons, I went with a vertical one due to lack of space. I bought it from national tank outlet, if you folks are ever looking for a reasonably priced mixing vat that's bigger than an olive drum I'd recommend them, check them out at this link: plastic tanks, plastic water tanks, plastic storage tanks, plastic double wall tanks, plastic septic tanks
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This is the manifold connected to our septic, the left side is connected to the mixing vat to allow periodic flushing of the vat when the residue from salt mixing builds up. The right side is the drain from the sump. BTW I can't take credit for these kind of ideas and attention to detail, that goes to Jason (my tank builder).
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This is the drain & Valve in the sump.
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Here is the tank in place, it is on a 2 foot high stand, the valves and transfer pump are underneath the tank.
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This is the pump and valve setup, it allows draining the tank into the septic, transferring water to the tank, and the third one in the middle bar is not hooked up yet, it will be a feed back up to the tank near the top to recirculate water within the vat to mix up salt. The pump is an Iwaki 100, it moves all the water from the vat to my tank in about 4 minutes, kinda overkill... You also get a close up view of the Rhino coating on the stand, it is made out of the same steel as the tank stand.
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This is the valve setup up under the tank, the bottom one controls flow directly into the sump, of the two upper ones the one on the right controls flow from the mixing vat, the one on the left controls flow to the septic, if the bottom one is left closed and both the left and right top ones opened, you can turn the mixing vat pump on briefly and flush the standing water out of the plumbing. The left one is closed and the right and bottom one opened to pump water into the sump from the vat.
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Nice to be able to share this sort of info with folks that are interested in it, when I try to talk to Brenda (my wife...) about it her eyes kinda glaze over.....

[rbtwo4]

lol wow so confusing for me

[Breakin Newz]

DAAAAAAAMN nice damn tank..

[fishkeeper]

one awsome setup

[nyfireman3097]

awesome set up

[albfelix]

awsome and crazy setup!!! love it!!!

[JF2381]

With every pics you post the more I like this setup!

[johnmaloney]

Sorry to reply so late the post office was taking its time. I finally got the quote though. I can get a manatee calf shipped to you for $1500, which is reasonable considering the cost of fuel these days. For a full grown manatee the cost would be substantially higher, because I would have to ship them in an irregular shaped box.

[Breakin Newz]

Originally Posted by johnmaloney

Sorry to reply so late the post office was taking its time. I finally got the quote though. I can get a manatee calf shipped to you for $1500, which is reasonable considering the cost of fuel these days. For a full grown manatee the cost would be substantially higher, because I would have to ship them in an irregular shaped box.

a manatee? The animal manatee?!?! What he is going to put that in his tank???

[johnmaloney]

Yeah it is a sea mammal that eats lettuce and sea grass and stuff. Sort of a mini-elephant of the sea if you will. They spend most of their day being lazy and getting run over by bad boat captains.


You can find out more about them here.










Had to do it....It is a pretty big tank though!

[rbtwo4]

WTF????? how big are those things? its gonna fit in that tank? is that legal? lol