got ethical husbandry?

Cruz Mc5’s family reef tank

Seems the waterline in your sump leaves plenty of volume to catch water in case of a power outage. Leave your return lines as high as possible in the tank; in case the power goes out, the air will break siphon and you won’t have to deal with a wet floor. You can get a sheet of plastic from TAP Plastics, HD or Lowes as Mark suggests;
Iquid Nails should do a good bonding on the drywall.
 
Yeah. Definitely not an issue of flooding at my current water level. I’ve added some more water since that picture and still have tons of room left in the sump. I’ll have to work on my water levels after I actually start putting salt water in the tank as I’m guessing the water level was too low since I couldn’t even test my emergency drain without the pump chamber running dry.

Every time I start to feel comfortable that I understand the plumbing, I see something that doesn’t seem to be working right and go back to being convinced that I messed it up. For instance, my emergency drain is definitely a bit too high right now, and I kind of think my trickle drain is a little too high as well. Dropping them down is going to be a huge pain though.
 
You want your trickle only a couple of inches below display tank water level.
Otherwise, you will get noise from the waterfall over the overflow.
Not at first, but as crud grows there, it gets uneven, and makes more noise.
Emergency needs to be just a tiny bit above trickle.

For sump level, look at the ideal water depth of your skimmer.
That is a common way to set the depth.
Of course, you can raise your skimmer with a small pvc platform.
 
Yeah. Unfortunately I think my trickle is about 1/2 to 1 inch too high. Right now it probably keeps the water level in the tank too high, as the trickle drain is just slightly above the bottom of the overflow cut outs. It makes for quite the quiet operation, but that's because there isn't any water cascading down the overflow.
 
Ugh. First rookie mistake is in the books. I was setting up the Kessil brackets to mount my AP700 on the tank. Turns out I don’t have nearly enough room between the tank and the wall for the bracket to fit. So it looks like I’ll be hanging the light from the ceiling.
 
Do you only have the one AP700?

I went with screw fittings for the standpipes inside my overflow and didn’t bother with Teflon tape or anything. I just hand tightened them so that I could remove them more easily.
 
Yeah. Just the 1 AP700. For what we want to grow, it should be ok. And if we want to do more sps, we can add a second one.

Threaded into the bulkhead wouldn’t have worked for my main drain and my trickle drain. With the 2 90’s on each, there wouldn’t have been room to turn them. Maybe I should’ve just done a 90 at the top of each pipe rather then using 2 and making a “U” shape.
 
For PVC fittings that don’t need to be completely sealed, I’ve used the circular saw to shorten the fittings; in the case of a Durso style pipe, saves good space in the OF box and where normally only one can fit, you can use the return as second drain by trimming the 90* elbows
 
That would've been a good idea and saved some space. Also, I think I'm going to mount the brackets to the wall behind the tank. I'll have to do some modifications, but it should work just as well as mounting them on the rim of the tank. It'll also keep the brackets completely dry and further from the water.
 
Am I going WAY overboard getting a 125 gallon ro/di and 125 gallon salt water mixing tank? It seems like my options are essentially 55 gallons or 125 gallons. Our system should be about 150 gallons between the sump and display tank.
 
If space is of no concern, Why not?
In my opinion, a 50g for each on a dolly would make things easier if for X reason you need to move the barrels out of the way. Rubbermaid has a round dolly; not the one for the Brute containers; is about 24” in diameter and a 50g-ish barrel fits nicely there; I scored one for $10 at a garage sale last week !
 
I am thinking about buying 2 of these. Then essentially stacking them, with the ro/di tank on top, SW mixing tank on the bottom. Then plumbing the ro/di to drain into the SW. The SW would have an external pump that would mix the water and could then pump it to my sump.

My return pump is also going to have the ability to empty water into my sink. The hope is that water changes become extremely easy to do.
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The problem with those fancy mixing stations - hard to fully clean.

I just use a 55G brute garbage can, with a power head near the bottom.
I can pull it out and easily wash it after every use.
And the float switch for RODI fills it to exactly the height of one full bag of salt. No measuring needed.
 
Here’s our first attempt at aquascaping. The wood in the back is to show the height of our tank. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Front view

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Top view

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Side views

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