Well, here goes...
The wife and I have been getting 'Big Tank' syndrome for some time now, and not having the room in our house for anything over the 55g we currently have, we opted for the next best thing... to start a fragging/growout room.
Anyway, to make a long story short, we figure we can alleviate our Big Tank jones and maybe make a little money on the side growing out frags for sale (and to trade with fellow reefers of course
).
Here's a schematic of the room itself... we're going to split my workshop in two (that half usually is just filled with junk anyway), which gives us around 8'x9' of workspace... not a whole lot, but we want to start small.
I plan on running (4) 250w halides (2 over each raceway), though I haven't decided whether to use 10k or 6500k... which would be best for growth? I'm thinking 6500k, but I really like the 10k Ushio I'm using over my current reef so I may lean that direction. The combined gallonage should be just a hair over 210g, with ~80g in each raceway and ~50g in the sump.
Ventilation will be handled during the winter with a tempstat on a ventilation fan, and during the summer will be handled by a wall-mount A/C (our summers get really hot).
I'll probably look into getting a chiller too, depending on how cool I can keep the room with the A/C. The skimmer I'll be using is a DIY Venturi I built for my current reef, which was extreme overkill (about 45" tall 4" ABS, driven by a Mag9.5). Filtration will also be handled by live rock in the sump, and I may also add a remote DSB or caulerpa fuge should nitrates prove to be a problem.
I plan on adding a calcium reactor also, since we'd like to grow out SPS once we get it up and running well.
The next shot is a detail of the raceways:
Each raceway will be constructed of plywood (3/4"), reinforced with crossbraces, and painted inside with water tower paint. I'll also have 3 glass windows in the front of each raceway for side-on viewing. I thought about using a Mag18 to do the duty of pumping water to the top raceway, which will then gravity-feed to the bottom raceway, in turn which will gravity-feed back into the sump. Each raceway will have a closed loop spraybar powered by a Mag 5, which I believe will provide plenty of current for whatever I wish to place in the raceway. The raceways will also contain sections of eggcrate suspended off the bottom so frags can be grown out on frag plugs. The arrows in the picture show the direction the water travels through each raceway.
The little ladder-looking parts at the water inlet on each raceway are bubble traps.
I haven't decided on the final height of the lighting over each raceway, but I was figuring on about 16" so I get plenty of elbow room.
Am I missing anything? If you started a growout room, what hurdles did you run up against that you didn't plan for?
I'd like to start on this in late February to mid-March, when we'll be getting some extra cash, so I have plenty of time to play around with the design aspects.
One other thing... where can I find the paint I need to do this project? I did a couple searches on the internet, but only came up with a white-paper on the paint (the Benjamin-Moore kind)... of course it was headed with large letters 'Not for Residential Use! Contractor Use Only!' (yeah, right.
).
I'd appreciate any feedback you're able to provide... I'd like to turn this into a business in the future should it prove to be successful (since I'm majoring in Environmental Economics and minoring in Business Administration I think this would be right up my alley)... I guess I've got 'Walt Smith' aspirations...
Thanks.