Mike and Terry's 300g Reef

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 05:16 AM

As we are new to R2R, we thought we'd share our build.

Our current system has been up and running since May 1, 2011 and consists of a custom Marineland 300g deep dimension tank with a total system volume of 475g.

nt 1584 by terryl93, on Flickr

Equipment List:
Custom 300g Marineland Deep Dimension Tank
Custom (approx) 70g shallow acrylic sump (dimensions: 48" x 24" x 14")
150g Rubbermaid stock vat
75g refugium/frag tank
Iwaki MD70RLT return pump
1/2 hp Tradewind chiller w/Panworld 50pxx pump
Super Reef Octopus 6000-SSS internal skimmer
Deltec AP851 Skimmer
GEO Calc RX
GEO KH RX
Phosban 550 RX (for GFO)
Phosban 550 RX (for GAC)
Tunze 7095 Controller
(4) Tunze 6055 Turbelle NanoStream pumps
(1) Tunze 6105 Turbell Stream
Reeflo Dart (3600gph) and Ocean Motion 4 for closed loop
Custom slide out aluminum light rack from eztube
(3) Lumenmax Elite Reflectors
(3) Lumatek 400w dimmable electronic ballasts currently running 400w Radiums
(2) VHO Super Actinics
(3) 12.5" Ecoxotic Royal Blue Stunner Strips w/reflectors (for dawn/dusk)

It is probably best to give some background on our journey to get to where we are today. This is our 2nd 300g tank. The first tank was installed in March of 2010. Less than 6 months later (Sep 13, 2011) the bottom seal ruptured and approximately 2 hours later, the tank was nearly drained.

We were fortunate to be home when it happened and were able to act quickly and managed to save everything except for 1 of our Borbonius anthias that had wedged into a crevasse in one of the rocks. By the time we discovered what had happened, the fish had been out of water too long.

Here's a picture taken just before the disaster:

The tank after it drained:

Our livestock, rock and sand in temporary housing:

Temporary vats:

Sump:

Refugium/Frag tank:

Needless to say, the damage to our house was significant:

We were fortunate that one of our local reef club friends loaned us a 350g Oceanic tank and steel stand to temporarily house our livestock while we waited for a replacement tank. The tank was setup in our garage and we were able to connect it with our sump, refugium and chiller.

What we thought would be a 2 to 2.5 month wait on a replacement tank turned into 7 long, frustrating months. It was difficult to keep a stable environment in our garage for that length of time and we lost several harder to keep SPS colonies and fish. Amazingly, many of our older coral colonies thrived in the environment and most of our fish weathered the conditions well.

We were fortunate to be able to re-use the skin from the original stand with the new one we built:

Here's a pic after the counter tops were re-installed:

The replacement tank was installed in April and after 2 weeks of running, the custom center acrylic overflow designed, built and installed by Marineland peeled away from the silicon holding it to the glass on the left side (from top to about 2 inches from the bottom). Needless to say, it was not a pleasant situation. Easter weekend was spent preparing and moving all of our livestock, rock and sand to two stock vats in our garage. We did not have the luxury of being able to hook into our sump, refugium and chiller this go around and we had to use hang on turbo floater skimmers and magnum canisters to help with water quality. After the repair, we spent the following weekend moving everything back to the DT.

Thankfully, things have settled down over the past few months. We learned a lot of valuable lessons over the past year and have made many improvements to our system along the way. We'll stop here for now, but will post more on our back office shortly, so stay tuned...

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 06:07 AM

We recently made some changes to our remote sump room located in our garage. We replaced our old 125g glass sump with two sumps: A custom 70g (approx) acrylic shallow sump and a 150g stock vat. To make room for the stock vat, we relocated our 75g refugium/frag tank outside of the room.

The 125g glass sump before the change:

The refugium/frag tank sat to the left on the other side of the black plastic which was there to keep light from reaching the sump. Here's a pic:

The new shallow acrylic sump:

The 150g stock vat. We have since added additional rock to this vat as well as the Deltec AP851 skimmer.

Here's a pic of the Refugium/Frag tank after it was relocated. It now sits outside the room to the left of the doorway:

Here you can see the tank in the background sitting next to the door. This pic was taken during the assembly of the acrylic sump:

It is amazing how much more room we now have in the room. Especially when you consider how much more water capacity we added. We've been very pleased with the change.

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 06:41 AM

After our first disaster, we realized that housing electronics (ballasts, timers, tunze controller, etc.) under our stand was not a good idea. We decided the best option would be to move them to the other side of the wall in our laundry room.

To make room, we stacked our washer and dryer and then installed (2) 20amp circuits. Here are a couple of pics:

The ballasts sit on top of the cabinet and everything else fits nicely inside.

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 07:09 AM

Some of our favorite recent fish pics:

Our male M. bipartitus

Amphiprion ocellaris female

Pygoplites diacanthus

C. jordani (Super male and Sub-male)

C. rubrisquamis

Tomentosus Filefish

C. lineatus

Ctenochaetus strigosus

We'll post more later...

**skyhigh** · 10-12-2011, 07:14 AM

Wow thats a super cool setup!! Cant wait to see more pics..

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 07:18 AM

How about some coral pics:

**ToXIc** · 10-12-2011, 08:37 AM

great lookin tank. looks awesome..

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 08:43 AM

Originally Posted by skyhigh

Wow thats a super cool setup!! Cant wait to see more pics..

Originally Posted by ToXIc

great lookin tank. looks awesome..

Thank you skyhigh and Kevan!

**swannyson7** · 10-12-2011, 08:46 AM

Amazing setup! I give you a lot of credit for diving right back in after a disaster like that... my wife would never let me set up another tank after a mess like that!

**Electrobes** · 10-12-2011, 08:49 AM

Holy cow. I am just amazed at not only your patience, perseverance, but still your livestock looks great after such an ordeal! What did Marineland say after all that? I'm not sure I could even contain my anger after all that!

**Bernie** · 10-12-2011, 09:05 AM

Wow, gorgeous build and absolutely amazing livestock!

**soccerbag** · 10-12-2011, 09:12 AM

Richmond, VA in the house! That's what I'm talkin' about. Wish more of the RR club would come on over and post more. Great looking tank. I heard about your ordeal with Marineland from some of the guys here local. What a mess. Tank looks great and love the granite top around the tank. Thanks for sharing it here : )

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by swannyson7

Amazing setup! I give you a lot of credit for diving right back in after a disaster like that... my wife would never let me set up another tank after a mess like that!

Thank you! I'm not gonna lie, there were moments where we both felt like throwing in the towel. Thankfully, they didn't last long as our fish are like our children and we truly love this hobby.

Originally Posted by Electrobes

Holy cow. I am just amazed at not only your patience, perseverance, but still your livestock looks great after such an ordeal! What did Marineland say after all that? I'm not sure I could even contain my anger after all that!

Thank you Electrobes! The majority of the 7 month wait for our replacement tank was not the manufacturer's fault and without going into the "gory" details, suffice it to say that the original stock tank was replaced with our new custom tank at no charge to us. As for the overflow box fiasco, they did reimburse us for the repair, but we are still amazed that they ever thought it would hold in the first place.

Originally Posted by Bernie

Wow, gorgeous build and absolutely amazing livestock!

Thank you Bernie!

Originally Posted by soccerbag

Richmond, VA in the house! That's what I'm talkin' about. Wish more of the RR club would come on over and post more. Great looking tank. I heard about your ordeal with Marineland from some of the guys here local. What a mess. Tank looks great and love the granite top around the tank. Thanks for sharing it here : )

Thanks Craig! I don't know whether you are aware, but we are hosting our Annual Reef Party this Saturday. You should come join us. If you are interested, you can find details on the local RR site.

**m and m** · 10-12-2011, 10:19 AM

first time seeming this thread sorry for the misshap in the start of it but the tank looks amazing now. Very clean looking great job.

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 10:36 AM

Thank you m and m!

**m and m** · 10-12-2011, 10:40 AM

I wanna take a VA trip and see this and craig's in person one day, they truely are both amazing.

**LegoZ81** · 10-12-2011, 01:39 PM

Did you ever determine what caused the seam split?

Very nice on the rebuild!

**Reef Pets** · 10-12-2011, 03:30 PM

Beautiful

**Mike&Terry** · 10-12-2011, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by m and m

I wanna take a VA trip and see this and craig's in person one day, they truely are both amazing.

If you are ever in town, feel free to stop in and check out our tank...

Originally Posted by LegoZ81

Did you ever determine what caused the seam split?

Very nice on the rebuild!

Thank you LegoZ81! We know there were some issues with silicon and another tank that failed within a week of ours was replaced under warranty, but we were never given a definitive answer as to the cause.

Originally Posted by reefpets

Beautiful

Thank you reefpets!