120G Build

[StrictlyBusiness]

Hey everyone!
I’ve been holding off on this for some time now. I knew my build would be slow so I didn’t want to keep you all waiting. I’ll show you where I’m at now and then we will revert back to where it started. I’ve been planning this tank for around 6 years. Nothing went according to plan, I purchased all the equipment slowly over about 2 years and literally the week before I was about to order my custom tank from miracles…. The CRA (Canada revenue agency) called and informed me, my taxes had been filed incorrectly for the last 5 years and I owed roughly $40,000. Talk about a gut check. Luckily for me I was able to pay them off but didn’t have a ton in the way of disposable income. I figured the tank would never happen, then I saw a Facebook marketplace post for a custom built miracles tank, little bit shallower then I wanted. With 2 vectra M2’s, extra plumbing parts and a custom $7200 sump…. all for around … $700 CAD. How could I not do it? A little shallower than I wanted but for the price… I had no choice!


I will start my journey soon, stay posted, and keep safe!

 

[MossyFroggyLove]

Nice tank.

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

So I’ll give you guys a breakdown of how it all started…
Starting from about 2023 I’ve been slowly accumulating the items I wanted, skimmer, pumps etc. (this has come back to bite me in the butt and I don’t recommend it). I started by ordering the carrib sea life rock and planning my scape, built the scape in sections, I then ordered an ice bath off amazon to use a vat to start cycling the rock in.

My plans were to order a custom aquarium from miracles, I believe the dimensions were going to be 66”x36”x22” and literally a week before I was going to place the order, I got a call from the Canada revenue agency stating I had been filing my business taxes wrong for the past 5 years and owed a very large sum of money, and they gave me 3 months to pay it cause they are so generous. Needless to say, I basically thought the tank wasn’t going to happen and I may as well start selling the gear I had accumulated but the resale market on the gear sucked so I held on to it holding out hope…

At this point the rock was cycling in a completely blacked out vat that I had added Dr.Tims and microbacter 7 too, I almost drained it but decided to keep it going. That fall I saw a Facebook marketplace add for a 60”x30”x18” miracles aquarium, custom sump, came with 2 vectra M2’s, extra plumbing and the stand if wanted for $800 or something. I managed to get him down to $600, and thought, this is going to be my only opportunity considering I have most of the equipment I need already. I wasn’t a fan of how shallow it is but for the price I can’t argue.







Ended up picking up the tank on my way back from a stint of out of town work in late November 2025. Had to drive 3 hours with my tailgate down cause it was about a 1/2” too long to close it which had me worried but managed to get it home safe and sound despite the cold Edmonton weather and terrible roads.
Worked out of town for a few months, then got a new job that took most of my time so things stalled. I had to re build my scape to fit the dimensions…



I built a completely over engineered stand out of steel and had it painted at our paint shop at work, around Augest of this year and started the plumbing…
So the aquarium was built entirely out of starphire glass, even the ONE piece eurobrace with rounded corners he had made that allegedly the first one cracked while trying to manufacture it. It’s quite nice, I’ll try to snag a photo of it I don’t have one right now. It is also drilled for a closed loop which I wasn’t super keen on but again… the price…

 

[Samantha A]

Wow! What a great deal on a nice setup. Congrats

 

[FlameangelLover]

Following

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

Around mid September I decided it was time to do a water test, so I filled it up and let it sit for a week. All went well until literally while I was hooking up the hose to drain it and my 4 year old daughter was playing around the sump area and her head hit the UV sterilizer and I heard a loud crack. It sounded like that noise PVC makes when you’re moving it around so I wasn’t too worried. That was, until I noticed this crack by the bulkhead, I felt it with my nail and confirmed that it was deep enough to catch my nail….


I was devastated, I assumed it was all over.
So I drained it as quick as I could and removed the bulkhead to inspect it further. I realized the “crack” was actually just a scratch. It didn’t reach to the drilled hole itself and it didn’t penetrate that glass at all. It was just on the surface .





Regardless I sent these pictures to miracles and asked their opinion, they agreed with me and thought it would be fine.
First crisis averted!

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

Sept 16 I filled it up with saltwater and added the rocks, couldn’t get the sand I wanted locally so had to wait a few weeks to order it online.

I had been culturing pods for around three weeks, they were ready for harvest so I dumped them in and restarted the culture. It was probably too early but oh well. I thought they would take longer.
Next step was getting the clownfish into quarantine. I’m using the SR quarantine method from Serious Reefs. They finished on Oct 16




The next fish would be a small yellow and purple tang
I started working on the cabinet that would sit behind the aquarium, I wish I had done this first but I was impatient to get the water in the tank
Below are the cabinet and the canopy that I am making out of 80/20. Seemed a lot cheaper then the mounts Ecotech makes that I’m not really a fan of.

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

The canopy has 6, gen 6 Radion XR-15’s, it will eventually get skirted in wood as well as the cabinet on the aquarium. I’m working out how I want to do it but since the stand is steel I want to make the panels all attach via magnets so I can remove them at any point for easy maintenance.
The tangs went in a few weeks ago and I currently have a blue and Naso tang in quarantine, but yesterday the Naso kicked the bucket unfortunately. He wasn’t eating anything I fed, I tried mysis, seaweed extreme, I had small nori strips, I tried big sheets of nori, I even tried Manila clams…. No luck
Found him like this in the morning



The blue tang is eating and doing great though.

 

[fishface NJ]

Love the aqua scape. Good luck with the tank. What is "SR quarantine method from Serious Reefs?"

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

Love the aqua scape. Good luck with the tank. What is "SR quarantine method from Serious Reefs?"

Serious Reefs is a subscription based you tube channel with Ryan from bulk reef supply. It’s an amazing resource for all things reef related. I would highly recommend it.

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

Now I’d like to get into my ongoing problems I’ve been having with my equipment. Starting with Neptune systems. I am so thoroughly unimpressed so far with what I have had to deal with. I hooked up my A3 pro after I finished my cabinet, went through the setup process ok, no issues, but immediately started to notice it would not stay connected to fusion. I would get a solid orange light, but I could not log into fusion because the apex was never connected. It would say I’d have 284-376 disconnections in the last 24 hours. I contacted support and they just kept giving me intrusions to log into fusion to allow them access but I couldn’t log into fusion. No matter how many times I told them, they just kept telling me to log into fusion. After almost a week of back and forth I found a window when the apex was connected and logged into fusion quickly before it disconnected and gave Neptune support access. Fast forward over a month of waiting sometimes 5-7 days in between responses from Neptune, completely resetting the apex 3-5 times, buying an Ethernet cable, buying a new micro SS card to replace the corrupted one in the head unit, and buying a separate wifi router specifically to run the apex on, I currently have an apex that is locked on the blue connection light, won’t allow me to connect to the apex, I’m leaving on vacation over Christmas in less then two weeks and Neptune won’t replace the head unit because it’s out of warranty. The unit is brand new, but this is why you should never buy this stuff early on and sit on it. I get it’s out of your 1 year warranty window, but I’m sitting in almost $5000 in your company’s equipment that I can not use because your base unit didn’t work out of the box. Throw me a bone here Neptune.

 

[StrictlyBusiness]

Added the blue tang yesterday, seemed to integrate well despite being super skiddish in quarantine. But noticed a few notches missing from my purple tangs fins today when I got home from work so I hope it’s just some minor bickering.