125 gallon mixed reef

Eagle_Steve · Jun 7, 2018

Well I figured it is about time I did a build thread. My tank has been going for a little over a year now and it just seemed fitting. Here we go...

This was all done for under $500 (live stock not included), after a lucky day. All of the stuff bought at an estate sale was not in the original starting setup, but I will leave the original stuff out as it was all sold to recoup my initial investment.

Tank: used 125 gallon (60” long) dual overflow/return tank = Craigslist free

Lighting: used 1x mars aqua 300w on 2 timers and used 2x current orbit bars and controller = $200

Misc pipe and fittings = $100

Sand: Stuart Florida beach sand on return trip from family reunion.

Live Rock from 8 year old tank being broken down = $50

Homemade rock = $50

All below was from broken tank at an estate sale = $100
Pump: Reef Octopus VarioS-8 (2700 gph)
Skimmer: Reef Octopus Classic 110SSS
Heaters: Finnex HPG 100w x2
Custom 50 gallon sump now rebaffled to be semi-quasi triton.
BRS dual chamber reactor
3x hydor corillas with controller
Unknown 10 gallon ATO that is now hooked to my ro/di.

I originally had about $1400 in all equipment not including rock. Luckily I went to an estate foreclosure sale where someone busted an empty tank in the living room, and I bought all but the tank. Was weird as all the rock, most the sand, and critters were gone. They left all of the goodies though lol. The original sump was your basic 40 diy sump with socks, skimmer, fuge, and then return. In doing more reading then paying attention to conference calls at work, the triton method intrigued me. I was not all to keen on relying on the supplements though, so I played with it some. Not sure what you would call it at this point. The fuge produces 3 gallons of cheato a month and about another 2 gallons of other macro algae that all gets fed to my goats. I have also included a diy algae scrubber into the mix. Since doing all of this my nitrates stay at about 2-5, dkh right about 9, ph stays at 8.2-8.4 depending on time of day, ammonia is 0, nitrites are 0, calcium has to be dosed via kalk and my ATO. It stays at a consistent 450 right now with dosing after figuring out the mix to compensate for consumption. Other trace elements get tested and dosed as needed. I have been 5 months without a water change, but have had to top off with salt water due to skimmer and what comes out when I thin out the fuge.

I know I am going to get some flaming about the water change thing, but I test all parameters weekly and am ready if something gets out of whack. Enough of that, below is the live stock.

Critters:
Lots of snails and hermit crabs (display and sump)
Pods, pods, and more pods
1x Mandarin Goby
4x emerald crabs in sump
2x emerald crabs in display
2x purple firefish
3x normal firefish
Mated pair of black photon clowns
2x blue/green chromis
Mated pair engineer gobies
1x tailspot blenny
1x pink spotted goby
1x diamond goby
1x peppermint shrimp
1x banded coral shrimp
1x burgundy starfish
1x chocolate chip starfish in sump
5x mini maxi carpets
1x green condi that has never moved from its spot
Tons of sponges on the rock rubble in the sump
And the star of a show, 1x black fin shark aka columbian catfish aka “Earl” that started life in my sons freshwater tank, moved to the brackish spotted puffer tank, and is now full salt.

Corals:
Kenya trees
Duncan with 3 heads now
Numerous shrooms
Numerous zoas
Numerous button polyps
Aussie elegance
Some gsp thats about to be cut up and placed on plugs again.
And new to the display a mysterious chalice that was found in the sump and has an ID thread about it.

I am sure I forgot something in the mix. Either way I am happy with everything and so are it inhabitants. Fish growth has been awesome, coral growth has been awesome as well. I cannot say what I am doing is truly successful as it is just over a year old, but 5 months of stability is nice. I do still worry though. I watch the gsp and Kenya trees since they have always reacted first. I know they are hardy, but sensitive to close up quick as well. The weekly testing with 3 different kits helps as well.

Hope you enjoyed my novel above, as sometimes I ramble on.

Below is a pic of the tank.

Eagle_Steve · Jun 7, 2018

I almost forgot to add the stand to this. Being in the IT world, I don’t get to do much wood working anymore. Framing houses did pay for
College though lol, and did allow me to know how to build a strong base and brace the crap out of my floor. Floor bracing was needed for sure as the tank sit in a 100 year old farm house.

Left over lumber was used to build it, it’s super strong due to that. Pallet wood was used to cover it. The sides come off via magnets, the doors on the front open all the way and the center brace comes out via removing 2 pins. With the front and sides how they are, it makes doing anything underneath easy. The plug is on a 20 amp gfi breaker tied to a series of server battery back ups. The cable jack is now a cat6 data jack, that I plan to use for a raspberry pie controller I am dabbling with. Although I may change that plan to use some other form of programming.

Reefer Deez · Jun 7, 2018

Beautiful tank and setup

it looks really good you got an awesome job so far! Keep. Up the good work

Flippers4pups · Jun 7, 2018

Yes, looks good!

Eagle_Steve · Aug 9, 2018

Well being as I cannot leave stuff alone, I redid my plumbing, installed a larger sump, and put in a float for top offs from my RODI.

Plumbing was noisy and my left return was way slower then my right return. So I changed the pipe for the return to equal length and changed the drains to where they are 1” and come into a 1 1/2 wye then into the sump. Both did exactly as planned. Flow is even and drain is silent. The float for top off worries me. It has worked well so far, but I think I may still put a secondary cutoff sensor that runs to a normally off relay connected to a normally closed solenoid. Any thoughts on that are appreciated.

Being as I had to take the sump out to do this and we broke down our old Oscar tank (they were 14 years old and when the female died the male followed a week later), I had a 60 gallon tank (36”l x 22”w x 18”d) just sitting there and it looked like it might fit. Well it did fit and the fun began. Old sump went back in for a bit and the new sump build began.

The new sump has a “muffler chamber” for the drain to eliminate any bubble pop noise that remained. That chamber has a sock holder for when I use one. I also installed the acrylic sheet to where is makes the chamber a triangle and actually frees up some space for other stuff. The exit from the sump is about 4 inches from the bottom and the water flow goes from down to up over the next sheet of acrylic. Being as my first area is my fuge, the flow from down to up gently turns my cheato. It also allows easy cleaning of any detritus that isn’t consumed by my massive pod population. The fuge is over half the length of the sump and is about 30 gallons. The second chamber is my skimmer to catch some of what the cheato misses. After that it goes to a 3 wall bubble trap and then the return pump.

My return plumbing also got some ports added for my dual brs reactor. Very nice as I was able to delete a pump.

All in all it has been 2 weeks with the new setup, the extra room from old to new let me add some more rock in the sump. Due to this my pods have exploded so my mandarins are happy as can be and it is fun to shake the cheato over the tank when thinning it out and watch the madness from all the fish. My cheato growth has increased as well, so the goats are really happy. I really think the cheato rotating helped that. My nitrates went from a steady 10 to a steady 5 (my end goal) with no change in my feeding or anything else. This setup has definetly helped as I like fat fish and feed everyday. Probably more then needed lol. The GHA that was starting to get ahead of the CUC and my tang has now become even with their consumption. Which is where I want it. GHA is natural and I have no issue with it,
as long as it stays mowed down. Free food for my Kole tang and starry blenny is always a good thing.

In the end this may not have been the best way to reduce nitrates by 5 lol, but it was fun to design the sump and it actually work as planned. Next up will be a real light for the fuge instead of 3 grow bulbs in shop light holders screwed to the stand frame. At least they can’t fall in lol. Can’t forget I will be getting some more corals this weekend. Not sure what, but I am sure zoas and lps will be on the list. Maybe even an SPS to see if I am ready for that.

Some pics below. I will try to get some more tomorrow with an actual camera lol. Especially the sump I am super proud of it lol. DIY FTW.

Old phones don’t do well for pics lol.

Excuse the dirty sump glass. Got to pick up a mag scrubber tomorrow. Due to sump water depth my poor skimmer is on an 8” stand, and yes there is room for back flow. Power pump off and I still have 2” of space after the syphon breaks. Skimmer stand will be redone from acrylic this weekend as long as my order gets here by then.

Eagle_Steve · Aug 9, 2018

Forgot to add I changed my lighting last month. The Chinese boxes are gone and I now have a diy 60” led fixture. It is manual dimmers but I did 4 channels all on digital timers. Simple but effective. Still have to get my hands on a par meter again to get it fine tuned, but for now my purple people eaters were used to judge the brightness. I snapped a pic with the old lights to look at how far the “reached” up to the light. Setup the new lights and kept going up in brightness slowly till they were at the same “reach”. Not an accurate way, but seems to be an effective way to me. Nothing is dead or bleached lol and I now have no shadows or dim areas at the back edges of the tank. That means more area for corals!!!!

Purple People Eaters before and after. Old lights we’re seriously blue heavy and phone didn’t like it. First pic a crappy due to that. Second pic made me realize my phone can actually take a decent pic of the light spectrum is better.

Now with more UV and a more balanced light spectrum across the board. Phone still doesn’t do well due to some blue. At least with the new lights it’s a more natural look when taken with my phone. And much more pleasing in person.

NY_Caveman · Aug 9, 2018

Eagle_Steve said:
Forgot to add I changed my lighting last month. The Chinese boxes are gone and I now have a diy 60” led fixture. It is manual dimmers but I did 4 channels all on digital timers. Simple but effective. Still have to get my hands on a par meter again to get it fine tuned, but for now my purple people eaters were used to judge the brightness. I snapped a pic with the old lights to look at how far the “reached” up to the light. Setup the new lights and kept going up in brightness slowly till they were at the same “reach”. Not an accurate way, but seems to be an effective way to me. Nothing is dead or bleached lol and I now have no shadows or dim areas at the back edges of the tank. That means more area for corals!!!!

Purple People Eaters before and after. Old lights we’re seriously blue heavy and phone didn’t like it. First pic a crappy due to that. Second pic made me realize my phone can actually take a decent pic of the light spectrum is better.

Now with more UV and a more balanced light spectrum across the board. Phone still doesn’t do well due to some blue. At least with the new lights it’s a more natural look when taken with my phone. And much more pleasing in person.

Really nice example. Looking good!

Eagle_Steve · Aug 19, 2018

Well I finally got my nitrates to sit at a steady 5 and then tested 3 days ago and they were non-existent. 3 brands of test kits and all 0. Not good for what I have in the tank. I seriously thought, “ok, I will just dose and it will be fine”. My common sense kicked in and I decided to find the cause. I started with a list of everything I do, all items used for filtration, etc. I then broke that down to be very specific. Turnover rate, skimmer size, cheato size, and how much rock I had. All was fine except for the rock. In my build journal I did keep track of each rocks weight, but never added it up. I had 294 lbs of rock. 152 of TB live rock and 142 of DIY rock. The DIY rock was very porous and good sized chunks. There was my problem. Even feeding 3 cubes of food, plankton, reef roids, and an assortment of other stuff all mixed in, my system could process it very fast. Friday night, I removed 133 lbs of rock, put in a tub with a power head and a heater. Rearranged the rock in the display with no cloudiness of stirred up sand. (thanks god for super washed sand at the start and some adhd gobies). A mix of TB live rock and diy rock was removed, as anything with zoas or palys on it stayed. Needless to say, even with all that moving and stirring my nitrates only went up to 10 on the test performed 2 hours after completion. Yesterday they were about 10. I tested today and they were still 10. Which is great, as my cheato is about the size of a baseball again. This week will be watch cheato growth, test twice a day at the same time everyday, feed exactly the same, and find the sweet spot of cheato size that keeps me at 2-5. I know bacteria plays a big part, and I had enough of that for sure to begin with lol. I will hopefully find the happy medium of bacteria consumption to cheato consumption. My skimmer will stay super dry as it has been, so hopefully I won’t have to figure that in too lol. Let the journey of balance begin again lol. I also got approval from my wife for another tank as she loved the sponges and other thing on the rock I took out. Let the fun of another tank begin.

On a side note, all my zoas were open this morning once the lights ramped up some and looked so much more vibrant. Poor things didn’t have enough dirt lol. My euphilas were even looking a ton better. Heck a rescued, about dead birds nest frag had the best PE it has ever had.

Pic below of new scape with a ton less rock. I will get a better pic shortly once the whites kick up some. This pic does not do justice for my hallucination colony.

Eagle_Steve · Oct 30, 2018

Well, the tank is dead and all has been moved to a new one. Dang zebra snails..... Guess I get to do a build thread for the new tank now lol.

Squeaky McMurdo · Dec 22, 2018

How is your Columbian Shark doing? I want one for my tank and I’m not sure how young they can be acclimated to full salt.

Eagle_Steve · Dec 22, 2018

Squeaky McMurdo said:
How is your Columbian Shark doing? I want one for my tank and I’m not sure how young they can be acclimated to full salt.

He is about 9” now and doing great. He was about 3” when in a brackish tank with a spotted puffer and then moved to salt after about an hour of drip acclimation at the size of 4”. Best thing for missed food, no exceptions. All missed food is scooped up in a hurry lol.

Squeaky McMurdo · Jan 18, 2019

I bought 2 of them for redundancy in case one dies. They’re in my quarantine right now at 1.010

Eagle_Steve · Jan 19, 2019

Squeaky McMurdo said:
I bought 2 of them for redundancy in case one dies. They’re in my quarantine right now at 1.010

Awesome. Good luck and if they are in quarantine, you can bring the SG up in it slowly over time to get them adjusted.

RichtheReefer21 · Jul 25, 2019

U have like 10 build threads. Which one can I follow? Did the 500g start yet?

Eagle_Steve · Jul 25, 2019

RichtheReefer21 said:
U have like 10 build threads. Which one can I follow? Did the 500g start yet?

I need to go through and update or close out some of them lol. We just moved and some tanks stayed the same, while others got combined. The 500 is in the garage and not on the list right now lol. I have room, but just moving kind of put a kink in things lol. Right now, my sons tank is the prime focus. It is his first reef tank so all energy is there tank wise, especially after the move.

Here is the link to his and once I get some time, I will try to make a single one for the 6 tanks we have active now outside of that one. They did all go back up at the same time lol.