15 Gallon Office Tank Build

[Mattie H.]

I've been reefing on and off since I was a teen back in the early 90s. Then, I worked on both freshwater and reef tanks as a hobby with my mom. When college rolled around in '95, I was forced to hang it up for a while. As is often life, after college came work and eventually family obligations, etc., and I never got back into the hobby, even after my mom finally got out of the game herself and gave me all of our old tanks and equipment to store in my basement. In 2016, however, I moved to a new home. In cleaning out my old home's basement, I came across my old display tanks and equipment, and a little flame started burning in my mind... by the time the old equipment made it to the new house, that little flame was a raging fire, and I decided to break out the old 75-gallon display and make a fresh go of things. Boy had things changed since the 90s. And boy did I realize just how much I missed doing this.

Now two years in, the tank is thriving, full of a variety of soft corals, LPS and easy to handle SPS such as Montipora. I'm still no expert, but I've learned a lot and continue to progress. It's so much more enjoyable now than in the 90s, when the tech was so dang rudimentary and keeping a successful home reef was not for the faint of heart.

Since that first tank in 2016, I've adopted a few tanks from others who either had life changes or couldn't handle their tanks, and I've also gotten back into freshwater a bit with a 10 gallon semi-planted tank. I've documented my progress on each tank all along the way using my trusty phone app - for posterity, I guess - but until now I've never really detailed any of my work for others to see.

I'm currently in the very beginning phases of setting up my first nano tank, which will be located in my office in Baltimore, Maryland. Friends have suggested I journal this process online. The idea of getting feedback from the reefing community as I build actually sounds like pretty great to me, so here goes nothing...

 

[C-Reefer]

Welcome to R2R!! I'd say reefing sure has changed a whole lot since the 90's. I can't wait to see what it continues to progress with. Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on it already, so I'm sure this is gonna be a sweet tank. Is it going to be AIO?

 

[Mattie H.]

This build started when I found a white 15 gallon Aqueon column tank with stand sitting in storage at the family's beach place. It was from 1998, when my mom gave another brief shot at fish. She ran it for a year or two, but having to break it down and take it home from the beach each season was too much, and it soon ended up in the utility room. When I pulled it out and dusted it off, I saw it had an old 12" T-5 light fixture and a small Aqueon HOB filter.

Here's a pic of it at my office as I'm beginning to set it up. Don't mind the condition of the wall behind, there's a bit of an office upgrade going on at the moment.

I know it's going to be saltwater, but I'm not sure what type of saltwater tank it'll end up becoming.

 

[Mattie H.]

Welcome to R2R!! I'd say reefing sure has changed a whole lot since the 90's. I can't wait to see what it continues to progress with. Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on it already, so I'm sure this is gonna be a sweet tank. Is it going to be AIO?

Thanks!

I decided to try to challenge myself with this build and do it on a budget. I chose to reuse the HOB filter rather than spending the money to try to divide the tank into an AIO. Besides, the tank is fairly shallow so that would cut down on precious display space. I know I wanted a protein skimmer and wasn't going to do any type of sump, so I did a bit of research and came up with a HOB skimmer from Amazon with decent ratings for about $65 to supplement the stock HOB box. Bonus, the color matches the tank! Also added a digital thermometer, which I bought a bunch of a while back for about $3 a pop, and a Tetra 50 watt heater, a $7 add-on from Amazon.

I'm a few days into this build as I start this thread, so here's a pic of the skimmer and original HOB box already hanging in wait...

 

[Mattie H.]

I researched to see if I could find a good 12" T-5 that would do the trick and work with the existing ballast fixture, but I didn't find anything that fit the bill, so I decided to strip out the existing fixture and go with LEDs. I disassembled the fixture and removed it, and used a box cutter to cut out the old fixture enclosure.

Here's the old stuff, about to go into the recycle bin...

I replaced the T-5 with three waterproof LED strips from Amazon. I've used this brand on other builds, both stand-alone and combined with ATI T-5s, and had great results every time, so I decided to use them again. I went with two blues and one cool white. Figured that would make a good color for whatever I end up with in the tank. $12 each, x3, plus $3 for the power adapter.

Here are the strips all siliconed in and ready to go...

(Sorry, should have taken a "before" pic...)

I wanted these lights to be on a timer since this will be an office tank, and since I'm doing LEDs, I wanted to ramp them on and off, so I purchased this Current ramp timer off Amazon as well for about $20.

And here we go with the lights... Success!

 

[Bruno516]

Welcome back!

Sweet freakin tank, I totally need one for my office now!

 

[Mattie H.]

I've ordered 20 lbs of CaribSea Special Grade Reef Sand, $28, and 40 lbs of dry rock (which I probably won't use all of), $50. Rocks should be delivered in about 2 days from now. Once they're here, I'll get the tank laid out and the RODI water mixed and added.

I'm going to use standard IO salt, which I always use in every tank. I've also ordered some DrTims One & Only Bacteria, $10, which I swear by, to jump start the cycle.

Total outlay so far? Tank, stand and HOB box were free, so I've only spent about $222 give-or-take (plus tax) to date.

Will post more in a few days!

 

[Mattie H.]

I received the rock for the tank, a total of 40 lbs. It looks great, with various sizes and shapes. Considering the depth of the tank, I'll want to build a rock formation that has character and will make a good primary feature but leave plenty of space in the water column. I also need to design it so that I can easily clean the glass and vacuum the sand during water changes.

After many attempts (in the evening after work - poor wife!) I've come up with a rock formation that I like. As expected, I ended up with a few big extra rocks, which I'll throw into a new sump that I'm adding to my softie tank. I know this rock formation will look a bit different once the sand is added, the very bottom rocks will appear somewhat smaller.

Again - ignore the walls and floors! [emoji16] The office is undergoing a pretty extensive remodel.