180 gallon SPS focus build

[ReefBeta]

Kalkwrasse went out for the first time.


This is what the tank pH and kalk pH drop look like. The pH drop in kalk stir is smaller than I thought.

For replacement I simply dump the whole 1 lb bag in. The kalk stir got pretty full lol. But as long as the stir can turn, it will be fine. But next time I'll probably put in hard a pound instead.

 

[Regg]

After 6+ years of reefing, I finally got my first tang-appropriated size tank: a mega matrix 180 gallon tank. It's 72" x 24" x 24". So here is the build thread to share the build process of it. More posts below.

2020-11-04

2020-10-11

2020-08-09
How easy is it to do maintenance inside your tank as I'm thinking about getting this exact setup. Always had rimless tanks with no canopy?

 

[ReefBeta]

Learnt couple things about CO2 scrubber.

1. The media depletion is not binary. At the last couple of days it's absorption drop by a lot, but still working.

2. The media turn color when it's complete depleted, not when the absorption reduced.

3. The media change color from inside. The outmost layer did not change color. Could be because the air flow is lower there and thus they are not completely depleted.

 

[ReefBeta]

Finally done with waiting for the load to use up and moved the CO2 scrubber from 180G to 42G. Also setup the Phosban 550 as the CO2 scrubber for 180G.

The previous load has been running for 11 days. It should be close to exhausted according to previous record. But so far no drop in pH yet. One thing I changed is lowered the power of the skimmer, so that it draws in less air. That might have extended the life of CO2 media. It also make the skimmate production more stable while keeping the foam head close to the cup neck, so that the gunk only collect in the cup neck, not the body. So when setting up the co2 scrubber for the 42G, I also greatly reduced the air intake, so that the foam top is less bubbly.

 

[ReefBeta]

I have been feeding quite a lot of phytoplankton this past week. Fed it every time when feeding the fish, and again at night when broadcast fed coral. This past two day I noticed the sand bed is start getting some brown dino again. Wonder if it's related. Will stop phyto feeding for a week to see how things change.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

What covers are those on the mp40s @zsxking ?

 

[ReefBeta]

What covers are those on the mp40s @zsxking ?

It's something similar to this. https://www.saltwateraquarium.com/vortech-mp40-shallow-shield-black-pico-aquariums/

The one I use is 3D printed. I draw it myself according to that design, with some improvement.

 

[ReefBeta]

Got a solenoid to better regulate CO2 scrubber, hope to extend its life. But I found that I bought the wrong one. I got the CO2 solenoid, it sounds to be the right choice, doesn't it? Wrong! It's for pressured CO2 canister, for calcium reactor. It can handle quite a bit of air pressure, but also put quite a bit of back pressure to the input. In my case of opening route to short circuit CO2 scrubber, the opened route still present too much back pressure that lots of air flow still go through the scrubber. I should have gotten the water solenoid instead.

 

[ReefBeta]

Adding this thread here, for me to find easier in the future.

TLDR: changing from dose kalk every 2 hours to continuously slow dose increase pH by 0.03, which is the spike it got from the 2 hours dosage.

 

[Fishy Jacket]

Just read through your build and progress. Learned quite a bit. Thanks! I am looking at a custom Planet 60X24X26 tank with steel stand & wood wrap (if I can get it for a tank that small). Any more thoughts or your Planet purchase? Changes you would consider? Also looking at Radion XR30 Pros Gen 5 for lighting and now think I will need to hood mount like you did. You think ordering a custom hood that is taller would be better? I assume I would still have to come up with some mounting system because Ecotech arm edges won't fit between tank and hood edges. Or do they?

 

[ReefBeta]

Just read through your build and progress. Learned quite a bit. Thanks! I am looking at a custom Planet 60X24X26 tank with steel stand & wood wrap (if I can get it for a tank that small). Any more thoughts or your Planet purchase? Changes you would consider? Also looking at Radion XR30 Pros Gen 5 for lighting and now think I will need to hood mount like you did. You think ordering a custom hood that is taller would be better? I assume I would still have to come up with some mounting system because Ecotech arm edges won't fit between tank and hood edges. Or do they?

I would get a extruded aluminum stand wrap it with some sort of plastic (pvc, acrylic, etc.) for better quality and more open sump space. I would get a custom canopy that's higher, and have door open instead of lifting the front half (it's heavy, and the joint blocks many light install options). I would get a europe brace tank instead of center brace. Not having the center bar will make light spacing a lot easier. But I haven't look into what all that together will cost me. I might not want them after knowing the price lol.

About the mount, you won't be able to use ecotech's track tank mount with planet's canopy, next the canopy actually sit on the edge of the tank. But if you do a higher canopy, you can just hang the trace under the canopy. I opted not to do that because it will lower the light by another couple inches. It's already low to being with, so I really need every inch I can get there.

 

[Fishy Jacket]

Yes, I think I will go euro-brace for the reason you mention and get a taller hood. I was hoping to avoid mounting to the top of the hood, so I can easily open the hood (depending on design). I like the idea of going front access panel on hood and that would make mounting to the top an easier decision. I was also thinking that with the extra hood headspace, coming up with a side mounted hood solution for the rail might be possible as well. I would like to be able to adjust light spacing as needed, so hopefully can keep rail in design. What I have read so far suggests XR-30s placed ~8" from water is ideal for 24" front to back tank, so locking height should not be a problem. Right? What do you think about going with 4-6 XR-15s rather than 2-3 XR-30s? I assume it would even out my spread better and reduce shadowing, but wondering about PAR bottom of tank. Looking at mixed tank so maybe just keep SPS higher? Probably will incorporate more NPS anyway after seeing your stuff

 

[ReefBeta]

Yes, I think I will go euro-brace for the reason you mention and get a taller hood. I was hoping to avoid mounting to the top of the hood, so I can easily open the hood (depending on design). I like the idea of going front access panel on hood and that would make mounting to the top an easier decision. I was also thinking that with the extra hood headspace, coming up with a side mounted hood solution for the rail might be possible as well. I would like to be able to adjust light spacing as needed, so hopefully can keep rail in design. What I have read so far suggests XR-30s placed ~8" from water is ideal for 24" front to back tank, so locking height should not be a problem. Right? What do you think about going with 4-6 XR-15s rather than 2-3 XR-30s? I assume it would even out my spread better and reduce shadowing, but wondering about PAR bottom of tank. Looking at mixed tank so maybe just keep SPS higher? Probably will incorporate more NPS anyway after seeing your stuff

I would definitely go with XR15 if not for the center brace. Start with 4* XR15 and a PAR meter. It's simple to add another one or two later. With the PAR meter you will know exactly how much light there is, no more guessing game.

 

[Fishy Jacket]

Thanks! The whole "lights fitting in hood" thing is really quite annoying. Back in the day, the Coralife system intentionally only had a thin piece of plastic on the outside of the four support arms. (so it could fit between tank and hood edges) with a bigger piece to rest on top of tank edge for the real support . Anyone have DIY rail solution for this? Any other ideas?

 

[ReefBeta]

Thanks! The whole "lights fitting in hood" thing is really quite annoying. Back in the day, the Coralife system intentionally only had a thin piece of plastic on the outside of the four support arms. (so it could fit between tank and hood edges) with a bigger piece to rest on top of tank edge for the real support . Anyone have DIY rail solution for this? Any other ideas?

Check ReefDudes' video. He use extruded aluminum as light bar. Randy@BRS also has a custom rail on his 360 tank.

 

[ReefBeta]

Focus of this week is lower calcium. After founding out that calcium is elevated, I start working on lower it.

The cause is too fold. First I use tropic marin pro salt. It has relatively high calcium to begin with. Then I use only kalk so far, which contains slightly more calcium than 2 parts.

So I lowered dose on kalk, and setup Alkatronic to dose soda ash solution to maintain 8.5 dkh. It dosed about 20ml a day. But the surprise is that, the pH of the tank got noticably higher, from 8.35 peak to 8.44 peak. Not sure if it's exactly the cause, but they coincidence perfectly. Sodium carbonate should have lower pH impact per dkh than calcium hydroxide, and it's landing on the same dkh. So I'm not sure why the raise there. Will test again tomorrow. If calcium drop down enough, I'll switch back to full kalk. I may have better insight on what's going on on the ph jump.

 

[ReefBeta]

The more important note from the pH boost finding here is a change of plan. Initially, I was planning to use All-For-Reef after kalk is maxed out, to save on dosing head. But now I'm more leaning towards two parts, with sodium hydroxide. Because if using it can give a 0.1 pH boost, or even just a 0.05, it would translate to a great reduce of CO2 scrubber usage. My current estimation of CO2 media is $200 a year. If it can cut it to half, that's $100 saving right there. Even for cost of a versa pump, it would worth it in less than 2 years. Also it give me ability to adjust calcium level, which I expect to need to adjust it regularly as I use so much kalk.

 

[ReefBeta]

About CO2 scrubber, this weekend I played around the bubble into sodium hydroxide method @Randy Holmes-Farley has been suggesting. I confirmed my previous suspicious that the water depth is a conflicting factor in that method. The back pressure of the skimmer requires it to be low, while the contact time for the reaction requires it to be high. So, it's not "simply bubble it into sodium hydroxide". An actual working method will require a purposefully designed reaction chamber. I can think of mainly two way. The first is to use air pump to put fine bubble into the solution. The second is to spray solution into air chamber. In both way, the input of the skimmer is no need to put under water since the bubbling of it won't be the main way of reaction anymore. The cons of air pump are two fold. First is noise. There aren't air pumps that are as quiet as DC pump that I know of. Second is the air volume between skimmer pull and air pump push. If two are not matching close enough, it would lean to either waste of media, or insufficient CO2 removal. On the spraying approach, the first challenge is how to produce fine spray. I know that the water pump used in aquarium is terrible in spraying, because the head pressure is generally low. In terrarium's misting setup usually use the boosting pump we used in RO system. That thing is even noiser than a typical air pump. So finding a way to spray water quietly while efficiently is an unknown to me. The other consideration is the eventual precipitation in the solution. It will probably cause complication and blockage on spraying mechanism.

So anyway, that's a reactor that yet to be thought out for hobby level implementation. In comparison, CO2 scrubber is so much easier to implement. But the potential of a hundred or two in media cost per year might be enough a reason to find a practical solution for the sodium hydroxide CO2 reactor.

 

[Poseidon's snail]

following

 

[ReefBeta]

Seems recently there are more advocate on using live rock, just like it was several years ago on dry rock. It now went full cycle. I have no problem with people wanting to go back to live rock for various reason, but it feels weird that it so often framed as "dry rock sucks". The most I saw in my feed are ReefBum's. In every single live stream he's trying to validate his argument of "live rock > dry rock". It gets old pretty fast. You don't have to proof the other option bad to legitimatize your choice.

In my experience, both live rocks and dry rocks have its own challenge, and solutions. So it's not like one is necessarily better than the other. It's just choose which battle you want to fight.

On dry rock, the problem is clear, and often cited as the reason it "sucks", that's it prompt to dino outbreak. In my experience, it's because of the lack of competitors in a deserted new tank. So the easy solution is slow cycle with lights off. Run the tank for 3+ months with low or no light, to let the non-photosynthetic bacteria and micro organism establish and take over living space before the light loving one. It may also help to seed the tank with some non-photosynthetic lives, like some sun coral, NPS gorgonia, feather duster, christmas worm, etc. Plugs and rubbles come with them will bring in more diversity of bacteria, coraline, sponge, etc. The problems people usually get is when they light the tank right after nitrogen cycle is complete, or even before that. When it's a totally empty battle field, light love organism like diatom/dino seem to have the advantage to take over.

On live rock, it has its same problem of unexpected pest. Years ago when most people use live rock, that's what people were talking about all the time. Unknown crab, worms, mantis shrimp, majano, are not strangers to our tanks. Also seeded with macro algae making algae boom that much more common. Same as dino with dry rock, these are all solvable problems. Careful dips and cleaning, "curing", etc. can minimize unwanted pest going in. Also most of those "pest" are not that detrimental, probably except mantis shrimp and bobbit woarm. Most are mild annoyance. With live rock, the tank will be able to mature and stable than with dry rock. That's probably the reason why dino was not such a common problem back then. But then, people are usually spend months to cure live rocks, so is live rock actually mature faster? or is just dry rock give people for false sense to go too fast?

So both options have its pros and cons. Higher likelihood of dino vs higher likelihood of unwanted pest/algae/critters. That's before taking account into cost and availability. For me, the factor mostly goes down to cost, since both work just fine, it's nature to go with the cheaper option, and save the grand on live rock towards corals instead.