185 Gallon Custom

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

Hello everyone I have been in the Hobby for awhile and am fairly active on a lot of the threads on R2R but never did a build thread so bare with me if I am painful and slow. Up to about 3 months ago I had a modified 250DD. The previous owner had cut off the overflows on the sides and glued and silicones a piece of glass to each of the bottom corners. He also built a ghost style overflow with the returns being external and were then connected to 2x 3/4” sea swirls. The tank was very clean and just had some minor scratches on the bottom where the sand bed was. I had the tank for approximately a year or so before disaster hit. Well almost disaster if it wasn’t for my wife. So on January 21 at about 7pm, my tank decided to spring a small leak on the right bottom corner. Thank god for my wife being so attentive to everything that goes on in the house, she saw the water slowing dripping down the side of the stand it started fairly slowly but dripping seamed to be getting stronger and more steady as the minutes passed. We quickly got some towels and an old piece of clothing that I usually used to wipe the glass and proceed to tape it up with some heavy duty black duct tape that I have.

Above are some before pics. I will be adding to the story little by little as I have time. Can’t do it all at once and bore you to death.

Thanks.

graffitireef · Mar 19, 2018

Nice looking tank. The sand bed is a little red. Cyano?

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

Yeah. I think the red leds were culprit.

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

This was when I had A 36” Hamilton technologies with 2x400 watt 20k Radiums.
Great natural shimmer.

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that the person who sold me the tank also likes to do woodwork, so I asked him if he could build me a simple stand. I needed it to be no taller than 30” so tha it could fit through my doors as well as to help with the 27”depth of the 250 DD. He did a great job building it.

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

PANONHAS · Mar 19, 2018

After staining the stand I used clear flex seal. Worked out great. For future reference, I will be using the same stand for the new build. So there is a hint on the dimensions of the tank.

graffitireef · Mar 20, 2018

PANONHAS said:
After staining the stand I used clear flex seal. Worked out great. For future reference, I will be using the same stand for the new build. So there is a hint on the dimensions of the tank.

Phil Swift approves.

PANONHAS · Mar 20, 2018

Picture before it was set up for reference on how it was modified.

PANONHAS · Mar 20, 2018

Above are picture of the day it started leaking and the process of emptying it out. I don’t think I mentioned that before all of this happened, I had purchased an acrylic tank from an LFS near me. I was going to try and create a waterfall style aquarium just to see how it would come out. Well I am glad I had purchased it because it basically saved my rear end. Below are some picture of the build progress on that particular tank.

PANONHAS · Mar 20, 2018

PANONHAS · Mar 20, 2018

PANONHAS · Mar 21, 2018

Ok, so fast forward past the tank leak and now it’s time to get another tank. I did quite a bit of research (meaning a lot of research) and received a few quotes from different Manufacturers. I love Reef Savvy but they took quite a long time to get back to me and by then I already had made my decision. I am pretty impatient once I put my mind to something, probably not the best thing to be. As I mentioned before I will be using my current stand so that means that the tank will have the same dimension as the 250 DD as far as length and depth. Since my experience with the height of the tank was not that great I decided to not go as deep. So here is what I am getting.

After contacting Crystal Dynamic Aquariums and receiving a quote from them. I emailed them several times asking about as many question as I could to the point where I thought Zoya, was just going to ignore me. Well she didn’t. And she is extremely helpful and very nice. I spoke to her several times over the phone also to square away some details. From my perception Zoya is the face and voice of Crystal Dynamic Aquariums,she has always been very prompt in responding my emails always within the same day. So as you see from the build document I am getting a 60” x 36” x 20” 3 sides starfire, with recessed eurobracing and a Synergy Reef Ghost overflow. I am also getting the 44” trigger systems Triton sump in Blue with the piping to match. I also went with the bottom being full black starboard. I will be going bare bottom.

PANONHAS · Mar 21, 2018

I will be using some of the equipment I had before such as skimmer and return pump as well as the power heads. The protein skimmer is an Eshopps S-300. The return pump is an Ecotech L1 and the power head that I have right now is an MP-60QD, I also have a Maspect Gyre which I might use.

PANONHAS · Mar 22, 2018

Hello everyone as I have been patiently awaiting for my tank to be built I have been cleaning up the stand and also painted the inside white. This should help make it brighter inside for maintenance purposes. Also while looking at the Marketplace on R2R about a month or so ago I came across a ATI Nano Box Hybrid. Asonitez (Tristan)was selling it. It was an 80Watt 8Bulb that was converted to 6 bulbs and 8 Led clusters. He also had it powder coated white. I had to take advantage of the deal so I bought the light. I have to say that he is a great guy, there was some damage during the shipping of the Light, even though it was really well packaged. Seems like the Fedex person dropped it on a corner. Tristan filed a claim for the damage and sent me the check as soon as he received it, he also kept me in the look at all times. The damage was merely cosmetic and the light works fine. Also based on the color of my stand I painted the fixture black. I used high heat paint that is typically used on grills in order to not have any issues later on. I was initially thinking of wrapping it and am still considering it. I also found high heat wrap that is used for brake calipers. Once I bought the light I had to find a way to hang it. Since my ceiling is pretty high and is also sloping, I decided to use Black 80/20 Extruded Aluminum to build a mount for the light. Below are some pictures of the light as well as the mount.