Hello fellow reefers- I wanted to share a new project that I’ve finally completed after about ten months of planning, building and (of course!) spending.
The inspiration for this project came from Shadows Reef’s build thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-80-20-build-w-cabinetry-leveling-casters.981343/ . Many thanks to Shadows Reef for sharing so many fantastic tips from his build - I copied many of his ideas, suggestions and part numbers!
This is a pretty lengthy build so I’ll divide the story up into a few different sections to hopefully make it digestible.
Part 1: Stand, tank and plumbing
Part 2: Aquascape
Part 3: Control panel and cabinet
Backstory: My first tank was a ~4 foot high vertical tank with artificial coral, purchased from a neighbor in 2021. I would guess it was ~200g. It was visually impressive but tough to maintain (hard to reach into the tank, clean etc). I wanted my next tank to be a bit shorter and wider, but still vertical enough to make an impression. I also wanted a live rock aquascape. I have a 90g lagoon tank that I have been attempting to grow corals in, so my plan was for the new tank to be kind of a FOWLR type setup with maybe some easy corals at some point.
Part One: Stand/Tank/Plumbing
After some thought I decided to go with a cube shape, 42” inches on each side, LxWxH.
My lagoon tank has a stand made out of aluminum extrusions, designed and purchased from Alufab. It’s a fantastic stand, so I wanted to take the same approach with the Cube. Michael at Alufab was super helpful as always and provided a design beefy enough to support the massive weight of ~250g of water (plus rock, sump etc). I also wanted it to be on casters- my tank is in my garage on vinyl wood floor, but I liked the idea of being able to re-position the tank if needed in the future (without water of course).
Assembly of the stand was easy and fun, like working with big legos.
I wanted to go with acrylic, partly for safety - I live in Southern California where we get occasional tremors, and I don’t want to deal with potential cracks - and partly for weight considerations. I reached out to a local acrylic fabricator, John at Advanced Acrylics, who does great work at very competitive prices. John recommended 1” thick acrylic.
I put a lot of thought into plumbing this beast. I wanted a super clean setup (minimal head pressure) with two return pumps and two inline closed loop pumps. I didn’t want any power heads in the tank. Of course this meant a lot of bulkheads at the bottom of the tank and in the overflow, plus a lot of pondering on how to fit it all together.
This was a fun part of the project, but also a little stressful because I’m still a bit of an aquarium newbie and was paranoid about making a design mistake (eg a return hole cut too close for the bulkhead to fit, etc). In addition to using design sketches and CAD software, I also built a full size mock up using wood and pvc pipe to get an idea of how everything would fit together.
I was simultaneously figuring out what sump to use. I have a Geo sump on my lagoon tank, and it’s fantastic - a real work of art. I decided to go with a new Geo sump - the SU40R-PRO-AFR - designed for peninsula tanks, customized for my setup with slightly different dimensions, color etc. This model has a filter roller, two return pump lines, a refugium, a UV and a media reactor. When the sump arrived it exceeded all expectations. Geo is fantastic to work with and put up with all my newbie questions, providing me with precise dimensions for my tank/plumbing design process, as well as great advice.
Advanced Acrylics cut the holes in my tank to spec (14 in all!) and delivered the tank safely on the back of a flatbed pickup truck. I also asked John to make a 1/2” acrylic sheet to go under the tank, and another to go under the sump. I had a group of friends and my sons help move the tank off the flatbed, this ended up being easier than expected since the stand backed up to the truck easily with the casters, and ended up being the perfect height. It was tempting to tell everyone that I’d planned this all along but it was just a stroke of luck! I wanted to make sure the tank, acrylic sheet, and stand were all perfectly centered and aligned, which required using special angled spacers that I made with my 3D printer.
The sump arrived shortly thereafter and the fun and exciting process of plumbing began. I opted to go with schedule 80 for cosmetic reasons, although of course this meant multiple orders from BRS and other providers. So many orders! Schedule 80 is a PITA to cut and work with - everything needs to be perfectly cut and sanded. I didn’t use any flex tubing, I wanted a clean look but this meant every pipeline to the return pumps etc needed to be perfectly aligned.
Even after all of my paranoia-driven design work, I still made some mistakes, the biggest one was probably when I discovered that my sump drain holes couldn’t be positioned directly under the three drain holes in the tank. This was due to the plumbing for the closed loop pumps, which were a b-tch to integrate into the system. I addressed this by 3D printing three 1.5” Z-bend fixtures to connect the drains together (it was too tight to use two standard 45 degree connections at each drain). I was worried this wouldn’t work but it all came together perfectly, probably because the three drains aren’t under a lot of pressure. If anything, the Z bends seem to muffle the sound of water falling into the sump a bit, although maybe this is just wishful thinking…
I spent a week just chasing leaks in the system, performing various leakdown tests, etc. Ultimately I got things where I wanted, with no leaks or drips, but it was a learning process for me.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully people find this entertaining! Please share any suggestions and feel free to ask questions. I’ll post part two shortly.
The inspiration for this project came from Shadows Reef’s build thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-80-20-build-w-cabinetry-leveling-casters.981343/ . Many thanks to Shadows Reef for sharing so many fantastic tips from his build - I copied many of his ideas, suggestions and part numbers!
This is a pretty lengthy build so I’ll divide the story up into a few different sections to hopefully make it digestible.
Part 1: Stand, tank and plumbing
Part 2: Aquascape
Part 3: Control panel and cabinet
Backstory: My first tank was a ~4 foot high vertical tank with artificial coral, purchased from a neighbor in 2021. I would guess it was ~200g. It was visually impressive but tough to maintain (hard to reach into the tank, clean etc). I wanted my next tank to be a bit shorter and wider, but still vertical enough to make an impression. I also wanted a live rock aquascape. I have a 90g lagoon tank that I have been attempting to grow corals in, so my plan was for the new tank to be kind of a FOWLR type setup with maybe some easy corals at some point.
Part One: Stand/Tank/Plumbing
After some thought I decided to go with a cube shape, 42” inches on each side, LxWxH.
My lagoon tank has a stand made out of aluminum extrusions, designed and purchased from Alufab. It’s a fantastic stand, so I wanted to take the same approach with the Cube. Michael at Alufab was super helpful as always and provided a design beefy enough to support the massive weight of ~250g of water (plus rock, sump etc). I also wanted it to be on casters- my tank is in my garage on vinyl wood floor, but I liked the idea of being able to re-position the tank if needed in the future (without water of course).
Assembly of the stand was easy and fun, like working with big legos.
I wanted to go with acrylic, partly for safety - I live in Southern California where we get occasional tremors, and I don’t want to deal with potential cracks - and partly for weight considerations. I reached out to a local acrylic fabricator, John at Advanced Acrylics, who does great work at very competitive prices. John recommended 1” thick acrylic.
I put a lot of thought into plumbing this beast. I wanted a super clean setup (minimal head pressure) with two return pumps and two inline closed loop pumps. I didn’t want any power heads in the tank. Of course this meant a lot of bulkheads at the bottom of the tank and in the overflow, plus a lot of pondering on how to fit it all together.
This was a fun part of the project, but also a little stressful because I’m still a bit of an aquarium newbie and was paranoid about making a design mistake (eg a return hole cut too close for the bulkhead to fit, etc). In addition to using design sketches and CAD software, I also built a full size mock up using wood and pvc pipe to get an idea of how everything would fit together.
I was simultaneously figuring out what sump to use. I have a Geo sump on my lagoon tank, and it’s fantastic - a real work of art. I decided to go with a new Geo sump - the SU40R-PRO-AFR - designed for peninsula tanks, customized for my setup with slightly different dimensions, color etc. This model has a filter roller, two return pump lines, a refugium, a UV and a media reactor. When the sump arrived it exceeded all expectations. Geo is fantastic to work with and put up with all my newbie questions, providing me with precise dimensions for my tank/plumbing design process, as well as great advice.
Advanced Acrylics cut the holes in my tank to spec (14 in all!) and delivered the tank safely on the back of a flatbed pickup truck. I also asked John to make a 1/2” acrylic sheet to go under the tank, and another to go under the sump. I had a group of friends and my sons help move the tank off the flatbed, this ended up being easier than expected since the stand backed up to the truck easily with the casters, and ended up being the perfect height. It was tempting to tell everyone that I’d planned this all along but it was just a stroke of luck! I wanted to make sure the tank, acrylic sheet, and stand were all perfectly centered and aligned, which required using special angled spacers that I made with my 3D printer.
The sump arrived shortly thereafter and the fun and exciting process of plumbing began. I opted to go with schedule 80 for cosmetic reasons, although of course this meant multiple orders from BRS and other providers. So many orders! Schedule 80 is a PITA to cut and work with - everything needs to be perfectly cut and sanded. I didn’t use any flex tubing, I wanted a clean look but this meant every pipeline to the return pumps etc needed to be perfectly aligned.
Even after all of my paranoia-driven design work, I still made some mistakes, the biggest one was probably when I discovered that my sump drain holes couldn’t be positioned directly under the three drain holes in the tank. This was due to the plumbing for the closed loop pumps, which were a b-tch to integrate into the system. I addressed this by 3D printing three 1.5” Z-bend fixtures to connect the drains together (it was too tight to use two standard 45 degree connections at each drain). I was worried this wouldn’t work but it all came together perfectly, probably because the three drains aren’t under a lot of pressure. If anything, the Z bends seem to muffle the sound of water falling into the sump a bit, although maybe this is just wishful thinking…
I spent a week just chasing leaks in the system, performing various leakdown tests, etc. Ultimately I got things where I wanted, with no leaks or drips, but it was a learning process for me.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully people find this entertaining! Please share any suggestions and feel free to ask questions. I’ll post part two shortly.
