29 gallon for first build

[james73]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and saltwater aquariums in general. Had a couple of freshwater cichlid tanks years ago but had to rehome the fish and break it all down when i went to college.

After weeks of reading and planning, I'm finally getting started on the setup of my tank today. I'm building a stand from 2x4s to house a 29 gallon up top with a 10 gallon sump in the bottom. I'm going to lay out all of the details of the setup and if there's anything that jumps out to the more experienced reefers as a bad idea, please let me know!

I have an entire unused room in the back of my basement with room for this setup. I'll have space for a water mixing station, a quarantine tank + other tanks if I need them, and a phytoplankton culture to feed to pods. I'm eventually hoping to do soft corals and a pair of seahorses, but for the first 6 months or so my goal is just to get a stable system going with a large copepod population and some seahorse-safe inverts. Long term goal is to get the system mature and stable enough that I can introduce seahorses but as of right now I'm not 100% sure if I'll get there or wind up going with a more traditional mixed reef.

I'm planning to drill holes for 3 1 inch bulkheads in the 29 gallon so that I can run a herbie style overflow and a return through the back glass. The acrylic overflow boxes were all expensive and none quite fit the dimensions that I wanted (3x7 inch top to bottom overflow in the center of back glass) so I had some glass cut to size and i'll be making it myself.

For my sump I'm planning 3 chambers: 1st one is 8inches deep for the drain and emergency drain. I'll run a 200 micron filter sock and i'm planning to put a simplicity 120dc skimmer and my heater in this chamber as well. Next chamber is going to be 7inches deep for a refugium with some rock, macroalgea, and hopefully a thriving copepod colony. After that there will be a bubble trap and then the return chamber. I was planning to go with a syncra silent 2.0 rated for a little over 500gph to get a little more than 10x the system volume in flow through the sump per hour.

Inside the tank, i'm going to start with 1inch sandbed and about 30lbs of marco reef saver rock. I'll add some food to kick off the amonia cycle and then probably just run the tank for at least 6 weeks to get through the various cycles and ugly stages. I think at that point it would be safe to add pods and supplement feeding them with phytoplankton. Would this be a good time to start my cleanup crew? I'm thinking 1 or 2 snails and a peppermint shrimp.

For lighting i'm thinking of doing the nicrew 100watt LED as i think it should be good enough for some soft corals. I really want to try to get more of a coral+invert tank going in the first 6 months or so and get a lot of branching corals that would make good hitching post for seahorses in the future.

I'll be posting in update in the next couple of days with pictures as I hope to get my tank stand and all of the plumbing done this week.

A few big picture questions i'm still thinking about:
1. Is it feasible to establish a mature coral+invert tank prior to adding any fish?
2. Do i need some live rock or will my longer timeline allow my dry rock to become live enough for this sytem?
3. When it comes to flow for seahorses, i've seen conflicting advice but for now I'm following the advice I've seen to create a lot of flow but use rockwork to create slower areas that the seahorses can escape to if needed. I'm not sure what the best way to achieve this is without creating deadspots in the tank.
4. Any suggestions on water testing kits? Going to start with ATI strips for the cycling but eventually planning to upgrade.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

For water testing kits? ATI aren't bad to start with (I would get a master test kit over the strips if I were you). Some people like them, others don't. Personally, I have had success with them? However, I would eventually invest in getting either hanna checkers, a Red Sea master kit, or saliferts. Best of luck!

 

[james73]

Just a short update today, mostly finished with the stand for my tank. Just need to skin it with plywood on the top, sides, and back and give it a water resistant coating. Next steps are to drill the display tank, add my glass overflow box, and add my baffles to the sump.

 

[rbancroft]

Sounds like a solid plan, good luck!

I'm no expert but your timeline sounds very reasonable and as long as you keep adding things slowly I wouldn't worry about live rock/dry rock. You could also add some other biological media in your sump (e.g. marine pure or brightwell microbacter) to increase surface area for beneficial bacteria.

With no fish it might be a bit more challenging to keep the nutrient levels high enough and stable. But it's definitely possible.

I use and like red sea tests.

 

[james73]

So I've been pretty busy and havent gotten as much done as I wanted but i have another short update. Finished up my stand this morning and gave it a coat of spar varnish and i'll probably just do one more tomorrow. I also drilled my tank, which was actually a lot easier than I expected it to be. Going to build the overflow box and sump later today and hopefully the tank should be ready for water and rocks next week.