330g Tang Nation Build

[winxp_man]

Sooooooo……. On to a new build that started back in Oct of 2025. Tank was done ordered in Nov 2025. Received the tank this March.

96x30x25. It has some serious weight to it! So on to having a custom metal 2x2 post build.

The start design with @Joe Glass Cages ! What an awesome guy to work with! When he first picked up the phone line, I was singing along to the song they had playing for the wait hahaha. We had a good laugh about it! Then dove into tank for about a hour. Much info was passed between us and loved the convo!

I will add info to the thread as the tank gets stocked and the rest of the equipment installed. I saved everyone the pain of waiting for the longer parts by not posting haha!

Equipment is as follows.
96x30x25 CG tank
Custom metal stand with ply painted gloss white
Custom acrylic sump 60x20x16
Return Pump Reef Octo Varios 10
2x IM Helios 700 Helios Heater system
RS Reefmat 1200 hard plumbed
2x Aqua Ultraviolet UV 57w in dual return split off
Reef Octo Regal 250 Int (installing soon)

Soon to be installed Neptune Apex Pro along side Trident ACM and NP systems

RedSea ATO system

RedSea 4 head dosing system

Simplicity (I think that’s the name of the product) canister tanks

Trigger 10g ATO tank will upgrade to larger tank in a bit.

BRS Carbon/GFO system (no rush to install this unit.)

5x Ecotech Radion XR15 Pro Gen 6 on a Ecotech 90” bar suspended with the cable system. For now anyways. Will not be putting in corals for a few months.


At this point the tank is cycling in day two tomorrow being day three.

Nitrates day two of cycling 33.3 ppm Hanna

Nitrites day two of cycling 2.0-5.0 ppm API

Ammonia day two of cycling .25 ppm Hanna

Dosed 59 ML Fritz Fishless bottle Monday evening 11pm Tuesday 12am. Bacteria 30 min after the ammonia dose.

Temp 85*

No lights

Salinity 1.017 Tropic Marin

Working on posting pics in a few minutes.

 

[winxp_man]

The starting point….

Stand in the raw form being welded.

At the shop ready for power coating.

Finished powder coating. The stand was also primed with zinc for extra protection.

Tank arrival…..

Stand set in place…..

 

[winxp_man]

Tank unwrapped

Garage a mess with all the moving parts! And the bass boat in it! Haha. Took 6 of us to put it on the stand. Which in the end is a bit too tall. I didn’t account for the adjustable stainless feet I had installed.

 

[littlefoxx]

Ooo this looks cool! Im following for sure

 

[1ocean]

awesome...Just got a 90x36x24 with a 6 in wide overflow on the left panel of tank / Full 36 inch weir overflow. myself for a tank swap upgrade for the tang group to grow. new tank is still dry

 

[winxp_man]

Some updates……

Tank has fish!

But will post pics in order. Took a few hours spread over two days. But rock work was custom done by me. No prebuilt, or just piled up rocks. Wanted a scape that would give the tang bunch hiding spots. It’s one of the issues with tangs that I’m seeing. Hiding spots. And not having a lot of straight shots across the tank also helps improve anti aggression, along side much food!

So some rock washing and build pics. I did four days of bleach at 1 gal bleach for 10 gallons of water. Followed by 20 min of muriatic acid at 3 gal per 35 gal of water. Wasn’t the best to leave it for 20 min but it’s a done deal now. It ate a bit more than I would have liked out of the rocks. Should have done less muriatic or less time. One or the other would have worked just fine. But all in all rocks were cleaned and cleared of NO3 and PO4. Also I had a lot of dead creatures in the rocks after I took down my 150 system to make it a temp observation system. After the muriatic bath, I ended up doing two 10lbs bags of baking soda to neutralize the acid bath. Talk about foam volcano!

After that I washed them over night with Rodi, and a bunch of prime. Next two days they sat and dried off and to let the bleach fully gas off. Then on to the building of the rocks. So on to a few pictures of the processes as it took place since the last pic.

 

[winxp_man]

The next few pics one is of the sump panels being painted. It was chaos I tell you!!!! Haha!

Here added hose water to get the pad settled down, and to test it before going further. I let this site for three days with FW in it.

Sump put under the tank. And electrical started…..

One of the schematics that I drew. Ended up close to this but added a few differences to it.






Poor fish still suffering a 150g while the tank was being put together…. Have to show some!

 

[winxp_man]

Rocks being dried off before the building started. Mind you guys, I got most of these things done in three / three and a half weeks from tank setup and fish in it. It was a crazy few weeks!

So a pause….. i bought the UV’s from a local LFS. All they had in stock was the tube pipes Aqua UltraViolet uv systems in the 57wt. So I got a honing tool, cut off the tube bushing, honed out the UV union and installed new 2” bushings to adapted to my 1” return lines. Yea more chaos during this whole ordeal! I bought the UV during all this craziness and decided not to wait snipping and all that wait time! My fish needed their new home done already! At this point their where at about two months in the observation tank. Yea it was a 15O system, still not enough for how many! So what was in stock for purchase I bought, and modified to work. Don’t even want to get into the fitting ordering hahah! That was a crazy part to! But got it all in time! A lot of over night shipping was paid let’s just say! Haha!

More plumbing to be continued after the UV body alteration!

 

[winxp_man]

Hard pipe route with the RM1200…..

Much epoxy. I tried the regular mortar version on a foot repair from one of the old platforms, it simply didn’t work for how fast I had to get this done. So epoxy two part sticks it was! Bought out all of it from two LFS’s that had what I needed, the Aqua Scape DD stuff. And ended up going to homedepot and buying all of the JB Weld Water Weld from two of the local stores. So I ended up working with three different types or epoxy but they all worked well! Haha!

Some of the boulders were only for propping up the rocks I was glueing together.

 

[winxp_man]

So with the sand……. I ended up washing all of it! Glad I did. My 150g system (long story) I didn’t get a chance to….. and boy it sucked!

I got Fiji pink for sand.




Loading in the sand. x12-13 20lbs bags. I have about 1.75-2” bed.

 

[winxp_man]

awesome...Just got a 90x36x24 with a 6 in wide overflow on the left panel of tank / Full 36 inch weir overflow. myself for a tank swap upgrade for the tang group to grow. new tank is still dry

Awesome! Will be on the lookout for the thread if you decide to do a build thread!

 

[1ocean]

Awesome! Will be on the lookout for the thread if you decide to do a build thread!

just adding it to my current thread as the progression swap in tanks

 

[1ocean]

300 gallon oasis in the desert...may change the name to 400

 

[winxp_man]

Now on to more posts


As stated above ended up going with 1500+ ml of Turbo Start 900. This tank ended up eating up 2ppm of ammonia in three days. So I then dosed ammonia up to 4ppm by accident. But the tank ended up eating it in two days.

I had the skimmer just running to get O2 going into the system but not collecting anything.

All cleared up and cycled on day 7

 

[winxp_man]

Day 8, excitement day! Get to put fish in the system!

Regular blues from the XR15 Pro G6.

And this is moon light as the lights are getting ready to turn off.

The Gang!

This is the the dry side with a temp ATO jug. I have to fill it about every three days. Basic 5 g jug. I have a 20g custom arriving in about a week. So still have to work on installing a few things. Trident ACM and NP, RS 4 head doser, BRS GFO and Carbon unit.

More Gang Pics….

The Golden Rim got bruised when I was in the processes of catching them from the 150g system. He/she is all healed up now.

 

[winxp_man]

So the other day, I had a long day. Had to skip from managing my contracting projects to get a generator setup because the power pole was being replaced. So the power was getting shut down from 0830-1500.

So the day before I was able to grab a generator last minute before harbor freight was closing shop the day before. Then early morning running around with extension cords to connect my 150g system, my 300g system, the eshopps m70 system, two QT setups, and the house fridge.

From this adventure what I learned is I’m going to install an interlock system on the main panel. And make my life a lot easier when it comes to connecting the generator. This generator was not a bad unit at all. But eventually I’m gonna get the quiet inverter unit and have it ready in a jiffy for connecting it when needed vs pulling a million cords! Haha.

 

[JumboShrimp]

What I love about this thread it that it really shows how much actual work (labor of love?) goes into something like this. Two thumbs up.

 

[winxp_man]

What I love about this thread it that it really shows how much actual work (labor of love?) goes into something like this. Two thumbs up.

Thank you! Yes weeks of work for sure! And patients is a must to do it right!

 

[FireUnderwater]

Any chance you have a full stock list? Planning a very similar build out to go in my new home office.

 

[winxp_man]

Any chance you have a full stock list? Planning a very similar build out to go in my new home office.

I can work on making a list. It’s a crazy one though haha. I’ll post a video soon.