hydroinnovations
Community Member
Hi everyone
This is my 440 gallon tank that I started installing about 8 months ago and am finally starting to finish. Just when I think that I'm done it seems that there is something that needs to be changed out. I built everything myself except for the glass and the cabniet facing. The dimensions are 130" long, 24" deep, and 30" tall with starphire front. Some speacial things about my tank are
This is my 440 gallon tank that I started installing about 8 months ago and am finally starting to finish. Just when I think that I'm done it seems that there is something that needs to be changed out. I built everything myself except for the glass and the cabniet facing. The dimensions are 130" long, 24" deep, and 30" tall with starphire front. Some speacial things about my tank are
- I have (5) air-cooled lighting fixtures installed over the tank that I orignially had (5) 400 watt bulbs installed but have since changed out to 250 watt instead (I think that I was overlighting my tank). These air-cooled reflectors are attached to each other with ducting and are connected to a fan in my equipement room. The fan is then connected to a water-cooled heat exchanger which removes the heat from the lighting and chills the air. This chilled air is then blown back under my tank stand to cool the ballasts and frag tank lighting...making everything ultimately water-cooled. I use a fan speed controller to keep the 6" fan just above an idle so that it can't be heard. My tank adds NO heat to my office at all.
- 7 dimmable lumatek ballasts (5 for DT and 2 for frag tank) which means that I can change to 250 watt or 400 watt bulbs anytime without replacing the ballast. You can run a 400 watt on 250 watts temporarily if acclimating a coral just by turning the dial. These are all mounted inside the stand and are cooled with the lighting.
- Dual temp dual fluid ChillKing chiller. This chiller is capable of cooling freshwater for my lighting and also cools my tank water seperately. This is done with a single compressor and a 10 gallon stainless steel tank inside that houses the chiller evaporator. Freshwater is pumped over this evaporator and then passes to the heat exchanger to cool the lighting. Installed inside this 10 gallon reservoir is a stainless steel coil that the tank water passes through. Both are controlled by thermostats. This chiller is a one of a kind custom built unit for this tank. Whats really nice is that its commercial grade and can and should be placed outdoors so none of the heat from the chiller effects the indoor environment.
- Custom steel stand with water tight catch pan. It can hold 55 gallons if there is a leak.
- My in stand sump doubles as my frag tank. When I first installed it I had (2) 250 watts over it but this was too much light, I recently switched to (2) 150 watt instead. Its a 75 gallon tank and has several frag racks installed in it that I keep full most of the time.
- My cabinet facing is attached to my metal stand, this is the only wood used. All of the lower panels are attached with magnets so that they can be easily removed to work on the tank.
- In stand 40 gallon fuge where my small puffer and boxfish live
- Reefbrite LED actincs
- Deltec TC skimmer
- 25 gallon ATO
- 75 gallon water change tank that is intergrated in to the system
- 1/2 hp reeflo gold series pump
- Sterilight 5 GPM UV sterilizer
- Vertex calcium reactor
- BRS phospate reactor
- BRS carbon reactor
- Copepod reactor
- (3) vortech mp 40's
- (2) Tunze wave boxes
- Bought (5) vortech mp40 to start and it wasn't near enough flow. I ended up replacing (2) of them with waveboxes before I really got things moving.
- I had problems getting my deltec tc 2460 skimmer to work proplerly and it ended up not having enough flow. I bough a dwyer flow meter and put in line to get exactly the right flow rate. I also added one for my UV sterilizer.
- Started out with cool tube reflectors and flourescent actinic t5's (4 rows) all mounted to a moveable rack inside my canopy. The reflectors were terrible and light bled out of the front of my tank pretty bad. I ended up removing these reflectors and replacing with Daystar reflectors but unfortunately I no longer had room for the t5 actinics and switched to LED actinics instead.
- I bought in to the Digital Aquatics package which ended up being a mistake. I had Reefkeeper elite, net box, 5 powerstrips, temp, orp, and ph sensors. I had nothing but problems out of the system since day one and after it malfunctioned and turned on all of my MH lamps in the middle of the night I had enough. It heated my tank from 78 to 86 within a few hours...lost sps and stressed everything else. Most of the system sits in a box right now waiting to go back to DA. Once I get it back I'm selling it. I instead swtiched to more commercial grade controllers with redundancy.
- I setup the tank with (5) 400 watt for DT and (2) 250 watt for FT. I felt like this was too much lighting so I switched to (5) 250 watt and (2) 150 watts which was easy with the ballast that I have...I just switched the bulbs. My zoas are growing much faster now and my sps don't seem as stressed. I also reduced the light cycle form 12 hrs to 8 hrs and I seem to be getting about the same amount of growth.
- This is the worst one....bought a horseshoe crab to clean the sand and it spiked my nitrates and phosphates which nearly wiped out 30% of my sps, I'm still dealing with that.
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