90G No Rush Mixed Reef Build

[jwood73]

I just picked up a used 90G (rimmed) with acrylic sump for a decent price. This will be a long slow process for me (probably at least a year before I have it up and running as I need to accumulate the sump equipment, build the stand, cycle more rock, etc.). It is currently sitting in my truck bed, until I can get a friend to come help me move it into my workshop where it will be for the next month at least. I got the tank from my LFS, it was one of their display tanks they took down while consolidating their saltwater portion of the store. I know it does not leak (so the seams are good); however, the silicone on the interior corners has seen better days, I am guess their algae scraper did a number on it. I intend for the tank to be up for the foreseeable future, so I might as well do it now while all my fish and corals are happy in their current tanks (and not wait for it to become an emergency in 5-10 years). My first plan is to thoroughly clean the tank and then build up the courage to redo the inner seals (not the seams). I intend to use RTV 108 for the silicone and one of the silicone/caulking beading tools, I will update as I progress on this front.

In the meantime, I have begun to plan out my stand. I mocked up the tank in SketchUp, and built my stand around it. Currently it will be 54" from the floor to the top of the tank rim which is about what my WaterBox 50.3 is right now. I didn't want to go any taller as I would prefer to not need a step stool when working in the tank. Construction will be 2x4, 2x6, and a 3/4" birch plywood top with a 1/4" chamfer. Joints will be TiteBond III and pocket holes/screws using a Kreg jig. I have planned for a 1/2" lip on the backside of the tank, and a 1" lip on the front and sides. The 1/2" lip on the back is to make sure my drain lines clear. I will leave the back of the stand open as I am going to plumb through the wall and put my sump in the room behind my tank. The sides will be closed off with bead board (not shown in SketchUp). I will make cabinet doors for the front, and put plywood in the bottom for general storage. The cabinet doors may be further down the road once I can make it down to my parent's and make use of my dad's shaper to make some raised panels. I will prime the stand with Zinsser bullseye, then use a semi-gloss white paint. I will not have a canopy. I will start on the stand once I have resealed and leak tested the tank.

The overflow is drilled with two holes, one 1-3/4" diameter hole, and one 1-1/2" diameter hole. My assumption is it was drilled for a durso overflow with one drain and one return line. My goal is to plumb it for a herbie over flow, and run my return lines over the top of the tank like this:

Thoughts on drilled returns vs going over the rim?

Am currently in the design phase of my build and was wondering what everyones opinions are on going over the top rim of the tank vs drilling for returns? why?

www.reef2reef.com

I currently have no idea how I want to setup the sump yet as all my current tanks are AIO or using an HOB. I will be plumbing my 10G frag tank into it, and would like to have a fuge. I may split my drain line and run a separate fuge that sits below my DT and above the sump. The acrylic sump is 36" long, and 13.5" wide, 16" tall, so approx 33g. I may end up tearing down my FW 20g L and convert that to the frag tank, and use my 10G as the fuge. I have some time before I have to decide on this though.

My goal is to end up with one system in the house and only one DT, as opposed to the 4 separate tanks I am running right now. I will update as I make progress on the cleaning, silicone, and leak testing. If that goes well, I will move onto the stand. After the stand, I will start watching the used market and BRS openbox/sales for sump equipment as I plan out the sump build.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[jwood73]

Well now that power is back I decided to start messing around with the silicone in the tank. All of the forums where they talk about how monumental a task this is, they were not kidding! I’ll probably just do this one seal at a time and spread it out over a week or two. In the future, I probably wouldn’t go through all this unless the tank was free (a lesson learned for my future self). I cut out one vertical seal and got the overflow cut out, the overflow was a pain in the butt, the vertical seal was easy. For the overflow I had to use stainless steel fishing wire to get between the overflow and the glass. I’m going to start soaking the overflow box in vinegar to clean it up and help get the old silicone off. The RTV-108 delivered today, so next on my list is to get some bulkheads so I can leak test the tank when I’m done re-sealing it.

 

[jwood73]

This has been back burnered for a few months. Finally got around to starting on the stand. Decided to redesign it and build it out of 11-ply 3/4” birch plywood. Here are some progress pics. If I were to do this more than once I’d bite the bullet and buy a track saw, it would have been much easier. It still needs the back and top attached. I’ll probably paint it black and make 2 sets of push to open cabinet doors for it, plus some shelves for the cabinets. My sump will be in the room behind my tank so no need to fit it under my stand.

 

[jwood73]

More progress on the stand. I have cut out the spot for my drain lines, as I will need to use the stand for the upcoming leak test.

On top of this, I finished resealing the tank. In hindsight I would have done this during winter so the skin time on the silicone was longer. The beads look okay, some are great and some are less than great. I have found 3 air bubbles in three of the seams, but I am hopeful they'll be okay given how thick/deep the seams are. I used a P100 respirator with activated carbon for organic vapors, and had my air filter running on high with the garage door open, even with all this my eyes were burning from the silicone vapors. Just a word of caution for those looking at doing the same.

Prep work was isopropyl alcohol, and frog tape for the edges. I bought a silicone smoothing tool to smooth the seams, with how thick my beads were the tool was absolutely necessary. I will hopefully leak test this weekend. If it holds water, then I'll work on applying bondo and paint on the stand.

Removing the old silicone from the overflow was pretty difficult. I pretty much had to scrape it all off with a razor blade.

I would highly recommend an organic vapor respirator.

Air filter I mentioned earlier, I know this won't filter out vapors, but it at least helped keep air moving. You seriously need to do this in a well ventilated space.

Celebratory beer for finishing the seams.

 

[jwood73]

So far the tank has passed the leak test. The overflow didn’t leak either and functioned properly so my excitement with the build has started to increase. I put in an order with a plumbing supply house and BRS consisting of 3/4” and 1” fittings and some loc-line to get my plumbing setup.

I also have my skimmer and fleece roller on order. I went with a bubble magnus 7, and a Klir V2 fleece roller to retrofit the 7” sock fitting I have in my sump. I know the original Klir had a lot of bad reviews but it seems they all stemmed from the sensor and the V2 supposedly fixed that… guess time will tell. I have plans to drill and pipe in a 40 breeder I have laying around to be a large refugium, I’ll run a DSB, lots of rubble rock and macro algae. But that will be after getting the sump ironed out.

 

[jwood73]

My sump is starting to come together. Fleece roller, skimmer, and return pump are all in. I’ll plan on using some bio bricks to lift up my skimmer to the right water level. I went with a DC jaebo pump, my math puts me around 450gph.

Still trying to decide what heaters to run, I’m thinking I’ll run dual 200W heaters with an inkbird controller. Size is a concern, I can’t really exceed 12” in length. I’ve seen mixed reviews on the BRS and hygger titanium heaters, but they’re about the right size for what I need.



Also starting to play around with some rock to come up with a scape. More to come as I progress. Next is to make a small stand for the sump, and to finish painting my 90’s stand.

 

[jwood73]

The stand minus the four doors is finished. The doors can easily be installed once the stand is in place, so my plan is to work on those once the tank is up and cycling. I smoothed it our with a combination of caulk and bondo. Sanded to 120 grit, and painted with an interior/exterior acrylic enamel paint intended for trim and cabinets. 2 coats seems to be sufficient. I will be moving the stand to the other side of our basement to let it cure for the next few weeks. It is not fully dry in the last picture, so I don't have one yet showing the fully uniform color.

I have been tinkering with my scape as well. I have this put together so far. It's about 40-50% glued between the two main structures. The center pieces are not glued, as I have to be able to move it, and I am not fully satisfied with the end result yet. The right side has a lot of small caves and cervices that are hard to show on camera. But I am still tinkering with making some more overhangs. Max height on it right now is about 12" which would be half the tank depth, so I think that is as tall as I will go with it. Open to feedback on the scape.

My hope is to have the tank up and cycling by mid June. I have everything minus heaters, sand, and a stand for my sump, which I should be able to bang out with some scrap in one of the coming weekends.

 

[jwood73]

The tank is officially up and running.

I found a steel beam on the first cut I made for my drain lines, so I had to make a small patch and move my opening over about an inch and a half. From there, I plumbed my primary and emergency drain lines (SCH40 PVC) through the wall so I could set my sump in its permanent location. A leak test revealed my 1" bulkhead had a slight drip, so I had to redo my 1" line with a new bulkhead. All socket joints were glued with PVC glue and primer rated for drinking water, and for all the threaded connections I used pipe dope that is NSF-61 certified for drinking water. I still need to build doors for the 90's stand.

After a successful leak test on my drains, I proceeded to set my return line, which was run in 3/4" PVC. The pump is a Jecod DCP-6500. The pump runs at 64% speed and 32W.

The tank has roughly 80lbs of dry marco rock and 80lbs of caribsea special grade live sand. I used my RODI water and mixed up 25g batches of saltwater (tropic marin pro-reef at 34ppt) to fill up the tank. The display probably took around 65-70g of water to fill up to the bottom of the weir. I then filled the sump to my minimum water level for the pump (approx 6" in the pump chamber). From here I turned on the pump, and adjusted my drain line, pump speed, and added water until my sump's recommended water level was reached while running (there is a sticker for min/max level above my salinity meter in the picture above). From here, I turned off the pump and I still had plenty of volume to catch all the flow back. My return jets are located right at the water level so I have no real amount of water siphoning back into the sump, just the water in the pipes and my overflow. All in all, I probably have a total water volume in the 80-85g range. I plan to drill my 10g frag tank and convert it to a refugium which is why you see the ball valve teeing off from my return line which will eventually feed the fuge. Which should push me up to 90-95g total water volume.

I added a Jecod SCP-120M gyre pump which seems to be offering pretty good flow right now. I will probably have to play around with it once I have some corals in the tank and can get a better feel for the flow. I have two Nero 3's in my 50g right now, I will probably move them over and mount them on the back wall to help add turbulence and eliminate some dead spots behind the rocks.

I have two Noopsyche K7 Pro 3's on order with hanging kits for my tank's lighting. I have a 1/4" screen kit from BRS to make a mesh lid for the tank. I will need to move my ATO into the back room, and set that up along with wall mounting my inverter/battery backup which will run my return pump so it's under 24/7 battery backup (the inverter acts as an automatic transfer switch and battery charger). At this point it's just waiting for the tank to cycle. I added Fritz turbostart 9000 and a cube of my frozen food to the tank to let it get started. I have ceramic biomedia that I could move to the sump from my established tank, but I want to avoid moving any rock over as I want to keep out xenia and gsp which have taken over most of my rock. I plan for this tank to be LPS dominant (with maybe mushrooms at the very bottom), and I will transfer my dosing pump and media reactor to the sump once the 50g is broken down.

At this point I am just trying to plan out my tank transfer process once the tank has cycled and what additional fish to add as the tank grows and matures.

Fish I have that will eventually transfer over:
- Flame angel
- Midas blenny
- tail spot blenny
- Lubbock's multicolor wrasse
- Yellow watchman goby

Fish I would like to add:
- McCosker's wrasse
- Longfin fairy wrasse
- Assessor basslet (yellow or randall's)
- Some type of small group (I have looked at the following: chalk bass, zebra dartfish, blue reef chromis, or cardinals).
- One larger showpiece/utility fish (leaning towards a Tomini tang due to the relatively small size). I have also really considered a one spot foxface in place of the tang, but keep telling myself no due to their larger size.

Inverts will be trochus, turbos, and nassarius snails, blue and scarlet leg dwarf hermits, maybe an emerald crab or two, and a cleaner shrimp.

 

[jwood73]

The tank has been running overnight and I have not flooded the room yet so I think my return pump speed and main drain valve are throttled correctly/or at least close enough. The water level in the overflow is about 3" below the emergency drain line and the sump level seems pretty steady. It may be pumping just a little faster than the drain, I don't know what an acceptable amount is though as this is my first system with a sump. From what I read it's nearly impossible to get them matched 100%. I am at the point where I am adjusting the speed by a single % in either direction and waiting a few hours to see if my sump level has changed.

My next task will be to close off my main drain fully and make sure my emergency line can keep up with my return pump. I have marked my main drain's valve with a sharpie so I can get back to the same spot I have been using.

Without a pressure gauge or flowmeter I resorted to calculating my turnover rate so it's purely theoretical, but I used the Hazen-William's equation to calculate my system's friction losses as a function of flowrate. I used K values to approximate minor losses (losses through fittings, pipe exit, etc.). With a system curve created, I used the manufacturer's pump curve and affinity laws to calculate a reduced speed curve (100% vs 65% pump speed). Then plotted both curves to see where they intersect which is around 3.75gpm or 225gph at 4.86' of head, which would be 2.5 times my tank's nominal volume (per hour) which seems like an appropriate turnover rate. This is probably overkill from my end, but a fun exercise where I got to breakout my old fluid mechanics textbook. I realize now that I did not adjust my math for the increased SG of the saltwater, but assuming the pump curve is also published for plain freshwater they would both be off by the same factor.

As a disclaimer, I do not know how much I really trust Jecod/Jebao to produce an accurate pump curve nor do I think they test to any HI standard so this approximation could be wildly off just based on poor information from the manufacturer but it's the best I can do without an actual measurement to verify my information.

I am curious now how other people calculate their turnover rates. I suppose I could do a draw down test, and see how much my sump chamber level decreases for say 15-30 seconds with my drains closed, and convert that to a flow rate with some simple math.

 

[jwood73]

System has been running well, I have my 20G fuge tied in, I just have rock and my frags in it right now, will move my frags and add macro algae once I start to get enough nutrients in the systems. I have probably 20lbs worth of live rock and rock rubble from my old tank in the fuge, lots of sponges and filter feeders on them. Been messing around with trying to find a happy medium with my ATO level as the automatic fleece roller affects water level as it begins to clog up. I broke down most of my existing 50G and transferred my 4 existing fish along with rock, ceramic media, and some select corals. I also moved my carbon reactor to this system now to start running as I have some soft corals (GSP island in the back, Zoa island in the front center, Florida ricordia in the back right, and a rhodactis mushroom in the front right). My lights came in yesterday and seem to be working well, I went with two Noopsyche K7 Pro III’s. TRSC aquatics is now shipping them in the US, I ordered direct from the Noopsyche site, and receive tracking from TRSC in less than a week, my lights were delivered within 8 days of my order. My hanging kit for them shipped from China, so who knows when those will arrive.

I think my final stock list will be as follows:
- Midas blenny (already have)
- Tail spot blenny (already have)
- Lubbock’s multicolor wrasse (already have)
- YWG (already have)

New additions:
- Katherine’s or Exquisite wrasse
- McCoscker’s wrasse
- Yellow wrasse
- Spingeri damsel or assessor basslet (want some blue)
- Purple firefish (or similar sand dweller)
- Squaretail Bristletooth tang

Brings me up to 10 fish total. System volume is around 110g total and it seems that most fish will fill different niches other than the ornamental wrasses which should hopefully fill the midwater with movement and color. I think I’m at the wait and let the tank mature and fish enjoy the tank stage finally. I just need to install some pipe supports for my refugium drain line and build doors for the stand eventually.

 

[Submerge]

Super clean and well done build.

After seeing what you went thru buying used, seems like new is probably in my future. I'll be doing something similar real soon.

Nice shop. I have a lot of those same tools, including that Wen air filter.

 

[jwood73]

After seeing what you went thru buying used, seems like new is probably in my future.

If I could do it over again I would have bought new. I don't know if I really saved any money in the long run, and I have some scratches in the glass from the previous owner that I am stuck with. If you shop around you can find new reef ready 90g's for the $600-700 range if you're willing to drive and pick them up from an Aqueon dealer. I'll probably go through glass cages if I ever upgrade to a 6' tank.

When you do it, I would recommend you use gate valves instead of ball valves. The true unions are nice as they cut down on space and extra fittings, but you loose a lot adjustability for drain-rate and flow. Mine is super finicky, luckily the DC return pump gives me some extra adjustability to get it tuned.

That little wen filter has been great, it's probably going on 7-8 years old now. Hard to beat for the price. I would probably just end up adding a second if I ever decide I need more air flow in there.

 

[Submerge]

I'm looking at an SC Aquariums 150 RN. I also have several on marketplace that are 1/4 the price, but none of them are set up how I want, so I'd be doing the same as you and trying to save money by converting it into my time spent. It's a toss up, but after seeing what you went thru I'm probably gonna pull the trigger on new and get exactly what i want.

Gate valves for sure. My sump will be in the room behind it a lot like yours.

I love the Wen for dust, I use a carbon filter for any time I'm using chemicals. Often both at the same time. Smells never get out of the basement.

Your stand looks great without doors IMO

 

[jwood73]

I think going used has some diminishing returns for larger tanks, depending on their condition. If they don't leak and the silicone is in good shape it may be worth it, but I would not do another reseal on something of this size. You may be able to part out some of those used setups you see to jump start the sump and filtration equipment.

Nice shop, I wish mine looked as clean as yours on any given day hah. I will have to check out the carbon filter, I try and mix or use chemicals outside when I can. My metal dust collector does have a carbon filter in one of its stages.

I think I want to make the doors simply to challenge myself. I have thought of doing shaker style doors, and cutting the rails and stiles with some router bits since I don't have a shaper. Maybe do some type of unique or different panel like a grey tinted glass instead of just a plain mdf panel. But that is a problem for future me.

 

[jwood73]

The tank has been maturing and doing great so far. I just got out of the uglies stage and am getting some green film algae starting to take over the rock work. My fuge has exploded with pods and I have found some colonies in the DT. I have not yet added macro algae to the fuge so it’s mostly just a frag tank since my skimmer is keeping up with nutrients right now. With the tank on cruise control as it continues to mature, I finally got around to making the doors for my stand. I have a decent stash of thermally modified ash, so I resawed a board of that to make my rails and stiles, and decided to use tinted plexiglass as the panel for the doors. I looked at real glass, but that was about 4 times the cost. This was my first try at making doors and I did it all on the table saw with a dado stack, I think if I were to do it again I would use rail and style bits on a router table. I used Berta European style soft close hidden hinges. All that is left on the doors is to take them back off and finish them with Rubio monocoat pure. Their pure finish has no tinting so it should be a natural satin finish on the doors.

 

[Submerge]

Love your work.