A reef in Vermont

[thepotoo]

I think that documenting my tank's progression will make me a better reefer, and I've been bad about taking progress pictures and reflecting on my mistakes, so here goes.

I see a lot of build threads where people have seemingly unlimited resources, are effortlessly perfect DIYers, and never make mistakes. Rest assured, this thread will not be like those.

I'm located in Vermont, and while the freshwater club here is very active and has a number of top tier hobbyists, the local salt water world is very lacking. I suspect this is due to a combination of local fish stores charging double online prices and the low median income in this area.

Here's where we're going:

Our story begins in 2013 or so. I had been living in a condo previously, but after some unfortunate water-related incidents, complaints from the downstairs neighbor, a drywall repair bill of $1500, and several very nasty emails from the condo association, it became clear that I was simply too, oh, let's say, "eccentric" to continue living in a condo. But that is a story for another time, for now, on with the build thread.

I had two requirements for a house:
1. No HOAs
2. A basement that could be turned into a proper dedicated fish room

After touring several homes, I added two additional requirements to my list:
3. If the house is a foreclosure, I will not forgo the home inspection, thankyouverymuch
4. If the joists have fire damage, and rather than repairing them you painted over them, I will not go in the basement

And after 6 months of looking, I finally I closed on a house in 2014. It met all my requirements, but most excitingly, the house's previous owners left the basement a real mess, perfect for my fish room! This is the spot where the reef tank will eventually sit. The dangling electrical wires will all be replaced, a lot of them had ripped insulation and, even in the hypothetical world where code allows dangling junction boxes, were not even close to code.

The basement was partially finished, but had clearly been water damaged. There was some 70's fiber board and old 2x3 studs which I ripped out.

Above is the exact spot where the reef tank will go. The horizontal line is efflorescence, water wicking through the cement blocks. I took two steps to remediate this - first, I painted the basement with drylok (next picture), which did absolutely nothing, and second, I re-graded the soil away from the house, which completely solved the issue.

Dry-lok on the walls, 4" polyisocyanurate insulation with Great Stuff expanding foam between the boards. I spent a total of $1500 insulating the basement, and the project reduced my heating bills by about $1400 per year. Insulation: highly recommended. Despite applying the drylok to the manufacturer's instructions, there were several places where I found water on the floor after rain. Drylok: not recommended.

One thing that I wish I had done differently here is to raise up the insulation about an inch off the floor. The 2x4s that contact the concrete are all pressure treated, but when things get wet, the bottom of the polyiso is sitting in water. I did rip out some drywall a couple years ago to see if it was molding and it was fine, but still, it would have been so easy to do when this was going in.

New electrical wires in, new studs on the walls, soffit built, and insulation between the ceiling joists.

I hate how messy these picture are, but they are unfortunately a reflection of how I work. I saved almost $100 by not removing any trash until nearly the end of the project, which is nowhere near enough to cover the hassle of navigating around a huge pile of trash. Not the first time I have been cheap to a fault.

Drywall in and mudded, the ceiling is even pained in this pic. The greenboard drywall is mold resistant, which I felt was worth the 20% premium it cost. I would later go on to test its mold resistance by letting the bottom of it sit in water for extended periods of time.

Painted! I don't know what the ladder was doing here, it's not like I need it to reach the 7' ceiling. Perhaps I just wanted more trip hazards.

This is the spot where the reef will ultimately go. The two PVC pipes going through the wall lead out into the back yard, and the ends are capped and the wall around them sealed. At one point, I had debated putting a pond it and they would have allowed me to connect it to my fish room. I had someone come out to put in a basement bulkhead and had him drill those holes. It bugs me a bit that they aren't at the same level, but it's not like I haven't half-arsed stuff before... The PVC at the bottom right of the pic is the air line for my fish room's central air system, a linear piston air pump moves air in, and the PVC runs around the walls bringing air to my sponge filters.

I did cut the cement with a diamond saw and put in a number of drains. I don't seem to have any pics of the process, sadly. You can see the drain (PVC in the floor) and the air admittance valve next to it in the bottom right of the above pic.

One of my regrets is not putting in a proper floor drain, but as my system has gotten better dialed in and I spill less water on the floor, it's become less of an issue.

The fish room doubles as a computer room. The reef is just visible on the left. I still haven't put flooring on the stairs in this pic. I don't ever remember this room being so clean.

Here's the freshwater side of the fish room. You can see the dehumidifier in the corner, this ultimately was too expensive to run (despite being a high efficiency unit) and I installed a bathroom fan that pulls air continuously out of the fish room. I only run the dehumidifier when it's below zero outside.

 

[thepotoo]

My primary interest is in freshwater plants and shrimp, but I enjoy anything that's challenging to keep alive. Probably why this tank quickly devolves into an SPS build...

So, with the freshwater part of the room mostly set up, I started looking for other things to occupy my time. I picked up a 150 gallon tank around 2015 from someone on Craigslist who was getting out of the hobby. I paid $500 in total, which is not very much compared to the $175k I paid for the house, and the $20k I paid to renovate the basement into a fish room. I remind my wife to keep things in perspective like this.

Here's the tank before I bought it:

Nothing particularly special, but it was well established and I prefer to buy used stuff when I can to keep it out of the landfill.

Rather than keep the 4' 150, I moved the rocks and livestock into a 6' 125, which I have very few pictures of. This was my very first experience keeping saltwater and there was definitely a learning curve. One of the advantages of buying used is that you get fish and corals that are absolutely bulletproof (after all, if someone getting out of the hobby couldn't kill it, chances are you can't either...)

I wish I could recall all the stupid mistakes I made here to document them. But, I seem to have repressed those memories.

Here's the 125 newly set up. You can see the sump next to the tank, which made maintenance easy, but was a real eye sore, even by my standards.

And here's the tank after being set up for a about a year. Right around the time this picture was taken, I made my first huge mistake: I turned down the lights. I read a thread somewhere either here or on reefcentral about how corals didn't need or want as much light as we were giving them. So I took my tank which was doing great, and dropped the PAR from ~350 to ~100. For like 2 months, the corals were fine, then one by one my SPS colonies RTN'd from the bottom up.

Like an idiot, I didn't piece together that the light was the issue (probably because of the time difference).

Also like an idiot, in the midst of losing colonies, I decided that now would be the perfect time to upgrade the tank. I think I was impressed by (jealous of) the build threads on here and reefcentral, and figured that if I spent more on a fancy tank it would magically make me a better reefer like the people on those threads. LOL!

So I dropped $3500 on a custom tank from Miracles. Do I regret it? No, it's a very nice tank and I look at it every day. But did spending the cash on a fancy tank magically make my corals better? Again: LOL!

I knew I wanted as large a tank as I could get in my space, but I also wanted to be able to reach all the way into it. I built a cardboard mock-up to make sure that I could get my hand in and retrieve frags that had fallen in the back, and scrape the back glass. 220 gallons, 8' long. Starfire front. I wanted 9' instead, but that wouldn't fit in a regular shipping container and would have cost a boatload more.

I sent Miracles a PO and didn't hear anything for like 3 months. I have seen a lot of folks post construction pics from Miracles, but I guess I am not important enough to warrant that. Still Miracles was a lot more responsive than Glass Cages, and Derek was nothing but polite and easy to work with, so I had no reservations about going with them.

And then one day in February, they called to let me know the tank would be delivered next week! I would have liked a bit more notice, but I hastily broke down the 125:

And set up some holding tanks on the floor while I built a stand:

Such a mess! I really need a dedicated workshop/staging area for this type of project, but it's at least a rare occurrence.

I had to move my GFCIs (top left) since they'd be behind the tank. I also added a vinyl pond liner to avoid floor damage in case of spills. In hindsight, this was totally unnecessary; in case of spills I am much more concerned about the livestock than I am about the concrete floor.

Tank stand in place. Just 2x4s, the stain is just to protect them against water damage.

The new tank was delivered to my local depot.

I rented a truck from Home Depot to move it. Because I was paying by the hour for the truck, this added a bit of time crunch to an already stressful project!

We managed to get it off the truck and onto the driveway, so I was able to return the truck and take the time pressure off.

When my wife saw the tank, the first thing she said was "oh, that's a really nice tank". She is not a fish keeper, so the fact that she didn't say "how much did that cost?" or "where are you going to put that?" really says all that needs to be said about the quality of Miracle's craftsmanship!

I'm not sure how much the tank weighs exactly, but back of the envelope is somewhere around 800 pounds. I bought an appliance dolly (some straps) from amazon and got a friend to help move the tank. To this day I have no idea how we got it into the basement, there were four of us moving it and I honestly thought at several times that either I or someone else was going to die. I definitely should have had 2-3 more people to help.

But, we did eventually get it in and level!

You can probably see the overflow isn't up to the standards of the tank build. I think I mentioned already that I am cheap to a fault. Sometimes, this is a good thing and I save a bundle, other times, I tell Miracles that I don't want an overflow box and then make one myself. Out of recycled glass that I got for free. Here goes:

I have now drilled about 20 tanks, and only broken one (a 10 gallon with thin glass).

But, it's on there, it doesn't leak, and it works, so it's hard to complain too much.

Livestock transferred over to the tank. I wish I had better pics of the setup. The PVC running up the wall on the right side of the picture is the return line.

The 40 breeder on the left adds additional volume to the system. It can be isolated from the main tank by turning a couple valves, and even has its own ATO (although I have never needed this).

The 40 breeder on the right is my sump. 3 chambers, from left to right: Bean Animal drain from overflow from main tank. No filter socks. The next chamber hold my skimmer and calc reactor. Finally, the return pump is all the way to the right. Next to that, the white and yellow box is my linear piston air pump, which has nothing to do with the reef tank.

The skimmer is probably undersized for the tank, but I stock pretty lightly. I hear a lot of people say "I need a big skimmer because I want as many fish as I can cram into a tank" but those same people are usually out of the hobby in a year, so....

For lights, I am running 4 black box LEDs. I finally figured out the light issue (I think it took me almost a year, ugh) and turned the lights back up so they are producing enough light now. Most of my acros are getting about 300 PAR, and as long as they are growing and not dying, I am happy. I could turn the lights up a bit more, but I am reluctant to experiment at the expense of my corals.

I need to document my calcium reactor; I built it myself out of spare parts I had lying around my fish room and it works surprisingly well.

I also built my own ATO from an ESP-8266. It's a waterproof HC-SR04 sensor, a logic level converter to go from 5v for the sensor to 3.3v, and a relay that drives a 12 volt 0 PSI NC solenoid. With Tasmota, I didn't actually need to do any coding and the total cost came in $15. Not bad for a reef controller. Some day I will document that project, too.

Above is a picture from 4/2017.

And from 8/2017, I am finally installing a skin on the stand to make it look a bit cleaner. Actually, the main reason is to prevent the lights from blinding me when I look at the tank.

Above is a full tank shot from 9/2018. One of my motivations in starting this thread is to be better about documenting coral growth and taking regular pictures.

 

[thepotoo]

I dislike that it's considered a faux pas to talk about costs in this hobby. At this point, my best guess is that I am in somewhere between $15-20k, in addition to the 20k to finish my basement and install the floor drain, soffit around the tank, sump pump, 2x electrical circuits, etc. My amazon purchase history shows that I have spent $1500 just on salt over the years. I estimate my running costs for the fish room to be around $150 a month, $75 of this for the reef tank. Ongoing costs are easily the single biggest expense. Another 1k on lights (they stop working when you drop them in the tank, did you know that??), and of course $3500 on the tank itself.

A couple colony growth pics. First off, here's a tri-color valida, almost overrun with vermitids in the first pic:

And 3 years later it's a good 6" across.

Here's another mistake I made: green slimer is an easy acro to grow, right? And it loves flow, right? So I put this guy right in front of a powerhead for 2 years:

And for 2 years it didn't grow.

I was complaining to someone that I just couldn't grow the easiest acro there is, and he asked it it was getting enough flow. I said, "oh yes, there's a powerhead blasting it 24x7" He said, "you're an idiot". He was right. I moved it and it looks like this now:

I will say that it took almost a year after moving it away from the powerhead for it to start growing.

Here's another one, purple stylo:

Above is when I got it in late 2018, you can see it on the left in the full tank shot below:

My gatorade birdsnest is on the right side (and a bit on the left side) in this pic. It's by far my fastest growing coral and it's been with me since 2016. I literally can't give it away fast enough, so if you're in the area looking for a free easy SPS, hit me up. Ideally I'd like to get rid of that whole colony and free up some space for more acros.

Finally, here's a random shot of a no-name A hyacinthus (?) colony. I need to dig out my macro lens and take some more upadted coral pics.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

My primary interest is in freshwater plants and shrimp, but I enjoy anything that's challenging to keep alive. Probably why this tank quickly devolves into an SPS build...

So, with the freshwater part of the room mostly set up, I started looking for other things to occupy my time. I picked up a 150 gallon tank around 2015 from someone on Craigslist who was getting out of the hobby. I paid $500 in total, which is not very much compared to the $175k I paid for the house, and the $20k I paid to renovate the basement into a fish room. I remind my wife to keep things in perspective like this.

Here's the tank before I bought it:

Nothing particularly special, but it was well established and I prefer to buy used stuff when I can to keep it out of the landfill.

Rather than keep the 4' 150, I moved the rocks and livestock into a 6' 125, which I have very few pictures of. This was my very first experience keeping saltwater and there was definitely a learning curve. One of the advantages of buying used is that you get fish and corals that are absolutely bulletproof (after all, if someone getting out of the hobby couldn't kill it, chances are you can't either...)

I wish I could recall all the stupid mistakes I made here to document them. But, I seem to have repressed those memories.

Here's the 125 newly set up. You can see the sump next to the tank, which made maintenance easy, but was a real eye sore, even by my standards.

And here's the tank after being set up for a about a year. Right around the time this picture was taken, I made my first huge mistake: I turned down the lights. I read a thread somewhere either here or on reefcentral about how corals didn't need or want as much light as we were giving them. So I took my tank which was doing great, and dropped the PAR from ~350 to ~100. For like 2 months, the corals were fine, then one by one my SPS colonies RTN'd from the bottom up.

Like an idiot, I didn't piece together that the light was the issue (probably because of the time difference).

Also like an idiot, in the midst of losing colonies, I decided that now would be the perfect time to upgrade the tank. I think I was impressed by (jealous of) the build threads on here and reefcentral, and figured that if I spent more on a fancy tank it would magically make me a better reefer like the people on those threads. LOL!

So I dropped $3500 on a custom tank from Miracles. Do I regret it? No, it's a very nice tank and I look at it every day. But did spending the cash on a fancy tank magically make my corals better? Again: LOL!

I knew I wanted as large a tank as I could get in my space, but I also wanted to be able to reach all the way into it. I built a cardboard mock-up to make sure that I could get my hand in and retrieve frags that had fallen in the back, and scrape the back glass. 220 gallons, 8' long. Starfire front. I wanted 9' instead, but that wouldn't fit in a regular shipping container and would have cost a boatload more.

I sent Miracles a PO and didn't hear anything for like 3 months. I have seen a lot of folks post construction pics from Miracles, but I guess I am not important enough to warrant that. Still Miracles was a lot more responsive than Glass Cages, and Derek was nothing but polite and easy to work with, so I had no reservations about going with them.

And then one day in February, they called to let me know the tank would be delivered next week! I would have liked a bit more notice, but I hastily broke down the 125:

And set up some holding tanks on the floor while I built a stand:

Such a mess! I really need a dedicated workshop/staging area for this type of project, but it's at least a rare occurrence.

I had to move my GFCIs (top left) since they'd be behind the tank. I also added a vinyl pond liner to avoid floor damage in case of spills. In hindsight, this was totally unnecessary; in case of spills I am much more concerned about the livestock than I am about the concrete floor.

Tank stand in place. Just 2x4s, the stain is just to protect them against water damage.

The new tank was delivered to my local depot.

I rented a truck from Home Depot to move it. Because I was paying by the hour for the truck, this added a bit of time crunch to an already stressful project!

We managed to get it off the truck and onto the driveway, so I was able to return the truck and take the time pressure off.

When my wife saw the tank, the first thing she said was "oh, that's a really nice tank". She is not a fish keeper, so the fact that she didn't say "how much did that cost?" or "where are you going to put that?" really says all that needs to be said about the quality of Miracle's craftsmanship!

I'm not sure how much the tank weighs exactly, but back of the envelope is somewhere around 800 pounds. I bought an appliance dolly (some straps) from amazon and got a friend to help move the tank. To this day I have no idea how we got it into the basement, there were four of us moving it and I honestly thought at several times that either I or someone else was going to die. I definitely should have had 2-3 more people to help.

But, we did eventually get it in and level!

You can probably see the overflow isn't up to the standards of the tank build. I think I mentioned already that I am cheap to a fault. Sometimes, this is a good thing and I save a bundle, other times, I tell Miracles that I don't want an overflow box and then make one myself. Out of recycled glass that I got for free. Here goes:

I have now drilled about 20 tanks, and only broken one (a 10 gallon with thin glass).

But, it's on there, it doesn't leak, and it works, so it's hard to complain too much.

Livestock transferred over to the tank. I wish I had better pics of the setup. The PVC running up the wall on the right side of the picture is the return line.

The 40 breeder on the left adds additional volume to the system. It can be isolated from the main tank by turning a couple valves, and even has its own ATO (although I have never needed this).

The 40 breeder on the right is my sump. 3 chambers, from left to right: Bean Animal drain from overflow from main tank. No filter socks. The next chamber hold my skimmer and calc reactor. Finally, the return pump is all the way to the right. Next to that, the white and yellow box is my linear piston air pump, which has nothing to do with the reef tank.

The skimmer is probably undersized for the tank, but I stock pretty lightly. I hear a lot of people say "I need a big skimmer because I want as many fish as I can cram into a tank" but those same people are usually out of the hobby in a year, so....

For lights, I am running 4 black box LEDs. I finally figured out the light issue (I think it took me almost a year, ugh) and turned the lights back up so they are producing enough light now. Most of my acros are getting about 300 PAR, and as long as they are growing and not dying, I am happy. I could turn the lights up a bit more, but I am reluctant to experiment at the expense of my corals.

I need to document my calcium reactor; I built it myself out of spare parts I had lying around my fish room and it works surprisingly well.

I also built my own ATO from an ESP-8266. It's a waterproof HC-SR04 sensor, a logic level converter to go from 5v for the sensor to 3.3v, and a relay that drives a 12 volt 0 PSI NC solenoid. With Tasmota, I didn't actually need to do any coding and the total cost came in $15. Not bad for a reef controller. Some day I will document that project, too.

Above is a picture from 4/2017.

And from 8/2017, I am finally installing a skin on the stand to make it look a bit cleaner. Actually, the main reason is to prevent the lights from blinding me when I look at the tank.

Above is a full tank shot from 9/2018. One of my motivations in starting this thread is to be better about documenting coral growth and taking regular pictures.

Tank looks really good!!!

 

[taulgrl]

Beautiful tank! That birds nest is crazy big

 

[Eric R.]

@thepotoo you have a build thread! Fun to see the evolution of the fish room and the reef tank, even after seeing them in person. Impressive project!

 

[thepotoo]

No name tort colony. Sadly I bumped this piece a couple years ago and while I still have it, it hasn't ever really taken off like once did.

 

[thepotoo]

Bubblegum digi that I picked up at our local frag swap prior to COVID. That reminds me, we are having another frag swap this Saturday -- should be a lot of fun!

 

[thepotoo]

Tricolor valida that grows pretty well for me. I very nearly killed this -- it died back to a single polyp, but managed to recover. Now, ~5 years later, it's a good 8" across.

 

[thepotoo]

Scroll coral. Not a big fan of this guy, it's just not that attractive. It's also pushing a foot across and taking up real estate. I'll probably take a chisel to it at some point soon.

 

[thepotoo]

This was sold to me as ORA Pearlberry, but it's clearly not. I paid pearlberry money for it from an otherwise very reputable vendor, though! Sadly, it's just greenish brown and only the growth tips are nice. I wonder if he would give me a refund -- it's only been 5 years!

 

[nuxx]

Very nice build