Blimpy's 300G Shallow

[PPBlimpy]

I am new to the site, not new to reef keeping though. intro may be long, bear with me.

Little background -

First marine tank was a FOWLR 155G bow front back in 2001. with a large lion fish, porqupine puffer and moray ell.
next was a 180g 96x24x18 mixed reef in 2002- miss this tank. Got out of the hobby in 2006

for an early 40th b-day present my wife kids decided to get me a 13.5g Fluval- I think my wife thought I had more self control- jokes on her, i don't have any. And got back into reef keeping hard. Within 30 days of the 13.5 being set up, i had acquired a 75g to set up. started cycling the 75 Dec 29th 2023- 6 month later I am setting up a 125G. Now a little over a year back in the hobby, we are moving to a larger house and my fish are getting a bigger home.

I am in the planning stages for a big tank upgrade. found a 300G shallow 96x30x24.
Mixed reef with few SPS for now

Big reason for the jump is my wife for Christmas bought me a juvenile emperor angel and juvenile Porcupine puffer and they will outgrow my 125 fairly quickly. yes i was there and warned her another upgrade would be needed.

Anyway i have not been on any forums in a long time to document anything- mostly FB groups and tired of that.

looking into lighting options for an 8 ft tank, my old 180 had 4x250w MH, 440W vho actinic

equipment I have

300G shallow acrylic tank
125G sump
building the stand / canopy
20g tall for future Kalk dosing reservoir
protein skimmer
2 x 12000 lph dc return pumps
a slew of gyro wave makers
approx 150 lbs LR from my current 125
100 lbs dry rock currently dark curing
250 lbs cleaned used sand

Looking at lighting options

my current 125 has 3 G4xr30 pros, but thinking about selling these and going with something else

popbloom, noopsyche, viparspectra, smatfarm? as you can tell i am trying to avoid high end lights

I have a buddy with 2 NoopSyche k7 pro v3s over a 4ft 120. they look great, and i think they will have a good spread

i am toying with purchasing 4 of the noopsyche and turning them 90* to help with the spread across 30" F-B.

any other suggestions on lighting?

3 pictures of the stand I am currently designing and picture of 300g peninsula tank found on the web is my inspiration
last is a crappy picture of my current 125
my tank will be against a wall , no peninsula

Thanks for reading
Ken

 

[Tahoe61]

Hello and Welcome to R2R.

Wow, you are jumping right back in. Sorry can't help with lighting choices on larger systems.
Congratulations though on the new tank.

 

[PPBlimpy]

Appreciate it! Wish I had never left. Now I have Adult money and more or less enjoy these things again. When I was young they were a lot of work. Would buy systems and part them out and resell stuff, polish tank etc. also did tank maintenance for a while.

Now I can just work on my own and enjoy

 

[PPBlimpy]

skimmer suggestions?

have a eshopp psk-300 but feel it will be to small. will run it for a while but any suggestions for a 400+gallon system, low to moderate livestock

edited: added content

on my 125 i have a curve 7. I may run both skimmers on the new system, set the curve 7 to run wet and run the psk-300 to run dry, or viceaversa .If they dont keep up i will look into an upgrade.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[PPBlimpy]

there is probably a better place to ask this but

anyone running / have ran the reefbright MH / LED hybrid fixtures?

i loved my old halides and stumbled across 4 x 15" 250w SE reefbright hybrid fixtures.

what kind of spread are you getting with these? i know halides run hot and are not as efficient but i can sell my 3 g4 xr30 pros, buy these fixtures, and new 14k bulbs and still be money ahead.

will 4 cover a 96x30 decently?

 

[PPBlimpy]

Moving forward.

the 300 gallon is acrylic. its been 20+ years since owning an acrylic tank.

When i build the stand i plan to top it with 3/4 plywood for the tank to sit on. should i run a level mat under the tank? maybe something similar to a yoga mat?

i also am looking at 3/4 ply on the bottom and running Home depot 1" pink insulation sheet under the stand.

this is an old house, circa 1800s, floors are old.
I will be supporting the beams in the crawl space to hold the weight i am hoping that the mix of 2x6 lumber, 3/4 ply underneath and the 1" foam will allow the tank to sit flat and level.

i will have the ability fine tune by putting pressure on the beams underneath to help level it.

this plan sound decent?

thoughts?

 

[PPBlimpy]

Plans change. Wife wants the tank in a different room so I have changed the stand design. Will be more like a traditional stand and canopy.

Got the stand frame mostly built today. Put the tank on top and slid the sump in to help make space in the garage.

More braces to come, top and bottom 3/4 ply and lots of paint. Once in place I will skin it


This is going to be a lot of water!

 

[PPBlimpy]

Lighting - as mentioned above I was thinking about MH fixtures but wound up finding a pretty sweet deal on 4 Noopsyche k7 v3 lights. I will start with these 4 over the tank and see how they do. I am looking for 4 more to add to it or possibly run 4 x 48" led bars found on ebay to supplement and help with shadowing. unsure which direction yet.

Flow - I Have decided to make my own ocean motion style wave maker.

waiting on material to show up but in the mean time I need to drill for my closed loop.

closed loop will be feed by a skimz l160 4400gph pump

Feeding the pump will be a 1.5" bulk head centered between the overflows approx 7" from the top of the tank.
I will use a square 4x4 plant basket to cover the input to block from any fish getting sucked in.

Going to use 1" plumbing for the closed loop return. The wave maker will always have 2 ports open and small bypass to the other two ports at all times.

Going to place them thru the bottom of the tank - 3.25" from the ends of the tank and 5.0" from the front and back. this will make them land between the 2x6 supports. Fronts will come up just above sand height and T to loc line and 3/4 RFG nozzles.

the rear will probably be a T with single output low and then a second about 10" up with another output. both with 3/4 loc line and RFG nozzels or two split to 2 1/2 rfq nozzles. Unsure exactly yet

picture is a rendering of the tank. I haven't actually measured where the overflows are so this is approx.

 

[PPBlimpy]

So been working on things here and there but started looking at my skimmer, it is an old eshopp psk-300.

Back in the day I built every piece of equipment I could because I was young , dumb and broke. Still two of those......

I have decided instead of replacing the eshopp I am going to modify it and see how it performs.

I have a skimmer body with feed from an old CPR sump that fits in the neck of the psk-300.
I plan to ad this 10" section of tube to the to, where the collection cup normally sits, also going to pick up another needle wheel pump and ad it as a recirculation setup. a bubble plate will be added to the bottom of the extension. This theoretically should ad plenty of dwell time for the bubble. Hoping to make this old skimmers perform.

ordering up some weld-on tonight and hopefully can play with it this week.

also need to finish cleaning the tank and start sanding and polishing. weather is nicer now and can spend time outside the garage!!

 

[PPBlimpy]

Only picture I currently have of the eshopp

 

[strich]

Hey Ken,

Really impressed with what you're doing here! Looks like a lot of DIY and interesting design considerations going into everything - I always love these kinds of builds versus the "I bought the whole Redsea kitchensink".
Your old 125g looks like a professional job I have to admit - I assume you're an accomplished tradesman of some kind?

Speaking of, so are these 2 floor pipes outlets as I think you mentioned you might do again in the 300g?

If so that's quite cool! I wonder if in the new build you can find a better way to hide them though?

Also, how do you stop a power outage from causing those outlets to drain the tank?

 

[PPBlimpy]

Hey Ken,

Really impressed with what you're doing here! Looks like a lot of DIY and interesting design considerations going into everything - I always love these kinds of builds versus the "I bought the whole Redsea kitchensink".
Your old 125g looks like a professional job I have to admit - I assume you're an accomplished tradesman of some kind?

Speaking of, so are these 2 floor pipes outlets as I think you mentioned you might do again in the 300g?

If so that's quite cool! I wonder if in the new build you can find a better way to hide them though?

Also, how do you stop a power outage from causing those outlets to drain the tank?

so those outlets are a internal closed loop, there is 4 of them. the closed loop in the 125 in completely internal. there is a 750 gph pump behind one of the large rocks in the back.

That picture is hard to tell but all my rock in the center is sitting on a shelf about 4" above the sand.
this allows my horseshoe crab a lot more sand and my fish a lot more swimming/hiding spots.
I have 2 rocks I carved out to fit over those outlets but I made them to close to the front glass and I cant get a cleaner between the covers and the front glass. by the time i had things figured out with this tank i decided to upgrade again.

I am a CNC Machinist working in a Aerospace company, before we moved across company 3 years ago I owned my own CNC Shop doing aftermarket automotive parts and a lot for the food industry.

 

[PPBlimpy]

the two center up pipes are to help keep flow under the shelf and detritus from building down there. They are just 3/4” pvc that is completely open so it’s not a high pressure/flow type nozzle

 

[Gumbies R Us]

the two center up pipes are to help keep flow under the shelf and detritus from building down there. They are just 3/4” pvc that is completely open so it’s not a high pressure/flow type nozzle

That’s clever with keeping flow pipes underneath your aquascape like that!

 

[PPBlimpy]

also the 300g will have a completely closed loop going thru the bottom, this is separate of the sump/ returns.
if power goes out water has nowhere to go in the closed loop.

returns, sump will act like normal and drain down like any other tank.

 

[strich]

I love that internal flow pump design! Such a simple solution and a relatively unique thing AFAIK.

In future I wonder if you can get away with smaller pipes under the sand and just use a wider exit funnel to slow the output flow.

Got any pics of the horseshoe crab?

 

[PPBlimpy]

I love that internal flow pump design! Such a simple solution and a relatively unique thing AFAIK.

In future I wonder if you can get away with smaller pipes under the sand and just use a wider exit funnel to slow the output flow.

Got any pics of the horseshoe crab?

Unfortunately I don’t have any recent pictures on my phone. My daughter usually takes pictures of him. He was smaller the a Quarter when we got him.
Originally Put him in my 13.5g and would bury a frozen cube of brine in the sand in front of him as he was bulldozing around. He would find it and still for an hour or two and then continue on.
Have had him over a year and is about 2” wide now. Has molted 4 times. Still give him a cube of brine or chunk of raw shrimp when we see him out.

 

[strich]

Unfortunately I don’t have any recent pictures on my phone. My daughter usually takes pictures of him. He was smaller the a Quarter when we got him.
Originally Put him in my 13.5g and would bury a frozen cube of brine in the sand in front of him as he was bulldozing around. He would find it and still for an hour or two and then continue on.
Have had him over a year and is about 2” wide now. Has molted 4 times. Still give him a cube of brine or chunk of raw shrimp when we see him out.

Super cool! Post a pic when you do get a chance in the future!

 

[PPBlimpy]

Slowly making progress. Doing what I can when I have time.

printed a 3/4" RFG nozzle. Going to install in my current 125 and check fitment and flow. If all is good I will continue printing. will need 12 for the 300.

I will be running the same return pumps from my 125 on the 300 with 2 rfg nozzles each, 1"pvc and approx the same head height so it should be a good test. currently i have fan nozzles and they seem to really limit flow.

also cleaning the tank and will start sanding/ polishing.

building a 4 port wave valve at work, similar to a OM4, have the dry side finished, needing to finish rotor and waiting on material for the wet side.