Cakes' 150 SCA Reef Build (Lots of custom projects)

Cakes · Feb 17, 2020

I've been following reef forums for probably 20 years now and have never pulled the trigger on a build until now. I love following custom builds so I'm going to do the best to document mine. Even though this is my first tank, I wanted to get something pretty sizable. I shopped around quite a bit and the size/cost balance landed me with an SCA 150.

Current Equipment

Tank - SCA 150 Gallon 5'x2'x2'
Stand - DIY based on "RocketEngineer" design 60"x24"x36"
Sump - Custom 46"x17"x17" Acrylic
Skimmer - Reef Octopus Regal 200 INT
Return Pump - Reef Octopus Varios 8
Powerheads - Tunze 6105
Heaters - 2x 250w Eheim
Lighting - 2x A360X Kessil's (will add 1 or two more later)
Controller - Apex
ATO - Tunze 3155

Cakes · Feb 17, 2020

Tank

The tank was delivered about a month ago and it sat in the garage waiting for the room be prepped for the tank. Before signing for the delivery, I had cut out the sizes to ensure there was nothing broken. I didn't want to cut the straps off because I still had to move it around the pallet. The box looked a lot more pristine when it first arrived. Overall the packing seemed great and it arrived safely and timely. I haven't water tested it yet so hopefully there aren't issues there.

I built some custom dollies to sit the tank on so I could roll it around and used forks attached to a tractor to move it onto the dollies myself.

A couple notes about the tank that I had problems searching: Older photos of the euro bracing so the glass overlapping where they meet. That must be an old design because as you can see in the first picture, all the euro-bracing is level. I'm happy its this way as you lose some volume with that older design and I couldn't find references to how it would look when it arrived. Also, don't cut holes in the top of the cardboard. They include a foam mat to put under the tank that I ended up cutting a little, though it will still work just fine.

Cakes · Feb 17, 2020

Utility Room

The room I'm going to be putting the tank in is a "family room" that is off of our our living room. Our house is from the 80's so this room has a wet bar attached to it. It's too small to be an actual equipment room, but at least it can serve as a source of water to put the filters in and to use the sink for miscellaneous reasons. The sink is was too small and the finishes are pretty dated so I decided to do some improvements.

Before:

This photo from when we toured the house before we bought it

After:

I gutted everything except the cabinets. The counter is a butcher block slab from home depot and the sink was a deal I found from Ikea. I had to side mount the faucet due a lack of depth of the cabinet. It's not ideal but it'll work fine. i still have some finishing work to do with the molding and floor.

Cakes · Feb 17, 2020

Stand

The stand is essentially the RocketEngineer design that can be searched on the forums. The most difficult part was deciding on the height. I ended up going with 36" which I hope will be a good middle ground. It will actually end up being 36 3/4" with the plywood topper. I'm going to opt for not having a front center support, so I used 2x6s for the top supports.

Stand Dimensions: 60"x24"x36"

Here is the wood haul for the project

12'x2"x4" (Quantity: 6 but only needed 5)
8'x2"x6" (Quantity: 2)
3/4"x4'x8' Plywood
1/4"x4'x8' Plywood

I used mostly pocket holes to assemble everything. Here it all is cut to length with all the pocket holes drilled

The only thing that bit me was that one of the 2x4s actual width was a bit over 3.5". I had to do some planing on the sides to get them to be exactly even with the front/back. I glued everything I could just for extra strength.

For the bottom, I put 3 2x4's front to back which lay flat. Then I put 3/4 plywood over top. The goal here is that I get a little bit of depth in the bottom to hold water in case there are small spills.

Painting and silicone to come next.

Johnd651 · Feb 21, 2020

Following... that's one of the 2 tanks that have made my final cut for when I pull the trigger this summer.

How long was shipping from when you ordered? Was it in stock?

RickG · Feb 23, 2020

Awesome tank! Been wanting to pull the trigger on it for a while now. Will be following along your build thread

508_nanoreef · Feb 23, 2020

Great tank. Off to a good start love my SC aquariums tank and couldn't be happier with it

AllFin-ished · Feb 23, 2020

Looks like a fun project falowing

acrum222 · Feb 23, 2020

Looks good, following along. Have my SCA 150 still in the garage. Hope to have it running in a few weeks.

Johnd651 · Feb 23, 2020

Cakes said:
Stand

The stand is essentially the RocketEngineer design that can be searched on the forums. The most difficult part was deciding on the height. I ended up going with 36" which I hope will be a good middle ground. It will actually end up being 36 3/4" with the plywood topper. I'm going to opt for not having a front center support, so I used 2x6s for the top supports.

Stand Dimensions: 60"x24"x36"

Here is the wood haul for the project

12'x2"x4" (Quantity: 6 but only needed 5)

8'x2"x6" (Quantity: 2)

3/4"x4'x8' Plywood

1/4"x4'x8' Plywood

I used mostly pocket holes to assemble everything. Here it all is cut to length with all the pocket holes drilled

The only thing that bit me was that one of the 2x4s actual width was a bit over 3.5". I had to do some planing on the sides to get them to be exactly even with the front/back. I glued everything I could just for extra strength.

For the bottom, I put 3 2x4's front to back which lay flat. Then I put 3/4 plywood over top. The goal here is that I get a little bit of depth in the bottom to hold water in case there are small spills.

Painting and silicone to come next.

How will the overflow plumbing fit with the stand? Based on the dimensions on SCAs site, it looked like a 2x4 wouldn't fit in the back.

Cakes · Mar 14, 2020

Johnd651 said:
Following... that's one of the 2 tanks that have made my final cut for when I pull the trigger this summer.

How long was shipping from when you ordered? Was it in stock?

Sorry for the delay in replies, I must have disabled notifications.

It was in stock (and on sale for $850) when I ordered it. They shipped it almost next day and if I recall correctly it arrived in only a few days. So as far as buying/shipping was concerned, it was great experience.

Cakes · Mar 14, 2020

Johnd651 said:
How will the overflow plumbing fit with the stand? Based on the dimensions on SCAs site, it looked like a 2x4 wouldn't fit in the back.

With the width of the 2x6's being an actual 1.5", there is enough room to fit the bulkheads (I've already dry fit them to be sure). Hopefully, this picture helps clarify:

Cakes · Mar 14, 2020

I went 130 lbs of marco rock. Here is what it all looks like:

Here is my shot at aquascaping. Following some of the aquascaping recommendation threads, I want to have one side be taller with a cove and then a second large island. It's definitely going to need some tuning.

Cakes · Mar 14, 2020

I painted with stand with about 3 layers of Kilz oil based primer. The tank is now on it's final spot on the stand. When I moved the rock in, i wasn't able to get the rocks as I had them in the garage, so I have some more work to do to get the right side a bit higher.

As you can tell, I'll be sharing the room with the kid's play room.

Johnd651 · Mar 14, 2020

Cakes said:
With the width of the 2x6's being an actual 1.5", there is enough room to fit the bulkheads (I've already dry fit them to be sure). Hopefully, this picture helps clarify:

Yep... sca dimensions made it look tighter then that

Cakes · Apr 5, 2020

Here's an update on the sump. I considered options for buying vs building but for the size I wanted it was cheaper to just build it myself. This is the 2nd "tank" I've built out of acrylic so I'm still very much learning on the fly, but this one went a lot better.

I chose to use 3/8" acrylic (for everything except the baffles) which is probably overkill and cost twice as much as 1/4" but it is still far cheaper than buying a pre-made sump.

The dimensions are as follows:
Total = 46"x 17"x17"
Skimmer Section = 20" long and 9" deep
Return Section = ~9" long and 9" deep
Refugium Section = 12" long and 12" deep

The design is based off of Melev's Model F sump and here is a sketch up model for what I built

I glued the baffles and ends to the long sides first (all seams done with Weld-On 4)

To help hold things I made a couple of plywood jigs which were perfectly square and then just used painters tape to hold them in place. I bought some 3d printer nozzle cleaners off amazon to use as the seam needles as these were cheaper than i could find for the acupuncture needles

After the sides were on, the bottom came next, followed by the top. I had the hardest time gluing the bottom due to the number of seams that need to be welded plus having to level everything out perfectly. Some of the seams on the bottom didn't come out as perfect as the others.

Here is the finished product after routing off the excess and chamfering the edges.

And the final water test proved successful

After spending some time setting this up under the tank, there are a couple changes I would already make. The skimmer section is too deep so I had to make a stand for my skimmer. The top bracing is also too wide at 2.5" and I would probably go down to 2" next time just to give more access on top. But overall I'm pretty pleased with how this came out.

Lowefx · Aug 3, 2020

Do you have this plumbed up yet?

revhtree · Aug 3, 2020

Cool build! How’s the tank?

Cakes · Aug 3, 2020

Here is the tank as it sat in June. Will follow up in a second post about what is going on with it

Cakes · Aug 3, 2020

The tank has been running for several months. Here is a list of changes

2 Clowns and 3 Chromis out of QT and added to the tank
5 LPS, 5 Zoas, and a hammer out of QT and added to the tank
Lighting added: 2x A360x Kessils
55 Gallon mixing station added in garage
Built stand cover (still need to paint)
Opted for Apex controller vs DIY due to timing
Added ATO and DOS water changes from tanks in garage
Added small clean up crew and cheato (which I just threw out due to the issue below)

Livestock is doing great. Big current issue is that I seem to have invited dinos which started in my coral QT since it had low/no nitrates and continued in my main system due to; small amount of livestock + filter roller + oversized skimmer + chaeto. I'm following the threads on how to resolve this and about to throw on some UV later this week followed by a blackout.

More pics to come on all of this...