Caravan's Waterbox 135.4 in Austin

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Caravanshaka

Caravanshaka

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Beautiful! Interested in the same tank, but intimidated too. It will be my first large tank. I've had a 29 biocube for the last 4 years. :)
Go for it, it’s actually easier with larger tanks if you can afford to have one. Changes happen 4 times as fast in a 29g than a 135g!
 
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Caravanshaka

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Well, I've gotten tired of a few things with the setup, namely the lack of space both in the display and underneath. I also wanted to add a frag tank, but didn't have room where the tank was placed. I was going to try and move the tank to my office to get a lot more space and to add a frag tank, but my wife wants the tank out where everyone can see it so the location will have to remain unchanged. I've got about a 70" x 36" footprint to work with, and she even said I could run a little bit of tubing through the wall so I can put an 20 gallon ATO tank in our master bedroom right on the other side of the wall :eek:

I just placed the order for a custom SC Aquariums tank, going 54x30x24 with an external modular marine overflow. In a few days, I will place the order for my 48x30x15 custom designed modular marine sump that includes a decent sized frag area, as well as a ton of 80/20 aluminum to build a stand and light rack. I'll likely start a new build thread, but will probably be June before I get everything together and have the balls to move the waterbox to a temp location and keep it filled while I finish out the new build where the waterbox currently sits.

In addition to the tank change, I've also got about 80 lbs of rock that I aquascaped a while back curing in a tub right now. It's already got coralline algae growing on it, so it will definitely be ready by June. I will be transferring my halides to the tank, along with the 1 mp40qd, and will be adding 2x gyre 250's. I've also got a Reef Octopus 220 INT elite that I got used, which may be overkill but I'm going to at least try it for a while and see how it goes.

Color scheme will be white and red underneath, with the sump being all white and plumbing being red. The skimmer and calcium reactor also have a white and red scheme, so everything should match quite well (except the COR 20 return pump :()
 

PookieGV

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Had a long Day and a couple drinks, so figured this was a good time for honest reviews!

Waterbox tank:
Pros:
- nice clear glass and a glass overflow
- better sump design compared to Red Sea
- schedule 80 plumbing all included
- Stand is good quality, though the instructions are terrible
- don’t include an awful return pump, they let you make that choice
- overflow is quiet once dialed in
- included ATO has been rock solid

Cons:
- Stand arrived with a panel drilled completely wrong. Had to manually modify it and sent them a note about it to hear they were in the middle of a change and I must have gotten mismatched parts
- no protector seam on the silicone, just the main bonding seam. Makes me nervous with a scraper and has a few slight imperfections that tend to magnify when lit up
- metric plumbing is a pain to modify. Took me 2 orders to obtain all the parts to add a manifold to the return
- ATO is too small to be useful...would rather see them dedicate that to a fuge
- plumbing blocks the pre-drilled holes for a light rack which is pretty annoying when you want to make a change.
- no venting or airflow in the “Dry” side of the stand
- on my second set of magnetic door pushes, though they replaced them free of charge with a quick note
- acrylic overflow top section doesn’t fully seal, so it increases the amount of water that will flow back to the sump on a power outage. It still holds it all, but gets dangerously high in the sump

Overall it is a good tank and I would purchase something from them again. I would, however, like to see some changes made in the future to make it better.

Calcium Reactor:
Pros:
- Solid design and construction
- Second chamber for degassing
- bubble counter that matches
- attractive design
- Sicce pump, so should be reliable

Cons:
- I had a slight leak in my main chamber at the bottom seal. Vertex had nothing at the warehouse to replace it with for weeks, but walked me through a DIY fix that had me up and running the next day leak free.
- needs a T with a valve on the recirculating line to help vent air on startup. Easy fix but would be easy and cheap to add from factory
- flow meter should just be tossed...it’s worthless and I have bypassed it

Very happy with the Calcium Reactor so far. I do suggest to get a good regulator and a peristaltic pump for effluent for the best combo though...working on the peristaltic side of mine now.


Do remember which panel was drilled wrong? I am building my stand now and I think I also have a bad panel
 

PookieGV

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Thanks. That is exactly where I am stuck. :(

Edit: waterbox has got me covered. Excellent customer service.
 
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Mike Arnold

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Awesome setup. I'm waiting for the delivery of my Waterbox 135.4 sometime mid-week. I'm curious about your sump/refugium setup; it looks like from the pictures that you are filling the ATO reservoir via a manifold connection off of the return and then it overflows into the skimmer section. Am I missing anything? I can't can't tell if you drilled anywhere. Thanks
 
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Caravanshaka

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Awesome setup. I'm waiting for the delivery of my Waterbox 135.4 sometime mid-week. I'm curious about your sump/refugium setup; it looks like from the pictures that you are filling the ATO reservoir via a manifold connection off of the return and then it overflows into the skimmer section. Am I missing anything? I can't can't tell if you drilled anywhere. Thanks

I did not drill anything, in fact I plugged the little hole that is meant for the ATO tubing to go through, which allows the water to slowly spill over the sides and into the skimmer and return sections. You are correct, it is simply a T off the manifold that feeds water into it.
 
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Awesome setup. I'm waiting for the delivery of my Waterbox 135.4 sometime mid-week. I'm curious about your sump/refugium setup; it looks like from the pictures that you are filling the ATO reservoir via a manifold connection off of the return and then it overflows into the skimmer section. Am I missing anything? I can't can't tell if you drilled anywhere. Thanks

Oh, and before you get the tank wet, figure out how to get airflow into both sections of the stand...too much humidity if the doors are closed and no fans are feeding fresh air into the stand.
 

Mike Arnold

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Great. Thanks for the advise. I wonder if drilling a couple of 4" holes in the back and connecting a couple computer fans to the apex breakout box would be adequate?
 

wonderwomari

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I recently moved to Austin from Dallas, and was only able to bring a Nuvo 10g tank with me after downsizing from a 180 gallon tank and a Nuvo SR-80. Fortunately, I was prepared, and the week after we moved in my new Waterbox 135.4 arrived. I originally looked at the Red Sea tanks, and came across Waterbox on Premium Aquatics site. I talked to Jason there, and he had Brandon check them out at Macna. On their recommendation, I decided to go for it.

I am now about 2.5 months into the Waterbox being up and running, and wanted to start a build thread to document it. As much as I would like a stable system, I am terrible about changing things up on tanks, and sometimes a build thread is the best way to document changes and how your system reacts. Even in the 2.5 months it has been running, I have made a couple major changes, and I suspect more will come in the future.

Here are the specs:

Tank
Waterbox 135.4 with included sump and top off system
Lighting
3x Radion XR15 G4 pro's mounted on a custom 80/20 extruded aluminum rack
Aquaticlife 4x39w hybrid with 2x Radion XR15 G4 pro's mounted on a custom 80/20 extruded aluminum rack
Flow
Vectra M1 return
Vortech MP40wqd
Filtration
filter socks
Simplicity DC240 skimmer
refugium utilizing a zetlight fuge light in the built in ATO section of the sump
Bashsea Media reactor utilizing BRS Rox carbon
Marinepure bio block and balls in sump
Controller
Apex Classic
2x pH probes, temp probe
Leak Detection
Other Equipment
Bashsea 10g ATO Container
Neptune DOS doser for Ca and Alk
Vertex RX-C 6D calcium reactor fed off return manifold
10lb cO2 tank with Reef-Fanatic Regulator
Octo Aquatics lid​

Livestock
55 lbs Premium Aquatics Pukani rock with some leftover Walt Smith rock that traveled in my nuvo from Dallas
Tropic Eden sand​

Fish
2 clowns
yellow Tang
Regal Tang
Orange-Back Fairy Wrasse
Blue Spot Goby
2 Blue Chromis (started with 5 and they picked themselves down to 2)​
SPS
Jason Fox Unknown
Tyree Pink Lemonade
WWC Hailstorm
WWC Yellow Tip
WWC Mad Man Austera
WWC Mirage Milli
WWC Watermelon Milli
WWC Green Austera
Cornbred Pink Tip
WWC Cookie Monster
WWC Hyper Pink
WWC Shaggy Dog Tenuis
WWC Wildfire
WWC Limelight
ORA Valida Tri-Color
ORA Laura's Purple Polyp
Live Aquaria CCG Strawberry Shortcake
Cultivated Reef Commoner's Envy
Cultivated Reef Electric Green
Live Aquaria CCG Neon Polyp True Undata
LPS
Green Purple Frogspawn
Green Octospawn
Green & Purple Splatter Hammer
Teel Hammer
Light Green Hammer
Neon Hammer
Pink tip Torch
Bubble Gum Monster Chalice
Pink ******* Chalice
Zoa
Sunny D
Kedd Red
Rasta
Fruit Loop
King Midas
Eye of Rah
Scrambled Eggs
Devils Armour
WWC AOI
Paly Grandis
Utter Chaos
Vivid Rainbows
Coral is a mixed reef, and has some not listed here but wanted a place to keep track of the bigger/higher end stuff I have.

First pic is the 10g nuvo that I brought from Dallas:


Next is a pic of my water station setup. Running 7 stages of filtration after my water softener:


Pictures of the tank prior to lighting change:
38915020051_7ff2882fea_c.jpg


38879662862_8feef86ca6_c.jpg


38028947165_e716992fa2_c.jpg


And more since the lighting change:
38915019681_153b8c9239_c.jpg


25043748598_21e4fa6053_c.jpg
I know I am a year late but I recently bought a 135.4 waterbox and I would like to use the front as a refugium if you could tell me what to use to make it happen that would be great.
 

Daniel@R2R

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@Caravanshaka, how's the reef doing? Any new updates? I'd love to see some updated pics! :D
 

onetootreefor

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i just got a waterbox yesterday and was shocked to see the ATO instead of the refugium chamber. Thanks for the info on how you changed yours! I am also running an M1 pump so hopefully I dont have any issues.
 

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To be honest, the noise at the start drove me nuts too. The issue is the water cascading into the socks. The goal is to somehow get the water to trickle down something into the socks, whether that be by slowing the flow or adding something that wicks the water down that would normally have flowed into the middle of the sock.

There are several things you can do. I will outline 2 options that I would try:

1 - Filter Floss - This is what I do. Cut some filter floss to a bit bigger than the sock opening, and shove it into the sock so that the water going into the sock hits the floss and trickles down it. Makes it MUCH quieter, but adds more maintenance as the floss gets clogged in a couple days. I tend to change my floss every 2 days and socks every 4 days.

2 - Recently I found that GEO sumps manufactures a “sock silencer” out of acrylic. This appears to channel the water into smaller drips into the socks rather than a waterfall. I don’t have experience with them yet, but they intrigued me when I saw them.
http://www.geosreef.com/product/felt-filter-sock-with-geo-silencer/

I hope that helps!

A bit of eheim floss seems to work for me so far on my 75.2 that I’m just getting around to filling up.
Wonder how those Geos products work....
 

Mike Arnold

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Awesome setup. I'm waiting for the delivery of my Waterbox 135.4 sometime mid-week. I'm curious about your sump/refugium setup; it looks like from the pictures that you are filling the ATO reservoir via a manifold connection off of the return and then it overflows into the skimmer section. Am I missing anything? I can't can't tell if you drilled anywhere. Thanks
Any chance that you can share your parts list for your custom return and where you purchased the parts; I'm really struggling with finding and purchasing metric parts and adapters for the return. I have adapters for the overflows, but the bulkhead for the return has a slip barbed connection glued in. I can't seem to find the proper bulkhead to replace it. Anyone that has suggestions on where I can get these parts, I would greatly appreciate it; CoralVue and FlexPVC doesn't have them

Thanks
 

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