Corey's Waterbox 130.4 Build

swvahawker · Jan 31, 2020

Greetings All,

I've decided to document the building of my new Waterbox 130.4 along with the transfer of my current 75 gallon mixed reef to the new tank. The 75 has been up and running in some form for about a year now (started in a 20 gallon AIO, quickly graduated to a 75) and has had several setbacks and successes. Most recently I've been fishless for about a month for the second time after losing a nice yellow eye kole and flame fin tomini tang to ich. Current stock of fish living in a 40 gb until the fishless period is over includes a foxface, mombasa lion, melanarus wrasse, and 4 sapphire damsels. There's a snowflake eel in there too but I'm going topless on the 130 so he'll go to a friend who is taking the 40 setup off my hands when I'm done with it.

Current Set Up

75 Gallon Marineland, home-drilled overflow
Trigger Systems Sump
Skimmer, unkown brand
Mag drive return pump, unknown brand
Aquatop 300 watt titanium heater
4x ATI T5 in homemade hood
Icecap 3K gyre pump

New Waterbox 130.4 (scheduled to be delivered the week of 2/17/20)

130.4 tank (48x24x22ish, 100 gallonish display)
2x Maxspect XF330 gyre pumps
Rimless dual cascading filter sock sump included (30ish gallons)
Vectra M2 return pump
Ecotech battery back-up
Battery back-up booster (required for vectra to back-up connection)
Reeflink
Nyos 160 skimmer
Neptune Apex EL
Neptune Trident
Neptune DOS X2 mounted in basement (one dosing 2 part, the other for AWC)
2 extra fluid level sensors to monitor level of top off container and saltwater container for AWC
Neptune ATK
Aquatop 300 watt titanium heater (did me right so far)
Aquatic Life Gen 1 T5/LED hybrid
4x ATI 54 watt T5
2x Kessil A360X in Hybrid fixture
Kessil WIFI dongle
20 gallon ATO reservoir in basement
dosing containers in basement

Current 75 with rock and corals piled back in after fish removal:

I'm thinking I'll need to add another A360X at some point to ramp up the total light for better sps growth but we'll see. Let me know what you think about the equipment list.

esther · Jan 31, 2020

Nice! Looking forward to following along.

kwall737 · Feb 6, 2020

Nice! I just purchased a 130.4 as well to get back into it all after 10+ years of being out. Looking forward to following along!

swvahawker · Feb 7, 2020

Got my first equipment shipment. Putting everything together, tank should be here next week. The DOSers are mounted to a floor joist in my basement under the tank.

swvahawker · Feb 17, 2020

Preparing for delivery of the new tank tomorrow. Got the old tank away from the wall and did a through-the-wall installation for my lights.

esther · Feb 17, 2020

Nice job! Looks great.

swvahawker · Feb 18, 2020

Delivery Day! In case your wondering, a Waterbox Reef 130.4 with the stand boxes on each side will fit in the back of a 2006 Volvo XC70 wagon if you have a skilled forklift operator and like testing limits.
Stand assembled, control board and shelf in.
Having some neighbors help me extract the aquarium later...

My only complaint so far is these cam lock things can crack the coating on the stand. I smeared some silicone over those closest to the sump and put a light smear around the bottom edges inside the cabinet in order to keep leaks from getting in the cracks.

swvahawker · Feb 26, 2020

So I’ve had the new tank up for a week. Other than needing an extra hand to tighten the plumbing it was basically a one-person job. I got my rock and corals transferred over and have decided to stay with a bare bottom. So far everything seems to working really well. Neptune fusion takes some getting used to, of course, but I’ve been able to keep my alk right where I want it for the most part and it’s huge relief to check my levels so frequently. The only thing about the apex that scares me is the ability to turn a dosing pump from “auto” to “on” by simply moving a slider on a touchscreen device. One unnoticed slip of the finger while trying to adjust something else and you’ve just dumped a gallon of concentrated sodium carbonate solution in your tank (everything dies). I’ll probably dose from much, much smaller containers (like pint jars) to try and mitigate the potential for catastrophe. Alarms can be set but the alk/cal/whatever dump will likely have already happened once you notice. The addition of 70 gallons of new water brought my cal and mag way up (fritz rpm blue box for reference) but those numbers are slowing coming down. Some pics of the progress below:

Hella_Reef · Mar 1, 2020

swvahawker said:
So I’ve had the new tank up for a week. Other than needing an extra hand to tighten the plumbing it was basically a one-person job. I got my rock and corals transferred over and have decided to stay with a bare bottom. So far everything seems to working really well. Neptune fusion takes some getting used to, of course, but I’ve been able to keep my alk right where I want it for the most part and it’s huge relief to check my levels so frequently. The only thing about the apex that scares me is the ability to turn a dosing pump from “auto” to “on” by simply moving a slider on a touchscreen device. One unnoticed slip of the finger while trying to adjust something else and you’ve just dumped a gallon of concentrated sodium carbonate solution in your tank (everything dies). I’ll probably dose from much, much smaller containers (like pint jars) to try and mitigate the potential for catastrophe. Alarms can be set but the alk/cal/whatever dump will likely have already happened once you notice. The addition of 70 gallons of new water brought my cal and mag way up (fritz rpm blue box for reference) but those numbers are slowing coming down. Some pics of the progress below:

Looking great already,
How big is the overflow box? How much does it per reuse out? And how big is the inside dimension of the left cabinet? My 130.4 shows up in a week and I’m trying to prep some things beforehand.

swvahawker · Mar 16, 2020

Hella_Reef said:
Looking great already,
How big is the overflow box? How much does it per reuse out? And how big is the inside dimension of the left cabinet? My 130.4 shows up in a week and I’m trying to prep some things beforehand.

Sorry for the late response. Here’s a schematic of the display.

The left side of the cabinet is approximately 13”x 26.5” up to the front support beam.

Hella_Reef · Mar 27, 2020

No worries, I ended up just waiting for my cabinet and tank to arrive before cutting my control panel plywood. I feather wedged the top for easy removal if anything ever goes haywire. Thanks for getting back to me.

Letterkenny · May 25, 2020

Hella_Reef said:
No worries, I ended up just waiting for my cabinet and tank to arrive before cutting my control panel plywood. I feather wedged the top for easy removal if anything ever goes haywire. Thanks for getting back to me.

What’s the size of the controller board and what are those dosing containers? Have a 130 coming in and wanted to start working on the board.

Biglex · May 25, 2020

Looks good!

Letterkenny · Jun 14, 2020

Hella_Reef said:
No worries, I ended up just waiting for my cabinet and tank to arrive before cutting my control panel plywood. I feather wedged the top for easy removal if anything ever goes haywire. Thanks for getting back to me.

How did you mount the DOS to the side of the plywood?