CPerry's Build Thread Waterbox 180.5 SPS Tank!

[Trey]

Awesome build so far brother! Im 5 months into my 180.5 build and we have some similar stuff going on. Just dropped my first "tester" corals in on sunday. Looking forward to following along.

 

[thewedge]

Thanks for sharing your experience. My wife finally wore me down and convinced me to upgrade from my 65g. It was my first saltwater tank, started in '14. 130gal is about the minimum my wife would settle for upgrading to and I'm striking while the iron is hot and will be pulling the trigger on a 180.5 next month.
I'm taking this opportunity to not repeat some past mistakes, particularly with coral selection. After beating back a particularly aggressive paly strain, I've pretty much been beaten by mushrooms. They were about the 3rd corals I ever bought and over the last year, they pretty much overtook everything except a few leathers and some zoas. Also upping my water-change game starting now as I am still in the bucket brigade.

One thing I like about the Waterbox cabinets is the controller section. But on the 180.5, it looks like that area is meant for the ato reservoir. Is that accurate? I plan on keeping everything stock and I don't have the ability to locate my filtration elsewhere. The tank is going to go in my finished basement with my mixing station moving to the boiler room. My current setup is in my man cave so I was less concerned about aesthetics. Just trying to figure out if I will need to come up with a plan for a small cabinet to house either the Apex or ato.

Your feedback on Triton and DOS are clutch. I've been using BRS dosers and two-part with my own program on the Apex. For a while I was good on testing and I really had some great growth and some nice corals. But around the time the mushrooms started taking over I also got a little cocky and was just trying to eyeball my parameters. Not something I'm willing to do with a new build of this magnitude. I'm thinking that at this level of investment I have to go all in to do it right.

 

[Trey]

Thanks for sharing your experience. My wife finally wore me down and convinced me to upgrade from my 65g. It was my first saltwater tank, started in '14. 130gal is about the minimum my wife would settle for upgrading to and I'm striking while the iron is hot and will be pulling the trigger on a 180.5 next month.
I'm taking this opportunity to not repeat some past mistakes, particularly with coral selection. After beating back a particularly aggressive paly strain, I've pretty much been beaten by mushrooms. They were about the 3rd corals I ever bought and over the last year, they pretty much overtook everything except a few leathers and some zoas. Also upping my water-change game starting now as I am still in the bucket brigade.

One thing I like about the Waterbox cabinets is the controller section. But on the 180.5, it looks like that area is meant for the ato reservoir. Is that accurate? I plan on keeping everything stock and I don't have the ability to locate my filtration elsewhere. The tank is going to go in my finished basement with my mixing station moving to the boiler room. My current setup is in my man cave so I was less concerned about aesthetics. Just trying to figure out if I will need to come up with a plan for a small cabinet to house either the Apex or ato.

Your feedback on Triton and DOS are clutch. I've been using BRS dosers and two-part with my own program on the Apex. For a while I was good on testing and I really had some great growth and some nice corals. But around the time the mushrooms started taking over I also got a little cocky and was just trying to eyeball my parameters. Not something I'm willing to do with a new build of this magnitude. I'm thinking that at this level of investment I have to go all in to do it right.

Sounds like you are trying to do a very similar set up to what I just did. 180.5 in finished basement, with the mixing station in my "utility" room. Take a look at my build thread. I used the section you are asking about for all of my electronics and a controller board, maybe you can find some inspiration or something lol.

 

[thewedge]

Sounds like you are trying to do a very similar set up to what I just did. 180.5 in finished basement, with the mixing station in my "utility" room. Take a look at my build thread. I used the section you are asking about for all of my electronics and a controller board, maybe you can find some inspiration or something lol.

Your tank looks great! Thanks for sharing your story.

 

[Trey]

Your tank looks great! Thanks for sharing your story.

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[cperry7467]

Short update to my build thread, I need to come back and update some of my sections, lots has happened since my last post. Right now the major update is that I've been battling AEFW for a few months now. Despite that my corals are growing well and looking good.

Here's a fun tip if you're looking for AEFW damage, after lights out take a flashlight and look around at your corals. Here is what the damage looks like. You can see the bare spots on these corals where a flatworm has been munching on it. If I take a turkey baster to it after lights out every now and then I'll find a large AEFW blow off. Blowing them off nightly I only find 1 every 2-3 weeks though. Tough to eliminate that's for sure.

 

[cperry7467]

Alright here are some progress photos along with some of the up/downs of the year so far.

Pink Cadillac from January to now

Red Planet from Jan to now... The damaged spots are from flatworms. The damage has stopped but the coral hasn't grown over the spots yet.

TGC Northern Crush January and now. I LOVE the color on this one. Lots of encrusting but not much vertical growth yet.

Orange Passion January to now. I've fragged this a few times and took some damage as well. I cleaned my gyres and after I put them back in they weren't positioned correctly and blew the tissue off part of my colony. That hurt. I clipped off the dead areas last night, I think it well recover faster that way.

Not a before/after but just a couple of my larger colonies. Pink Lemonade on the left and blueberry nasuta I purchased from @gws3 last year (highly recommend). Both are fast growers, I've cut COLONIES off the pink lemonade this year because it grows so fast.

Green Slimer, Pinky the Bear(@gws3), and Captain planet(@gws3) off to the side from Jan to now. Pinky was a little mad during the picture but normally has long extended polyps. The colony to the right was looking amazing right before it got hit with flatworms and hasn't looked the same since. It's recovering slowly.

No name Tenius and CB Malificent from Jan to now. Malificent also got hit with flatworms and you can see the dark area that was damaged. I haven't seen any recent damage, just still recovering.

Walt Disney Jan to now. In my last tank this colony grew like a weed but not so much in this tank. The color hasn't been great for a couple of months so considering moving it to another spot. It might be due to the flatworm treatment I've been trying, everything has been a bit ticked off. The blues just aren't there like they used to be.

And some new additions, CC Voodoo Majick

Formidable Milli and Fruitopia. Don't mind the torch below.

Something interesting... I have been trying Purge V2 to get rid of the flatworms and it has stressed out my Bubble tip and rock flower anemones. The bubble tips have split a few times as a result and my rock flowers actually spawned. I've been finding baby rock flowers all around my tank for a month now.

And just a few more random shots thrown in...