DanP_SD’s 300g Build Thread

[DanP-SD]

So I’ve put it off long enough. So here goes.

A couple years ago, I was complaining to my wife that I needed a bigger tank. My 125g SPS reef was totally overgrown and the fish had no room to swim.

This was in our dining room in a built in cabinet. My incredible wife, strolled around the house and then surprised me when she said, “if you give me back my dining room, you could put something really big right there.” She was pointing to a wall at the end of the hallway that had a built in wall fountain. I should say, it had a really ugly built in wall fountain.

It would be a huge project tearing out the fountain and building a tank suitable for a focal point of the house. This wall was a straight line of sight from the front door and highly visible.

Regretably, I never took any pictures of the ugly fountain — does anyone take pictures of ugly fountains — so I don’t have a true “before” shot. But I quickly started thinking about the possibilities. I did some light exploratory surgery and discovered that behind the fountain was a cold water supply and angle stop, a drain and outlets on two different 14 amp circuits. It was like the spot was custom made for a reef tank.

The location does get both morning and afternoon direct sunlight. I know a lot of reefers advise newbies not to put a tank where there’s direct sun and I guess that’s good advice for newbies who might struggle with nutrients but I’ve always found sunlight is ok if you keep nitrates below 3ppm and phosphates below 50 ppb. So I had my spot. More importantly, it was my wife’s idea so how could I say no.

Now the good news is, this project is done — well as done as a living ecosystem ever is — so I have pictures of the build and the finished project with two years of growth and tweaking. I just need to get them posted.

So here goes.

 

[DanP-SD]

The first phase was demolition and site prep. This was pretty straight forward — pull out the fountain and fix the damage.

Of course, nothing ever goes that smoothly.

Here’s the area where the tank would go with the fountain removed.

In the bottom left, you can see the preexisting drain pipes and angle stop for the fountain top off. The square opening is a panel for access from the other side of the wall — the master bedroom. I decided to leave that so I can turn off the water supply when needed without having to come in from under the tank.

 

[DanP-SD]

The twist here was that the tile flooring didn’t extend all the way back. Luckily, I found some extra tile in the garage and was able to fill it in. Here’s the site with the drywall and flooring done.

I also ran some additional outlets to have plenty of options.

 

[Brynn]

The twist here was that the tile flooring didn’t extend all the way back. Luckily, I found some extra tile in the garage and was able to fill it in. Here’s the site with the drywall and flooring done.

I also ran some additional outlets to have plenty of options.

Following.

 

[DanP-SD]

Next step was designing the tank and stand. One thing I was certain of is I wanted to do a Bean Animal overflow. With the plumbing right against the wall to my MBR, silence would be paramount. So I designed the tank with a center overflow and seven 1” bulkheads — four for the overflow and three for returns (two that I’d use immediately and an extra in case I wanted more flow). I know the traditional Bean Animal calls for three pipes - 1 siphon, 1 open channel and one emergency. Since I didn’t want the overflow box big enough for 1.5” plumbing I decided to use two 1” lines for the siphon line and tee them into a 1.5” gate valve; hence the four lines.

I sourced both the tank and stand from Aquatic Warehouse and gave them detailed 3D renderings of exactly where I needed everything to make it work — including the offset corner posts shown in the picture above to leave room for the drain pipes. Derek was a great help in bullet proofing the design and ultimately, they came through with a great tank and stand. The tank, btw, is by Vizio.

Here’s the stand in place:

Then I ordered a marine starboard sheet and cut it to the floor of the stand. Lastly, I added a ledger board above the tank. This was to accomplish two things: 1) giving me a mounting spot to hang lights that is centered (front-to-back) over the tank, and 2) providing extra support for the two 12” eye bolts shown. Those were used as the anchor point for a 2-ton engine hoist I used to lift the tank into place.

 

[doodledreads]

Following..

 

[Susan Edwards]

following

 

[DanP-SD]

So there’s a little bit of a jump here. I really wish I had filmed the process of moving the tank into place but my hands were full. Due to the weight of the tank, there was no safe way a few guys could lift it into place. This was compounded by the fact that the back two-thirds of the tank nest into the wall, meaning the only places to mount a suction cup are the front glass and the front third of the side glass.

To provide some added muscle, I put in the eye bolts shown above and got an engine hoist from amazon rated for something close to two tons. I also bought four dual suction cups and several heavy duty winch straps. With the help of four friends and using the suction cups on the outside of the tank we lowered the tank from the cargo van I picked it up in to two dollies and rolled it back to the stand. In the picture below you can see the insulation foam I picked up from Home Depot to cushion the bottom of the tank.

Once the tank was on the dollies in front of the stand, we moved the suction cups to the inside of the tank — all four walls and used the winch straps to connect them to the engine hoist. Then the nerve-wracking part of hoisting the tank up while holding it manually forward so it wouldn’t slam back into the stand. Once it was a couple inches higher than the stand, we slowly (really slowly) maneuvered it into position. Then I slid the insulation foam between the stand top and the tank bottom and we lowered the tank into place.

If you ever try this route, I learned through a lot of trial and error that, to get it into its exact final location, I lifted most of the weight with the hoist so the tank was touching the foam board but lightly. Then we manually slid the tank into perfect position, lowered the weight off the hoist and then cleaned up the edges of the insulation foam using a hacksaw blade.

Here it is in position:

They’re a bit out of order. The middle one shows the foam before it was cut. The other two show after the clean up.

 

[DanP-SD]

Next step was to add the lights — I wanted them in before the cabinet surround was installed — and some shelves to hold ballasts:

 

[DanP-SD]

I think the most nervous any reef keeper ever feels is the moment water is first introduced. It was time to test the tank for leaks. It’s an easy process — fill it from a garden hose then sump pump it out. The Rubbermaid container is there because my drain lines were open and would drain water once I got it over the return bulkheads.

 

[DanP-SD]

Next came the rockscaping. Now, I’m the first to admit, I’m not very good at this, but I looked at a lot of threads on this site, got some ideas and then started laying out my rock on a folding table in the back. I used a bandsaw to cut flat surfaces into rocks, acrylic rods for support and a lot of glue and cement to put it all together and in it went. Virtually all of the rock is Real Reef. In my experience, it takes longer than natural rock to develop a lot of life (coralline algae, macro algae, tunicates, sponges, etc.), but is pest free and far better for our reefs.

 

[DanP-SD]

Whoops, got a little ahead of myself on that last picture — showing the sump and plumbing too soon. So, as you might guess, the next step was plumbing. I had a custom sump built by advanced acrylics. They did an incredible job and I can’t say enough about the incredible service and communication through the design process and the quality of the finished product was beyond compare. The flow on this setup is straightforward-ish. In the overflow box, I have two full siphon pipes that drain into the large gate valve you can see in the background above. I use that to slow the flow enough to max out those lines and cause a trickle of water into the second pipe (the open line that only becomes a siphon if the water level rises too high in the overflow). Those all drain into the left chamber of the sump behind the filter socks. Then water flows over the spillway and through the filter socks. Then into the skimmer chamber with heaters. Then over the baffle where I usually keep carbon and bubble trapping materials, and into the return pump chamber. The return pump pushes the water into the center and right return lines back to the tank. I don’t use the left return.

The skimmer is a Skimz Leopard. The pump is a Waterblaster. I’m not sure I’ll ever use something else. These things are the most reliable pumps ever. I’ve had some of them run years without even cleaning them (not that I recommend that) but I have yet to find a way to kill one of them.

The RO system on the left will eventually be put in the open space to the left of the sump but first I needed to install a cabinet for a secondary top off and salt mixing station on the other side of the wall in the bedroom (again, nod to my incredibly patient wife).

 

[DanP-SD]

Some alternate shots of the plumbing and under tank setup:

Having a drain pipe under the stand is a tremendous asset. The black line at the top is waste water from my RO system. Later, I set up an automatic water change system using two Apex PMUP pumps. One adds saltwater and one pumps old saltwater into this drain. Very handy.

 

[Holy_makerel]

Awesome! Keep em comin

 

[DanP-SD]

To this point, this build has been pretty standard -- tank, stand, lights, sump, skimmer. But one of my chief goals was to engineer the build to a point that routine maintenance would be very simple. I've done this with my last four tanks and I think I have it pretty well dialed in now. To achieve a truly low-maintenance tank, you need to put the work in on the front end to provide means for low nutrient levels (nitrate and phosphate primarily), and need to automate water changes, top off and consistent dosing of elements to maintain ionic balance (calcium, alkalinity and magnesium) as well as desired trace elements.

Covering all those bases requires a lot of gear and, as you can see from the pictures above, my sump didn't leave much room for additional gear under the tank. So to achieve the desired goal, I needed to add a second cabinet on the other side of the wall. Since that's the master bedroom, it needed to look like furniture while providing good access and good sound insulation. Together with my awesome carpenter, Matt Plane, we designed a cabinet that had a dry section (for dosing computers and some A/V gear), a wet section (for reservoirs), access doors and a hinged top. Here's the exterior. The tank is on the other side of the wall in the background:

Here's the inside. The left section is the dry section and has shelves (not in this picture). The right is the wet side. The black box is another custom build from Advanced Acrylics. It's a three-chamber reservoir for 3-part BRS dosing or Balling Salts:

Here you can see the hinged top, which is great for access and the gear installed. On the left are two Vertex Libra dosing pumps. One was for Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium dosing. On the other, I initially set it up for automatic water changes with one channel removing salt water from the sump and dumping it in the drain pictured earlier, and one replacing it with new saltwater. Later, I changed that system but more on that later. In the right cabinet, the tall left reservoir is for RO storage. That's an Avast Barrel Tender on the front. I later upgraded to the newer version. The middle reservoir is for salt water. They're plumbed with pumps so, to fill the salt reservoir, I just make sure I have enough RO water and turn on a pump that transfers it over. I measured out the exact amount of salt, so I just dump in a preset amount and the salt reservoir has two mixing pumps that run every day from 8am to 11pm. It's enough to keep the water moving while limiting noise during the night.

Here's a top view showing the plumbing. Also note the RO water (left), with a flip of a ball valve, can be routed to the Calcium, Alkalinity, Magnesium reservoir instead of the salt reservoir. Very convenient when it's time to mix up new solutions. The three-chamber reservoir on the right (black) also has three mixing pumps, which I only run when mixing up new batches. On the far right, you can see a brass bar. I drilled this to hold four momentary buttons connected to my Apex I/O breakout box. One button activates the cabinet light. One would eventually activate a fully automatic water change (more on that later). One would turn on the mixing pumps in the black reservoir for 12 hours. One was left open.

Closer view of the dosing pumps:

The maze of tubes behind the cabinet. The cabinet is pulled out for this photo. Believe it or not, this is only half the tubing. I later added a third Vertex Libra and used those three channels, plus the remaining open channel from the middle doser to add four-part KZ supplements:

 

[DanP-SD]

The next phase of this build out was completing the cabinet and surround. The tank was free standing without any wood work, so essentially it was just an enclosure to wrap the equipment. This was a complicated design both from a structural and aesthetic perspective and beyond my wood working skills. My wife, my carpenter and I spent a lot of time coming up with a design that was practical but still fit the house. Ultimately, we decided on two large hinge doors below and four smaller doors above plus two hidden door panels on the sides for accessing things like controllers and magnetic pumps (ie, Vortech dry sides). The wood design was modeled of an ArtItalia piece from the dining room and I have to say Matt did an amazing job with the inlay on those.

Here's the frame of the enclosure:

And here it is with the doors fully installed:

The last picture above also shows the RO unit in place. That's a small refugium to the right of it. Basically, I didn't have room in the cabinet on the other side of the wall so the way it works is the water flows from the angle stop in the wall into this cabinet to the RO/DI unit. It's filtered and the waste water goes to the drain pipe shown earlier and the clean water goes through the wall into the RO/DI reservoir in the cabinet in the bedroom. That worked ok and I kept it this way for about a year, but I was never happy with the messy look and sloppy tubing. So, eventually I replaced it with one of the Aquatic Life Twist-In units mounted on the left wall of the sump cabinet and a new custom reservoir the guys at Advanced Acrylics built for me. Not as much RO daily capacity but a much cleaner solution and I'm getting more than enough water with zero TDS so it's a good solution for my need.

 

[DanP-SD]

In terms of livestock, the tank has gone through an evolution. Initially, this tank was planned as a replacement for my SPS tank at the top of the thread. Once I got this up and running, I began cherry picking the best corals from that tank (and fish and inverts) and placing them in the new setup, along with some LPS corals. With the Giesemann Aurora light unit, I was getting strong growth and coloration but I found that in the bigger tank, it wasn't as impressive and I couldn't resist the urge to add more LPS and soft corals to help fill in the spaces.

Eventually, a trend emerged where guests and family members would love looking at the soft corals with all their movement and didn't even know the SPS's were alive. I'm not the first to hit this fork in the road, but I got tired of all the effort going into the SPS corals for a reward I couldn't share with anyone else. I was the only person who routinely saw them and cared. So after about a year, I began migrating to all LPS and soft corals. There are still some SPS left -- some montis that were too encrusted to remove and a Pocillopora that spawned all over the tank and left 100s of frags growing in every exposed spot of rock at about the mid-height mark -- but it's now mostly soft and LPS.

Pics of the tank as it currently is (and a video) coming.

 

[Danny_M5]

one day in the future I want to build something like that in my house...;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy;Snaphappy