Dave's reefer 350

DaveBally · Aug 19, 2019

Hi all,

So after a long 15 odd year break from reefing, its time to take the plunge again and do some serious damage to the wallet

I went round in circles about the size of tank, 250 to 525 were all in the running before settling on the 350 for the balance of space and cash. Never any doubt about the make though, Red Sea Reefer was the only option.

Major equipment list :
Reefer350
2 * Red Sea ReefLed 90
Red Sea RSK-600 Skimmer
Al Nero 5 Powerhead
Schego 600w heater
Jecod DCP-8000 pump
TMC 75 RO unit

So skimmer may be a bit large, but better to overskim i think and will probably need to add another powerhead or two, but a pretty good selection i think.

15/08/19

First delivery of the day, most of the dry goods in nice shiny new boxes

Second delivery, tank and cabinet. Bit of a big package but delivery guy managed to squeeze if around to the back of the house.

Cabinet build in process. You can feel the quality of the cabinet as you do this and gives you the warm fuzzy feeling that you've made the right choice.
(Look carefully to spot the deliberate mistake)

Cabinet complete and ready to have the tank lifted on.

And shes up. Heavy but me and the wife were able to lift into place, not a simple job, but do-able.

Next up, unboxing sump and reservoir. Good advice on the reservoir

Last one of the day, plumbing, sump and reservoir all in place.
A good days work done.

17-Aug..

Im going bare bottom, and heard a good tip on the BRS videos, use an ABS sheet to cover the bottom protects and stops unsightly reflections.
Needed cutting down to size and siliconing into place.

Then rest of equipment installed in sump. I was going to create a manifold for it, but decided my skills are not upto it at the moment. Maybe another job in the future.
The piping would needed to be run around the reservoir and i couldn't quite see how to make it work. Will revisit that at some point.

The skimmer also obscures the sliding baffle to create a refugium, so if that is important to you, then get a smaller skimmer.

Dry side all done too, packing material doesn't make a bad shelf either.
With lights and powerheads being wifi connected , i only need access to temp controller and circ pump controller.
These are stuck on with velcro so i can swap things around / build proper control board if needed.

So final setup is now not looking to bad:

19-Aug:

First job of the day, ran off to Aquacadabra and pickup some rocks.

Time to get sacping

Will post again as that develops.

------------
Not sure why these images are here, i keep removing them, but they pop back in.

hdsoftail1065 · Aug 21, 2019

Nice setup! Following along!

DaveBally · Aug 23, 2019

Hi again, its been a few days and things have moved at a pace.

I've mostly been playing with rocks, bashing with a chisel and lump hammer to get some smaller workable rocks.
Took a while, as it should do to get it right and im pretty happy with how it turned out.

Lots of epoxy was needed to hold it all in place.

Time to fill her up

So as its a nice day, setup the RO unit in the back garden.
Small leaks from the joints in one or two places, but ill 'get a man' in to sort all that and install it in a permanent position inside

Triple TMC 75 RO unit, ive added a pump to push up the pressure as the TDS was originally 20, now :

Plus the two extra D&D DI chambers, should give me 0 TDS on the way out. Well if not, not much else i can do.
After a day of two of filling ive turned on all the pumps and the lights.

The return pump is way to powerful and drained the pump chamber in seconds when running full bore, ive dialled it waaaaay back to 35% and that is now pushing up enough water to allow the drain to be running completely open.

Nice and silent tough, makes the wife happy.

The red sea e90s are nice well constructed lights, but the android app doesnt seem to want to correctly register them on my phone, Honor View 10. Had to use daughters iPhone to register them in which works. Also i couldnt add the to my guest (open) network, always seems to want a password.

Eventually both were up and running and now registered i can play with them from my phone ?!

The nero 5 no such problems, that worked straight away and moves a significant amount of water

Then i added the salt. 37g per litre * 350 litres = 12.9kg.
I added slighty over ( 12.997 kg ) , yes i got a bit anal weighing each pot full in... but after that .. TA DA...

I decided to upgrade to the Mantis Digital, the manual refractomer i initially bought was broken and now winging it way back to Amazon. This little device seems well worth it, simplicity itself.
Tested my RO water and that is indeed 0 TDS too, so adding the DI chambers has helped.

Right now then tank is up to temperature, the D&D controller is also great, ive thrown a frozen shrimp in, removed the filter floss that helped clear the tank of the rock dust, turned off the skimmer and poured in a bottle of Dr Tims.

We are cycling, now the waiting begins...
Ill give it a week or two and pickup some live rock to seed the corraline algae.