DIY 40g breeder reef system / 20g long sump / fuge

jtone_philthy_aquatics

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What’s up everyone long time no see. I haven’t been very active on here lately and it feels great to be back!! Hope everyone is doing well out there!
So I’ve finally been putting together a reef system that I’ve been planning since I moved to the Midwest this past February. It’s a 40 gallon breeder drilled with a stand alone overflow bulkhead and the same matching bulkhead for the return. This is more of a budget build due to the fact that I did just move here and a lot has been going on over the past 8 months. It has a 20gal long sump.

EQUIPMENT USED⬇️
•40 gallon breeder
•20 gallon long sump
•1 inch over flow ( stand alone drilled on back side with rigid tubing standing above the displays water line for a nice air/ water ratio and
to silence the gurgling)
•1 inch return bulk head
•black flexible pond tubing for both return/drain lines.
•marine aqua return pump (model DC-4000) 28watts (can also work as a wave maker)
•red devil protein skimmer (I believe this model is rated 70 / 75 gallons)
•13 watt UV sterilizer
•tunze ato (model 5070)
•2 ceramic bio bricks
•filter floss for bubble trap
•jebao cross flow wave pump (model cp-90)
•jebao wave maker (just for detritus in corner) (model slw-5)
•20lbs aragonite sand ( refugium section in sump)
•25 lbs two little fishies (staxx reef rock)
•Marco reef rock cement for aqua scape design
•200 watt heater
•5gallon innovative marine ro tank
•kessil a80 refugium light

•viparspectra 165 watt modified (removed a lot of the 470nm blue and the cyan leds along with some others) (added 10 - 440nm royal blues and 10 - 400nm violets) I have mostly 120 degree lenses but I left about 4/5 90’s on just to mix it up a bit. I know SB reef lights have a mixture so I figured I’d give that a try I can always switch them out or just remove them all tog

•aliexpress 470nm 54 watt led bar
•AliExpress white blue cyan Uv 54 watt led bar (arriving in a few days)

I don’t have a par meter at the moment so I’m getting a ballpark idea of my par based off of the lux/ footcandle photometer readings. it’s going to be very heavy blue and violet so I’m using (70 / 75 / 80) as the constant when using the Lux converted to par formula. I’m hoping that will give me a decent idea on what I’m working with in the system. Im going to use the (Milwaukee ap 700 photometer) I’m using a cheap one at the moment while I’m waiting for that one to arrive. I’d prefer to get some readings under the water and check out each area of the rock work. I’ve been studying up on a lot of the Lux to par threads out there and it seems that a good amount of people rely heavily on this system and achieve great success with it.

the tank has been cycling for around 3 weeks to a month now and the ammonia is pretty much fully converted to nitrite at this point. Nitrite is still reading decently high in the system. Things are moving along though!

•bacterias used / experimented with so far
•fritz #9
•microbactr 7 brightwell (small amount)
•seachem stability (tried out the prime as they recommended but I stopped because I didn’t want to interfere with the natural process too much. I just felt that chemically it’s probably not too good to remove nitrite and ammonia that way during a cycle. I could be wrong but I didn’t wanna play around with any of that)
•now I add a small amount of dr. Tim’s here and there in hopes that it will help to boost different types of bacteria colonies. I have had a lot of great success using dr Tim’s in the past for multiple different reasons.

So yea that’s where I’m at with the frag grow out system at the moment! I’m happy with everything so far. I know a lot of people aren’t into using cheaper equipment these days. I enjoy the high end stuff as well I use alot of name brand products on my other systems. Personally I think you can succeed with the off brand equipment as well. I will be sure to update along the way and let everyone know how things work out! Thanks everyone happy reefing ✌️

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T_BONE

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Nice looking build! I like how you did the scape in the breeder. Looks like lots of shelves to place stuff so it will get plenty of light! Be sure and keep us updated with the progress.
 
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jtone_philthy_aquatics

jtone_philthy_aquatics

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Nice looking build! I like how you did the scape in the breeder. Looks like lots of shelves to place stuff so it will get plenty of light! Be sure and keep us updated with the progress.
Thanks man I appreciate that! I see all of these awesome rock scapes online with so many ledges to place corals and a family member gave me a small bucket of that Marco cement so I figured It was my chance to finally try it out. I’m happy with it so far. For sure I will keep it updated.
 
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jtone_philthy_aquatics

jtone_philthy_aquatics

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Just wanted to update for anyone that might be interested.
I received my second Ali express led light bar so I now have the all 470nm blue and also the day time bar that has white blue and green leds.
they are pretty nice considering I only payed 39 dollars a piece for them.
I still have a few weeks before I go to the next frag swap in St. Louis mo so I’m working on the lighting schedule now. Because I already had 2 ai prime hd16 lights laying around from older systems and I really hated the thought of not using them so I hooked them up at an angle on both sides of the viparspectra.

they run for the first half of the day and then they run royal blue violet and uv at a low intensity for the rest of the day. The viparspectra is now set up basically just to run the blue channels because I like using the primes for my white lighting during the day time. I did mod the spectrum on the vipar and had 25,000k whites but I still wasn’t a fan of the whites coming from this fixture so I have a few different blue spectrum leds running along with 400nm 410nm 420nm leds for Uv and violets. I know it’s a waste of the white channel but I just liked the look of running the lights this way.

I added my two clown fish that I already had along with my purple dottyback and a scopus tank for algae control. I figured with the extra 10 gallons of water in the sump and all of the biological filtration/ fuge the tank should be able to handle the waste. If I see any issues coming along I will move some fish to other systems right away. The tang seems very happy and has even colored up a lot more since being in this tank. He eats sea weed every day along with pellets/ flakes. The 2 clowns haven’t fought at all either I’m really happy about that because I love having 2 different clowns in a tank.

but that’s it so far just added onto lighting did some more led mods in the vipar added fish and also dragons breath macro algae and red grape algae to the sump/ fuge.
 

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jtone_philthy_aquatics

jtone_philthy_aquatics

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These pics are just still shots of a video I took with the additional leds so they aren’t the best and the macros aren’t in the sump in the pics. I will post better images really soon
 
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jtone_philthy_aquatics

jtone_philthy_aquatics

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Here are some pictures I took earlier today of the 40 breeder system that I recently built.

picked up some really nice eyphillia frags at the @reefingusa swap in St. Louis mo. This was my second time at this event since I moved into the area. The vendors were the same as the first time that I attended. They all have some really awesome frags and one of their rules to being a vendor at this particular event is to have aqua-cultured 80% of your live stock which I think is a pretty cool rule to go by! Props to all of the vendors because the corals they are producing are top notch. I didn’t receive any bad hitchhikers either and that’s always a great thing. Very clean corals I didn’t see anything worth stressing about while going through my rigorous dip procedures.
Shout out to @BahamaLlamaCoral since I believe he has something to do with this seasonal swap.
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Shout out to everyone who was at the event! I’m looking forward to connecting at the spring event!
Thanks for stopping by my 40b build thread. Happy holidays everyone
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

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