Fred's Planet Aquarium 225 Reef Build.

[Freddy0144]

Good Day Reefers,

Hard to believe I am hear again, new tank build after a two year break, after a horrible tank crash due to a air conditioning failure in my house. Anyway, I have wanted a planet tank for a while now, and after a few weeks of searching I happen to find the exact tank and stand that I wanted. It is a Planet Aquarium 225 that is two years old. 72 long X 30 Deep X24 Tall. It also came with Planets Steel powder coated stand. I picked it up on Saturday, and it needs to be cleaned a little, and obviously plumbed and set up. The tank is going to be located on the wall outside of my office and viewable from the kitchen and dinning room. Please excuse the mess as I have had to inventory what I have and what I need as one can imagine.

Plans so far are

Trigger 39 sump (from old system)
about 120 pounds of live rock (from old system)
sand bed
Skimz protein skimmer
3 Kessel lights and a 60" T-5 Fixture. this is also from the old tanks and loved the look
57 Watt UV along with a couple of media filters in line with the UV.

Goal is to have a mixed reef, with a focus on softies

 

[glb]

Sounds like a great build! I wasn’t able to open the videos. Could you post some pics?

 

[Freddy0144]

Getting some of the return plumbing roughed in. This is still dry fitting everything. The lower horizontal pipe is the emergency overflow for the left and right sides, and the upper one is the flow controlled Herbie style over flow.
The Tee in the lower pipe is going to be the return back to the sump from the in line UV and in line media filters. I am thinking I may run the UV in line by itself and run the inline media filters on another loop to have more control about the frequency of running media filtration, still sorting this in my head.

UV will not be in effect right off the bat. I want to build the bacteria first, but need to get it plumbed in.

 

[Freddy0144]

Well Plumbing is almost done. The guy running the level is a 1/2 bubble off and some the aux stuff is on the rise, but it will still work. Still lots to be done, but it passed the leak test last night.

 

[AaronFReef]

Man you move fast! Had my same size tank a week and a half and haven’t leveled it yet!

 

[AaronFReef]

Any idea what fish you will stock? Building out the same footprint tank myself.

 

[Freddy0144]

Man you move fast! Had my same size tank a week and a half and haven’t leveled it yet!

Well the tank was in a holding pattern for the last 10 days because of work. And today I replumbed the return pumps and changed it to eco tech m2 x2. I will get some pics up in a few.

the sicce was really loud and hummed plus this gives me more control over tank turnover. And lowers the amp draw.

 

[Freddy0144]

Any idea what fish you will stock? Building out the same footprint tank myself.

I love LPS CORALS like hammers, Jedi mind trick, and stuff like that. Fish wise I am a fan of tangs, blennies, gobies clowns I like some angels but I know they are a no go with coral. I already have over 200 lbs of live rock from my previous tank, along with all the hardware.

 

[Freddy0144]

Ok, I wanted to get this shot up last night but time was not permitting, here is the redesign of the return. It is so quiet and the pumps are running at about 50%

 

[Freddy0144]

The reactors may not stay where it is right now, but they are accessible that was one of the main points, still so much to do. Lights wire management, skimmer power, ATO, dosing pumps etc.

 

[Freddy0144]

Man! What a weekend, Finished the plumbing as seen above, No leaks (that was relieving) Tank is quiet for the most part. There is still some noise as there is no slime on any of the overflows, I think this will quiet down after that starts to build. So far I am liking the setup. I was a little scared about having the sump under the tank. The last tank was plumbed to the basement, but that was not an option for several reasons.

Still lots of electrical to do, the wire management should be fun, going to try panduit this time. We used it when I was in the network cabling business and it always looked nice and easy to organize.

 

[Freddy0144]

Well, the rocks and sand are in.. at this point who knows what it looks like???

also accomplished the control board. It is installed but a long way from done

 

[Freddy0144]

Well, the rocks and sand are in.. at this point who knows what it looks like???

also accomplished the control board. It is installed but a long way from done

 

[Freddy0144]

 

[Freddy0144]

Well. besides my house being a complete disaster, I can say that the wire mess is about 98% complete. I have a few things I still have to wire in such as the UV and the pump for the ATO, but over all I am in good shape. I know this is not that neat, but there is a method to my madness, I have things grouped such as the M2's, MP40's, Lights, etc so that in the event I have to replace something I am only cutting a couple of tywraps and not the entire bundle of stuff.

 

[Freddy0144]

The Aqua-scape I am pretty happy with, If you decide to glue rocks together use lots of super glue and accelerator, wait for it to cure over night and then, when if you decide to mortar with the Marco e-400 mix small batches with consistency a little thinner than peanut butter. We had one piece break after it was in the aquarium which I was bummed about, but it was stable enough not to have to pull out and re-glue and mortar again.

The tank is still really cloudy and I have to blow the rocks of from the sand install but over all there will be lots of room for corals and still lots of room for the fish to have open space to swim in.

In angle picture, you will notice the tank is near the window, that glass is painted black and my wife will be picking up a black out curtain for the window. We may scrape the black off after the curtain is installed, but for now it will stay.

 

[Freddy0144]

Wanted to post an update, after returning from vacation we added a few fish, 2 black ice clowns, 2 cleaner shrimp, 1 bicolor blenny, 1 watchman goby and 1 pistol shrimp.

Water test were ok, I will start posting those test results soon enough. I am not too happy with the salt mix but I knew better. and the ALK and CAL were low. not horribly but lower than what I would like to target. over all the tank has been pretty stable seeing the PH drop over night from 8.16 during the day to 8.06 over night, that is not too bad. IMHO.

Pic 1, Full tank shot, had an issue with the control cord on the Kessels and have to wrap those cable back up. I also have to sort out what I am going to do with the dosing pump. It is obviously not going to remain sitting on an empty box.

Pic 2 is the BiColor blenny, doing what he does, hanging out watching.

Pic 3 is the sump area, I am also waiting on my ATO container to arrive, this will live on the left side of the sump area and then I can remove the giant black water container that is hold my fresh water top off. (this was put in place while we were on vacation.

Slowly but surely, things are shaping up. I am also starting to introduce lights, right now the kessels are not running more than 20% intensity and only for 4 hours per day. There is obviously a ton of natural light that enters the house and I need to get my wife to pickup the curtains for that window.

 

[wet_rocks_reef]

Ok, I wanted to get this shot up last night but time was not permitting, here is the redesign of the return. It is so quiet and the pumps are running at about 50%

Nice you have so much room under the tank! question, I heard gate valves on Vectra pumps are over kill what's your take on it? Why have valves on a controllable return pump?

 

[Freddy0144]

Nice you have so much room under the tank! question, I heard gate valves on Vectra pumps are over kill what's your take on it? Why have valves on a controllable return pump?

The gate valves are there strictly for maintenance, and not needed for flow control, but since I run two pumps, I needed to be able to stop the flow to one or the other incase I have a failure. The control I get through the app is allowing me to run the pumps at less than 50% right now. As the tank grows out and matures this may change, but I am getting good tank turnover and the entire tank is super quiet.

 

[Freddy0144]

So, I was reading through the Photography thread and decided to get some practice in tonight. Out of about 25 pictures I found two that I liked. There was some post processing with Lightroom. I shoot a Canon 60D with a Macro 100MM lens.