Free’s Waterbox Reef LX 290.6 Build

[freelancer]

Semi-Upgrading from a Waterbox Peninsula 25.

Ended up choosing the Waterbox Reef LX 290.6. The 340.7 just appears to always be out of stock and the extra foot seemed like it may be troublesome for our space.

Will be moving over and reusing some equipment that we got previously as we had already planned to upgrade after we moved and we’re now at a good place to make that change.

Equipment Plan:

• Waterbox Reef LX 290.6
• Ecotech Vectra L2 pump
• Ecotech Radion G5 Blue ( x1 already have)
• Neptune Apex
• Neptune ATK
• Neptune Trident
• Neptune AFS
• Red Sea Reefmat 1200
• Reef Octopus Regal 250SSS Skimmer
• Innovated Marine Helio 1000W PTC Heater
• Ecotech MP40s x2

Livestock:

• Biota blue mandarin dragnet pair
• Biota Yellow Tang
• 2x Blackstorm clown fish
• Tomini Tang
• Achilles Tang
• Purple Tang
• Flame Angel
• Red scooter dragonet
• Blue Hippo Tang
• Leopard Wrasse

Items in italics are the ones already have and moving over to the new build.

Substrate will just be Caribsea Reef Sand and Live Reef Rock.

Uncertain if we’ll re-setup the Pax Bellum ARID N18 for this. It’s likely not large enough for the tank, and we’d need to get the N24 if we wanted to go down this path. We may eventually set up the refugium, which would need it’s own light and such. Last crazy heat wave also may mean looking into a chiller as well.

Open to suggestions and feedback.

 

[SaltyT]

Congrats on the new tank! We need pics!

 

[freelancer]

Just took delivery! it was scheduled originally for this past Friday, but FedEx needed to reschedule.

Some minor damage to the black wrap and holders, maybe a bit of damage to the bottom of the tank container. Fingers crossed no damage inside.

LFS coming on Wednesday morning to help move it into the house.

 

[freelancer]

Tank is now inside and in place.

We had some set-backs to deal with. Primary one is a damaged return piece. Contacted Waterbox and we're getting a replacement on Monday.

We are currently filling it for leak testing the tank display part without putting water in the Overflow until next week.

The Red Sea sump modification kit came in yesterday as well, so we'll take some time to pull out the Sock chamber for the Reefmat.

We're also thinking we're going to do a small bit of cutting down the length of the main drain for it to have it flow cleanly.

 

[freelancer]

The replacement piece from Waterbox came in, so we were able to put in the rest of the overflow for the return.

Leak testing is going nice and slowly but still happening. Nothing leaking so far which is great.

Started to take a look at the MarcoRocks we got. Definitely didn’t get enough shelf rocks. Need to order some more. We did end up switching from Caribsea LiveRock to the MarcoRocks instead because we wanted to mess around with the NSA aquascapes that we’ve been seeing. We’re going to be using 3 or 4 PolypLabs Genesis Rocks in the sump for additional filtration to help.

The medium foundation rocks are also way too small, so going to need 2x large foundations. Probably will break the mediums into islands for the aquascape.

 

[editour2]

No further updates? What ssre the dimensions on that tank? I'm thinking about the LX 320.7 or larger.
How easy was it to put the plumbing together?

 

[freelancer]

No further updates?

We just finished filling the display part of the tank and checking for any leaks. We checked the overflow for leaks as well and everything came out fine. We've started mixing the salt in it.

We also have been working on and just about decided on our aquascape.

Top down

Right Side view

Left side view

What ssre the dimensions on that tank?

Dimensions (LxWxH): 1836 x 750 x 650mm (72.3" × 29.5" × 25.6")

I'm thinking about the LX 320.7 or larger.

I don't think they make that one anymore. It's like 340.7 now, which was out of stock but also that extra foot was unfortunately slightly too big for our space. Blue Friday sale is also going on right now, so I'd recommend getting that 15% off on it, if you're getting it. That's a huge discount on it.

How easy was it to put the plumbing together?

It was extremely simple. They really give you everything to get started.

Basic setup like this too all of 10-15 minutes.

The modifications that you may want to do though, can be a bit harder.

For example, they give you the pieces to hard plumb your return if you'd like. Which is nice, minus the piping. It comes with a flex braided tubing to get started, but if you choose to hard plumb, the connectors are available in the box.

The other modifications are up to you as well.

I'm going to be removing the black piece there that holds the filter socks either today or tomorrow to get the Reefmat 1200 in place. Then potentially cutting one of the main drains a bit shorter to get the connection flex hose of the Reefmat in place.

I won't hard plumb the return pump to begin as I'm debating on a UV or not and how I'll get that connected in.

Aquascape video:

 

[Klx110ripper]

We just finished filling the display part of the tank and checking for any leaks. We checked the overflow for leaks as well and everything came out fine. We've started mixing the salt in it.

We also have been working on and just about decided on our aquascape.

Top down

Right Side view

Left side view

Dimensions (LxWxH): 1836 x 750 x 650mm (72.3" × 29.5" × 25.6")


I don't think they make that one anymore. It's like 340.7 now, which was out of stock but also that extra foot was unfortunately slightly too big for our space. Blue Friday sale is also going on right now, so I'd recommend getting that 15% off on it, if you're getting it. That's a huge discount on it.



It was extremely simple. They really give you everything to get started.

Basic setup like this too all of 10-15 minutes.

The modifications that you may want to do though, can be a bit harder.

For example, they give you the pieces to hard plumb your return if you'd like. Which is nice, minus the piping. It comes with a flex braided tubing to get started, but if you choose to hard plumb, the connectors are available in the box.

The other modifications are up to you as well.

I'm going to be removing the black piece there that holds the filter socks either today or tomorrow to get the Reefmat 1200 in place. Then potentially cutting one of the main drains a bit shorter to get the connection flex hose of the Reefmat in place.

I won't hard plumb the return pump to begin as I'm debating on a UV or not and how I'll get that connected in.

Aquascape video:

Very curious what you do with UV. I just bought a waterbox and trying to figure out how to tie my uv in currently

 

[freelancer]

Haven’t decided on the UV yet.

Did run into a couple of more hiccups.

One of the Ecotech Marine MP40s wet side is no good. It just won’t stay attached to the dry side and vibrates like hell out of the box. Nothing we tried to clean made it work. We’re going to contact Ecotech support to see what they say.

We also got our Helio PTC Heater system delivered today. Unfortunately, it’s suffering from E1 error code out of the box. We’ve tried only connecting it by itself both in and out of the water. By itself where it’s the only thing connected. Tried to see if there’s anything to clean on the connections and we weren’t able to get anything to register. Always only says E1 the entire time. Sent a message to @Innovative Marine to see what we can get done.

Unfortunately, this is holding us back from cycling the tank, as we have no heating to get the water to temp. So, looks like it’s going to take longer.

We did get the aquascape into the tank. We have to move around the one working MP40 as it’s moving the sand bed a bit. So, we’ll be working through that and finishing the sock chamber removal to set up the Reefmat tomorrow.

 

[Peter Keefe]

Wow! Looks like we're doing nearly identical setups! I just got my LX last week and am still setting up my RO and water change system. I'm also planning on doing an HNSA setup with rockwork similar to yours! Still haven't started that process, but will be breaking up the rocks soon. Curious how the sump modifications for the filter roller worked out? Do you need to re-route the plumbing too?

 

[freelancer]

Wow! Looks like we're doing nearly identical setups! I just got my LX last week and am still setting up my RO and water change system. I'm also planning on doing an HNSA setup with rockwork similar to yours! Still haven't started that process, but will be breaking up the rocks soon. Curious how the sump modifications for the filter roller worked out? Do you need to re-route the plumbing too?

The removal of the sock holder was actually really simple with the Red Sea Sump Modification kit.

The Reefmat actually fits in there just fine. I'll take a picture of it in it later.

As for the plumbing. There's a couple of options that can be taken.

1. Connect to just one of the main drains directly, and allow the other to flow naturally.
2. Cut and connect to just one of the main drains, same as above, one flows naturally through.
3. Cut and join both main drains with a T and 90 elbow, then connect that to the reefmat.
4. Get 2 reefmats, one for each drain. (Not sure if 2 500 reefmats would fit in the sock chamber together though)

We were initially going to go with option 2 and only cut one of the main drains to connect it to the reefmat (the gate valve one). But have since decided to go to option 3 as after removing the sock holder and looking at how the water comes from the drains into the back section then flows into the sock area, we got concerned that it would cause a bit of water noise (though very little to be quite fair).

Unfortunately, we ordered the wrong size pipes and fittings, so we're waiting for the correct sizes to get delivered now.

 

[salty150]

No updates...?

 

[freelancer]

February Update

We got stuck with a bunch of items during the holidays. Primarily, we came down with some illnesses that held us back a bit from making some updates.

What's happened since:

• We got our lids from TopLids. They're amazing and working just perfect. We made sure to get the feeder openings on all 3 of them. We're currently waiting on getting frozen food dispensers from them.
  
  
  
  
  
  There's also the covers for the light mounts as well.
  
  
  
• We decided to hook up the ReefMat into just 1 of the drains instead of connecting both together. We may end up eventually connecting them both together and having a crazy amount of flow that goes through that it may not be able to handle, even though it says max of 2380gph is capable.
  
  
  
• We've been fighting with tuning the Nyos Quantum 220 skimmer. Some days it's doing great, other days it's like it decides it wants to overflow. We're getting closer day by day on getting it tuned.
  
  
  
• We had a massive storm that knocked out power for 18hrs. We were able to get a generator, air pumps and some backup batteries to keep things going. It was very stressful, but luckily no problems.

Issues:

• Our Phosphates were a bit high. Nitrates were perfectly fine. We're trying out Maxspect Nano-Tech Phosphree to see how it does if at all on reducing the PO4. It's just hanging in a media bag near the skimmer.
• We had a huge bacteria bloom that lasted well over a month. We tried to let it deal with itself, but last couple week we decided to take things into our hands and resolve it. It was not an issue of any deaths, as we only have 2 clowns and a Tomini Tang in the tank, along with a few snails and hermit crabs.

New Equipment:

• We set up the BRS GFO & Carbon Reactor - Deluxe with the ROX 0.8 Aquarium Carbon.
  This was in effort to see if it would help clear up the water cloudiness, but it was a bacteria bloom, so the carbon didn't do much.
• We've been slowly seeding the tank with Reef Nutrition Apex pods. We've got a Pod Hotel in the sump where the "refugium" is supposed to be.
  This is mostly because we've got our 2 Mandarin dragonets in the 25G peninsula that are going to be moving in, so we're trying to get the population established. We generally add 2-3 bottles per week.
• Our pH was generally hovering around 7.8 or so when we started. We actually grabbed a long airline tube and put it so that it would pull air from outside the house to see how it did. It brought it up to 7.95 - 7.99. Not too bad.
• Just out of timing, we saw that the Reef Octopus Universal CO2 Scrubber came out, so we grabbed one of those to try out. It ended up bringing our pH to be between 8.11 - 8.2. This is pretty great. It's not set up for recirculating, just pulling air from outside. Biggest downside, is that it's not sustainable apparently. BRS puts this information in the "More Information" tab instead of "Details" - but here:
  
  
  
  
  I'm not sure if this means we'll have to eventually get a "jumbo" one or just change the media way more frequently. To be determined at a later date.
• Due to the bacteria bloom issue that lasted longer than we'd like, we ended up going and getting a Aqua UltraViolet 40 Watt Classic UV Sterilizer. We've paired it with a Reef Octopus VarioS-4 Controllable DC Pump that has been running for almost a week now. It's cleared up the water beautifully and has had no side effects on the fish or inverts. The only side-effect was my wife complaining we didn't get it sooner, since it cleared up the bloom so quickly compared to "letting the system resolve it itself".

What's coming up:

• We're going to work on moving the UV to the sump. We initially set it up in the display just to get things going and to see if this was even going to get the job done. Now that it has, we need to get it into a more permanent location.
• Need to fix up the Neptune Trident. It's been giving the fun "No Water sample" error, and likely just needs to get opened up and fixed up.
• Debating on whether or not to "seed" some coralline with the bottles. Reviews are mixed. Uncertain at this point.
• We're getting ready to start the process of migrating the Mandarin dragonets and the Yellow Tang from the 25gallon Waterbox Peninsula to their new home.
• We're concerned about doing the same for the Blackstorm clownfish that are in there, as they may fight with the current Longfin Mocha clownfish, since they're both pairs.
• Lights and corals are likely coming soon as well. We're starting to see bits and pieces of the "ugly" phase showing up on one of the rocks. We held out on putting lights on, since there's no corals yet and it would just push the ugly phase faster than we wanted.

 

[freelancer]

Missed update

I forgot to mention, we also set up 2x EcoTech MP40s. They're currently both on the back, one on each side. We may move them to the sides of the tank instead once we figure out the coral placement. They're currently running at 35% on Reef Crest setting.

 

[salty150]

Nice update!

Question... If you are only using one drain to the ReefMat - where is the other one going?

 

[freelancer]

Nice update!

Question... If you are only using one drain to the ReefMat - where is the other one going?

Same place as the emergency drain. In the back chamber.

That back chamber in the current design, is where all 3 drains go. I've taken the middle one and attached that one to the Reefmat, left the emergency drain alone, which is on the left most side, then there's the 2 on the right, a drain and the return line.

The unfortunate thing here is the plumbing sizes. With the Reef LX the emergency drain (the one on the left-most end without any valves) is larger than the other 2 drains. In particular, the 2 drains are 1in.

If this was an Infinia instead where the plumbing sizes are the same for all 3 drains, you can just swap the order and do this, which is way cleaner and connects both to the ReefMat just fine.

Note, this isn't my photo, but someone else in the group that was kind enough to share how he was able to set up. It is a 6ft Waterbox Infinia though.

 

[salty150]

So some of your water is going through the ReefMat and being filtered - and some if it isn't...?

 

[freelancer]

So some of your water is going through the ReefMat and being filtered - and some if it isn't...?

Yes, it still goes through the refugium section and gets processed by the skimmer and all, then gets processed back up through the return and could get processed by the ReefMat the 2nd time around.

You'd end up with this issue regardless if water ends up going into your emergency drain anyway, unless you've re-plumb that part as well to go directly into another area of the sump, like in the above Infinia picture, where it's got a pair of 45 degree fittings to drop the emergency drain straight into the skimmer section.

Right now we're pushing around 1550 GPH from the return through the Vectra L2 running at 50%.

The ReefMat has a Max. Flow Capacity - 2380 GPH according to the website. We were a bit concerned about it being able to do the 5-10x GPH from the recommendations of:

From BRS:

For reef aquariums, the general rule among hobbyists is to find a pump that can deliver at least 5x to 10x the tank's total water volume per hour.

And Waterbox suggesting 5-7x the system volume.

We have the plumbing pieces to put both drains through the ReefMat, but haven't done the full hard plumbing of everything because were uncertain how we would handle the UV and what flow rate we would use for that. Putting the plumbing pieces together isn't overly difficult, but what we noticed is, that if we did it right away, it'd be difficult to go back if we needed to. So, we opted for, let's try out this experiment before making a final decision on what ends up being the best method overall.

Given we now know we're sending around 800 GPH through the UV, we're likely going to keep that separate from the Return and just keep it running off of the Varios S4 and let the Vectra L2 continue to run the main return alone. We'll likely end up doing the both drains through the ReefMat, but wanted to also see if letting some of the water not go through the ReefMat and everything get filtered, would end up better for our Pod population in the refugium to end up getting additional nutrient food that doesn't get constantly filtered out. Jury's still out if that's really that critical.

The other part was that if we allow some of the water to not get ReefMat filtered initially, does that allow us to not have to dose various supplements to the tank. Meaning, are we having to dose Nitrate because the system is filtering out so much. Another current unknown.

 

[freelancer]

Equipment Update:

We've fixed the Neptune Trident. There was some garbage stuck in one of the intake flexible tubing. It was simple enough to take apart and use some hot water and a pipette that we have from Hanna tests to push it out and through.

We also got the UV set up in the sump. Regret not going with the AquaUV 57wt instead of the 40wt. Less about the wattage being an issue, but more of the dimensions for fitting in the sump.

57wt: 20" L x 3.75" W x 6" H
40wt: 36.875" L x 3.75" W x 6" H

That extra 16" is crazy hard to deal with in putting in the sump that the 57 would've fit in way better. If we ever need to replace it, I know which we're getting.

We've added our lights to the tank. We ended up going with 3 Kessil AP9X instead of the Radions. Primarily because of the look and feel. The Kessils are way thinner and look way different compared to the larger Radions.

For the Kessil AP9X we also needed the AP9X Mounting Arm Extended Slide Bar because the tank is just so large and deeper.

We got the EcoTech Versa set up for Auto Water Changes, which has been wonderful. We have it set up to do 3 options, a small 10 gallon and a medium 20 gallon and big 40 gallon water change, all on-demand using scenes in the Mobius app. It's made things significantly easier to do. Just needing to have the water and salt mixed up properly.

We also got a Maxspect Coral Gripper 83 (32.5 Inch), due to the height and such for this tank, this is just sooo helpful.

Issues Update:
We're currently in the ugly stage and flighting the beginnings of GHA and Diatoms. We know the cause is elevated PO4 as we've been testing and it's definitely high. We've been working through getting that down slowly as to not shock the tank.

We've been using a refugium with Tunze Eco Chic Waterproof Refugium LED Light 8831.00 but it's definitely not as strong as the AP9X so, we're looking into a stronger light. The chaeto is also pretty small, so it's taking a while for it to grow and pull those out. We're also using Maxspect Nano-Tech Phosphree and the combination seems to be working slowly. Though, it's possible it's being lowered more by our Auto Water Changes.

We're going to be trying some Nyos Phosi-Ex this weekend to help bring the PO4 down more. Our Nitrates haven't been an issue and have been within expected ranges, just the phosphates being problematic.

The last primary problem we're dealing with at the moment are hydroids. We're not sure what they came in from, but we've dipped all the corals in Coral RX inside of the Simplicity Coral Dipping Container, which is amazing in itself, but we didn't seem much of anything come out. We didn't dip the Anemone, or Chaeto for obvious reasons, so maybe in one of them. Having the magnifier, egg crate and measurements on it, is just great.

They look kind of like this. Our LFS said to leave them along and they will hopefully die off and disappear. Right now, they're mostly just on the glass and it's annoying us.

Chaeto tumbling. This is currently a manual process, as our small little bit of Chaeto isn't tumbling / rotating on it's own, so we're working on potentially adding a small gyre or something else to get it tumbling to help it grow and not suffer with dead light areas that could release nitrate and phosphates into the tank.

Livestock Update:

Fish:
We've added a Copperband Butterfly. It's been eating PE Mysis and some of the HIKARI frozen spirulina brine shrimp. We're generally feeding the spirulina for the Yellow and Tomini Tang, but the Copperband seems to go for it as well as the PE Mysis.

Corals:
Got a bunch from @Living Reef Orlando during the sale and they look amazing.

The 2 on the top right came from World Wide Corals and were DOA. We're awaiting replacements and they have been removed from the tank.

We're also waiting on some new corals from @TopShelfAquatics from this past Easter weekend sale that we're pretty excited about.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Equipment Update:

We've fixed the Neptune Trident. There was some garbage stuck in one of the intake flexible tubing. It was simple enough to take apart and use some hot water and a pipette that we have from Hanna tests to push it out and through.

We also got the UV set up in the sump. Regret not going with the AquaUV 57wt instead of the 40wt. Less about the wattage being an issue, but more of the dimensions for fitting in the sump.

57wt: 20" L x 3.75" W x 6" H
40wt: 36.875" L x 3.75" W x 6" H

That extra 16" is crazy hard to deal with in putting in the sump that the 57 would've fit in way better. If we ever need to replace it, I know which we're getting.

We've added our lights to the tank. We ended up going with 3 Kessil AP9X instead of the Radions. Primarily because of the look and feel. The Kessils are way thinner and look way different compared to the larger Radions.

For the Kessil AP9X we also needed the AP9X Mounting Arm Extended Slide Bar because the tank is just so large and deeper.

We got the EcoTech Versa set up for Auto Water Changes, which has been wonderful. We have it set up to do 3 options, a small 10 gallon and a medium 20 gallon and big 40 gallon water change, all on-demand using scenes in the Mobius app. It's made things significantly easier to do. Just needing to have the water and salt mixed up properly.

We also got a Maxspect Coral Gripper 83 (32.5 Inch), due to the height and such for this tank, this is just sooo helpful.

Issues Update:
We're currently in the ugly stage and flighting the beginnings of GHA and Diatoms. We know the cause is elevated PO4 as we've been testing and it's definitely high. We've been working through getting that down slowly as to not shock the tank.

We've been using a refugium with Tunze Eco Chic Waterproof Refugium LED Light 8831.00 but it's definitely not as strong as the AP9X so, we're looking into a stronger light. The chaeto is also pretty small, so it's taking a while for it to grow and pull those out. We're also using Maxspect Nano-Tech Phosphree and the combination seems to be working slowly. Though, it's possible it's being lowered more by our Auto Water Changes.

We're going to be trying some Nyos Phosi-Ex this weekend to help bring the PO4 down more. Our Nitrates haven't been an issue and have been within expected ranges, just the phosphates being problematic.

The last primary problem we're dealing with at the moment are hydroids. We're not sure what they came in from, but we've dipped all the corals in Coral RX inside of the Simplicity Coral Dipping Container, which is amazing in itself, but we didn't seem much of anything come out. We didn't dip the Anemone, or Chaeto for obvious reasons, so maybe in one of them. Having the magnifier, egg crate and measurements on it, is just great.

They look kind of like this. Our LFS said to leave them along and they will hopefully die off and disappear. Right now, they're mostly just on the glass and it's annoying us.

Chaeto tumbling. This is currently a manual process, as our small little bit of Chaeto isn't tumbling / rotating on it's own, so we're working on potentially adding a small gyre or something else to get it tumbling to help it grow and not suffer with dead light areas that could release nitrate and phosphates into the tank.

Livestock Update:

Fish:
We've added a Copperband Butterfly. It's been eating PE Mysis and some of the HIKARI frozen spirulina brine shrimp. We're generally feeding the spirulina for the Yellow and Tomini Tang, but the Copperband seems to go for it as well as the PE Mysis.

Corals:
Got a bunch from @Living Reef Orlando during the sale and they look amazing.

The 2 on the top right came from World Wide Corals and were DOA. We're awaiting replacements and they have been removed from the tank.

We're also waiting on some new corals from @TopShelfAquatics from this past Easter weekend sale that we're pretty excited about.

Nice looking frags!!