Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

[Greybeard]

Hi folks. Wanted to start documenting. I'm a firm believer in the saying 'Nothing good happens fast'... This one may take a while.

Concept:


60" long, 30" wide, 18" tall 3/4" glass 140g tank, ordered 4/24/17 from Planet Aquariums.
2x H2Overflows and 3/4" Siphon Stopper returns from CustomAquarium.com
Custom 12" x 10" x 3" acrylic external overflow box, BeAnAnimal style.
Custom 1.5" 11g square tube steel stand, powder coated gloss black, ordered 4/28/17
Current USA eFlux DC return pump, 1900gph
Sunlight Supply TEK 8x 48" T5 (4x Blue+, 2x ABSpecial, 1x Coral+, 1x Actinic)
Trigger Ruby 36
Reefkeeper Light/Basic (Lights, Heater)
Gyre 130 (from my cube)
Reef Octopus skimmer (from my cube)
Tunze Osmolator (from my cube)

Investigating the following:
Avast Spyglass reactor. Love the design... Opinions?
Avast Barrel Tender. Seems a better method that relying on me remembering when to refill my ATO reservoir. Anyone have one and want to talk about it?

Going Bare Bottom, with a fairly large refugeum. Starboard?? Not sure yet. This will be my first bare bottom display. Never really liked the look, but it's been growing on me. The idea that I can put some serious flow without causing a sandstorm is attractive, since all the flow has to start at one end.

I'm a bit concerned about bio filter. I'm an old DSB fan... no sand bed, planning on fairly sparse rockwork, I'm thinking I'm going to need to add a significant amount of bio media somewhere. What's the general opinion of the Marinepure ceramic stuff? I could easily put a fairly large amount of this into the sump... Better than using sand? They really ought to make big, thin 'tiles' of this stuff, like 24x24". I can see using this under the rockwork, instead of starboard.

All support systems will be located in a closet, behind the tank. No more bending over for this old, greybearded fatman. Regular maintenance can be performed upright.

Eventually I plan to fill in the space under the stand with cabinetry of some sort... no hurry. I enjoy woodworking. I'll build 4 separate, unique inserts. No water under the tank, steel stand is all the support I need, these will be purely decorative.

My daughter is going to do a mosaic tile on the 9" 'shelf' surrounding the tank. Similar to what she did on my 60 cube, but I'm requesting brighter colors (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/greybeards-cube.292760/)

Two days after I started actually ordering components, Red Sea comes out with their Peninsula system... Probably could have saved myself some money, but hey, building it is half the fun, right?

 

[Jimbo662]

This is going to be so cool!!!

 

[ksfulk]

I'm a bit concerned about bio filter. I'm an old DSB fan... no sand bed, planning on fairly sparse rockwork, I'm thinking I'm going to need to add a significant amount of bio media somewhere. What's the general opinion of the Marinepure ceramic stuff? I could easily put a fairly large amount of this into the sump... Better than using sand? They really ought to make big, thin 'tiles' of this stuff, like 24x24". I can see using this under the rockwork, instead of starboard.

I really like the marine pure blocks. They are generally unobtrusive and seem to work best in low flow environments. A few things about your use that might skew your usage though.

The blocks are relatively soft and if used as a substrate, then they will likely crush and emit "dust" over time, which can get really annoying. Ive had them etch a bit just from being too close to the drain on my large tank (granted it was 2 - 2" drains, but still, you wouldnt expect that on a ceramic block).

Also the blocks are just squares/cubes - they have a rounded or beveled edge and the "front" of the block has a radius to it. I was going to use mine as a skimmer stand, but the radius is enough that the skimmer wouldnt sit flat on the block. The tiles might be different - I use the 8x8x4 blocks mostly.

I've recently started using the spheres for a small section of my sump and they are nice as well, but in limited application. I think with a tank this size, you'd want 1-2 8x8x4 blocks to take care of your tank, though depending on how minimal the rockwork is, 3 might be better - of course bioload will dictate a lot of that.

Still, looks really nice - I wish I had a good place in my house of a pennisula style tank.

 

[Greybeard]

ksfulk; thanks for the feedback.

Too/tree of 'em (in my best Chicago accent) in the refugeum, sounds like a plan.

I don't usually over crowd a system, figure medium bio-load... I'm going to keep my pair of ocellaris clowns, my smith's blenny, and yellow corris wrasse, and adding to that. I want a tang... perhaps a kole, scopas, one that won't be too ridiculous in a 140g tank. Maybe one of the Centropyge angels... a pair of anthias. I'll likely add a few more shrimp.

 

[HolisticBear]

Marine pure gets high marks, but the other common alternative is siporax. You could use either the pond or standard, you could build your perfect size with some egg crate.

Examples:

I've read people who used starboard that recommended others' silicone around the starboard to prevent debris getting stuck underneath. Doing bare bottom seems much easier on an SPS tank where you can crank up the flow so debris won't settle. If you wanted to keep a bunch of low-flow LPS, it seems it could be a challenge to have nice low-flow areas and not have dead spots on the bottom.

Will enjoy following this build!

 

[Greybeard]

Doing bare bottom seems much easier on an SPS tank where you can crank up the flow so debris won't settle. If you wanted to keep a bunch of low-flow LPS, it seems it could be a challenge to have nice low-flow areas and not have dead spots on the bottom.

Will enjoy following this build!

With a 5' long tank, and all flow being generated from one end... I suspect flow rates will be reduced sufficiently at the far end, regardless of what sort of flow pumps I end up with, to allow for some lower flow space. I'm rather fond of wall hammer, if nothing else. Used to have one with black flesh and emerald green tips, though I haven't seen one like that in a decade or so. I'm also fond of clams, which in my experience do rather poorly in very high flow areas.

I to will enjoy this build

 

[TherealplexiG]

What's the general opinion of the Marinepure ceramic stuff? I could easily put a fairly large amount of this into the sump... Better than using sand? They really ought to make big, thin 'tiles' of this stuff, like 24x24". I can see using this under the rockwork, instead of starboard.

Works like charm, you don't need to fill it in like other media, maybe a single 8*8*4 inch block would be suffice but I might put two. Or go with 8*8*1 inch plate and cover the bottom as you mentioned. You cN cut those things easily with hand held hacksaw. It doesn't clog like other media and you don't have to regenerate, just give it a nice rinse once in couple of months or so. Blocks 8*8*4 is capable of denitrifying. I'm planning same for my cube, sparse rock work with marinepure.
Good luck..

 

[HolisticBear]

With a 5' long tank, and all flow being generated from one end... I suspect flow rates will be reduced sufficiently at the far end, regardless of what sort of flow pumps I end up with, to allow for some lower flow space

Makes sense. What I was thinking is that my bare bottom QT is gross and I know I won't vacuum a bare bottom DT enough to keep it 'pretty'. So it seems like an interesting challenge to have enough flow that nothing can settle while keeping young hammers happy. My LFS has a long (8') bare bottom peninsula frag tank with a gyre at the top and bottom on one side, the flow seem impressive to my eyes.

You've seen the posts about people freaking out about aluminum from a Triton report after many years of marine pure, but it's always countered by Randy and other experts here that no one has seen a problem with slightly elevated AL and it's been around for years. If it does bother you, you could go half marine pure / half siporax. Have you seen the BRS video where they did the water displacement test of various medias? One of the conclusions was how porous marine pure was over pukani, like 3x. BRS was going to do a investigate to test that the 8x8x4 block could do denitrifying, general consensus is that it can.

 

[TherealplexiG]

Triton's test- Inductively Coupled Plasma – Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). This method will measure any compound containing the aluminum as the aluminum atom. It does this by breaking the compound down into its fundamental elements. In a natural reef eco-system, there are already vast amounts of Aluminum. In fact, aluminum composes over 8% of the earth’s crust as rocks and minerals. Virtually all of this aluminum is combined with oxygen or other elements and is inert in a reef environment. CerMedia fires MarinePure in order to bind any free aluminum with oxygen, thus making it inert. It is quite possible that some or all of the elevated aluminum being measured by Triton are in the harmless forms.

As on cermedias web..
Here is the link to it...
http://www.cermedia.com/blog.php

I have used this stuff since a long time without any problem...

 

[Greybeard]

I'm an old DSB guy. A couple of 8x4" block surely would take up a lot less space, wouldn't restrict the flow in the display tank, and if it does a decent job handling bio load, well, sounds like the way to go to me.

Elevated aluminum? Well, maybe. I've seen enough healthy tanks that have been running MarinePure for years to be worried about it.

 

[Greybeard]

Return pump is here, drain plumbing parts, in blue PVC, are here, 8 ATI T5's are here (gotta love BRS light packaging!). Tank is 3 weeks out.

Just found out that the used 8 bulb Tek T5 light I bought has a bad ballast, ordered a replacement, should be here Friday.

In a bit of a quandary, new tank is going in the same place as the old one. I picked up a 55g tank to hold livestock, what little I have, from the old system while I'm setting up the new one. Do I wait for the last minute, or move it now?

Planning to siphon water into a barrel to the top of the sand bed, put the few corals and fish I have in a bucket, move the sand bed and rock, and then pump the clear water back in on top. I should be able to do so without causing too big of a disaster... Should be fine for a month or so while I'm getting the new tank up and running.

Livestock consists of a corris wrass, a smith's blenny, 2 small clowns, a 4" deresa clam, a couple gorgonians, two small LPS and two small SPS frags. 55 will have a live sand bed, not sure how much of it's I'm going to move, but a couple of inches anyway... 40lbs of well seasoned rock, a heater, flow pump, and a cheap LED light strip. No skimmer, I'm thinking I'll do a 10g water change weekly while they're in limbo. Not ideal, but I'm hoping it'll be survivable.

 

[TherealplexiG]

Why no skimmer Grey?

 

[Greybeard]

Why no skimmer Grey?

In my temporary holding tank? Because I don't have a hang on, and this won't have a sump. On my new tank? Reef Octopus.

 

[tj w]

Grey, you're going to keep the existing sand bed when you transfer to the holding tank? Be careful, if it was me I'd buy new sand or rinse repeatedly until clear.

 

[Greybeard]

Yup, keeping existing sand... in the holding tank. I'm afraid if I didn't keep the sand, I'd not have the bio filter to keep my critters alive. Not that much rock in there... don't want to kill off the bio filter.

The sand will _not_ be going into my new permanent display. No sand will be... bare bottom, but that tank, I'll be taking through a normal break in process. Likely, with the Red Sea reef mature kit.

Stand is built... I'm picking it up tomorrow to deliver for powder coating.

 

[Greybeard]

Oh, and I sold the clam back to the guy I bought it from when his tank broke. One less critter to worry about during the change over. It's a nice clam, hated to stress it out like this. I'm going to be getting rid of my tiger pistol, as well, since I'm going bare bottom.

 

[SD_Reefing]

Nice build so far

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool! Following!

 

[Janci]

Following.

 

[Greybeard]

Stand looks great, had it for about 20 minutes, just long enough to drop it off with the powder coat guy