grizzwald39
Community Member
Hello All,
First time posting so I hope some find this interesting or useful. This is my new 150 build which is planned to be bare bottom with mostly SPS. Got the tank, stand, sump from a buddy. I have been reefing for quite a while but recently took a break for the last couple years with just a small 40 gallon running with anemones. The tank went on the garage slab which require alot of work leveling. Luckily stand had adjustable legs but still needed to use lots of plastic shims to get everything right. As the tank took me almost two years to get from when i first planned to thanks to covid and shipping delays i acquired most gear over a two year period. This is my first time posting so sorry if this is a mess.
Once i got tank in stand leveled then tank leveled on top of stand and foam pad. I decided to build my light fixture out of left over stainless steel hog wire fencing i had from an old project. I like this fencing because it made it so that everything for the lights was fully adjustable. Height placement angle of lights so on. I am running two neptune skys and a old kessil i had lying around to add "More shimmer".
We have a local acrylic store that sells scrape acrylic super cheap so i used that for all custom acrylic stuff i made like the holder for the kessil light below.
For the aquascape i tried to create a scape that was built for corals to grow into. I wanted to design the scape so that theres was lost of tunnels and hiddy holes but so that i could turn up the flow in tank and blow it clean. I tried to design it so that when it is looked at from different angles you have completely different tunnels and channels for flow. I wanted it to be somewhat NSA scapped but im not into the total modern NSA stuff. I built aquscape up and then used mostly superglue to glue the three different main structures in. I left it so that each structure can be removed if needed but no rocks are gonna fall or go anywhere. After i filled it the tank i hated the middle bride rock so i ripped it out which you can see in later pics to give more room for flow and coral growth. I purposely left a large gap on left side of tank for frag racks down the road. I used a hack saw to cut several of the base rocks to make them more stable on the bare bottom.
Using acrylic i built a custom controller cabinet to mount to wall and try to manage cables. A buddy has a 3-d printer and hooked it with some of the brackets.
I Built out an RODI/ Saltwater Mixing station. I had to plumb a line through the wall for this but that was easy. The Rodi tank is fed using BRS 5 stage RODI sytem. I had to run it through a booster buddy to achieve right pressure but love the system. Rodi tank is then regulated by two apex optical sensors that control a solenoid. Low RODI and High. Rodi system stays off till LOW RODI sensor triggers then fills 25 gallons till it trips the high RODI optical sensor to help with slat creep. I installed a float valve as a fail safe as well. The RODI tank is then plumbed to a second 25 gallon tank i use as a salt water mixing station has a dos connected to if for AWC purposes. The rodi tank has a hole drilled in the bottom gravity feeds into my ATO reservoir and is controlled by a float valve so that ideally it never runs out. I use a tunze ATO system for top off on tank.
I built in the shelves for housing all my "necessary" aquarium gear and a maintenance table with a wet working top (acrylic and siliconed edge.) I plumbed in dual returns for if cor fails and also for secondary return to run manifold at a later date. I built custom Sump covers out of acrylic as well. Tank is run on Neptune apex with two wav pumps and two gyres for water movement in tank. Main return is a cor 20. Skimmer is an old DC skimmer i had from a previous tank.
For now this is about where i am at tank has been running for 4 months now and has two clowns i raised from eggs a long time ago. One Scopas One Lt. Tnag and two firefish.
First time posting so I hope some find this interesting or useful. This is my new 150 build which is planned to be bare bottom with mostly SPS. Got the tank, stand, sump from a buddy. I have been reefing for quite a while but recently took a break for the last couple years with just a small 40 gallon running with anemones. The tank went on the garage slab which require alot of work leveling. Luckily stand had adjustable legs but still needed to use lots of plastic shims to get everything right. As the tank took me almost two years to get from when i first planned to thanks to covid and shipping delays i acquired most gear over a two year period. This is my first time posting so sorry if this is a mess.
Once i got tank in stand leveled then tank leveled on top of stand and foam pad. I decided to build my light fixture out of left over stainless steel hog wire fencing i had from an old project. I like this fencing because it made it so that everything for the lights was fully adjustable. Height placement angle of lights so on. I am running two neptune skys and a old kessil i had lying around to add "More shimmer".
We have a local acrylic store that sells scrape acrylic super cheap so i used that for all custom acrylic stuff i made like the holder for the kessil light below.
For the aquascape i tried to create a scape that was built for corals to grow into. I wanted to design the scape so that theres was lost of tunnels and hiddy holes but so that i could turn up the flow in tank and blow it clean. I tried to design it so that when it is looked at from different angles you have completely different tunnels and channels for flow. I wanted it to be somewhat NSA scapped but im not into the total modern NSA stuff. I built aquscape up and then used mostly superglue to glue the three different main structures in. I left it so that each structure can be removed if needed but no rocks are gonna fall or go anywhere. After i filled it the tank i hated the middle bride rock so i ripped it out which you can see in later pics to give more room for flow and coral growth. I purposely left a large gap on left side of tank for frag racks down the road. I used a hack saw to cut several of the base rocks to make them more stable on the bare bottom.
Using acrylic i built a custom controller cabinet to mount to wall and try to manage cables. A buddy has a 3-d printer and hooked it with some of the brackets.
I Built out an RODI/ Saltwater Mixing station. I had to plumb a line through the wall for this but that was easy. The Rodi tank is fed using BRS 5 stage RODI sytem. I had to run it through a booster buddy to achieve right pressure but love the system. Rodi tank is then regulated by two apex optical sensors that control a solenoid. Low RODI and High. Rodi system stays off till LOW RODI sensor triggers then fills 25 gallons till it trips the high RODI optical sensor to help with slat creep. I installed a float valve as a fail safe as well. The RODI tank is then plumbed to a second 25 gallon tank i use as a salt water mixing station has a dos connected to if for AWC purposes. The rodi tank has a hole drilled in the bottom gravity feeds into my ATO reservoir and is controlled by a float valve so that ideally it never runs out. I use a tunze ATO system for top off on tank.
I built in the shelves for housing all my "necessary" aquarium gear and a maintenance table with a wet working top (acrylic and siliconed edge.) I plumbed in dual returns for if cor fails and also for secondary return to run manifold at a later date. I built custom Sump covers out of acrylic as well. Tank is run on Neptune apex with two wav pumps and two gyres for water movement in tank. Main return is a cor 20. Skimmer is an old DC skimmer i had from a previous tank.
For now this is about where i am at tank has been running for 4 months now and has two clowns i raised from eggs a long time ago. One Scopas One Lt. Tnag and two firefish.
