Journey to a Reefer 750XXL

mygsris2slo4u

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This setup has been in process for over a year now and coincided with a job transfer with my company from Louisiana to Ohio. We moved from LA and finally got in a house in OH at the end of July 2017.

In Louisiana I had this 90 gallon setup.

6de851b4e1a035feaee22f0379c7cf6c.jpg


Before being transferred I bought this Planet Aquariums 73 gallon rimless from a fellow forum member.

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The first of many misfortunes happened when the movers both loading and unloading decided the this end up stickers were nonsense and proceeded to load the crate on the side that had the glass external overflow. It was not crated to be loaded in this manner and it therefore arrived broken. It then took 2 months of back and forth with the movers, relocation company and third party crate company before I received an acceptable settlement. They literally tried to limit my claim to $300 because they found a 75 gallon tank on petco’s website!

With my settlement in hand and trying to decide what to do my wife offered up a different spot in the house that would allow for a larger tank. I immediately took her up on the offer and began researching my options. I considered another custom, elos and redsea. I finally decided on the redsea 750xxl as they had recently come out and I liked the dimensions along with availability.

Then this showed up... a falling apart crate with a hole from a fork truck through the side of the crate! Awesome, this is my luck with shipping aquariums.

Upon un-crating the tank was actually fine, but the top of the stand (which is under the tank in the crate) was pretty much wrecked from the fork. The vendor was very helpful however redsea had no stock as (from what I was told) they had some flooding in there warehouse in Houston as it was during that massive hurricane last year.

So we waited... and sometime in November a new crate showed up. To my surprise they shipped several of the stand pieces along with an entire tank! I have since sold the other tank to recoup some costs of this build.

With the holidays and life carrying on I finally got the tank in the house stand assembled in February. I got it filled with saltwater and it’s been cycling since.

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I had also decided that I wanted a basement sump. It took a few months to get the basement setup the way I wanted, but it looks like this now.

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When first setup I had a reeflo pump but after 3 leaking seals and never actually having a leak free pump I swapped it out for an iwaki 70 with no mechanical seal. I’m glad I did.

I also went with the a t5 Kessil hybrid for lighting. Here’s the tank currently.

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I’ll continue to update with more information about this setup, but wanted to get a first in show where it stands currently.
 
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mygsris2slo4u

mygsris2slo4u

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That is a heck of a story. Glad to hear it worked out in the end! Really like that aquascape too.


It's been quite the jouney for sure. I hope I do not have the same luck with livestock now that the tank is up and running.

I started cycling the tank back in February by using ammonia along with powerheads and heaters in the tank. I did not have the basement sump running at that point.

I finally got the basement running bare bones in early June and added my first fish. A pair of gladiator clowns. They were QT'd using @Humblefish recommended practices (i.e. TTM w/ prazi, then 2 more weeks in observation) posted here on R2R.

The basement still needs to be cleaned up, but the current equipment list includes the following:

Upstairs
Redsea Reefer 750XXL
Aquaticlife 60" t5 fixture (2 ATI blue plus, 2 ATI Coral plus)
Three Kessil A360WEs
Neptune Apex Wireless controller
Neptune Apex EB8 (for the lighting)
Neptune WAVs pair (mounted on back wall of tank)
"Custom" locline return
Neptune fmk for return plumbing
Neptune AFS
Walt smith 2.1 rock

Basement
20 gallon high refugium (tank drains to here)
40 gallon breeder (skimmer, 4 marine pure blocks)
Iwaki 70 return pump running 900 gph dialed back and drawing 245 watts - Love this pump!! Should've got it from the start.
Kessi A380 over refugium
Two finnex HMX heaters (200w and 300w)
Two Neptune DOS units (not setup yet) One for AWC, one for 2 Part
Neptune EB832 for basement equipment
Neptune classic display
Tunze ATO
NYOS 160 skimmer with airline running outside

Water Station
Two Ace roto mold 55 gallon vertical containers (plumbed in the usual manner)
8 Stage BRS RO/DI unit (dual membrane) with a spectrapure flow restrictor
Aquatec 8800 booster pump (runs 90-95psi)

QT/Frag tanks
20 gallon long coral/invert QT/frag tank
24" Coralife T5 fixture with ATI bulbs
Tunze ATO
Cobalt heaters (I'm in love with these and have 6 1oow units for various uses)
Several 20 gallon and 1o gallons to be used for QT/TTM

This pretty much covers the equipment setup though we are all equipment hoarders, so there is lots of miscellaneous equipment laying around.

Now onto the reason we all get into the hobby... Livestock!!

My fish list is not set in stone but looks like this in order that I plan to add.

Fish
Two gladiator clowns (currently in DT)
One court jester goby/rainsford (currently in observation)
One helfrichi firefish (currently in observation)
Trio of Bengghai cardinals (if they ever show back up on Diver's den)
Nine lyretail anthias (1 male, 8 females)
Several flasher/fairy wrasses (not sure which) (I just had a red head solon male die during TTM - never colored up or ate from day 1)
One purple tang
One white tail kole tang
One powder blue or naso tang
Maybe one more tang (yellow, chevron, achilles)
Mandarin

I will need to step up my photography game for the fish and corals because typing it out does none of the livestock any justice.

Currently in the DT are a few zoa frags, giant green hairy mushroom, purple tip hammer and a small generic scoly.

Stay tuned more to come...
 
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mygsris2slo4u

mygsris2slo4u

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I’ll post this in the Red Sea thread too, but here is how I hard plumbed the tank. I used 25mm to 1” spigot adapters from pvcpartsonline.

If you look at standard Red Sea plumbing they use 25mm fittings to slip over there drain/return fittings.

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Ldogg

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How do you like that 5’ T5 hybrid fixture? I am looking at it as well for a 750 build and I was torn between the 5’ fixture or 2 3’ fixtures. Ideally I would go with the 1 5’ fixture to save on plugs. I saw their manual stating on a 6’ tank to put your LED units on the ends to get full coverage and I was thinking 4 xr15’s/hydra 26’s/kessil 360x. I like the extra puck in the hydra 26 and front to back I think I could get decent coverage.
 
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mygsris2slo4u

mygsris2slo4u

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How do you like that 5’ T5 hybrid fixture? I am looking at it as well for a 750 build and I was torn between the 5’ fixture or 2 3’ fixtures. Ideally I would go with the 1 5’ fixture to save on plugs. I saw their manual stating on a 6’ tank to put your LED units on the ends to get full coverage and I was thinking 4 xr15’s/hydra 26’s/kessil 360x. I like the extra puck in the hydra 26 and front to back I think I could get decent coverage.

I like it a lot. When I was gathering parts for this build I got excited when they released the 60.” I think two 36” would look a bit off since the 750 isn’t 72.” Also, I would agree on 4 or 5 led fixtures. I’ll be adding more eventually.
 
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mygsris2slo4u

mygsris2slo4u

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Nice build. Were going to go with the same tank for our new build. How do you like the NYOS 160 skimmer?

My post above about getting a lifereef skimmer is not a condemnation of the Nyos. I carried the nyos over from my 90 which was in the kitchen/dining area and quiet was a key selling point. It's a very quiet skimmer though if I was buying it right now for a 750xxl I would go with the 220. The 160 is too small for any sort of normal bio load.
 
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mygsris2slo4u

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Looking for input on heaters. Today the house got down to 65 degrees which is about where we keep the heat in the winter. I found out quickly that my 500w of finnex HMX-s heaters could not keep up. They are set to 79 degrees and the tank has been as low as 77.

I do not believe it's due to the size of the heaters, but the fact that they have an internal thermostat which causes them to continually cycle on and off and do not stay on for extended periods at all. @BRS mentioned this in their heater review video. I find that with this they are not even on when the definitely should be.

I'm considering the following options.

- One 800w titanium finnex with ranco controller (this would not be able to be backed up by apex as it exceeds the 7 amp capacity of the eb832 outlets)

- Two 500w titanium finnex with individual ranco's (this would allow me to plug into eb832s, but this would almost max out the 832s 15a/1500w capacity)

- Three 300w ehiem jagers with one ranco controller (the internal ehiem thermostats would act as back up to the ranco since it wouldn't be tied to apex controller

I've considered the water heater titanium heat exchanger aproach, but I don't think it's necessary on a roughly 200 gallon system.

Any other ideas that I should consider?

Also, I'll be posting pics of my WWC subscription and live sale buys from this past week that are currently in QT when I get a chance.
 

NY_Caveman

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I am no help on this, but would suggest starting a new thread with specific title to get more eyes on it. Possibly in the equipment forum. Good luck!
 

norfolkgarden

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Not really. [emoji53] sorry

The main take away from reading other people's experience is you want several very underrated heaters to take up the entire load.
If just 1 fails (they can fail in the 'on' position) it has less opportunity to cook your entire reef before you notice the problem.


If you have a controller for your tank you can plug the heater into it and shut the heater off at the plug from the controller, if the heater fails in the on position.

Apparently heater failure (turned on constantly and cooking your reef) is one of the number 1 causes of tank crashes for people who have their reefs dialed in already.

Hpe this helps.
 
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mygsris2slo4u

mygsris2slo4u

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Not really. [emoji53] sorry

The main take away from reading other people's experience is you want several very underrated heaters to take up the entire load.
If just 1 fails (they can fail in the 'on' position) it has less opportunity to cook your entire reef before you notice the problem.


If you have a controller for your tank you can plug the heater into it and shut the heater off at the plug from the controller, if the heater fails in the on position.

Apparently heater failure (turned on constantly and cooking your reef) is one of the number 1 causes of tank crashes for people who have their reefs dialed in already.

Hpe this helps.


That’s pretty much my dilemma. I want to have two controllers so that there is a fail safe, however, the size heater(s) I need for the tank will overload an eb832 power strip.
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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