Maroon Lagoon V3.0

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Howdy! It’s finally time to start documenting the build of my new aquarium/fish room. My wife and I recently moved homes, which clearly means it’s time for a tank upgrade! I have also been struggling with mysterious unexplainable issues with Maroon Lagoon V2.0 for the past... 547 days, so it’ll be nice to get a fresh start and hope the new setup can alleviate some of these weird coral health issues.

Tank:
Dimensions: 84”x30”x25”
Volume: ~270 gallons
Sump: TideLine 48
Frag tanks: 2x 50 gal Low Boys
Rough total volume: 400 gallons

Equipment:
Lighting:
4x Radion XR30 Pros
4x 60” T5s

Water movement:
2x Tunze Turbellestream 6255
2x Tunze Turbellestream 6105

Skimmer: Regal 300INT 12"
Calcium Reactor: MRC dual chamber
Return: Jebao

Stand:
My last tank stand was steel and I couldn’t be happier with it. You can’t drill into like wood, but it affords a lot more operating room underneath and is stronger than wood. Powder coated red just like my previous tank.

E5446EEA-CF87-4400-8198-CF20261021AA.jpeg

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Location:
My previous house had the DT in the dining room and my fish room in the garage. Since the two areas weren’t close enough, I had to run 2 separate tanks (DT and frag tank) and had to move a lot of buckets around. I have always wanted to plumb my tanks together to have greater water volume/stability and move fewer buckets of water. An in-wall tank was also my desire since my wife and I are expecting a daughter in February and I want all cords, chemicals, and tank openings safely out of reach of the kid. Our new home has the garage sharing a wall with the living room so we decided that would be the best place for it.

As part of the negotiations with my wife, I could have a fish room in the garage if she could have the other side of the garage to park her car. So I marked off a 7 foot line down the garage and began to build a wall.
C5A0821D-4721-4A2A-98CE-AC12312FFBEF.jpeg


I’ve been working on the fish room non stop when I am not traveling for work and have free time. After a couple of weeks the walls are up, insulated, and the power is on. I ran two 20 amp circuits to the fish room so I wouldn’t need to worry about overloading one. I also installed an AC drop in from my central supplies air, and some flush mount speakers so I can jam out while performing tank maintenance in the future
A31BEF6F-CD6C-4618-8A08-B8DE9EB0944B.jpeg


For those of you wondering, no, the tank will not being going under the short false ceiling. It is just there for temporary placement and will be moved to the portion of the room with the higher ceiling so I can hang lights and have room to work.

More to come...
 
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Peace River

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Thank you for sharing this great write up! Congratulations on all of your new adventures including the new home, tanks, and most importantly your family addition!
 

dragon99

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Looks awesome, I tried to convince my wife I should be allowed to enclosure half of our back porch for a fish room. That did not go over well.

Are you planning to start with completely new rock?
 
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Looks awesome, I tried to convince my wife I should be allowed to enclosure half of our back porch for a fish room. That did not go over well.

Are you planning to start with completely new rock?
I’m seriously considering it. Since my parameters always checked out just fine and my Triton tests never came back with anything abnormal, I have a feeling the source of my coral problems over the past 1.5 years has been biologically based. Cooking the DT rock and starting over would help to eliminate that concern, but would also increase the time it would take for the new tank to cycle. It’s a tough decision since I don’t have concrete evidence that the issues have been viral or bacterial.
 

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I’m seriously considering it. Since my parameters always checked out just fine and my Triton tests never came back with anything abnormal, I have a feeling the source of my coral problems over the past 1.5 years has been biologically based. Cooking the DT rock and starting over would help to eliminate that concern, but would also increase the time it would take for the new tank to cycle. It’s a tough decision since I don’t have concrete evidence that the issues have been viral or bacterial.
You could have the bacteria tested to see if you have a pathogen, but that takes time and money too.
 

Mastiffsrule

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Great looking start.

It was nice of you to allow room in the garage for the car. If you are anything like me, you will keep everything on your side you a while. Then by accident you “forget” and leave a few buckets on the other side but run out and move them. A few weeks later you leave something a bit heavier or bulky by “accident” on her side. You say you will move it but take a few days. Keep doing that until you eventually have taken over the space :D
 
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Great looking start.

It was nice of you to allow room in the garage for the car. If you are anything like me, you will keep everything on your side you a while. Then by accident you “forget” and leave a few buckets on the other side but run out and move them. A few weeks later you leave something a bit heavier or bulky by “accident” on her side. You say you will move it but take a few days. Keep doing that until you eventually have taken over the space :D
Haha, that's really playing with fire, but I Like it!
 
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Unfortunately I hit a major road bump tonight. In hind sight I should have cut the wall open before starting on the fish room to make sure I didn’t have to move any wiring or support studs before I built out the room. That’s why hind sight is always 20/20.

For me, the load bearing column for the loft of my house runs right through where the tank is going to go.
E5BC148E-CD4E-4B0D-BF06-97FD273C718A.jpeg


And unfortunately where I would need to re-home the load bearing columns are right at the corners of where I built my fish room. My options are to tear down the walls I just built, or access those areas from inside the house and replace tearing walls out with tearing drywall out. I’m no structural engineer, but this is how I would envision the best solution for redistributing the weight on this wall:
EEAE4505-7DD0-40E4-B850-6091126F4314.jpeg


Anyone with expertise or experience, please feel free to chime in!
 
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bryanfuel

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Unfortunately I hit a major road bump tonight. In hind sight I should have cut the wall open before starting on the fish room to make sure I didn’t have to move any wiring or support studs before I built out the room. That’s what hind sight is always 20/20.

For me, the load bearing column for the loft of my house runs right through where the tank is going to go.
E5BC148E-CD4E-4B0D-BF06-97FD273C718A.jpeg


And unfortunately where I would need to re-home the load bearing columns are right at the corners of where I built my fish room. My options are to tear down the walls I just built, or access those areas from inside the house and replace tearing walls out with tearing drywall out. I’m no structural engineer, but this is how I would envision the best solution for redistributing the weight on this wall:
EEAE4505-7DD0-40E4-B850-6091126F4314.jpeg


Anyone with expertise or experience, please feel free to chime in!
Oh no! Reminds me of that episode of southpark with the load bearing wall.
 
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I’m still working on finding the solution for moving the load bearing column so I can get the tank in place and start working on the plumbing. This weekend I just focused on working on the light rack and the bar top. Laid gold leaf in the cracks of the bar top getting it ready for the epoxy cover.
7A6DC7E5-EA79-491C-9B30-D7911147BFDA.jpeg
 
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Small steps toward the end goal. Been busy researching and talking with engineers about how to redistribute the weight of my load bearing column. Shoring up the ceiling of the garage to bare the weight while I install the header.
E46C1392-769B-41A0-901E-68DE9C8E12B8.jpeg


I put the final coat of high gloss epoxy on the future bar top.
3154C3AF-80C2-4F4B-907F-1D24FAD768AF.jpeg
 

dbraun15

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Really enjoyed your last builds and looking forward to this one. Hopefully the construction runs smooth and turns out the way envisioned. Following along.
 
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Really enjoyed your last builds and looking forward to this one. Hopefully the construction runs smooth and turns out the way envisioned. Following along.
Thanks! My last tank ended rather poorly unfortunately. It sucks when parameters all check out fine, but SPS have zero PE and slowly wither away in an established tank. Hopefully hitting the reset button with a new tank will resolve the mystery issues.
 

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