My 250g SPS Reef Tank from the beginning!

JoseNovoa · Sep 22, 2019

I wanted to show this tank that I started building this week, is a 250g Reef that will be SPS Dominant, all equipment is already bought and I just Siliconed the glass together last night, I still need to do the inner seams and the Eurobrace, everything is being siliconed by the direct injection method (I’ll post a video Soon) sump is already here, big thanks to Rick and Vanessa Lowe from Synergy Reef who built it, it’s just perfect!

Let me introduce the tank itself, I’ll be posting pics and videos for the whole setup, I’ll post the first pictures today and will keep posting as soon as I get things done. Salt will be Red Sea Coral Pro until I finish the cicle (4 months) and by then I’ll switch to Tropic Marine Pro Reef Salt.

250g Tank
85” by 26” by 30” Eurobraced Top and Bottom 3/4 glass. Front and Sides Starphire Glass.

Synergy Reef Systems CL-60 sump with 4” socks.

Stand is made of 2” by 2” steel

Rock is provided by Marco Rocks (240 pounds) because I believe that we don’t need to take it from our oceans and we have to support everyone watching out for our natural reefs, besides it’s really porous and with great shapes, not to mention it comes clean from the process Marco Rocks gave them.

Equipment List:

4 Ecotech Marine Radion XR-30 PRO with RMS arms, rail and slides.
Vectra L2 Return Pump
Vectra M1 to the manifold to run reactors
4 Ecotech Marine Vortech MP-40QD
4 Ecotech Backup Batteries
1 Reeflink

Apex Gold with:
Salinity Probe
Ph Probe
ORP Probe
Temp Probe (Thomas Traceable Long Steam Thermometer for calibration)
2 DOS DDR packages
Autofeder
2 Finnex 500w Titanium Heaters
2 EB8
iPad mini for display

1 Reef Octopus Regal 250INT Skimmer
1 Kessil H380 Halo II for chaeto growing in fuge.
1 Avast Marine MR2 Reactor (Rowaphos)
1 Two Little Fishies reactor with Activated Carbon
1 Reef Octopus VarioS CR200 Calcium Reactor (Not to be installed in the first year)
Dosing Triton Method Core 7 as soon as it is required.

I think I’m not missing anything, I really hope you like this build and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions, I’m here to help.

See you all soon!

Keep Reefing

Sarah24! · Sep 22, 2019

Hello,

Sounds interesting will be neat to see. I do think your water volume is off a bit. If your tank is 85 long 26 wide and 30 tall that’s 287 gallons. My current tank is a 240 and it’s only 72 by 24 by 34. Id make sure what you have can handle min of 300 gallons as a heavy bioload. For example the reef octopus 250int can only handle 250 heavy bioload. Based on the dimensions provided your 37 gallons over (in theory tank wise, not to mention water volume from your sump, (then your final water displacement after rock and sand etc, your probably going to be over. With my rock and sand and sump I have min 200 gallons displacement just in my display alone, if I add in my sump, I’m still slightly over 240 gallons total water volume.

TexasReefer31 · Sep 22, 2019

Do you have pics of the Eurobracing? Sexy setup though, for sure!

JoseNovoa · Sep 22, 2019

Sarah24! said:
Hello,

Sounds interesting will be neat to see. I do think your water volume is off a bit. If your tank is 85 long 26 wide and 30 tall that’s 287 gallons. My current tank is a 240 and it’s only 72 by 24 by 34. Id make sure what you have can handle min of 300 gallons as a heavy bioload. For example the reef octopus 250int can only handle 250 heavy bioload. Based on the dimensions provided your 37 gallons over (in theory tank wise, not to mention water volume from your sump, (then your final water displacement after rock and sand etc, your probably going to be over. With my rock and sand and sump I have min 200 gallons displacement just in my display alone, if I add in my sump, I’m still slightly over 240 gallons total water volume.

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the interest, I post only the outer measurements, inner measurements are 83” by 24” by 28” wich gives me approximately 242 gallons, this is without sand and rock and the sump is 60” by 18” by 18” but the water level is not all the way up, aprox 45 gallons, so total water volume without rock and equipment displacement is 287 gallons, the skimmer is rated for 250 gallons with heavy bioload, return is rated for 3,100 gph and the wavemakers can move aprox 18,000 gph (4 MP-40), so yes, equipment is a well over requirements, full list of it is available in the original thread.

JoseNovoa · Sep 22, 2019

TexasReefer31 said:
Do you have pics of the Eurobracing? Sexy setup though, for sure!

Hi Texas Reefer!

Haven’t done the Eurobracing yet, it’s been roughly 36 hours since I applied the silicone seams, still need to do the cleaning and the inner seams, then the top and bottom eurobrace, I’ll keep updating as I move forward.

Thanks for the interest!

Sarah24! · Sep 22, 2019

JoseNovoa said:
Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the interest, I post only the outer measurements, inner measurements are 83” by 24” by 28” wich gives me approximately 242 gallons, this is without sand and rock and the sump is 60” by 18” by 18” but the water level is not all the way up, aprox 45 gallons, so total water volume without rock and equipment displacement is 287 gallons, the skimmer is rated for 250 gallons with heavy bioload, return is rated for 3,100 gph and the wavemakers can move aprox 18,000 gph (4 MP-40), so yes, equipment is a well over requirements, full list of it is available in the original thread.

Yes your correct total water volume is 287 (like I said

). But your still over 37 gallons, but only if your doing a heavy bioload. Depending on your stocking list, fish and corals will determine the bioload. Have you figured out how much rock and sand you will use, so you can find your water displacement? Normally you would use vf=v2-v1 and that gives you the difference, but our live rock is porous. So do you plan on finding vf for each rock or estimating it? The reason I mention this is well we all want you to have a successful tank. But for example I have an es300 eshopps skimmer that’s rated for 300 heavy bioload. It can barley keep up and I have a heavy bioload, well medium now that I have moved. But prior to my move, always had issues with import and export. It was simply do to the bioload even though My skimmer is rated close to 100 gallons over on water volume and bioload.

Yes your mp40 can In theory produced that much flow. That’s true, however depending where they are placed you will have to turn them down to about 50% because it will be too strong for fish and also rip flesh from corals. Most tanks I have seen (which is a lot) I very rarely see those at 40% ish. So they may produce 18,000 in flow but you will probably have to turn them down to half which cuts your flow to 9,000 roughly.

For example I have twin return pumps and each is rated for 3100, but flow is too high and ran at 50%. So with both of them i equal 3100, but if I turn them up to 100 then I’m 6200. I have six wave makers at 2100 each, even then on full blast I have sps corals 7 inches away and it rips the flesh off. So I run more wave makers and a 3000 gyre to get 20,000 gallons in flow.

When doing your rock scape and as your tank grows flow patterns will change. That’s one reason why I have more is so I can simply move them to optimize flow.

With the size of your tank, and running the four radions, how will you deal with shading once your tank is growing? I can see your trying to cover 2sq feet per light, but you will experience edges that have a lot less light and sections with hot spots since some may over lap.

I would definitely rent a par meter and find the critical angel (with water in it and flowing), so you can adjust your lights to the rock scape. Dead center isn’t always the best coverage.

JoseNovoa · Sep 22, 2019

Well, as mentioned, this tank is just starting, sps will be added in about a year from now, so, shadowing right now is not an issue, although, when fully stocked, I’ll add a T5 retrofit, haven’t decided yet which one, but that’s the way I’ll deal with it, I’m not new to this, I own a store and I’m in no hurry for anything, issues will be solved as needed, as stated...I just siliconed the tank, I also know the flow MP-40 can produce, I can dial them as needed as per demanded on tanks need.

I don’t need to rent a par meter, have two of them, as mentioned before, I own a store, this build is not to ask for advice, although is very welcome, I just started it because some fellow reefers wanted to see progression on it. Check the pics attached, is one of my sps dominant tanks in Store.

Happy Reefing

JoseNovoa · Sep 22, 2019

Difference Between Low Iron And regular glass, Front and back panes of this build.

rq786 · Sep 23, 2019

Hi
Will be following your build also would like to see how your tank assembly turns out assuming this isn’t your first time building a glass tank, how much gap did you leave between the panels and which silicone did you use. Biggest tank I have built is 2x2x2 rimless cube.

JoseNovoa · Sep 23, 2019

Hi,

As stated, this isn’t my first rodeo I do this on regular basis as I own a Fish Store, the silicone used was GE 1 100% silicone, I’d love to have done it a the store, but unfortunately this one won’t fut in my stairs, gap between glass is 3mm, used tile spacers for this. Thanks for the interest! Today I’ll be eurobracing it, there might be a video of this.