Bringing the reef to the land locked midwest! My year long build.

[Morpheosz]

Hey friends,

Relatively new to this forum and returning with a passion to the reefing game. I grew up keeping aquariums in the late '80s, keeping it up through the early '00s, ultimately landing on a passion for reef ecosystems. In 2003 the reef tank I had crafted and matured over a number of years sprung a leak half way down the seam. It was heart breaking, and given other life pressures and expenses at the time (finishing up a degree, 2 young children) I decided to give it up for the time being.

Fast forward 18 years and my teenage son found a similar passion for aquatic life and spurred on by lockdown we decided to setup a pair of nano reef tanks. He has a 20g in his bedroom and I have a 15g in my home office. I have found that working from home has been the ultimate use case for enjoying and maintaining a tank. I enjoy watching my critters when I need a break from the screen and it's a great distraction to putz with in between meetings or when I just need a work break.

Given that it seems likely that I will be able to work remotely indefinitely I've decided to upgrade my nano reef to something more along the lines of a dream setup that I didn't have the resources to create when I was younger. I live in a relatively small house but I have the good fortune of my office being on top of our laundry room that has a fair bit of extra space so I've hatched a plan to put the business end of a tank in there. I've already hung my PC from the ceiling down there to avoid the space / noise / heat of having it in the office and I've already plumbed RO water through the floor to top off my nano.

I've spent the last 2 months binging BRSTV and trying to assemble an approach that will be as automated and bullet proof as possible. If anything I've had to check myself recently to make sure I'm not overdoing the various filtration methods. I also work in tech and have a passion for home automation so I'm excited to automate as much as possible.

I welcome any and all constructive feedback or advice as I am a sponge for information right now!

I spent the last couple of weeks taking advantage of all the holiday sales, placing numerous BRS and other orders. My wife just rolls her eyes every time another daily package shows up, I'm sure many of you can relate

At this point I've ordered the majority of my equipment and the tank and I've built out ~90% of the laundry room end of the equation. I ordered the Nuvo INT-75 gallon tank as that is the largest tank I can fit, nearly perfectly, next to my desk. A carpenter friend is building me a stand that fits with my office decor, and I have a garbage can full of marco rock curing. I aspire to build out something along the lines of the HNSA that BRS recently built / demoed for the 180 they gave away. That is my next project.

Here is a list of the major components I currently have:

• NUVO INT 75 Tank
• Trigger Triton 34 sump
• Reef Octopus Essence S-130 skimmer
• 2x BRS 200W titanium heater and Inkbird controller
• 2x Current USA eFlux DC return pumps
• Neptune Apex
• DOS pump (was thinking of getting another one and trying triton method or using one for auto water changes)
• Kessil AP9X
• AI Prime HD (planning to move from my nano to refugium once I transition to this tank)
• BRS Jumbo CO2 reactor (probably overkill but seems like they are potentially very useful and I don't want to change media all the time)
• BRS 6 stage RO/DI
• 2x Sicce Xstream wave pumps (not sure if this will be the final flow solution but BRS indicated a wide flow pattern good for mixed reefs and I wanted something I could attach the the back wall overflow so that ruled out Vortechs)
• 100ish lbs of Marco rock and lots of glue, epoxy, etc.
• 35 gallon Brute trash can that is my fresh salt water tanks (currently used for water changes on our nanos but may plumb in for auto water changes)

Here are some shots of the progression of the build thus far.

Here is the space before I started:

This is the palette I created for mounting all the gear, along with a stand I purchased for the sump:

This is after a weekend worth of build, about 90% complete:

This is how the tank showed up, it was a cool experience as I believe it's the first thing I've ever had delivered in a full on wood crate! I felt like Indiana Jones opening the crate with the ark

This is the tank after wrestling it into the basement, waiting for it's final home in my office to be ready:

If anyone has any suggestions for getting the paper off the acrylic, I'd appreciate it, it doesn't seem to want to peel cleanly without ripping and I'm concerned about what chemicals could do to the tank or the acrylic.

Anyhow, lots more to come, but I figured I'd get the build thread started and start to crowd source any feedback or advice, or share any nuggets of wisdom I learn along the way that could be useful for others!

Thanks!
Zach

 

[fin mike]

Ummm. Any thoughts on your positioning of the sump right in front of your breaker box? Doesn’t seem like the best of ideas. You might want to rethink that.

 

[Morpheosz]

Ummm. Any thoughts on your positioning of the sump right in front of your breaker box? Doesn’t seem like the best of ideas. You might want to rethink that.

Yeah, thanks for the comment. I did think on that for quite some time, but unfortunately there are no other good options in my room. The sump is further out than it looks from this angle and I was brainstorming on how to further mitigate the risk by attaching a large sheet of plexiglass with magnets to the front of the box as a shield.

 

[fin mike]

I would do something like that. That salt mist/spray could eat that thing up. It did look like it was spaced a little bit from the wall but I wasn't sure. Keep your eye on it at least. If you start to notice that crust forming, it's plexiglass time!

 

[Morpheosz]

I aspire to have a setup that doesn't have any salt spray, I know, a lofty goal, but absent that, I think I'll go the plexi route either way because I have a lot of pride in my wall setup and I want to keep it as pristine as possible

 

[Weasel1960]

Actually I think it is a code violation. Need 3 foot clear in front and 18” on sides I think.

 

[Morpheosz]

Actually I think it is a code violation. Need 3 foot clear in front and 18” on sides I think.

Updated: I looked this up and the code is about having enough room for an electrician to safely work on the panel. The requirement is a total of 30" laterally, and 3' out from the front. I feel like my lateral clearance with respect to the items mounted on the wall is largely fine as they are pretty much all recessed behind the front of the panel. If, for instance, the wall was finished with drywall around the panel, it would cover most of the things I have mounted and therefore not in the way.

As for the 3' in front of the panel, I found a creative solution - my whole sump stand is mounted on a big plastic tray (bottom of a dog crate) and all my plumbing has unions so if an electrician ever needed access to the box, I can easily disconnect and slide the whole works out of the way. Added advantage is the tray can collect any leaks and I have a leak sensor in the bottom. Last, but not least, for added safety, I mounted a big piece of plexiglass to the front of the breaker box with magnets to block any potential spray.

 

[Morpheosz]

Wanted to share an update as I've been busy the past few weeks trying to finish up the plumbing and I transitioning to building the aquascape. I followed the BRS #HNSA videos pretty close to the letter and I found it to be just about as easy as they made it seem. I'm not the most creative or crafty person so that's saying a lot! Overall, I was thrilled with how it turned out and it's definitely the coolest thing I've ever made for one of my tanks.

A few things I learned along the way that could be useful:

• Rock: On the BRS video, if I recall, they recommended getting ~2 lbs per gallon. I think I ended up using around 1-1.25 in the end and as you'll see from the pics, I'd be hard pressed to squeeze any more in. As it is, I probably went a little overboard around the edges. Once you get rolling, it's hard to stop gluing pieces on as it keeps getting cooler looking and you keep thinking "if I bolt another small piece on here, I could fit one more frag!" I did get the base pieces even though they are ridiculously more expensive but I think it's worth it. Once you get complex large pieces going, having that solid flat base makes it much easier to work with and much more reassuring once in the tank. I'm sure you could make due without, but I'm glad I bought them. Each comes in a box so you don't have to worry about them coming busted up.
• Epoxy: I didn't use nearly as much epoxy as Ryan did in the video. I felt like I was pretty generous and it's super solid and I only used 4 sticks for this 75g build.
• Super glue gel: I used one about 2/3 of the large bottle of the gel and I did not go sparingly. It worked great, loved the bottle, never clogged. Whenever it dried around the tip, I could just break it off and continue.
• Insta-set: I didn't need nearly as much of the insta-set but it is potentially the most critical ingredient. I didn't have it right away and I was gluing 1-2 pieces a day in a very frustrating manner. Without that, it would be a nightmare and take weeks or months as you'd have to prop every piece and wait hours for them to set. I ended up buying one of the small BRS spray bottles and then I found a larger bottle for $12 at my local hobby shop. I think I refilled the small bottle twice and have a ton left over. Far more economical and less wasteful than buying a bunch of the small bottles.
• Thin glue: I didn't want to buy $35 worth of the thin glue to cover the epoxy so I bought a 2oz bottle of thin super glue off Amazon and ended up only using about 2/3 of it. Covering the epoxy seemed more difficult than what the video showed and I didn't feel like I did a great job but now that I have the finished scape in the tank, it seems the seam really disappeared so I guess the lesson is you don't have to be perfect.
• Gloves: I bought a large box off of amazon and it was great to have a ton of gloves, any time things got messy, sticky, or ripped, I would just peel them off and get a fresh pair.

I created a little workshop which made the whole process very manageable as it is a messy affair with a lot of stuff to manage. I highly recommend the cardboard approach I took as it caught all the flying rock bits and dust and what not. It's also nice to have a large area with room to lay out your pieces because there is a ton of trial and error, picking up and rejecting pieces for different ideas. Also building the tank frame was super helpful. I bought a few lengths of pipe at the hardware store and the 3 way corners off of Amazon.

Here is an in progress / nearly done:

Here is the finished product sitting in the empty tank. I agree with Ryan's comments in the video about photographing as well, it is very hard to show the depth. This has a ton of front to back structure, and a ton of overhangs, arches, etc. It ended up being 5 pieces, 3 big ones across the back, and a medium size one in the front left, and a small one in the front right.

Happy to answer any questions if others are interested in giving this a shot! I definitely had other learnings along the way, but I think you'll find that once you bite the bullet and dig in, it flows pretty well and is pretty easy to figure out!

 

[Morpheosz]

A talented carpenter friend of mine built a stand to match my office and it looks fantastic. Since my sump is in the basement, he was kind enough to build drawers for me instead of simply leaving it a cabinet. I've gotten religion on having drawers on lower cabinets ever since installing them our IKEA kitchen cabinets. The drawers are simply ~5" short of the back of the stand to allow for my plumbing. He also scribed the stand to the floor making it super solid and perfectly level. With everything installed I can say it worked perfectly!

I also got my final plumbing hooked up. It's not the prettiest job as I had to cobble together some parts. I opted to make the final connections with flexible tubing because it was difficult to get the pipes up into the office and they weren't perfectly aligned and I lacked confidence that I could hard plumb them to the tank perfectly. I also figured the soft pipe might reduce any vibration noise.

 

[Morpheosz]

Up and running! Finally got the last bits of plumbing installed and water made up and all the kinks ironed out. I'm happy to report that most of my gear choices seemed to be working out. I used the ocean direct sand so filling the tank was a bit of a pain because I would have liked to just fill it with water and mix the salt in the tank but since I was getting live sand, I had to mix a couple batches of water up in a trash can and fill it that way.

A couple of learnings - I put check valves on my 2 pump outputs so either of them could run independently in case of failure and I liked the idea of not back siphoning my tank all the way down to the outlet but I neglected to realize that I put a media reactor on the return line that recirculates a small amount of water back to the sump - unfortunately that also creates a path for the display to drain to the sump so I ordered and installed another check valve beyond that junction. I also discovered that my 200W heaters are not enough to individually keep the tank heated so I'm going to trade at least one up for a 300W.

I got a small school of 5 green chromis to kick it off and I moved my pair of clowns in as well and they've all been happy for a few days now.

 

[Morpheosz]

OK, so I had all these great aspirations of meticulously documenting my build and progress in this thread and that just went off the rails pretty early on. For posterity sake, I'm going to fast forward a year and share where I've landed as I've had lots of highs and lows this past year, with livestock, equipment, you name it but things are finally really getting dialed and feel like they are reaching a steady productive state.

First of all here are a few things that I started with but ultimately discarded or changed:

- Refugium - my nutrients have never been a problem and my chaeto barely grew
- Filter socks - I couldn't stand changing and cleaning them every few days but also didn't like what happened when I ran without
- Reef diaper - an improvement over normal filter socks, but they only lasted a few days and in the end were not a huge time saver over filter socks - not to knock the product, if you're doing filter socks, it was an improvement but still not for me
- Neptune ATK pump based auto-top off - I found that all I had to do was mount a reservoir above my sump and use the ATK magnet float valve and really simplified top offs using gravity. I use a float valve in the reservoir and a neptune solenoid to top off the top off reservoir every other night
- Dual return pumps - they barely fit in my sump and with the squirrelliness of DC pumps with a lot of head pressure (I believe I have about 15' effective as my sump is in the basement and there are some turns to get to the tank) I couldn't keep a steady consistent flow to the tank and was going crazy dealing with water level challenges
- Fresh air to the skimmer - it wasn't enough to solve my early pH challenges - I have a recirculating CO2 scrubber that works great and I only change the media about every 4-6 months. Additionally, I bit the bullet and installed an air exchanger in the house this fall which REALLY helped. This journey of managing reef pH led me to get a CO2 meter for the house and found out that with all my home upgrades (refurbished windows + new storms, new doors, etc) the CO2 in my house was perpetually pretty high so I opted to get a solution to help all the creatures in the house and I'm really glad I did.

Without further adieu, here is what the equipment looks like now in the utility room under my office / tank:

The sump sits on a TV stand from Best Buy. Under that is a tray that is for a dog crate - it's meant to catch any leaks. My laundry room slopes to a drain in the lower right side so if I had a major issue, it would head to the drain. I have a Neptune leak detection sensor in the lower right which serves as a first alert (which has already proven its value in a few minor incidents I had). This is a great setup as everything is really accessible and at waist height so easy to work on and maintain (and not put off maintenance because it's not a PITA).

Going up from there nearly all the equipment, power, etc. is mounted on the wall to keep it accessible, tidy, and above any leaks or sprays that might happen. Observers will point out that having all this around my electrical panel is not ideal but it's the only space I had. You can see I built a magnetic shield to protect it from any splashes / sprays and all the plumbing is able to be disconnected. Having the whole sump setup in the pan makes it so I can just slide it away from the panel if I ever need work done there. Also the leak detection triggers a shutoff of everything down here so any splashing / spraying / leaking would be short lived.

Starting on the far left side of my room, not pictured in the first photo, is my quarantine (currently empty), and my fresh salt water. The salt water reservoir is sitting on a water heater stand I found on amazon. To fill it (roughly once a month) I just flip the valve above and it fills automatically from my RO up to a float valve in the container. It takes a few hours. I have a small sicce pump always running in the bottom and I just dump 4 scoops of salt in, check the salinity a few hours later and life goes on. This is hooked up to a 1/4" line for auto-water changes in the sump and the spigot on the front is for ad hoc needs or my son's water changes on his nano. I have a heater in there as well and insulated the tank but ultimately decided I didn't really need to heat it so it's usually off.

Moving to the left of my sump on the equipment wall I have my cheap Amazon fireHD tablet that I just keep a web browser pointed to Fusion for quick check of parameters or easy access to controls. It works pretty well - it's sluggish and it often goes back to the home screen after an update, but it stays up and running ~90% of the time. Might ultimately replace with an old iPad I'm about to retire.

In the top right I have the battery backup. It's a series of widgets from left to right - a DC circuit breaker coming from a pair of 12V batteries run in series to provide 24V power, an AC/DC transformer that brings in the AC power to run the equipment and / or charge the batteries, a 24V UPS that auto detect the power situation and switches between battery and the transformer, a breakout box that my 2 Octo Pulse pumps are connected to and a transformer that also connects to reduce the 24V back to 12V and powers the Apex. I need the Apex powered because it is controlling the wavemakers and ultimately if I get battery backup on my internet too, I'll be able to get notifications and see what's going on.

Beneath the battery backup I have my Neptune power strip and my inkbird heater controller. I have 2 titanium heaters, one plugged into the inkbird which does the majority of the duty, the other plugged into the apex as backup in case the inkbird dies. I went this route to avoid the constant switching toll on the neptune power strip but wanted to use it for backup to eliminate a single point of failure in the Inkbird.

Beneath that I have my 2 Neptune DOS, one for 2 part, the other for water changes. In the middle is a simple 24V alarm I got off etsy that's also hooked into the power strip.

On the right side of my equipment wall, I have the Apex (hidden behind the shield as well), a breakout box from ebay that I use a couple of switches to be able to easily shut off the skimmer for cleaning or put the whole sump into maintenance mode, shutting everything off with one easy click. I also have a float switch in the skimmer cup wired into there which shuts off the skimmer if the cup fills and alerts me. At the top, I have my XL CO2 scrubber which I previously mentioned works great. I've changed media twice in a year so it lasts quite awhile. Off the bottom I plumbed a 1/4" tube to the drain to let excess condensation out - it works slick, never touch this setup other than twice a year to replace media. To the right of the CO2 scrubber are the 2 controllers for my Octo pulse wave pumps. The tank is right above this area, hence the plumbing and tank equipment is here. Between those controllers is my return line with a check valve to limit the drainage to the sump when I turn off the return for maintenance. This has been changed a few times. It used to be hard piped most of the way but more recently I've opted for tubing to take some of the turns out and reduce head pressure. To the right of that is my RO unit and not pictured above it is a Neptune solenoid that auto fills the top off reservoir every other night. Beneath that, barely pictured is the top off reservoir mounted on a shelf next to my washing machine. It is gravity fed to a float valve in the sump. In the center is a separate plumbed loop through a UV (I had ich issues early on) and a media reactor which is now just a place to add media in case of an issue as I have a reefmat and it's way easier to put my carbon in the bottom of that for regular purposes. Also pictured is another Neptune power strip, and a couple of pump controllers. Currently I'm using the Sicce SDC 9 for my return and there is a Jebao DCP-10000 controller from a pump I abandoned but keep as a backup in case something goes wrong with my main return.

Last but not least is the sump itself, a trigger systems Triton 34. On the far left is my reservoir holding 2 gallons each of Alk and Ca. In the sump from left to right I have a reefmat which I love, I use it for mechanical plus I put a bit of Rox carbon under it that I change every 2 months. Next is a Reef Octopus Essence 130 which has been pretty bullet proof - I just had to build a little stand out of egg crate and PVC to get it at a good height. I bought a slick 3D printed ring that goes on the top of the cup to hook up my CO2 scrubber in recirculating fashion and, as I mentioned before, I have drilled the top and added a simple float valve to shut off when the cup is full. To the right of the skimmer is a little Sicce pump powering the UV / media reactor loop. Above that is the Avast marine plank feeder. This thing has been flawless - feeding 5x / day. It drops food right on top of the return pump and shoots it into the tank. also pictured on the right is the Neptune ATK float mechanism which I'm just using to monitor the sump level and gravity feed top off water.

I'll stop this post with just the business end of things and share the tank side in the next post!

 

[Morpheosz]

Here is the current state of the tank!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank looks like it is doing really well!! Thanks for the update on it!

 

[kevgib67]

Wow stunning! How do you get any work done with this to look at all day?

 

[alonsooro]

Looking awesome, Congrats!
I just read your first post, and love that you are doing this with your son, it's beautiful to share this passion.

 

[Morpheosz]

Wow stunning! How do you get any work done with this to look at all day?

It's a really nice distraction during dull meetings or a break from the screen when I need it.

I will say that it is the killer use case. It gives me a ton of joy as I sit here for up to 12 hours a day between work and my own time, and it's incredibly good for the tank as I keep it pretty pristine and fuss over every detail since it's such a big part of my day to day experience and it's literally 1 foot from me for most of the day. It's kind of hard to miss any issues!

 

[Morpheosz]

For the sake of working to update this thread more regularly now, I am currently at a state of transition between stocking and maintaining. I've filled nearly every available perch with a coral frag and with the exception of 1-2 more, I think I'm pretty full up on fish. Coral is growing for the most part and looks very healthy and fish largely getting along and happy.

With that said, there are a few issues I'm dealing with now. In spite of me being pretty careful with incoming corals (removing plugs, dipping, etc), I have introduced a couple of pests, and I have some cyano / algae creeping in. If anyone has any additional ideas on these topics, please share!

1) Bubble algae - this has started showing up in small patches around the tank. I have 2 emerald crabs, not sure if they are eating some of it, but I suspect yes as it's not proliferating quickly. I've seen it for a couple months in small patches and it's not evolving quickly. I know the conventional wisdom says reduce nutrients, remove without popping. I don't know about everyone else but I have never been able to pluck a patch of bubble algae without massacring it. They are very small and very well attached, plus it feels like a bandaid as that doesn't remove them from the system. for now I'm just hoping for the best and hoping my crabs do some work and my corals outcompete for space. My nutrients are quite low so I don't think there's anything to be done there (PO4 fluctuates between 0.03-0.1 and NO3 is 4-6PPM).

2) Lately cyano has been creeping back in in small patches. I blow it off periodically but lately it has been proliferating a bit more. I wish I could solve this without chemicals but having used Chemiclean in the past, it has knocked it out for 6 months or so with no apparent ill effects so I think I'm going to run a course of it this weekend.

3) I also have some green film algae starting to accumulate in patches on the sand in the past month. Not sure what to do with that either. I did a manual water changes and siphoned some of the bigger patches out but it is creeping back in. Again, nutrients are in a very healthy range so not sure what else to do with that.

4) In spite of best efforts, I introduced aiptasia at some point. They proliferate slowly and I've just made peace with a weekly weeding with F-Aiptasia which works really well. They proliferate slowly in the tank (every weekend I find 5-10 to kill) but they tend to proliferate quickly in my ReefMat. I'm kind of surprised by that, I get it's nutrient rich but there is no light whatsoever.

Thanks!