New 310g Mixed Reef Tank Man Cave Build

[CincyReefer07]

Looks great. If u need any help I’m semi local. It seems a lot of reef guys are also car guys. What else are you waiting on?

Nice! Where are you at? As far as to just have it ready to put water in it and start cycling, really not much. I have my sump plumbing all dry-fit, I have to take it apart now and glue it all together, I want ti add a total of 4 reef octopus octopulses pumps on the back wall, 2 on each side of the overflow which will be controlled off a hydros wave engine, still need to buy the octopulses and the wave engine. I also need to get all of my controllers and what not mounted and cords ran neatly into my wireways that I still need to mount on what I’m calling my control wall above my sump. And then my ocean direct sand to have a 2 inch sand bed and I’d also like to get 20-25lbs of KP aquatics live rock and about 5-10lbs of Australian live rock to work into my aquascape to help seed the tank along with the ocean direct sand. BUT I’m going to want to place that live rock in a separate tank for at least a week or two to try and make sure it didn’t come with anything that will turn into a disaster down the road like aiptasia or make fish go missing like gorilla crabs or mantis shrimp. Then work it into the aquascape and then put the sand in and begin filling with water and start cycling.
But past that, I still need to buy lights, I’m going with 3 kessil a500x’s and then I’ll still need a uv which I’m going with pentair. And a custom clear screen top lid for the tank made by LidYourReef (ReefinAintEzy on Facebook). But I don’t need that stuff just to have the tank cycling. But definitely want to have that stuff obviously for when the fish and corals go in.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Big lesson learned for future, never “dry-fit” your plumbing pieces so tight that you can barely get them off. Had to get a good pair of gloves on with a strap wrench to loosen some of my pieces to take apart to glue back together permanently. But thankfully I finally got that all finished up, now it’s onto mounting all my controllers on the walls surrounding the sump and run and hide the cords.
I know I’ve been moving at a slow pace on this build, mainly because I only find time to work on it on Saturdays and Sundays and the fact I’ve gone way over my budget I originally planned for with me ending up buying a lot more pieces of equipment than I ever planned on because I’m constantly coming up with new ideas and cool gadgets to add lol

 

[CincyReefer07]

Made a bit more progress today, got a lot of my controllers and surge protectors mounted. Leaving room for some things I still have to buy such as another Hydros XP8 and Wave Engine. Have to put a shelf up that will hold my Kamoer X2SR awc unit and for when I get around to buying the alkatronic and Mastertronic, all of which will be on a shelf on the left wall. Waiting for my black panduit cable raceways to show up so I can hide all of the cables. My Pentair UV will be getting mounted on the bump-out I built that isn’t finished yet. Still have to put the white frp paneling on it

 

[DeniseAndy]

Looking good so far. That tank will be so much fun to fill with life. Besides the lps and softies and a few easy sps, what are you thinking for fish, inverts, etc? Also, what lps and softies?

 

[Cincyreefer513]

Nice write up so far! I'll be following this build for sure.
I'm hoping to move in the next year or two and I'd like to upgrade to something in the 120-300 range depending on space. Your 310 has the perfect max dimensions for what I'd ever consider so I'll have to look into this one too.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Looking good so far. That tank will be so much fun to fill with life. Besides the lps and softies and a few easy sps, what are you thinking for fish, inverts, etc? Also, what lps and softies?

As far as fish go, I plan on keeping: Male/female pair of blue throat triggers
Foxface
Copperband Butterfly
Pair of Clowns
Group of 3-5 Bangaii Cardinals
6-8 Blue/Green Chromis
Couple Basslets (either black cap or royal gramma)
Harlequin Tusk

Tang gang consisting of:
Hippo tang
whitecheek tang
Naso tang
white tail bristletooth
3 yellow tangs

I’ve gone back and forth on deciding on a few Anthias, but with this current list I feel I’m pretty well maxed out “I think” as far as fish stocking.

Inverts not totally sure yet on exactly what but I’m thinking(this list may change depending on my needs and what fish allow ):
Sand sifting starfish
Couple Conch snails
Large group of nassarius & turbo snails
Group of red & blue legged hermits
Couple cleaner shrimp
Couple Emerald crabs

Corals will be again assuming none of the fish create issues for me:
Acans, toadstool leather, hammers and torches, Duncan, Goni’s, Favia, trachyphyllia, zoas, GSP mounted on the overflow box, mushrooms/ricordia, birdsnest, montipora. Considering an anemone but not sure which one or if I even will. May not mess with a nem. Will see how things go and how much room is left in the tank once I start placing things and anticipate growth.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Nice write up so far! I'll be following this build for sure.
I'm hoping to move in the next year or two and I'd like to upgrade to something in the 120-300 range depending on space. Your 310 has the perfect max dimensions for what I'd ever consider so I'll have to look into this one too.

Definitely! I love the dimensions. I was originally only planning something in the 220-240 gallon range. But then my LFS is really good at selling me on things hahaha, so I went with this Planet 310 and could not be happier with how it fits in my space I had set aside for a large tank and the footprint to design a good aquascape habitat for the fish. What part of Cincy are you in??

 

[CincyReefer07]

Got some more goodies this weekend for the Planet Aquarium Mega Matrix 310 gallon build! Finally got my 80watt Pentair Smart UV Sterilizer, this thing is a BEAST! Came with all of the mounting hardware for it. I bought a Sicce Syncra SDC 3.0 pump to put in my sump to push water through the UV and back into my sump for disease management.
Also got (4) Reef Octopus OctoPulse 4’s that will go along the back wall of the tank. Got another Hydros XP8 so that I can split all of my equipment up in half between 2 dedicated 20amp electrical circuits to minimize the load draw. I also ordered a Hydros Wave Engine to control all of my OctoPulses from, but that was unfortunately out of stock at the time so that should arrive sometime in the next week or two.
And finally, I also stopped at my LFS and picked up an Aqueon 60 breeder, a bag of ocean direct live sand and a hob filter as I have a shipment of Australian live rock suppose to be coming later this week or next that I want to be sure I manage to keep as much living that is in it and on it alive until it’s ready to go into my 310 gallon. Spent last night throwing together a diy stand for it. I’ll use it as a quarantine/observation tank once the rock gets transferred over into the big tank, as well as the sand I’ll have in it.

It’s getting SOO much closer to ready for water!

The stand isn’t finished yet, have to add some vertical supports between the horizontal 2x4’s but I’ll finish that up probably tomorrow and get it moved into the sump room.

 

[t5Nitro]

Following along. I'll be heading up to visit my new house to see where to have the electrician place outlets. Your build gives me some good ideas! I like the sump room area. Nice work.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Following along. I'll be heading up to visit my new house to see where to have the electrician place outlets. Your build gives me some good ideas! I like the sump room area. Nice work.

Thanks man! I was very fortunate to have a good sized basement as well as having a very large laundry/storage room that I’ve been able to configure into also being a sump room as well for the display tank. Makes it so much nicer to be able to have that open room instead of trying to cram it all inside of an aquarium stand or sitting out in the open next to the display tank. I ran 2 dedicated 20amp outlets for the tank along with having the already existing basement 15amp circuit down there too.

 

[CincyReefer07]

25lbs of Australian Live Rock being shipped to me for this weekend! Cannot wait to get ahold of these beauties! I was sent some pics of the pieces and they look amazing, and one huge piece.

I’ll have a 60 breeder set up to cure/hold the Aussie rock until it’s ready to go into the 310g for cycling

 

[CincyReefer07]

This weekend I got my 60 breeder tank I’ll be using to cure and hold my Australian live rock in once it gets here tomorrow, as well as seed some of my dry rock as well in it. Then it will be used as a quarantine tank after I’m finished using it for the rock. Also got my second Hydros XP8 mounted as well as my Pentair 80watt UV.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Got another 15 pounds of Australian Live rock today. This time from a different source, Unique Corals. Adding this rock to my 60 gallon tank that is currently curing the other 25 pounds of Australian rock that I got 10 days ago. All 40 pounds of it will be going into the 310 gallon main display once I am ready to fill it with water hopefully within the next few weeks.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Looks like some amazing rock!

 

[CincyReefer07]

Not a whole lot done today, but I pulled my Reef Octopus Octo-Pulse 4’s out of the box today and placed them along the back glass of the tank “roughly” where they’ll be going, to figure out if I’ll need extensions for the cables or not to reach the Hydros Wave Engine controller. And I went back and forth for a couple months deciding whether to go with these or Ecotechs to avoid the cord in the tank. The nice thing with these is they are fully controllable/programmable through the Hydros Wave Engine controller and can eliminate the need for the power bricks in doing so. So I saved $850 by buying these as pump only over buying 4 ecotech mp40s.

My solution to eliminate the eye-sore of power cords in the tank was getting on Amazon and for $15 bucks bought 50’ of quarter inch blue cord wrap that almost perfectly blends in with my blue background. So if you have a blue background and have cords in your tank you can’t stand, highly recommend this!

 

[CincyReefer07]

Well I’m trying to figure out my stocking list, for those of you following or see this post, would love to hear your guys opinions if it’s too much, if I should cut back on some and which ones maybe, or if I’m good as is and even have room to add more. Never done a tank this big and I’ve always tended to be a bit on the cautious side in the past when it comes to stocking but I feel I may have a heavy bio load with what my list currently is now… love to hear your guys opinions! Plan on finally filling the tank up with water in 2-3 weeks

So here is what I have for my list so far:

1 - White Tail Bristletooth Tang
1 - Blue Hippo Tang
1 - Naso Tang
3 - Yellow Tangs
1 - Whitecheek(gold-rimmed) Tang
1 - Sailfin Tang
1 - Harlequin Tusk
2 - Black Cap Basslet
1 - Midas Blenny
1 - Copperband Butterflyfish
3 - Bangaii Cardinalfish
8 - Blue/Green Chromis
2 - Clarkii Clownfish
1 - Foxface
1 - Pink Spotted Watchman Goby
2 - Blue Throat Triggers (male/female)
5 - Disbar Anthias (1 male)
1 - Quoyi Parrotfish

 

[DeniseAndy]

Wow, the set up looks great! Nice job there. Especially the hidden cords and lights. It will get dirty soon.

Personally I think that is a couple too many tangs for a 310g. However, most those can stay smaller and may be fine. I just like a lot of smaller fish.

So, aside from that note, I would stick with the blue caribbean chromis over the blue/green as these always seem to dwindle down to a few.
I would also add a few little damsels in there for fun around the rocks. Talbots, Azures, Smithi would be good choices.

Be prepared for a lot of poop with that list.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Finally have all of the equipment I need to start filling this tank with water and begin cycling bought and installed. Just need to run my ATO line from my rodi bin to my sump for the ATO, plug in a few more of the electrical plugs, and it’s ready to go! Also ordered another 10lbs of Australian live rock from pristine marine aquariums because I’m in love with how gorgeous that rock is, and figure the more biodiversity I can get to seed the tank with the better. Setting the date to begin aquascaping and filling the tank and sump with saltwater for the last weekend in July, taking a 3 day weekend to build the scape, fill the tank, turn equipment on and hope for no leaks anywhere.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Wow, the set up looks great! Nice job there. Especially the hidden cords and lights. It will get dirty soon.

Personally I think that is a couple too many tangs for a 310g. However, most those can stay smaller and may be fine. I just like a lot of smaller fish.

So, aside from that note, I would stick with the blue caribbean chromis over the blue/green as these always seem to dwindle down to a few.
I would also add a few little damsels in there for fun around the rocks. Talbots, Azures, Smithi would be good choices.

Be prepared for a lot of poop with that list.

My buddy at the LFS has kind of talked me into the blue reef chromis as well. He had a good stock of blue/green and the blue reef in his store last week and the deep blue color of the reef chromis was really eye catching, plus he also mentioned the same thing that I’d have better luck keeping a large group of them than the blue/green. Only downside is they cost 3 times more than the blue/green chromis.

 

[CincyReefer07]

Got another small shipment of Australian Live Rock in yesterday, unfortunately though UPS lost this package and it sat in a ups shipment center for 4 days before I filed a claim and they actually did something about it and found it and sent it to me… I was not happy. But I do at least already have 40 pounds that is fully cured. This was a 10 pound shipment, I have another 20 pounds coming middle of next week. I’m in love with this Australian rock. Most of the Aussie rock I’ve bought has come from Jason at Pristine Marine Aquariums, I highly recommend! He’s got the best stuff

Will also be leak testing the 310 gallon and sump plumbing this weekend when I get home from work… fingers crossed no leaks or issues with the leak test, then drain it all, wipe it down and will be getting ready to aquascape and fill it finally in the next few weeks