Ocean_dreamer89's Red Sea Reefer 250

[powers2001]

@Ocean_dreamer89 glad you caught your fish without too much of a fuss. Another thing I’ve done is if possible drain the display tank water way down and save it to put back. The problem with nets is some fish have gill spines like dwarf angels especially coral beauties. Their scientific name means gill spine if I remember correctly. Their spines get tangled in the fabric. An alternative some use for nets is specimen containers although I’ve never used. I’ve got one of them NA portals too glad you like yours. I haven’t made my screen top yet mines a Red Sea how about yours?

 

[Ocean_dreamer89]

So a little update on my recent project I've been working on. I've had an RODI filter for a hot minute now, but not a very good setup. I have a finished basement in my house and have been using the half bath in the basement for my water setup for my RODI. It has worked so far for my nano aquarium but moving forward with this hobby I feel like there is definitely room for improvement, Luckily my husband is supportive with this and her has been helping me improve my DYI skills. So I knew that making water changes and more specifically making the fresh and ease of making saltwater was important. Luckily I have married a fantastic man that understands this!! haha. So i explained to him what I wanted to accomplish and a way that we could do that. I took some ideas of different mixing stations and what I wanted as far as available fresh water and how I wanted to make saltwater and how often.

The best solution I could come up with is was a long 20 gallon tote on top of a 44 gallon mixing gallon tote. Previously, I have been filling up the 44 gallon with the amount of RODI I wanted and then mixing salt. I plan on doing 10% water changes which is a total of about 6 gallons at a time, so filling up the 44 gallon with saltwater will last me a couple weeks in between having to mix more. As much as I would love to make automatic water changes work or even run a tube up to the tank, it's just not possible for me. Especially at my DIY skill level and not wanting to make permanent changes to my house.

Anyway, for that very long explanation of why my set up is the way it is, here is what I came up with. I started with planning the frame. I knew I wanted to get it simple but still look nice for my basement. We went to Lowes and Home Depot and picked up some 2 x 4's, 3/4 in sanded plywood, some paint, and some plumbing for the 20 gallon tote. The stand needs to be sturdy but not overly concerned with it since it's only supporting 20 gallons max. I also want to be able to store the 44 gallon brute underneath the stand. No pumps will be used and gravity will be my mode of transport for the RODI water.





We went a little out of order and had to wait to paint until the next day because of daylight, but here's a picture of where the stand will be and how the RODI unit will be mounted and booster pump installed. I'm using the AquaticLife Smart Buddie pump. Super easy to install and automatically flushes the unit so I don't need to remember to.



I learned a lesson a few weeks ago that no of us want to learn the hard way and that is to never forget to turn the RODI off! Haha. So for this, i finally decided to install an auto shut off and some redundancy to prevent this. Luckily when I flooded our basement bathroom, its all tile and drains into the garage, so no real damage done. But now this is going over actual flooring so I definitely don't want that to happen again. I installed a float valve in the 20 gallon tote and also bought the Flood Guardian optical auto shut off. For the auto shut off valve, I installed the Aqua FX high pressure valve on the RODI unit. They provide a Youtube video on how to install it and it was very easy. I have the Flood Guardian set just below the float valve so that it'll shut off the unit first, with the float valve as a back up. One cool feature with the Flood Guardian is that once it shuts off, it stays off until it's either power cycled or you push the button to start it up again. A timer could be used to power cycle it, but right now I just press the button when I want to make water. I like this feature because now its only making water when I home rather than just whenever.



The tote plumbing is very simple. I have all 3/4" piping and used a bulkhead for the tote walls. On the inside of the pipe, I put a 90 degree elbow facing down so that it draws water from the bottom and creates a siphon to empty the tote completely. On the other side, I have a union, a ball valve, an elbow, and then a barbed fitting with vinyl tubing attached.

 

[Ocean_dreamer89]

Once all the plumbing was done and the paint dried, I moved the stand inside and got to work rerouting all the tubes and finished hooking up the Smart Buddie pump. Overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out and think it'll make making saltwater much easier and I can always have RODI water on hand. After using the pump, I was very surprised how much faster I can make the water. Before, it would take about 1.5 hours to make four gallons and now that time is cut in half. For the waste and supply water, the tubes go into bathroom and are hooked up to the sink plumbing. I used wire management tracks to hide the tubing and then I also used that for the cords for the pump and Flood Guardian.



The final step was to clean up the mess of tubes every where. I ordered some push connect elbows, elbow mounts, and tube clips from BRS. This was probably my favorite part of the whole project and I thought that these simple additions made a huge difference and really cleaned up the whole look of the setup.

 

[powers2001]

Once all the plumbing was done and the paint dried, I moved the stand inside and got to work rerouting all the tubes and finished hooking up the Smart Buddie pump. Overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out and think it'll make making saltwater much easier and I can always have RODI water on hand. After using the pump, I was very surprised how much faster I can make the water. Before, it would take about 1.5 hours to make four gallons and now that time is cut in half. For the waste and supply water, the tubes go into bathroom and are hooked up to the sink plumbing. I used wire management tracks to hide the tubing and then I also used that for the cords for the pump and Flood Guardian.



The final step was to clean up the mess of tubes every where. I ordered some push connect elbows, elbow mounts, and tube clips from BRS. This was probably my favorite part of the whole project and I thought that these simple additions made a huge difference and really cleaned up the whole look of the setup.

@Ocean_dreamer89 Just my opinion but I would put cross supports half way up the height of your stand to strengthen it. You say you have 20 USG in there and a gallon of FW weighs 8.2 pounds IIRC. So ~ 164 pounds. But hey that’s just me.

 

[Ocean_dreamer89]

@Ocean_dreamer89 Just my opinion but I would put cross supports half way up the height of your stand to strengthen it. You say you have 20 USG in there and a gallon of FW weighs 8.2 pounds IIRC. So ~ 164 pounds. But hey that’s just me.

I definitely appreciate your input! Are you saying straight across horizontally or at a diagonal?

 

[powers2001]

I definitely appreciate your input! Are you saying straight across horizontally or at a diagonal?

@Ocean_dreamer89 I would put two, one on either side, across horizontally. Then one across the back horizontally. You could also put a section of plywood on one side instead of a 2x4 for stability and it could double as a place to mount things.

 

[Ocean_dreamer89]

Good news! So the fish have been in the tank for a little over two weeks now so I decided to go ahead and start transferring over my corals. I started with a small piece of my GSP. Left in the the tank a few days to see how it adjusted, and it did very well! When I saw that, I decided to go ahead and start transferring everything else. I moved some of the more hardy/easy to get corals and observed. As the corals kept doing well, I moved more and more over. Once enough of the corals were out of the Biocube, I could more easily move the rocks around and catch my little fire shrimp and moved him over as well. So far, I'm really happy with how everything is going. Some of the corals are a bit more difficult to remove from the rocks, so I'll knock them out later. Another struggle with the move is moving over the anemone. I've tried blasting a powerhead on it and holding the rock upside down, but so far have not been able to make any progress and it seems to be moving farther within a crack in the rock. I'm definitely open to suggestions! My last ditch effort will be to chisel off the the piece of rock that it's on, but if I can avoid that I would like to.

Picture time!

 

[powers2001]

Good news! So the fish have been in the tank for a little over two weeks now so I decided to go ahead and start transferring over my corals. I started with a small piece of my GSP. Left in the the tank a few days to see how it adjusted, and it did very well! When I saw that, I decided to go ahead and start transferring everything else. I moved some of the more hardy/easy to get corals and observed. As the corals kept doing well, I moved more and more over. Once enough of the corals were out of the Biocube, I could more easily move the rocks around and catch my little fire shrimp and moved him over as well. So far, I'm really happy with how everything is going. Some of the corals are a bit more difficult to remove from the rocks, so I'll knock them out later. Another struggle with the move is moving over the anemone. I've tried blasting a powerhead on it and holding the rock upside down, but so far have not been able to make any progress and it seems to be moving farther within a crack in the rock. I'm definitely open to suggestions! My last ditch effort will be to chisel off the the piece of rock that it's on, but if I can avoid that I would like to.

Picture time!

@Ocean_dreamer89 how are things going? Did you get the table for your RODI braced? At minimum I would put at least one brace on the back from side to side half way up. Do you have a livestock list? Can we get a photo of your cabinet with all the equipment?