OINK! I'm a Pig. 200g Reef Savvy, Bashsea, Royal Exclusiv -Direct sunlight- In wall w/ IKEA fishroom basement sump build

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drtechno

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Rock work update. Was able to get a couple solid hours into the aquascaping today. It's starting to come together I think. We were able to figure out how to fill the middle of the tank without doing anything bulky. We will jut out one of the ledge rocks towards the center.. The only problem is holding up the weight of that rock cantilevered out there. We put in some small rubble support pieces of rock, and will attempt to mortar it excessively. Not sure if people have experience hanging big pieces like this out there.... Hmm. Let me get the movie up on YouTube and link it...done

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drtechno

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If I order 1 year from now I'd likely get it in time for the date I'd want it. Really digging your initial aquascape btw.

Hah. Yes that's about right. Lol. When I decided to get back into the hobby earlier this year I couldnt even imagine that 8 month waits for fish tanks exist.. So I was quite blown away when I found out. So I'm going to be delayed like 3-6 months more than I planned, which is a LOT. It's looking like a Feb-March time frame for the tank. And with my luck we will be buried in snow and unable to move the tank into its spot.
 

mrpizzaface

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I'm thinking of this as the UV arrangement and plumbing. The box and coach are the edges of the wall and sump. This seems like it would work. Not sure if there's a better way?
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I think your build looks great, but I don’t understand why you are using two UV sterilizers.
 
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drtechno

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I think your build looks great, but I don’t understand why you are using two UV sterilizers.

So I am giving the BRS recommendation a try.. I will be running one at minimal flow rates ~150 gph to treat for ich and fish parasites, and the other will take all remaining flow (not sure how much yet) but ~600+gph to treat the highest volume of tank water possible for cyano/bacteria/microalgae .. If you run just a single UV, you have to pic one or the other organisms to treat for. You really need to run two to treat for both categories of pests. In an ideal world, the thought is you run one of your UVs on a closed loop to turn over the tank volume at a much higher rate to treat for bacteria/cyano, but I have a hangup on running closed loops as I don't want a "point of failure"/leak potential that a closed loop usually carries with it. The 'fish parasite' UV limb of the return system is always run at a low flow rate to maximize contact time.
 

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So I am giving the BRS recommendation a try.. I will be running one at minimal flow rates ~150 gph to treat for ich and fish parasites, and the other will take all remaining flow (not sure how much yet) but ~600+gph to treat the highest volume of tank water possible for cyano/bacteria/microalgae .. If you run just a single UV, you have to pic one or the other organisms to treat for. You really need to run two to treat for both categories of pests. In an ideal world, the thought is you run one of your UVs on a closed loop to turn over the tank volume at a much higher rate to treat for bacteria/cyano, but I have a hangup on running closed loops as I don't want a "point of failure"/leak potential that a closed loop usually carries with it. The 'fish parasite' UV limb of the return system is always run at a low flow rate to maximize contact time.

I’m planning two sterilizers as well, let us know how it goes.

Where did you get your flat ledge rock from?
 
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I’m planning two sterilizers as well, let us know how it goes.

Where did you get your flat ledge rock from?

Sure. Will do, but the tank won’t be running until ~March I’m guessing (with the ReefSavvy wait) so it will be some time :). I’m curious how much flow I will be able to get thru the second UV based upon how much water I want to put through my sump. The “fish UV” will be a fixed rate and the second return pump and UV will handle all the extra flow above that threshold. So will will see how it works out.
The flat ledge rock is just the MarcoRocks ledge rock. All the online stores have it. I would definitely order 2-3x more than you want of that since the pieces are very particular and you would want a variety of pieces to choose from. For example one of my pieces is super thin so it looks weird and almost unusable. One of the pieces is super cool, and the rest are in between. If I had ordered more I would have likely been able to get more super cool pieces and just use those.
 
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Finally got some time today to make progress on everything. Plus my matching reactors and top off containers arrived from Bashsea! So today’s plan is to install the Varios 2 pump into the salt water mixing station (the Seltz D kept leaking even after replacement), do some plastering upstairs, and make progress on the plumbing with the sump/drill the floor, and make progress with aquascaping (taking forever).
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Finally got some time today to make progress on everything. Plus my matching reactors and top off containers arrived from Bashsea! So today’s plan is to install the Varios 2 pump into the salt water mixing station (the Seltz D kept leaking even after replacement), do some plastering upstairs, and make progress on the plumbing with the sump/drill the floor, and make progress with aquascaping (taking forever).
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Nice, it will be interesting to see what you think of the varios, I am thinking of a 2 and 4 for my tank.
 

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Wow, great build, it will look awesome.

Quick question are you running both all returns through the two UV? If so you may want to think if you want to plumb them in with a bypass so that you could take them out if needed and still have life support to the tank. Certainly not a must, but a nice to have. Absolutely not needed if you run them as separate closed loop set up.
 
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Wow, great build, it will look awesome.

Quick question are you running both all returns through the two UV? If so you may want to think if you want to plumb them in with a bypass so that you could take them out if needed and still have life support to the tank. Certainly not a must, but a nice to have. Absolutely not needed if you run them as separate closed loop set up.

So the two returns are independent from one another, running off of separate circuits (coming off different breakers). One circuit is running off of a GFCI breaker circuit, the other is running off of a circuit using GFCI outlets. I used dissimilar GFCI methods for the two circuits to reduce the chances of similar type failures.. In my experience, after 10 years GFCI outlets have a very real failure rate. Anyways, so each return pump is dedicated to one UV. So should one return limb fail, or be shut down to take the UV out, the other limb will continue to run and circulate the tank. But you are right, originally I had the plumbing design so that each UV could be bypassed. But then my wife pointed out that this would not be needed because of the two completely independent return limbs. I think in the end I will go without bypasses because of the simplicity and the belief that it would be exceedingly rare for me to need to have one limb shut off for a prolonged period, and where the other limb would not compensate.

But at the rate the aquascaping is going, it may be two more weeks before I get plumbing.

*sigh*. I worked on it today and made so little progress it's embarrassing. Lol. Anyway, I guess see you all next weekend :)
 
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Ok. I’m gonna call it done. I am happy enough with the aquascaping and am worried about “rock creep” like “feature creep”, where adding additional cool rocks may seem like a good idea at first. But then you might stand back and realize that you have just overloaded your tank with live rock. I’m happy with the balance of open space and caves/coral mounting areas. It’s always hard to capture aquascapes in photos.

It’s a bit odd really since I LOVE minimalist stuff, but I just realized I wanted caves and stuff for my fish in the end. Maybe my next tank will be more minimal :/

And that’s It for this weekend. Next weekend will be mortar on the aquascape and then I will move on to another fun part ! Plumbing!
Couple more Bashsea pics also included :)

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Ok time for some progress this weekend! For one reason or another, I got. I thing done last weekend. So this weekend it’s time to put some effort in.

Today we managed to finish mortar’ing the aquascape. What a relief that was! Just a word of advice, order tons more mortar than you think you will need ! For my medium sized aquascape, we went through THREE e-Marco 400 buckets. I initially thought one would do it. Wow does that stuff go fast.

The other thing we managed to finish today was installing the reef octopus pump in the salt water mixing station.

So tomorrow I might start mounting the UV to the wall and start planning on the plumbing. Today’s pics (and a couple from last week where I siliconed the edges of the PVC board that we glued to the wall).

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