Payne's 93 Gallon Cube Build

[jopalmighty]

I've been out of the hobby for a few years. Since being out of the hobby, I've been wanting to setup another tank for several years but had to make sure the timing was right. I have been collecting equipment for the past, almost 2 years for this build. It is almost time for the tank to get wet!! I'll run through a quick explanation of where I am at to date and update as I go along.

Tank/Stand/Cabinet - 93 gallon cube marineland rimless 30" x 30" 24" - Custom metal stand 36"high - Custom Walnut cabinet/skin
I found the tank and much of the other equipment used from a local reefer who was getting out of the hobby. I wasn't happy with the factory stand height so I sourced a custom metal stand from a forum member on here Tinkwithanr (Shout out for the awesome stand!) This stand will give me a much better viewing angle and more space under the tank to work.

I have is a tank and a metal stand and need to figure out how to skin the stand to make it work with our home décor. I have a local woodworker that has done some other projects for me in the past, but never an aquarium cabinet so I put him to work making a walnut 3 sided skin/ cabinet to hide all the equipment under the tank. The cabinet turned out great, thank you Oak Born Wood

The tank will sit in a sunroom on a cement slab with tile flooring - I ran water lines through the wall to my fish room in the basement, hopefully I won't have to carry buckets throughout the house with this build.

On to the equipment -
Equipment Rack - Ikea BESTÅ cabinets and glass doors - I don't like having all the electronics under the tank - mainly because it looks bad and is hard to work on. I'd love to have this all in a remote room somewhere but the placement of the tank would not allow - I took this idea from another member on here Dal-Reef - thanks for the awesome write up! I have a 3D printer so I printed all of the brackets to hold the controllers and take care of the wire management on the back of the stand.
Lighting - 2 Radion G5 XR30 blue mounted with RMS rail
Controller - Apex - new model - running main display and wired into downstairs water storage system for ATO refill and Auto Water change, using DOS pumps
Return Pump - Octo Varios 6
Powerheads - 2 Ecotech MP10 and 1 MP60 - this may be too much flow and if needed I'll adjust and change back to 3 MP10's but I had the MP60 sitting around so I wanted to try it. Connected to a Ecotech battery backup.
Algae Reactor - Tunze Macro Algae Reactor
UV - Aqua Ultraviolet 25 watt
ATO - Tunze ATO
Skimmer - Vertex Omega 180i
Heater - Eheim 150W x2
Sump - Geo Cube sump - this has been the last piece of the puzzle for several weeks - I believe it is shipping in a few days - Can't wait to get it to get everything plumbed up.
ATO Reservoir - Advanced Acrylics Diamond Series reservoir

That is it for this update, I'll add more pics and updates soon
Thanks for following along and thank you to the many fellow reefers I have used, unknowing to you, along the way to help me out with this build

 

[jopalmighty]

Fish room setup
I have two 75 gallon storage tanks for fresh and saltwater. Plumbed together using a pan world pump. In the saltwater tank I will have a small power head and heater to keep the saltwater mixing and ready for my continuous auto water change using the DOS pump. I really wanted to have a spigot off of each tank so I wouldn’t have to turn on the pump every time I needed a little bit of water but space was a concern in the room as I have two water heaters in the way and don’t have a lot of room to spare so I chose to go this route with plumbing which doesn’t stick out in the space much at all. Opening two of the valves I can get water out without turning on the pump using gravity

For my RODI unit I have a BRS Spartan 300gpd setup. I don’t believe they sell this setup any longer but they still offer the filters. This thing makes water quick!

I want be able to pull water from these tanks consistently and anyone that’s worked with RODI tubing knows it has a mind of its own. I needed to get the tubing to be strait so it would pull from the bottom of the tank. To solve this problem I threw in a pc of pvc pipe and zip tied the rodi tubing to it so it would keep its form and go all the way to the bottom of the storage tank.
I’ve got an EB4 tied into my main Apex controller so I’ll be able to monitor the DOS pump, and everything else plugged in the basement.
Currently I have a brs 1.1ml dosing pump setup to pump fresh water up to my ATO reservoir but now realize it is entirely too slow to pump water fast enough so am looking to replace this with something else.

Coming in next I’ll post an update on the controller/electronic cabinet

 

[jopalmighty]

Quick update,
The sump from Geo finally showed up! Looks great and is exactly how I hoped it would turn out. Working on getting plumbing glued up. The UV sterilizer wasn’t the easiest to get right but I think I’m happy with its final install spot.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

Looks amazing!

 

[Poseidon's snail]

following

 

[Dryanimtt]

So far so good. Got a 93g cube myself. Wish I had room to setup a water station like that. That sump is awesome though!

 

[jopalmighty]

Well, I was terrible with updates on this thread but after less than a year the tank sprung a small leak in the silicon joints and have since changed tanks over to an Elos 100 - I had to scrap the stand, sump and several other items I spent way too long custom building and planning for this build. I'm really happy with the new tank but really liked the footprint of the cube.

 

[jopalmighty]

This is a current pic of the new setup. I really like the Elos glass. So much nicer than the marineland as far as clarity and the seams are almost a work of art

 

[tdyrkacz]

That's terrible. Was the tank new when you got it?

I am about to restart my 93 gallon cube. I had the marineland in my last home and cracked it during the move. I replaced it with a custom planet tank with same dimensions. Wills start a new build thread in the next few months.

 

[jopalmighty]

That's terrible. Was the tank new when you got it?

I am about to restart my 93 gallon cube. I had the marineland in my last home and cracked it during the move. I replaced it with a custom planet tank with same dimensions. Wills start a new build thread in the next few months.

No, I had bought the tank used. I think the tank was about 5yrs old when I set it up. I had been watching the bubbles in the seam get larger and larger over the past few months. I then started to see some coraline algae grow in between the silicon and knew it was only a matter of time for it to break loose. Good luck with the new tank. I loved the dimensions of the 93 cube, if I would have had more time to wait for a new tank, I would have bought a custom tank to match the size of the 93 cube