Phillips Family 120g Build

[Reefingmama]

Hello Reefers!

My husband and I are super excited to be getting back into reefing again. When we were dating (over a decade ago) we were slightly obsessed and would go to every frag swap event and loved the raffles. At that time we weren't living together and I had a 55g and he had a 180. I (Elissa) got him into reefing and he fell hard and fast (for reefing) haha! We enjoyed it for several years, got a bit burned from a tank crash and LOTS of work due to doing things half way and took a break to move across the country, buy a house and have babies.

MACNA 2010? maybe 2009

Making our own live rock

 

[Reefingmama]

So... Now onto the new build. Tim and I always knew we would get back into it. In June, while looking through FB marketplace, I found a 120G tank that was up and running and was for sale for $1500. It included everything down to the fish and coral. I proposed it to Tim and he basically called me crazy.. You see, we were in the middle of the covid pandemic, I had had a baby in May (yes, you read that right not even a month after having a baby I proposed this), and on top of everything, we had a toddler (2.5 Years old). But, after thinking about it, he reconsidered and we began talking with the owner. Here is the tank before we received it.

We paid a LFS to move the tank and thank GOD we did. Between tanking care of a newborn, juggling a toddler, and moving live animals... We never could have done it alone. They did a fabulous job.

As many of you can see, our rock was COVERED in GSP... And over 300 heads of hammer coral were included in the price of the tank, which was brought down to $1095. We paid the LFS $1000 to move everything and set everything back up. WELL worth every cent. We also bought a lot of upgrades and new rock real reef rock to get some of that GSP out of the tank. We ended up selling off a bunch of coral and made back $1200. So, overall, it financially was a great buy.

There were some major benefits to buying an up and running tank that was 9 years old. First, all of the liverock and livestock was very stable. We were able to fully stock just one week after getting the tank.

 

[Reefingmama]

So... Now onto the new build. Tim and I always knew we would get back into it. In June, while looking through FB marketplace, I found a 120G tank that was up and running and was for sale for $1500. It included everything down to the fish and coral. I proposed it to Tim and he basically called me crazy.. You see, we were in the middle of the covid pandemic, I had had a baby in May (yes, you read that right not even a month after having a baby I proposed this), and on top of everything, we had a toddler (2.5 Years old). But, after thinking about it, he reconsidered and we began talking with the owner. Here is the tank before we received it.

We paid a LFS to move the tank and thank GOD we did. Between tanking care of a newborn, juggling a toddler, and moving live animals... We never could have done it alone. They did a fabulous job.

As many of you can see, our rock was COVERED in GSP... And over 300 heads of hammer coral were included in the price of the tank, which was brought down to $1095. We paid the LFS $1000 to move everything and set everything back up. WELL worth every cent. We also bought a lot of upgrades and new rock real reef rock to get some of that GSP out of the tank. We ended up selling off a bunch of coral and made back $1200. So, overall, it financially was a great buy.

There were some major benefits to buying an up and running tank that was 9 years old. First, all of the liverock and livestock was very stable. We were able to fully stock just one week after getting the tank.

 

[fishguy242]

hi ,good enough story to rate a double post..lol,very nice,following for the ride,i do see a flame in that bucket wondering what else is in store,waitin' for more ,happy reefing

 

[MERKEY]

Excellent story, thank you for sharing and can't wait to see new pics!!

 

[coolrazor]

Good job posting, honey! I’m so glad I jumped back into reef aquariums with you! Really looking forward to growing this tank and watch it develop!

 

[MightyMO]

Awesomeness!!! You have a full tank shot of it set up???

 

[Reefingmama]

Awesomeness!!! You have a full tank shot of it set up???

Haha keep your panties on! It’s comin!

 

[Reefingmama]

Ok! More updates while the babies are sleeping!

So, we decided to move the tank as is and wait on any changes or upgrades. I personally can't stand GSP but we did want to keep a bit to put on the back wall. We ended up selling off about 250 heads of hammer coral. About 150 went to local hobby reefers and about 100 went to the LFS for CORAL CREDIT! ;Happy

We kept the following of what the tank came with:
Flame Fin (Tomini) Tang
Flame Angel
Blue eye royal Dottyback

We added:
Powder Blue Tang
Yellow Tang
Purple Tang
Exquisite Leopard Wrasse
Yellow watchman goby
Pistol shrimp
Diamond watchman goby
Starry Blenny (We call him our grumpy old man fish)
Helfrichi Firefish
Red Lizard Blenny
Mocha Storm Clownfish
Black Snowflake Clownfish
Mandarin Goby
3 cleaner shrimp
2 peppermint shrimp (in the hopes they will eat the one aptasia we have found...)
sand sifting sea star
a bunch of nassarius snails (my absolute favorite snails!)
Purple/green LTA

We are planning on adding 1-2 more wrasses

Video of FTS 7/21/2020

The sump area is a HOT mess. The protein skimmer that is currently running is nearly a decade old. There is wires and cords everywhere and nothing is hooked up to timers etc.. So, its a crash waiting to happen. Shortly after setting up the tank I put my hand in to move a coral and got zapped with electricity pretty good!! We frantically started looking for the culprit and found the old pump to the old GFO reactor was failing and leaking electricity into the tank! We immediately disconnected it and shortly after replaced it with a new GFO/Carbon reactor from BRS. The plan is to redo the sump area, replace the protein skimmer (we are considering the Aquamaxx 180 any thoughts on this?) as well as add a UV sterilizer since we have that pesky Powder blue to wreak havoc on the rest of our fish. We are also replacing the return pump which is technically working now... but is nearly a decade old and we REALLY don't want that failing on us. Some of the lessons we have learned is do it right the first time and replace before things fail. It's a hard pill to swallow but in the long run you end up spending less. Or so we hope! We also added 4 T5's and are currently running 2 ATI blue plus, 1actinic, and one coral plus which I am considering changing out for a blue plus. I am also scheming to switch out the old AI Hydras (a decade old) and get the Radions (hubby doesn't know this and this is how I am telling him! haha). Our goal is to add more SPS and have a mixed reef. We enjoy SPS, LPS and a couple high end zoas and we love our inverts and fish. We are going for high nutrient, high export.

We added some nice frags that we are excited to start growing out.
Red monti cap (doesn't every new tank have to have this one?
Red planet (our tester acro to see if we can sustain any SPS lol)
several cheap no name chalices
blasto frag
plate coral
bam bam zoas
no name favia
3 different ricordias
candy canes

We prefer to buy what we like and what we can grow vs the name brand stuff. Especially when you are starting a tank. So, we bought cheap, hardy, easy to grow corals for now and will later add the cherry stuff. I also prefer to buy at frag swaps vs online BUT I am ITCHING for a battlebox and hope that in the future we can do that. For now, we are just aiming for stable parameters and getting to know everything. I am testing everything everyday for now. We are going to be setting up the trident so I wont have to manually test so much. But I also like to have a more hands on approach when setting up. We are minimally feeding for now, daily a SMALL amount and sometimes skipping a day. I also do 1 sheet of nori every other day for the tangs. There has been some squabbling but we added everything at once so it has been minimal. For some odd reason the tomini absolutely HATES the starry blenny and attacks him every chance he gets. The starry blenny is fairly large so he is holding his own. We will see how everything stabilizes. The BEST part of the tank? Watching my two year old stand in awe at the creatures. She notices all the little changes and gets SO excited.

parameters:
Salinity: 1.025
Nitrate 5-10
Phosphate .04-.08
PH 8.3
Alk 8 (trying to get it up, I prefer 9 or 10)
Calcium 400 (again, trying to get this up)
Mag 1310

 

[revhtree]

Looking great and welcome!!

 

[Reefingmama]

Thanks! We are excited to be back!

 

[fishguy242]

very nice,one thing not mentioned ,do you have ground probe ,recommend 2 ,1 in tank ,1 in sump

 

[Reefingmama]

very nice,one thing not mentioned ,do you have ground probe ,recommend 2 ,1 in tank ,1 in sump

Nope! We are living on the edge for a while! Gotta get this thing safer. For now, we will know there is electricity when we get the **** shocked out of us! Lol

 

[MightyMO]

Looks awesome and my drawers are unbunched!!! Lol

 

[fishguy242]

get off that edge,10$ a piece ground probes!!! kid could touch bottom lip of tank and get zapped better safe for 20$

 

[jeffrey750750]

Sounds like everything except for getting zapped is going great. Great deal on the original investment

 

[Reefingmama]

get off that edge,10$ a piece ground probes!!! kid could touch bottom lip of tank and get zapped better safe for 20$

Haha yeah we know. We are getting everything buttoned up. The previous owner didn’t have any of that and we weren’t sure of all that needed to be replaced. Each day we are fixing and working on stuff. That’s high on the list and should be done super soon.

 

[Reefingmama]

Looks awesome and my drawers are unbunched!!! Lol

Haha whew! I was worried for you for a minute! Thanks for following! We are super excited to get this thing current with lots of fun pieces!

 

[Reefingmama]

Sounds like everything except for getting zapped is going great. Great deal on the original investment

Yep! That was quite a shock! Haha pun intended! Good thing it was a tiny pump. We are adding measures of protection. We already kid proofed it and grounding is high on the list. Then replacing anything that looks like it would fail soon. We are excited to get this thing fixed up!

 

[Reefingmama]

So, our skimmer sucks. We are planning on upgrading to a aquamaxx 180. We are also adding a UV sterilizer. The question is, thoughts on the skimmer? Also, should we move all equipment to the garage? It’s directly behind the DT. Downsides are we would have to add a chiller. It gets OVER 100 degrees on the reg. Upside is we would have more room to add as big of a sump as we wanted to and could make as many changes as we wanted to pretty easily. It would also make upgrading later easier.