Reef Room project w/ 4 systems (1000g+) - From SCRATCH!

Mschmidt · Nov 20, 2022

reefnook said:
You are welcome! Thanks for reading the post.

Yeah, I never understood why in USA/Uk homes are built using wood instead of concrete. It has to be a cultural thing... Actually I think concrete would be more useful in Uk and certain US states due to the wet weather.

I never heard about ReefMoonshiners, but I will take a look at it. It has to be the same, or very similar, as triton method. The only benefit I see on those methods is that of saving some money on salt. In all other aspects, I prefer WCs. Once we come back to normal live and everything is running, I will (likely) do WCs again.

Also congrats on the baby!

Undefendable (my dad would knownbetter. He's a civil engineer,) reasons for stick construction: availability of lumber vs stone when cities were being established, and even now, versatility, tradition. Some locations use concrete blocks instead. That could be weather related. My folks used concrete impregnated styrofoam for the main exterior of their timber frame. But that is a departure from standard. Basements are usually concrete.

acesfull44 · Nov 20, 2022

Man am I glad I spent the time to read this. Very cool project and I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Following along!

d2mini · Nov 20, 2022

reefnook said:
You are welcome! Thanks for reading the post.

Yeah, I never understood why in USA/Uk homes are built using wood instead of concrete. It has to be a cultural thing... Actually I think concrete would be more useful in Uk and certain US states due to the wet weather.

I never heard about ReefMoonshiners, but I will take a look at it. It has to be the same, or very similar, as triton method. The only benefit I see on those methods is that of saving some money on salt. In all other aspects, I prefer WCs. Once we come back to normal live and everything is running, I will (likely) do WCs again.

I did the Triton method once. The difference there is that they give you pre-mixed solutions to dose daily. With moonshiners, you dose Alk, Calc, Mag however you want. Then all the other elements are dosed individually, purely based on the ICP test results and the moonshiners online calculator. So it's very specific to your particular tank.

bcardoro · Nov 20, 2022

Mschmidt said:
Also congrats on the baby!

Undefendable (my dad would knownbetter. He's a civil engineer,) reasons for stick construction: availability of lumber vs stone when cities were being established, and even now, versatility, tradition. Some locations use concrete blocks instead. That could be weather related. My folks used concrete impregnated styrofoam for the main exterior of their timber frame. But that is a departure from standard. Basements are usually concrete.

Thanks!

I guess basements are concrete everywhere; I don't think wood would hold the pressure

Some people here use concrete for the whole building, like a bunker. The most common choice however is to use concrete blocks for the walls that are not under ground.

acesfull44 said:
Man am I glad I spent the time to read this. Very cool project and I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Following along!

Sacha Baron Cohen Thumbs Up GIF by Amazon Prime Video

d2mini said:
I did the Triton method once. The difference there is that they give you pre-mixed solutions to dose daily. With moonshiners, you dose Alk, Calc, Mag however you want. Then all the other elements are dosed individually, purely based on the ICP test results and the moonshiners online calculator. So it's very specific to your particular tank.

I also did triton method and I did not like it all. What you mention about moonshiners is much more clever in my opinion, since every single tank out there is different. In my experience, Ca and Mg were always beyond 500 and 1500 ppm when using triton, and I had to lower the dose of the 4 triton components and add alkalinity separately. Anyway, for one reason or another, my corals were not happy when I did full triton.

In the system we are running now we are using red sea products, how I did when I started in this hobby, and I am really happy. On top of that we are also adding kalkwasser. In the new system we are building now I would like to try a new european brand called "modern reef", which is the brand of a top-notch european coral (I would say acro) farm. However, I have mixed feelings about trying new things when I know products that work well for me.

bcardoro · Nov 27, 2022

Little update:

We just leveled the stand and put the plywood panels in place. Next step is to hang in the light cords.

In this build we will use dry rock in the show tank + 40 or 50 kg (~ 90-110 pounds) of the indo live rock we got almost a year ago (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/experience-with-indonesian-live-rock.900766/) in the sump. So far, the live rock has been in the third coral tank of our current system and received no direct light. The live rock is thus fully cycled but since we have no rush, we will take our time to properly quarantine it and perhaps doing a chemiclean treatment before place it in the sump of the new system. Our goal: get rid of some crabs we have been seeing at night over the last year, get rid of worms, and to make flourish (and then take action on) any algae that may be on the rock surface.

First set of rocks have already been dipped at high salinity (1.038) for about 5 minutes and placed in the quarantine system.

The dipping process did nothing to the crabs, but the worms were clearly irritated.

squidarcher · Mar 10, 2023

Any update here?

bcardoro · Mar 10, 2023

squidarcher said:
Any update here?

Hi! Sure, thanks for asking! Let me see if I can write the post this Sunday.

bcardoro · Apr 6, 2023

Ok, so I clearly couldn't write the post that Sunday lol, but I found some time today. So here we go again!

Just saw last update post #45, with no tank, was from 27th of November 2022. Wow. Time flies... That big boy is now assembled and running. We plan to put some light next week, so let me fill the gap.

Stand and wood panels in check. Was time for bringing in all the glass. Of course, there was no physical way of getting in the tank assembled in one piece, so had to assemble it inside the room. Glass base was some serious stuff: 19mm thick.

First put together the ATO tank (140L ~ 37g) and the external overflow, and put the vinyl: black in the back glass and white in the base.

Oh, and wife gave me this gift for the room door:

Then it was the time for the sump. You can bet it was a real challenge manage all the glass inside the stand and assemble it.

And finally, the big boy: 250 x 90 x 60 cm (~ 8 x 3 x 2 '). We first put the front and back glass eurobrace, assembled the tank, and once all was cured, we put the transverse reinforcements (don't know what specific word you use for this).

We removed all the silicone excess, put the squishing foam below the tank and did the plumbing. This was the final result:

The plumbing is actually pretty simple. Two main drains of 40mm + one emergency drain of 40mm, and then 2 return lines which split in two. So we have 4 return outlets, each outlet with 2 nozzles. Then the tank has 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 return nozzles. All the PVC you see behind the structure in the previous pic is not used. These are the PVC lines that will connect two satellite frag tanks into this system, but for the time being, I do not need them. To avoid the mess of setting all this up in the future, I decided to do it now.

Controller panel is very simple too. We do not run many equipment: 2 MP40's, 2 MP60's, 2 Vectra M2, ATO system, profilux mini wifi for temperature control and ph monitoring, skimmer and peristaltic pumps. Only thing we plan to add is a UV sterilizer.

Filling up the sump:

Filling up the tank lol:

Despite my bad experience with marco rocks in the past, I decided to give it another shot. In my opinion, this the best rock for aquascapping, and this time we will supplement it with 40 kg (~90 lbs) of 1 year old indo live rock in the sump, so I really hope this time marco rocks will perform well. For building up the aquascape we used the cyanocrylate technique (we did the bond using marco rocks sand). We used 90 kg (~200 lbs) of marco rocks in total (oh, and we also have 4 liters of maxspect bio spheres in the sump). This is the final result, already with the first 5 guests (tank bred flavescens):

I recently added two more tangs that were waiting for his new home in the sump of our other system:

All together, they form an exceptional gang! It is great to see them swimming towards the end of the tank when I enter into the room, asking me to feed them. So far, zero aggression. The rostratum and the achilles have been really good friends since day one when I received them. We will see when the flavescens grow up...