Rhoads238's 280 gallon reef with fish room

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

I've made some more progress with the tank. I've completed my leak test. It went really well. I ran the tank for a week and messed with some stuff in the overflow and got the tank dialed in. It's now very quiet to the point you almost can't tell that its running. Since the tank passed the test, I disassembled the plumbing, took the sump out and pushed the tank up against the wall. I cleaned everything up real good and put it all back together. It's nice to see the tank in its final position.

I've started aquascaping the tank and I think I have a design that I like. Aquascaping is one of those things thats difficult for me, so I'm happy to have something that I feel satisfied with. I tried a couple of other designs but I felt like I was struggling to have it not look awkward. I tried two islands, three islands, bommies and i also tried briefly to do an NSA. I like where I ended up with because it will have a ton of real estate to place coral on.

I'm going to look at the scape for a few more days and try to perfect it. Once I'm completely happy with it, i'll use some cement to hold it together a bit better, then its time for sand and water. While the tank is cycling I will get the wiring sorted out. I've come to the conclusion that I don't have enough room for all of the equipment under the stand so I'm going to have to do an external electrical box for some of the equipment. Should be an interesting project. I'll post pictures as it develops.

As always feel free to let me know what you think and thank you for viewing my build!

 

[Rhoads238]

This morning I woke up and decided that I was happy with the aquascape. I started the day by cementing everything together. I also added the sand after thoroughly rinsing it out. I am using reef flakes sand on this tank. I believe the grain size is around 3mm. I am planning on running a lot of flow in the tank so this sand should stay in place.

I'm also excited to say that I've started filling the tank with saltwater. I'm thinking by tomorrow I will have made enough to turn the pumps on. Once the dust clears I'll post some pics of the tank running. I'm so excited to finally have a tank running, this has been a long time in the making.

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey Everyone!

The tank is getting closer and closer to complete every day. Its filled with saltwater and it is actually already cycled. I did a fishless cycle using a combination fitzime, zeobak and brightwells ammonia. I also added most of the biomedia from my quarantine system that i have been cooking for the last six months. I'm planning on doing two 100 gallon water changes a week a part to get my nitrate down. I tested this morning and it is at 50ppm. Then if all seems to be in order, I will transfer over my quarantined corals and cleanup crew and possibly start quarantining one fish.

Aside from getting the tank cycled, I have also been doing a lot of work wiring the tank. I first worked on setting up the area under the stand I created for my controller board. I quickly realized that this was not going to be enough space so I decided to build a controller cabinet. I started with buying a cabinet from ikea and then got some plywood and cut it to size, drilled some cable management holes and painted it black. I set the board about a third of the way into the cabinet so i would have space on the front side to put my dosing reservoirs along with the dosing pumps and my mp40 drivers. Underneath the cabinet I mounted four battery backups for the MP40s. The back side of the controller board is all power bricks and Is an absolute rats nest of wires. I'm not really sure how it could be made better, there are so many wires in a relatively small area. That said, nothing that needs to be removed from the tank for maintenance is plugged in there, so i should only need to go back there if something breaks.

The cabinet is still not 100% finished. I have to buy a few more extension cables for the mp40s I thought i had bought enough but it turns out I need them for all six pumps to neatly route the cables over to the controller cabinet. I also have to get the dosing reservoirs, I'm thinking it will be two apex DDRs.

The next project with the tank will be setting up the ATO. I have kind of a unique solution for it on this tank. I will do a post about it when its all done.

Thats all i have for now. Thank you for viewing my build!

 

[Rhoads238]

Just a small update today. I came home from work to notice the first signs of life in the tank! There were some copepods and a small amount of biofilm on the glass. I’m really excited to see this and how things will continue to progress.

 

[revhtree]

Super nice build so far!

 

[Rhoads238]

Super nice build so far!

Thank you!

 

[SaltyinTennessee]

That is looking so sweet! I really like how the fish room turned out. Awesome build!

 

[DH78]

Looking good. Nice build.

 

[Rhoads238]

That is looking so sweet! I really like how the fish room turned out. Awesome build!

Looking good. Nice build.

Thank you!!

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

I wanted to do a post about my ATO now that it is finally setup. It's a little different than the way most people have them setup and it solves a problem that others may have so I wanted to share about it. My ATO reservoir is down and across a hallway from my sump. This presents a challenge because the reservoir is about thirty feet away from the tank. The reservoir is also taller than the height of the sump, so it could cause a syphon and flood the house. After doing some research, I decided that I needed a peristaltic pump for my ATO pump. I think this was a good option because it wont syphon and I can have the pump at the tank, rather than at the reservoir.

To do this I ended up deciding to setup a tunze osmolator to control a kamoer pump. The way i did this was actually pretty easy and it works really well. I removed the connectors that connect the osmolator to the included pump and wired it into the relay. I plugged the osmolator power supply into the relay outlet that is always on. When the osmolator detects that the water level is low, it sends power to the relay. The relay detects this change and turns on an outlet that is usually off unless powered. This starts the kamoer pump which tops the tank off. I like this system because this type of pump can't create a syphon and its also very quiet. They are also good at pushing water long distances.

I figured I would share this because its a little different from how most people use their tunze osmolator and it might help someone else with a similar situation to mine.

If you are interested in buying the relay here is the link. I think its a pretty cool thing that I hadn't heard of before until i started looking into how to do this.

I also figured i would share a quick video of the whole thing working when I was testing it on my counter. Let me know if you have any questions about it.

As always thanks for viewing my build!

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

Today I have an exciting update! I just put in the first livestock into the tank! I added the corals and inverts that have been sitting in my QT for the past four months or so. So far in the tank I have three zoa frags. Theyre rasta, sunny d and i think pink dynamite. I also added my fascination favia frag and a duncan. Along with the corals I also added a small cleanup crew, consisting of about six hermits and ten snails. I have one coral l left behind in qt, my jack o lantern lepto. I almost killed it with too much light. Its really making a comeback now and i've decided that it will stay in the qt until it makes a full recovery.

At the moment, everyone is looking kinda ticked off about the move but I'm confident everyone will settle in a couple days.

As a side note, radion g5 blues are difficult to get a good picture under. As the tank develops I'll start doing the photos with my dslr but for now, the iphone camera will have to do.

As always thank you for viewing my build!

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

Time for another small update on the tanks progress. I've just gotten back from a vacation at the shore. I found probably the most appropriate sign I've ever seen. I've hung it up in the fishroom.

What do you think?

The tank has started to go through the ugly phase. For now it's contained to the refugium. I recently saw a video on parkers reefs on youtube where he used a wet dry vac to clean the sump. I gave this a spin and I have to say it works really well. Give it a whirl if you want to clean your sump out.

For not having anything in the tank producing waste, my skimmer is putting in some solid work!

Aside from this I'm currently researching what will be the first fish in the tank. I will probably do a sepereate thread to get some opinions about that.

Thats all for now!

 

[sdreef]

Hey everyone!

Time for another small update on the tanks progress. I've just gotten back from a vacation at the shore. I found probably the most appropriate sign I've ever seen. I've hung it up in the fishroom.

What do you think?

The tank has started to go through the ugly phase. For now it's contained to the refugium. I recently saw a video on parkers reefs on youtube where he used a wet dry vac to clean the sump. I gave this a spin and I have to say it works really well. Give it a whirl if you want to clean your sump out.

For not having anything in the tank producing waste, my skimmer is putting in some solid work!

Aside from this I'm currently researching what will be the first fish in the tank. I will probably do a sepereate thread to get some opinions about that.

Thats all for now!

That skimmer is awesome. Silent and does exactly what you would want.

What fish are you thinking about putting into the system?

 

[Rhoads238]

That skimmer is awesome. Silent and does exactly what you would want.

What fish are you thinking about putting into the system?

I'm having a little bit of a hard time deciding what to put first. I've been looking at what's available on marine collectors. I'm thinking about a trio of Bimaculatus Anthias but I'm concerned about how much feeding Anthias need and am wondering if a new tank can handle it. I also saw he has white tail tangs which is one of my favorite fish. I'm worried that a tang will be too aggressive to go in first.

Here is the list that I've been working on. I'm not necessarily going to put everything in, these are just the fish that I like the most. I'm going to add some flasher wrasses to the list but I need to see about compatibility.

Bimaculatus Anthias
Blue Green Chromis

Melanurus Wrasse
Tamarin Wrasse
Leopard Wrasse
Mystery Wrasse
Rhomboid Wrasse
Flame Wrasse
Labouti Wrasse
Pintail Wrasse
Yellow Corris Wrasse

White tail tang
Purple Tang
Gem Tang
Tomini Tang
Achilles Tang
Chocolate Tang

Copperband butterfly
Green mandarin
Magnificent Foxface
Aiptasia eating filefish
Firefish
Algae Blenny

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

Just a quick announcement. I've ordered my first fish for the reef! I'm getting a mated pair of Helfrichi Firefish from marine collectors. I think they will be coming in a few weeks to a month according to what i've read about marine collectors.

I hope mine come in as beautiful as whats pictured on their website! I'll do a post about them when they come in!

Thanks for viewing my build!

 

[Kocodelux]

Awesome tank build! How's the tank going?

 

[skydirt]

We need a update. what's she looking like?

 

[Rhoads238]

Hey everyone!

Time for a long overdue update. The tank has been running for four months now and its been mostly smooth sailing. I would say that I'm in some point of the ugly phase of the tank right now. I'm seeing some hair algae growing on the sand and on the rocks I think I have some cyano. The "cyano" isn't like anything I've seen before so I'm not 100% sure thats what it is. What I'm seeing is small reddish brown balls, approximately 1-2mm in diameter, they scrub off the rock with a brush and hold their shape. They're not really like cyano or diatoms that I've seen before so i'm not really sure what to call them. All in all I think they are in recession after a good cleaning last week so hopefully I'll start seeing the tank looking better and better.

Also speaking of cleaning, I found something that makes working on the tank much easier at home depot a few weeks ago. It's basically a horizontal ladder. It makes it so much easier to work on the tank. If you have a long tank like mine, I would definitely recommend getting one.

A project that I'm really happy with how it came out is the screen top that I made. I used two red sea kits from brs, and cut them to size, I also substituted the clear netting for black netting and added an adaptive reef feeding portal. I'm really happy with the final result!

Two weeks ago, I made a very stupid mistake during my water change two weeks ago. I was doing the water change by pumping out my sump. Unfortunately I forgot to turn my heater off on my apex and one of them turned on while it was out of the water. The wire for my skimmer was laying across it and it burned the wire. Fortunately I was nearby and was able to turn it off before it caused a fire. There was a ton of smoke coming out from under the stand and the whole hose stunk like burnt rubber. I had to shop vac out the remaining water from the sump and clean all the residue it left. As bad as all this was I'm thankful that the sump was not damaged in any way.

As a result of this I had to order new motor block for my pump from royal exclusive. I just received it yesterday and instead of sending me just the motor block, they sent the whole pump with the controller. The only problem with this is that on this version of the pump, the controller is hard wired to the pump and that makes it impossible for me to put the controller where I used to have it. It also is problematic because the pump controller has to be screwed into the back of my tank to be mounted and because the pump doesn't detach from the controller, I would have to unscrew the controller from the board its mounted on every time it needs to be removed for cleaning. I'm debating if I should send it back, and try to get the thing that I ordered or just use this one and have extra parts on hand. I could just clean the pump in a bucket at the tank which might be easier.

In another misfortune, I eventually did receive my pair of Helfrich Firefish from marine collectors. Inexplicably, both of them died. One of them I saw was dead the next morning and the other lasted a little longer than a week. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and I don't know where I went wrong with them. My tank is cycled and all parameters are within normal ranges. I do think that the fish that died first may have been damaged because its antenna like dorsal fin was about half the length of the other fish. It did look as if it had been bitten off at the time I had received it. I drip acclimated them for three hours and put them into my display tank. They stayed out swimming around for the evening and the next morning one was dead. The following week the other firefish was out and was eating although not aggressively. And was coming out less every day. I eventually stopped seeing it and never found a body. There are no other fish in the tank to bully it. So I really don't understand what happened here.

On a more positive note, all of my corals that are in QT are doing amazing. My zoas are growing like weeds in there, acroporas are encrusting, one of them has grown all the way down onto the frag rack.

That basically brings up everything to speed that I can think of.

Thanks for viewing my build!

 

[rowdyreefing]

Are you happy with the overflow set up? I have a tank coming in this week with 5 overflow holes. I am also wondering how you decided on your configuration. I was considering connecting some of the plumbing before entering the sump. For example 2 of the lower I would connect, 2 of the middle heights I would connect, and the emergency would be by it self, so I would have 3 pieces of PVC entering the sump. Any insight or thoughts you have would be appreciated!

 

[Rhoads238]

Are you happy with the overflow set up? I have a tank coming in this week with 5 overflow holes. I am also wondering how you decided on your configuration. I was considering connecting some of the plumbing before entering the sump. For example 2 of the lower I would connect, 2 of the middle heights I would connect, and the emergency would be by it self, so I would have 3 pieces of PVC entering the sump. Any insight or thoughts you have would be appreciated!

Yes! I'm very happy with how my plumbing setup came out. Its extremely quiet and it easily allows for 10x flow through the sump which is recommended for the triton method.

I don't have any experience with combining the lines since thats not the direction that i went with it. If i had to guess, I wouldn't recommend doing the two syphon lines. Thats where most of your water flow is going to go through so I think it would be beneficial to keep them separate. Two that set the water level can probably be combined since there's only a trickle of water going through them.

In terms of helpful tips I would say it would be a good idea to dry fit everything. I did a full dry fit of my piping and then just left it that way for a week or two so I could look at it and really think about if it was exactly what I wanted, then I did the final setup. It was the first time I did pvc plumbing so having extra fittings on hand because I ended up wasting a bunch.