Rob's Really Rad 180 Reef Rally

RobB'z Reef · Jun 3, 2020

Making good progress on the room, slapping primer on tomorrow! The pic before was from yesterday after my last coat of mud. Did the sanding tonight. Would have taken a pic of that had I been able to see thru the dust lol!

Reef370 · Jun 4, 2020

The room is coming to life !! Loving the updates!!

RobB'z Reef · Jun 5, 2020

Hello everyone! The only other update I got this week is I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my tank stand from FramingTech.com. I designed it in Fusion360 and they gave it their blessing. Went 36" tall on it so I should have lots of room to play under there for my sump and other gadgets.

My Modular Marine 3,000gph overflow also showed up! Very nice workmanship on it too, this will be a very gooderer overflow than my last one which used a siphon to periodically dump water on my floor.

Plan on getting the last coat of paint on the walls (it's sitting there primed only) after getting it mudded and taped this week which will allow me to start building my mixing station! Now...what color do I go with? Suggestions?

Hope everyone has a great weekend, get outside and enjoy the weather

Reef370 · Jun 5, 2020

Yeah man, everything is rolling in! The stand is going to be awesome..

I suggest Behr gem turquoise. It will make you feel good every time your in the room! Lol

RobB'z Reef · Jun 5, 2020

Reef370 said:
I suggest Behr gem turquoise. It will make you feel good every time your in the room! Lol

Parent_usmc · Jun 5, 2020

I wish I had the space to plan a build like this! I'm almost ready to pull a plug on a redsea 250, and cram in into my living room haha

RobB'z Reef · Jun 5, 2020

Parent_usmc said:
I wish I had the space to plan a build like this! I'm almost ready to pull a plug on a redsea 250, and cram in into my living room haha

you should totally do it! I really like the Red Sea stuff, If I were doing a smaller tank I may well have gone with one of theirs.

RobB'z Reef · Jun 7, 2020

Hey all! Busy weekend here! Got the room painted Friday night. Took Saturday to go kayaking with my daughter and the gf.

Was an absolutely perfect day for it too!

Sunday I jumped back in and got the trim and cleaned up the room.

Post disaster area.

Added a little extra light, I may well put one more of these over my counter area for another work space. That may be where I keep a small quarantine tank as well. With some extra time remaining I started dry fitting my mixing station.

Towards the end I got kinda stymmied.

Yeah that's no bueno... I'll have to review my order from BRS and assign blame Monday. Hopefully it's not me lol! I ordered (possibly again) another 1" flex seal and will wait for it to get here before I start gluing anything together. In the meantime I'll get to work on mounting up my 5 stage RODI unit.

Any of you have thoughts about the aquaticlife DX18? I'm thinking about putting two 36" units over my 180, I really want dimmable bulbs. Looking at complimenting with either possibly some kessils or XR15's.

jk_s124 · Jun 7, 2020

Dang Rob you move quick! Looks fantastic!

RobB'z Reef · Jun 8, 2020

Hahahaha! Oops...

Reefer Reboot · Jun 8, 2020

;Hilarious At least the mistake was made on one of the cheapest items.

RobB'z Reef · Jun 8, 2020

I thought I would also mention that since I am not a fan of deburring my pvc pipe I found a saw blade that works beautiful for cutting schedule 40 & 80 PVC virtually if not completely burr free. You can't even see any noticeable swelling you get from other manual hand cutters out there. Using a chop saw can also be more accurate, faster as well as you eliminate any curf often going with other methods. I'm sure this is common knowledge out there for most reefers but I was pleasantly surprised by the results!

Reef370 · Jun 8, 2020

Now that’s nice and clean! Thanks for sharing.

RobB'z Reef · Jun 9, 2020

It's like a non-stop flood of stuff showing up everyday haha. Got a 36" T5 retro kit in today plus my oops seals. So I get to complete my dry fit on the mixing station tonight. My girl friend is starting to look at me cross eyed between the daily packages and my ignoring her every night LOL.

So I'm wondering, all you 180 + tank guys out there, what types of skimmers are you seeing success with for your tank sizes?

RobB'z Reef · Jun 10, 2020

Ok, apparently I suck at time lapse video or I'm just efficient. I will tend to lean towards the former lol. I set my wyze cam to every five minutes. I'll slow it down to 1 minute when I glue it together.

Reef370 · Jun 10, 2020

Well that was over in a flash!!

Lol

Reefer Reboot · Jun 10, 2020

Wait, I blinked. ;Playful

RobB'z Reef · Jun 10, 2020

Got my RODI completed last night! Primed it and ran about 5 gallons thru it to clean it out good etc... Very glad I bought the booster pump, before running that i was lucky to be getting 30 psi without it.