Rocha´s Reef

Marcelo_Rocha · Feb 3, 2022

It’s been a long 15 years away from this hobby.

Next month, it will be 1 year since the beginning of the equipment purchase and project execution that was being formed during all this time away. I will share here the entire process of building and evolving my reef! Welcome!

Tank: 90x50x50 cm

Equipment:
Return pump - Neptune COR20
Skimmer – Reef Octopus Regal 150 S
Flow – 2x Ecotech MP40
Avast Marine kalk stirrer
Pacific Sun fixture 8x39w with 2 ATI Coral plus, 4 ATI Blue Plus and 2 ATI Actinic. Probably i´ll change this configuration in the future maybe add some orphek leds.

Control:
Neptune Apex system
Neptune ATK system
Neptune DOS system. there will be 2, initially one for automatic water change and another for dosing, one of them is stuck in customs.

Let's get to the point, photos!

Trying to convince my wife that it wouldn't take up so much space

:

Stacking the boxes on top of the bed for a few months before the furniture arrives

BRS stuff for plumbing

I made this last week, now need to glue everything

control panel, still testing the positions

This is a SPS reef and all rock work was made for it. Probably i´ll add some hammers on the right side.

That´s it! Hope you enjoy.
Next steps: glue plumbing, test and start!

Follow on Instagram Rocha´s Reef

Best regards

carmodpg · Feb 3, 2022

wow, great build!

Daniel@R2R · Feb 3, 2022

Awesome build! Following!!

Marcelo_Rocha · Feb 3, 2022

Thank you guys!

Pistondog · Feb 3, 2022

Welcome Marcelo.
Really nice start.
If possible, get a few pieces of real live rock fom the ocean. That would quick start the bio diversity.
You must be anxious to get things wet.

Marcelo_Rocha · Feb 4, 2022

Pistondog said:
Welcome Marcelo.
Really nice start.
If possible, get a few pieces of real live rock fom the ocean. That would quick start the bio diversity.
You must be anxious to get things wet.

Thank you!
Probably this weekend I'll glue it all to start it! ;Nailbiting
I´m going to use tropic marin syn-biotic salt and microbacter 7 to start, but maybe use a little rock too, this´s a good idea.

Marcelo_Rocha · Feb 7, 2022

First test with water, some pipe leaks, quite a mess but moving forward with the project. a few more days running with fresh water and watching!
The water level in display got too high but i´ll need do live with this.

dpoltsdsu · Feb 16, 2022

Looking good! I like the control panel

Marcelo_Rocha · Feb 17, 2022

dpoltsdsu said:
Looking good! I like the control panel

Thank you!! ;Happy

I'm waiting for some things to arrive to do the cable management, then i'll show you.

In the meantime, some pics of it:

This is me trying to figure out how much space I would need to fit everything in. ;Playful;Playful;Playful

and here what really defined the space that i could use

Marcelo_Rocha · Apr 6, 2022

Finally everything running and so far so good. I used tropic marin Syn-biotic to speed things up a bit.
Today it's been 12 days with water. I turned on the skimmer yesterday at the end of the day and will probably do a water change in a few days.

These two little guys are the first reef´s residents. Initially I wanted two regular ocellaris but luckily the store only had one and now I'm in love with the other.

Marcelo_Rocha · Apr 11, 2022

Some news from the weekend.
I did the cable management of the control panel and, after 4 months waiting for the Brazilian customs clearance, I received, among other things, the adaptive reef toggle box. I found an old tablet that I connected to the apex information and add some leds in the fourniture.