Slythys 180 SPS Display

[slythy]

This is a continuation of my 70g display tank which is now my frag system. I started this a year or 2 ago and am not starting to write this build.
70g Build Thread


Equipment in the build as of 7/30/25

Tanks
Planet Aquariums 180g
Planet Aquariums Steel Stand
Planet Aquariums 70G rimless
Planet Aquariums Wood stand

Filtration:
180g Overflow Tideline 16"
70g Overflow Modular Marine 1600 Overflow
Bashsea SS48 Sump
Reef Octopus Varios 8
Reef Octopus Regal 200Int
AquaUV 57w x2
Finnex TH-0300S Titanium Heater x3
BRS Mini Reactor for ROWAPHOS
Avast Marine K2 Kalk Stirrer
29G Aquaon Tank for AIO

Lights:
180G
3x Gen 6 XR30 Pros
60" T5 hybrid fixture, 2 Coral Plus, 2 Blue plus
70G
2x Gen 5 XR15 Pro s
36" T5 hybrid fixture, 2 Coral Plus, 2 Blue plus

Control
Neptune Apex A3
3x EB832
1x EB8
1x EB4
3x AFS (2 on 180, 1 on 70g)
1x FMM
2x DOS
1x DOS QD
3x PM1
1x Trident
1x Trident NP
2x PM2
1x MXM
Jebao 3.4 Dosing pump.

Flow
70g
4x Ecotech MP10's
180g
6x Ecotech MP40's

Salt
Fritz RPM Blue Box

Rock
Tropic Eden Morroca (between 130-200lbs)
KP Aquatics Live Rock (15lbs)
AquaBiomics Rubble

Livestock
180g
Powder Brown Tang
Gem Tang
White tail Tang
Blonde Naso Tang
Yellow Tang
Tomini Tang
One Spot FoxFace
Pink Streak wrasse x2
Blue Devil Damsel
Starry Blenny
Fire Shrimp
Cleaner Shrimp

70g
Purple Tang
Convict Tang
Pink Streak Wrasse
Cleaner Shrimp
Peppermint shrimp (6?)
Tuxedo Urchin x3
Unknown Urchin known as the "Great Disruptor"




The catalyst for this build was the death of my Black Piranha named Harold. It was a High tech planted tank so most of the guts to swap over was already done. I had lines running though the walls already for ATO and power.

The start of the build was end of 2023 where around Christmas was when I started collecting parts and making this happen. The plan all along was to turn my office 70g and my 180g living room tank into a single system. I found a company that made a Threaded passthrough where I could run water lines and dosing lines easily into the sump.

At the same time I thought this would be a good time to replace the bolts that Planet Aquarium supplies with their stands to a good stainless Machine Leveling Foot. This spread the weight out more, raised the tank another inch and gave me more piece of mind.

Plumbing was definitely more interesting based on running 2 tanks off a single pump. I wanted all the water to both tanks to go through my 2 57W UV's while trying to limit more head pressure. I increased the size from 1" I had been running to 1.25". I also needed to make sure it didnt block my hanging light for my refugium.

Now filling up the tank with RO/DI and leak testing everything.

Salt was mixed in after the initial check and started "Cycling" the tank. At this point the 70g is operating on its own sump still. Was waiting until this was more complete to add everything.

 

[slythy]

First problem I ran into was my UV made my Piping glow like something out of the Simpsons....

This was remedied by ordering Fancy purple pvc (wife picked color) and remaking the section.

KP Aquatics live rock was added to the refugium section of the sump. I was very happy with the life that came on this stuff!

Next I did a big PAR map of the whole tank.

To help seed the tank with some pod life I bought a Gallon of copepods off Etsy and started dosing a little phyto for them to eat as well.

About a week in I started getting Hydroids on the glass with all the copepods, I did see some little red flatworms on the glass as well, but wasnt too concerned. (i get so many more later lol)

 

[slythy]

First Corals Added April 15th 2024

Lots of these little nems started showing up on a couple of my rocks.

At this point its going to be a bunch of corals added.

 

[slythy]

Even more corals

I added fish here from @Dr. Reef

More Corals!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

First Corals Added April 15th 2024

Lots of these little nems started showing up on a couple of my rocks.

At this point its going to be a bunch of corals added.

Great coral additions to add to your tank!

 

[slythy]

Printed and moved my Tridents over to mini tridents. This ended up biting me on the NP. It leaked and corroded itself. Im not sure it would have changed anything if it were in the other container because it still could have made its way to the circuit board and degraded. Still not happy at all the the NP based on price and performance... expensive way to test nitrates daily lol.

More CORAL!

I then added my favorite coral! Pic from store vs in my tank.

I did not take many picture of my 70g being torn down and then replumbed into my display. Here are pictures of what My tanks looked like when they were plumbed together.

And again more corals!

My Splice has not grown or shown any Red... I need to join that help group lol.

 

[slythy]

 

[slythy]

Heres a bad Panorama of my 180. It made my foxface an extra long boi.

My first bit of SPS coral warfare and my first 2 torches that I fragged and sold!

My frag tank became a super big algae mess. Was a mega PITA to get cleaned. Did an order from Reef Cleansers. Bought 4 urchins. tons of hermits and snails locally. manual brushing etc. It now looks good again!

I obliviously thought my hammers just had crazy coloration that i had not seem before... low and behold one night I look and I have 1000000 flatworms on my Hammers. It obviously isnt hurting them too much from growing as they keep branching seemingly monthly double. This also explanes why one of my pink streaks is obese lol. I took out the whole rock they live on and dipped it. Ive seen afew flatworms here and there on the tank but no where near where this was.

 

[slythy]

Here are some growth Photos! this brings us pretty close to today!

Here are some frags I cut out of my tank and then how full my Frag system is now.

 

[lubeck]

Cool setup following along. Where are the two tanks connected, the back wall?

 

[slythy]

Cool setup following along. Where are the two tanks connected, the back wall?

Yea there i a 7” hole in the wall where the pump splits to feed to the frag system and 3 soft return lines come back through for the sump.

 

[ruxsir]

Update?

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Curious about updates as well!

 

[slythy]

Update?

Curious about updates as well!

Well life has been pretty busy. Tanks fairly on Autopilot which is nice. Some corals have absolutely blown up.

My white tail tank was trying to kill my tomini tang so i did the logical thing and added more fish lol.

I added in the 180 :
Male Blue throat trigger
Orange black fairy wrasse
2 spot bristletooth

In my 75 i added
Copperband butterfly
Springeri damsel

Adding the New fish calmed everything down in the 180 display. Everyone is swimming together happy and no real bullying happening.

The copperband eats mysis out of my hand. I purchased an AF4 around christmas to keep my copperband alive. Been feeding mysis 3 times a day and he eats fairly ferociously.

I have been selling frags locally to pay for all my consumables and some frags.

Theres a frag swap this weekend to try and find some new rare pieces. Last cool one i found was a RWC College Fund

I still have some flat worms on the LPS but they dont seem to really bother anything.

 

[slythy]

I went to the Indiana INMAS frag swap and picked up a few new corals.

SBB Sun God Milli
JF HomeWrecker because the one I purchased earlier i dont think is :(
Favia of the Gods
2 different plate corals to go with my orange one
large orange lobo
some sort of purple stylo
a trachy.

Pictures were taken right after Dipping and introducing.

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

nice tank the trop Eden rock is amazing. hands down the best rock i have used to date