SP Dream 150G

[Tabasco1]

Although the actual tank build started in mid-May, wanted to get a tank build thread started before getting fish in. Fingers crossed that will happen Friday or Sat.

Equipment:
150G SCA rimless tank 60"x24"X24"
40G breeder modified sump
Reef Octopus skimmer
H380 over 15G fuge
Sicce 5 return (realizing this will need to be replaced within next 1-2 months)
ATI Dimmable powermodule supplemented by two a360WE kessils
2x 230 Gyres for circulation

30G quarantine system

Overall tank direction:
Love love love the South Pacific. SO... general feel/stock will be informed by some of my experiences and dive trips to that area.

Anyway. That is the nutshell.

Initial stock list:

mated pair of royal grammas-this will be my nod to the Caribbean. Have had this pair for about 2.5yrs.
exquisite firefish-just coming through quarantine
orchid dottyback-just coming through quarantine

Harlequin serpent starfish-purchased with the grammas

Corals-these are in a temp 16G IM AIO tank and probably will stay there for another month or two. Will use this tank for future coral quarantine/observation.

Space invader pectina
Bubble gum monster chalice
JF Jack o lantern lepto
Yellow hornet zoas
Chuckies bride zoas
and a couple others I can't remember

 

[Tabasco1]

Obligatory "in the tank shot". Setting the bulkheads.

 

[Tabasco1]

Has water, cycling rock. Will be drilling the light supports Thurs. and getting those up.

Still trying to figure out the door situation. Have some ideas, but needs to be very clean as tank is in the living room.

 

[zoasaholic]

Good selection of livestock and corals

 

[Tabasco1]

Wanted to post a bit about the stand. I took pictures of assembly and then just of the stand, but I must have deleted them without saving them. So posting a CAD drawing of the plan.

I went with 80/20 15 series aluminum. Overall pretty happy with this selection so far. It was very customizable to exactly what I wanted. We will see how the door process goes. Still trying to figure that out, but have an idea of what I'm going to do.

Couple of customizations of note.
I created a space for the outlets and controls that is essentially separate from the "wet" area and will have its own door for access.

I am not able to hook my tank up to my RODI station. The RODI source is in my laundry/utility room and about 25ft away from the tank. I don't want to carry buckets so I have the ATO reservoir on a trolly that I will roll to and from the tank to the fill station. It is a 10G trigger. With that, the reservoir section needed to be braceless at the bottom to allow for this to roll in and out.

I worked with a designer from a supplier of 80/20. This process could have been MUCH smoother. I found out late into the process that the designer was a college kid. And with my customizations there were some fatal flaws in the design and they had to re-fabricate custom pieces 2x in order to get it correct. And even then the final stand is not exactly as designed, but I'm ok with it and they knocked some $ off the price. I just didn't want to wait any longer and I was ok with it.

Stand allowed me to integrate light brackets into the back of the stand. There are channels that the cords can run, should be pretty clean. Will actually be drill pressing these pieces tonight and then hanging the lights. Fingers crossed.

If you have any questions about this product let me know, I learned A LOT about it having to sort through the design mistakes. It seems a bit over-whelming at first with how many options there are, but it is actually pretty approachable.

... well, the stand plan is PDF, and I'm not seeing how to post that. I'll try to take pictures of the actual stand to show the design.

 

[Tabasco1]

Working backwards a little bit. Hard plumb workings.

Pretty standard. I have a feed off the return that goes into both the fuge and skimmer sections to keep detritus suspended. There are spray bars across the bottoms of both sections to disburse that flow.

Will also paint the frame of the 40g if I don't upgrade sumps fairly soon.

Have additional rock that is finishing cycling to scape the left side of the tank early next week.

Transfer of gramma pair, firefish, dottyback and starfish Sat. afternoon. Woo hoo!!

 

[Tabasco1]

Small update. Will try to start getting more pics.

Transfer of fish went well and everyone has been in for about 2 weeks now. Current stock list:

mated pair of royal grammas
trio orchid dottybacks
1 exquisite firefish
1 huge harlequin serpent starfish

In QT
1 midas blenny

THINK next scheduled addition will be a trio of convict tangs, but not until after some travel in Sept. Won't have time to get them through QT before leaving.

Added chaeto to fuge, along with pods and started the reverse photo-cycle.

STILL working on the second half of my rock work. Hoping to get that wrapped up some time next week. Then will re-post full tank shots.

 

[Tabasco1]

On the SGA 150-overall great value for the tank. All of my euro-bracing was square. I read some other posts where folks had issues with this.

One thing that did bug me was that the water level was about 1 3/4" from the bottom of the euro-bracing. It was really bugging me. I couldn't adjust the water height in the overflow because it would create a full siphon in the emergency overflow. SO. I modified the weir so that the water level is about 3/4" below the euro-brace. I'll get pictures of this. Nothing fancy, just cut a piece of acrylic and siliconed across the bottom of the weir to bring the teeth height up. I did this inside of the over-flow so it is not visible looking into the tank.

 

[Tabasco1]

FTS progression.

Rock work is complete.

Still WIP. Two week trip planned late sept. so will not make any additions to livestock until after return. Which will force me to let the tank settle in a bit.

Pretty sure the dottyback trio is made up of 2 males/1 female. Would have been better the other way around, but think they have figured out the pecking order. They seem like they annoy each other, but they won't really separate and spend most of the time swimming and exploring together. Oddly, the males seem to pick on the female more often than they will each other. I'll have to watch them more, I'm glad I went with 3 of them. Also, pretty sure the female has already had a clutch of eggs. She was extremely fat and one of the males kept getting in front of her and vibrating... not sure how else to describe it, and trying to lead her to a crevice. They both went in and were mia for about 5 minutes and then the midas blenny went in after them. So they popped out and then throughout the day she seemed expel eggs. It was hard to get a good look, but the other fish would eat what she was expelling. So... guessing it was eggs.

 

[Tabasco1]

Been a while and figured I should update.

Long cycle-I'm going with a long cycle before adding light. I'm running just a 24" ATI sunpower at 40% MAX to illuminate the tank. I had actually decided to do this before watching the WWC/BRS hybrid series, but watching that gave me some confidence in that decision. I'm almost 4 months in. Started with marco rock and added a couple pieces of rock I've had for a couple years to seed. All the levels seem pretty stable. I'm testing consistently 0 A, 0 Nitrite and 5 Nitrate.

Fuge/cheato growth-This has required a good bit of patience. I started with about a softball size and really thought I was going to end up losing it. It just kind of languished for a little bit and was getting smaller. In the last month it started holding its own and in the last two weeks it has tripled in size. I'd say in the future I may not add macro algae to fuge until about 1-2 month in. Def. not from the jump.

Vacation-took a two week vacation. Overall this went smoothly-no losses in the main tank or coral QT. I'll call that a win. I had made food packets that the house sitter could just just thaw and dump. Since this is a new tank there are not really any organisms that take up the super small particles and "juice". I have been rinsing food to limit excess nutrients and knew that this was not going to happen. So when I returned I had a nice coating of red slime algae on the entire sand bed, and a lot of the rock. Algae coating the glass. I didn't knee jerk. Just did a couple water changes, siphoned what I could off the sand bed, lightly brushed the rocks and started rinsing food again and the tank is looking pretty good. I should have taken an "ugly" pic and posted it and then where it is now. SO, given how quickly things righted, I'm feeling pretty good about the tank. And it could be that the boost in nutrients while I was away jump started the chaeto.

So that is what has already happened.

 

[Tabasco1]

What is going to happen:

Stand doors-I'm still in the process of figuring this out. I have a cabinet guy that does a lot of work for me on other projects coming out this week to take a look at it and HOPEFULLY I can just have him do something. I would love to DIY, but ... just not finding the time. So skinning the stand is top priority. Husband is growing impatient with the open cabinet in the living room.

Adding a two little fishies dual reactor with GFO and carbon this week. Phosphate and nitrate are not an issue right now, and I will be very light on the media.

Ramping up the light to 60% max to see if I get an algae bloom and if so, how easily I can get it back in line.

If the 60% ramp up goes well I will move a couple of the coral in QT over and have a reef tank!!

Running all invertebrates through the coral QT for 30 days before moving over to the display. In QT right now:

2 porcelain crabs-ready
4 spotted anenome shrimp
1 harlequin starfish
Bunch of coral

Fish quarantine:
pair of B/W clownfish
Tribal blenny-he apparently is not reef safe with SPS so I will be re-homing him after QT

 

[Tabasco1]

Wow. Time flies.

Update. Short version, I ended up with a seal failure in the overflow. Randomly discovered by a midas blenny that took a trip into the overflow. In retrieving him realized that the overflow box was had a leak in the seal, SO if any of my bulkheads failed the tank would drain down to where the seal was leaking. This was about about 6" from the bottom, roughly 100G of water. No good. Luckily SCA warrantied the tank and sent a replacement. That was the good news (aside from discovering the leak before catastrophe). The bad news was that I needed to transfer that tank to the new tank. Which was not easy and my schedule become incredibly busy.

FINALLY I have the new tank up and running. So. SP Dream 150-the sequel. Sorry about all the blue, it was pretty late when I took this shot.