Steve's Reef 265g Build

[steveb]

Well I’m FINALLY ready to start my build thread.

There have been many false starts and delays along the way but I am determined to get this tank up.

My tank is 84x24x30 tall. Its a used AGE I picked up from Fish Gallery probably two or three years ago now. Yes you read that right.

The tank was in pristine condition but alas I have managed to put some scratches in the glass. That I had to polish out.

See the little white circles in the pictures...

I installed an internal 80”ish weir and 60” external box built by Modular Marine. I can't recommend Modular Marine enough! They have done several custom jobs for me and always provide quality workmanship.
Thank you to the folk that came over and helped hold, drill and provide general support with getting it installed.


The stand is built by RJ’s Aquarium Stands. Rob has been wonderful to work with. I highly recommend giving him a call if your in the market for a custom
or semi-custom stand. Thank you Rob!

You will note my stand is a more traditional design to match the decor of our sun room.

I also want to give a shout out to Urban Aquatics here in Houston! David Rains and his employee came out in the rain and helped me get the tank up on the stand. Thanks guys!

I also want to thank my SUPER patient wife Lisa.

Deanna, Aron, Frank and Travis, thank you for helping me move the tank the 1st time! Y’all know what I’m talking about lol.

Oh and Cody for talking me down when I was about to go crae crae on my sump and generally harassing me about the length of time my tank has been empty.

Here are some pics...

 

[steveb]

Here is one of the scratches that I polished out using GlassRenu 3 step process.

I have only done steps 1 & 2 out of 3 in the pictures.

Before

After step 2.

If your intersted

https://glassrenu.com/

Its not for the faint of heart lol.. you essentially have to get over making it worse to make it better. Just an FYI - inside corners are difficult.

You can watch the polishing process on youtube if your interested.

I ended up w/a few very faint whirls where the polishing pad couldn't get due to tank trim. But its invisible when the tank has water in it.

 

[steveb]

Sump is kind of similar to the old wet/dry filters! The section under the filter sock holder is for siporax.

Drain plumbing. I have a love/hate thing for unions. Hoping these don’t end up being in the hate column lol..

 

[steveb]

New stuff for the build

 

[reacclimating 2 the hobby]

Stand looks very nice! Great looking setup thus far. Following along

 

[steveb]

Lighting
Made some changes to the lighting. Originally was going to use all LED but decided to reduce the # units and add T5 retro kits to balance.

This required a rework of the light hanging system.

Decided on a sliding shelf to make bulb changes easy!

Big shout out to Cody for helping get this thing built.

 

[steveb]

Starting paint & T5 install...

Got the T5 fixtures mounted. Just letting the paint touch ups dry before bringing it back inside.

All done with the wiring. If I had to do it over I would have cut all the wires to length.
But I don’t want to unscrew all the sockets, pull the wires out and then cut & re-secure the sockets.
Meh, it’s hidden by the canopy and I will get some wire loom or something to clean it up.

 

[steveb]

Haha sometimes hoarding pays off! I remembered I bought some black wire loom a while back!

I like it!

I need to get some wire ties that have screw holes to secure it down but that’s it. Oh and some low profile power cords.

Yippie - got the low profile power cords in!

 

[steveb]

Electronics

Yeah my APEX is that old, and surprisingly unused lol.

 

[steveb]

Got some plumbing pieces. More coming today.

Finished the GEO818 CalcRX conversion to gray pvc

Finished the horizontal return runs.

 

[steveb]

Happy, happy, happy

No drips..

Come to think of it, this is the first time water has actually been circulating in this thing in 3 years or so.

 

[steveb]

Getting real close!

Still have to clean up the wires.

2xMP60’s & 2xMP40’s for flow in the tank

 

[steveb]

LiterMeter LM3-WXM repurposed for ATO. Will be pulling RO/DI water about 20’.

Going to use it with my Tunze Osmolator.

 

[steveb]

and this gets me caught up lol... probably not going to do anymore until next week...

I don’t want a rock wall, I don’t want a rock wall, I don’t want a rock wall...

Lol

Pukani in left, indo on right, Marco in left chair.

No this isn’t the layout. I’m just sorting for now.

 

[dantimdad]

Definitely following.

Looks good so far.

 

[steveb]

All my rock is back in the trash cans with 3g of bleach per can, will pull it out and pressure wash it this coming week when I'm off.

I mentioned in an earlier post about using a my tunze ATO with Spectrapure WXM module (due to distance of tank from RO/DI storage container.

Happened to find a video on youtube with a guy doing the exact same thing.

The one thing I am going to do in addition to exactly what is being done in the video, is put a float valve in the sump that is basically higher than the running level in the sump. I'm doing this to prevent a RARE event where the rollers on the peristaltic pump would fail to seal properly and allow a siphon to occur and essentially drain the ro/di container into the sump and overflow it in our sun room.

 

[steveb]

Also started working on my water exchange setup. This is in my fish room. It’s a mess. I need to clean up the loose wires and tubing sometime soon.

The Stenner pump and the EB4 powering it.

 

[steveb]

Started trying my hand at

NOT the rock wall

Kind of hard to make this one out with all the other rock on the table.

 

[litenyaup]

Looks great so far!

 

[steveb]

Got two of the bommies done and in the tank. They are a little higher than I had hoped. Was using 30” tall (tank height) when I should have done 28” (water height).

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