Techie's in-wall 210g Build

[Techie_]

Update! Here is the tank level and in place. Still need to finish up the wall and drill for the returns. Not quite sure how to size them with the 1.5in Bean-Animal overflow but I will figure it out and order that drill bit asap.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Glad you were able to get the tank leveled!

 

[Techie_]

BIG updates!

Got the tank plumbed up and started to fill with RO, largely to let the glue leech anything into the water. My city water has some of the lowest TDS in the country so maybe I'll regret this in a couple of weeks when I finally get the water bill.

I decided to go over the top with the return lines because I didn't feel like drilling two more holes, even though I will probably drill one for bucket-less water changes.

All the orange parts you see were 3d printed for one reason or another. Most importantly, the Vectra L1 adapter to 1.5in barb is great. I am very happy with them.

Finished framing the studs for the closet and cripple wall. The tank is set back a little bit to prevent vibration transfer to the finished wall and to provide some room to put some waterproofing and/or a frame around the "hole." Note here that I stopped using the PT lumber for framing because Menards is apparently only allowed to sell horribly warped lumber and was screwing up my measurements. All of the non-PT lumber is going to get treated with a waterproofing compound to help prevent moisture intrusion. We will be finishing the wall with the same "green" drywall, same you'd use in a bathroom. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing as far as a finish. Probably just tape + mud the joints and slap some sort of facia on it and call it a day. I'm open to ideas though!

Friday I'm also getting a pair of black frostbite (maybe snowflake?) clowns to go in the 20G until this tank is ready.

The big elephant in the room right now is getting the aquascape done. I'm going with Marco rock from my LFS and using sand + superglue for the joints. This is surprisingly effective. I was eager to try it so I picked some reef safe sand and some CA glue and went to town. Turns out 2oz wasn't enough, I knew it would only be 1/50 of what I needed, but I was surprised at how much I used so I ordered a much larger Gluemasters Thin as recommended by @Tidal Gardens .

 

[Tidal Gardens]

We used a ton of glue, but it was well worth it because the structures you can build are incredible. So far, after 5 years, there has never been an issue with the pieces we glued together. It's much harder to work with large pieces, so we spent some time breaking up all the larger rocks with a hammer and chisel.

 

[Techie_]

Update:

Started building the mixing station platform. Just need to cut another piece of wood as the top.

Finished filling and found a couple of leaks dialing in the overflow, ran to Home Depot to get the proper channel locks for 1.5in bulkhead nuts, tightened another quarter turn. and no more leaks.

Ran a full-tilt plumbing test over night with the L1 on 100% and no more issues! Overflow is almost completely silent. I will probably need to drill a larger hole in the open channel as its still forcing some air out but it's hardly noticeable compared to the water dripping in the filter sock compartment.

I've got some more glue arriving today or tomorrow to finish the first island. Filter socks are coming too just so I can see how silent this overflow really gets.

Bonus: picked up some fancypants clowns from the LFS.

 

[Techie_]

Update:

Drywall is up, made a small gaff on the front, but I might be ripping the bottom section out in place of some marine board I can hinge for rear sump access. Still trying to figure out what to do as a facade on the front.

Mixing station is also built and filled with RO, I am going to use a spare pump as the mixing pump once I get it cleaned up.

Got a Jebao/Jecod MCP-180 as a gyre for the tank for a steal. Works great too.

Noticed some coralline growth on the holding tank too! I couldn't get this stuff to grow 10 years ago :/

Waiting on LFS to get more Marco in-stock in a week or so.

 

[cilyjr]

Will you be making a small ledge or something to trim the tank?

What I mean is slightly inset like a window box rather than just trimmed like a picture frame.
My personal opinion is the window box looks more professional, but each their own!

 

[cilyjr]

This is how I did my old 180 at my old house back east.

 

[Techie_]

Will you be making a small ledge or something to trim the tank?

What I mean is slightly inset like a window box rather than just trimmed like a picture frame.
My personal opinion is the window box looks more professional, but each their own!

Yes I will be adding an inset of some sort.

 

[Techie_]

Quick update,

Added some teak paneling, looks pretty good IMO. Still have to notch out the spots for the hinges up top but that'll get done this weekend.

 

[Techie_]

Big updates:

Got the wall finished and trimmed out the tank frame, still need to put some finishing touches on the inside edges.

After waiting around for 2 months for the LFS to get MarcoRocks back in stock which was due to a supplier rep changing and missing an order (or something in that vein) I decided that I was going to go ahead and actually sit down and figure out the pricing, BRS was the most expensive after ship + tax. LFS was $3/lb + tax, and MarcoRocks direct was $3.50/lb + no tax. Turns out it was only $15 more expensive to get my rocks direct. Kind of kicking myself over wasting a few months of having my thumb up my butt.

As luck would have it, the day after my order shipped, the LFS called and said they were in stock. **** happen I guess LOL.

I spent the better part of 2 weeks figuring out how to get all of these rocks glued together. I took inspiration from several different sources, especially BRS HNSA video. I tried my best but I was figuring out how tight it would be to get the tank so I limited each structure to a max of about 80lbs.

I ended up going with 4 different structures and I will end up dropping in a couple of smaller islands with some extra rock I have for some of the more fast-growing corals I love so much. For those wondering I used GlueMasters Thick Viscosity (1500 CPS) glue and BSI CA Accelerator. A quick note on the accelerator, it is the same stuff that BRS uses, they just white label it. The sprayer the bottle comes does not hold up too well. After about 2 refills the seal starts to break down and the glue ends up seeping out the top and soaking whatever glove you have on (use a funnel and a different sprayer instead). It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure this out so I probably wasted $15 or so before I really looked at it and wondering why my glue wasn't hardening. I went through 3 refill bottles of the accelerant, 1 bottle of GlueMasters Thin Viscosity, and 1 bottle of GlueMasters Thick Viscosity. On some joints I used Instant Ocean epoxy that needed some reinforcement, I ended up using 2 tubes.

Next steps:
Picked up 80lbs of substrate from the LFS today, they should have more in on Friday or Saturday. Shooting for about 180-200lbs.

 

[Techie_]

Big update:

Got all the of the sand bed in place, ended up around 120lbs. It's probably a little thin overall and is definitely an uneven distribution. The dual returns are making it much thinner in the front while I figure out how to still get good turnover in the sump and not blow the sand around everywhere.

The same day I started filling the tank, which took about 2 days, ended up going with AuqaForest reef mix for salt instead of IO (the purple box) that was in the holding tank. I ended up needing about a box and a half to bring it up to 1.026sg. Brought it up to temperature with a hygger 1000W heater and decided to do a fishless cycle because I didn't love the idea of potentially killing a fish or two just to get my tank rolling again. This kicked off a run series of events with the LFS.

I started by dosing ammonia to 2ppm and dumped in a bottle of microbacter7 and added about 50lbs of live rock to the sump. This really didn't do much for the cycle, in hindsight, this is pretty obvious. Ran down to the LFS and grabbed a large bottle of Fritz Turbo Start 900 and dumped it in. I noticed that there was particularly arsenic-y putrid smell from the bottle of black liquid. I expected it to be bad but had a hunch there was something wrong. I had assumed that the bottle was not expired because, you know, LFS sold it, it was refrigerated, and I was told it was fine. That's 100% on me for not checking before opening though. After going back to the LFS to let them know they were kind enough to give me some free water tests until I was cycled, whatever Turbo Start they had on hand, and some store credit for my toubles. All is good by me and they made it right without having to be asked, which is awesome!

Took about a week to get the tank down to 0ppm NH3 after putting the correct, slightly less putrid, and light red colored turbo start into the tank. After Nitrate showed up the tank I went down to the LFS and got 3 Green Chromis to make sure all was good and two weeks later I moved my Kole tang, clowns and euphyllia over from the holding tank I set up months ago.

Everything has been going well and I went ahead and got some CUC memebers, 10 nassarius sails and 10 hermits; they're about as good as they can be.

As from here I've gone ahead and orded some K7 III's for the lighting and 2020 aluminum extrusion to build a bracket for them.

 

[Techie_]

Big updates!

Got the K7 v3's for $180 a piece with the mount and built a cool mount for them out of PETG parts and 4040 Al extrusion. I also added screen tops because I would like some wrasse eventually, not sure how to get the smaller bit in the back covered since I decided to go over-the-top with the returns instead of bulkheads, which I'm now starting to regret a bit.

Started a clean up crew with currently consists of the following:
- 20 hermit crabs
- 10 margarita snails
- 10 nassarius snails
- 5 trochus snails
There have only been a couple of casualties here thankfully. I also added a shell graveyard so they don't end up fighting over shells.

The current livestock for the tank, which I've added over the last 4 weeks is as follows:
- 1 Yellow-eyed Kole Tang, about 6-7 years old by my best guess
- 1 Hippo Tang, juvenile, blemished
- 3 Green Reef Chromis, juvenile
- 2 ORA Black Snowflake clowns, these guys are close to pairing
- 1 Royal Gramma, juvenile
- 1 Diamond Watchman Goby
- 1 Tiger Pistol shrimp, paired with the Goby!

So far loving the tank and entering the first stage of uglies but the only cure is patience!

 

[Amstar]

looking good -- coming along

any plans to do anything with the back wall of the tank so you can't see all the way to the backroom? I was able to get some velimax static cling total blackout window film for mine so the backroom/laundry room can't be seen

 

[Techie_]

looking good -- coming along

any plans to do anything with the back wall of the tank so you can't see all the way to the backroom? I was able to get some velimax static cling total blackout window film for mine so the backroom/laundry room can't be seen

I have purchased some 5% window tint, for car windows, etc.. I like the idea of being able to see along the back of the tank from the fish room to be able to find things if need be. I've just been too lazy to put it on!

 

[Techie_]

I'm going to try and give some weekly updates now if there are any changes.

This week I was able to pick up a skimmer on Ohio's Tax Free Weekend! Saved myself $40 which I ended up spending on some Fritz Alk and Calcium to dose. Reasoning for this was the Ca was a little low at 394, shooting for 450, which should keep me in a reasonable range within margin of error of my tester. The more concerning parameter was Alk which was at 4.4(!). This is pretty common in new tanks but mine hadn't been rising using the AquaForest Reef Salt at a level I was happy with.

So I picked up a Jebao 3.4 Wi-Fi doser on Amazon, which has a nice Home Assistant integration to play nicely with my gyre and the rest of my equipment that I've mangled together to be "smart." I started by dosing enough to raise it .9 dKh using a calculator and testing daily. As soon as I hit about 7 dKh, I immediately saw (more than likely noticed ;p) some new coraline growth scattered throughout the rocks in some spots. I had a similar phenomenon with the holding tank I was using before the main tank was set up, albiet a smaller tank, I was doing about 30% WC every week with IO Purple salt, which does take some time get the alk up.

As for whats next, in the upcoming weeks I should be getting a YT, PT, and possilby a Rabbitfish. Once the parameters stabilize and figure out a dosing schedule I will pickup a couple of torches and maybe an acro frag or two just to try my hand at them! A little further down the road, I anticipate picking up another local reefers Anthias and euphyllia. (Go buy @Ky_acc's tank, its a great deal)

Params:

Ammonia	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm
Nitrate	20 ppm
Phosphate	0.04 ppm
Calcium	~420 ppm
Magnesium	1440ppm
Alkalinity	7.9 dKh
pH	8.1

 

[Techie_]

Interesting week with experts, work, and the ongoing dino battle.

Based on some research I've found and advice from Randy, I went ahead and made a plan to keep my ratio of N:P in the aquarium as favorable levels. So this has meant daily testing, mixing 99% anhydrous Na2HPO4, and dosing the solution. So far so good. Running the skimmer only at night, producing pretty dry skimmate is keeping up with the feeding so I'm happy.

The system is still young so I'm trying to have as much patience as possible.

I added a Purple Tang and a six-line wrasse this week. There were some small territorial disputes going on but all the tangs seem to be getting along with minimal fighting which is awesome. This should be it for fish until I find some anthias or a plain foxface rabbitfish.
---
Params:

Ammonia	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm
Nitrate	12.5 ppm
Phosphate	0.06 ppm
Calcium	~461 ppm
Magnesium	1423 ppm
Alkalinity	9.0 dKh
pH	8.3

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Interesting week with experts, work, and the ongoing dino battle.

Based on some research I've found and advice from Randy, I went ahead and made a plan to keep my ratio of N:P in the aquarium as favorable levels. So this has meant daily testing, mixing 99% anhydrous Na2HPO4, and dosing the solution. So far so good. Running the skimmer only at night, producing pretty dry skimmate is keeping up with the feeding so I'm happy.

The system is still young so I'm trying to have as much patience as possible.

I added a Purple Tang and a six-line wrasse this week. There were some small territorial disputes going on but all the tangs seem to be getting along with minimal fighting which is awesome. This should be it for fish until I find some anthias or a plain foxface rabbitfish.
---
Params:

Ammonia	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm
Nitrate	12.5 ppm
Phosphate	0.06 ppm
Calcium	~461 ppm
Magnesium	1423 ppm
Alkalinity	9.0 dKh
pH	8.3

Good luck with getting rid of the dinos! Do you have any pictures of the tang and wrasse?

 

[Techie_]

Good luck with getting rid of the dinos! Do you have any pictures of the tang and wrasse?

I took some this morning but its quite bad (blue). I will get some lens filters and then I'll probably start posting more interesting photos!

 

[Techie_]

Seemingly winning the dino battle!

Added a Scopas tang to help disperse from Zebrasoma aggression and it seems to be working so far. He's about 30% bigger than the other two so that certainly helps. Kole tang seems to be a bit annoyed about the new additions as a whole, thrashing about randomly enough to scuff up his spine.
---
Params:

Ammonia	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm
Nitrate	9.9 ppm
Phosphate	0.13 ppm
Calcium	~435 ppm
Magnesium	~1430 ppm
Alkalinity	9.0 dKh
pH	8.3