THE RASTA REEF ( Innovative Marine INT 200 GAL BUILD )

[Rausch]

Well the time has finally come... We took the plunge and ordered a new 200 gallon fish tank. This has been a dream in the making for the last 7 years and now it is finally coming to fruition. Now that the tank is ordered we have a couple months to get everything in line and ordered. The last couple weeks we have started renovation on the fish room and here is the start to the process. Thank you all for following along and i hope to gain knowledge from the great reefers around the forum and would love to hear any feedback or comments as the process moves along and i will share the progress as we go.

First we had to do something about the color of this room... Here you can see the old tank, got this from Cris Capp at Aquatic Art about 7 years ago and it has been a wonderful tank, but the time has come...

New tank will go against this wall.

Installed some French doors so we can enjoy the tank from the living room.

A break after painting, my son took this Sunset photo

And the new color.

My Wife putting in the finishing touches to the trim

Now that the room is painted and ready the rock work begins. Just got in my order of MarcoRocks and a box of Stax from Two Little Fishies. Going to mix these two for some new design ideas i have been thinking about for the last few years staring at the old tank. I am not going to transfer any rock from the old system and will cure and start these new rocks in a few brute cans in the basement, on an investment like this i just want to try my best to keep this new tank free from anything i don't want in there. We will pull the corals from the old system clean and dip, put in a smaller holding system while moving the tanks and make sure they are clean before adding back to the new tank.

I taped out the dimmensions of the tank on the floor 70"x30" to be able to build my rock work to fit before adding the marco mortar .

Now its time to Rock!

 

[Rausch]

Got the rocks put together and this time i am going with the slow approach and using the Emarco mortar. Excited to use this as i have seen some great result coming from TSA and their aquaecapes . Finally getting a chance at this is a dream, something about putting rocks together brings joy to my life.

Grabbed some small paint mixing buckets to keep the mortar mixed in small batches. This worked out great and definitely easier to work in quick fast pieces then trying to do a large portion with a lot of mortar, this stuff dries out really quick!

Started by making a few pillars and arch pieces to let dry for a few hours before adding any shelf rock. Time is definitely your friend when drying this stuff , work too quick and it crumbles away... as i found out the hard way. i would recommend at least 4 hours between working the next rock in place

After waiting overnight i added the shelf rock to the pillar pieces. Crazy to see almost 100lbs of rock lifted up and flat off of the bottom. This mortar did really great holding in place , at first i was afraid to remove the braces but you can see in the back piece that it held great. With this aquascape i was going for lots of swimming space for fish but also flat consistent areas i can par test and place corals in their ideal location, hoping this works out. After letting it set for the day to make sure all the rock held i picked it up piece by piece, i created this in three large island like pieces with some small individual towers, then placed them in a brute can in the basement.

The rock has now been curing for about a week and i started the cycle process with some MicroBacter Start xlm , feeding that daily and hoping in a month or two we have some nice cured rock to start the tank with.

 

[revhtree]

Ooh liking that aquascape!

 

[El_Guapo13]

Nice. Following.

 

[Rausch]

Ooh liking that aquascape!

Thank you so much! Its a weird feeling aquascaping after 7 years... so many things that you always say, i will do that next time, and now i cant remember them all! haha. It makes my wife nervous , she said last night, thats a lot of places for corals...

 

[Rausch]

Nice. Following.

Thank you! love the avatar, Three Amigos is one of the best movies ever made.

 

[Rausch]

The Plumbing showed up and i couldn't be happier! the guys over at BRS really helped out and had some great pieces to get this project going. If you had been wondering where the name Rasta Reef derived this was definitely a big part of the plan from the beginning. You can see the team over at BRS seemed to catch the idea upon purchase and they placed all of the pipe in the correct color order

Not only will the plumbing be aesthetically pleasing it will also serve a function and each plumbing section will have its specific color pipe. Looking forward to getting this thing plumbed soon!

Had to match the shoes.

 

[Zotmurse]

I like the color scheme. What kind of lighting are you planning? I’m thinking of getting this tank and I’m a little concerned about mounting options with the euro bracing. Suspending lights is a non starter for me.

 

[oneilwiz]

Hey going to be a sweet build, when I saw the Rasta I was like nice another Jamaican reefer, finally

 

[Rausch]

I like the color scheme. What kind of lighting are you planning? I’m thinking of getting this tank and I’m a little concerned about mounting options with the euro bracing. Suspending lights is a non starter for me.

Thank you. Ya I'm interested to see how I end up mounting too, I'm going with Radions and the RMS mounts. I was thinking i might end up attaching them to the internal overflow , not ideal but could be the best option for this tank

 

[Perry]

Giving thanks and praise to the theme of your reef and family! Following

 

[flyfisher2]

Looks Interesting, following

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Definitely following. My build is shaping up to be similar in size (little bit bigger but close enough for gov’t work).

love the plumbing color scheme. But beyond the colors you chose, excellent idea! Hadn’t thought of it but I think I’ll be doing the same color coding.

can’t wait to see what comes next!

 

[Zotmurse]

Thank you. Ya I'm interested to see how I end up mounting too, I'm going with Radions and the RMS mounts. I was thinking i might end up attaching them to the internal overflow , not ideal but could be the best option for this tank

A lot people report sagging in the RMS mount across the length of the tank (if you decide to do that). They support it with a length of angled iron across the length. RMS mount on overflow might now give you enough spread!

 

[najer]

Following, love the pipe colours and the scape looks great.

 

[Rausch]

Definitely following. My build is shaping up to be similar in size (little bit bigger but close enough for gov’t work).

love the plumbing color scheme. But beyond the colors you chose, excellent idea! Hadn’t thought of it but I think I’ll be doing the same color coding.

can’t wait to see what comes next!

Thank you, yes im excited to have them color coded, using lots of unions so it will be nice to just grab the right color and screw it on, no wondering if its the right piece or not. Will definitely be interested in your build, what size are you going with?

 

[Rausch]

A lot people report sagging in the RMS mount across the length of the tank (if you decide to do that). They support it with a length of angled iron across the length. RMS mount on overflow might now give you enough spread!

Yes i have heard that... interested to see how much they sag, i was hoping with mounting them on the overflow i can shorten the length i have to extend the arm, but i might have to go with the angle iron in the end

 

[Rausch]

Last week we got the energy up and moved the old tank... My wife agreed with the idea of instead of moving the inhabitants into the new tank that we move it into the garage and keep it up and running! im a lucky man. So i took some time and cleaned a space in the garage and got the small 30 gallon lagoon up and running to be a temporary home for the fish and coral.

Next i got the electronics and equipment cleaned up and moved out from under the tank

one last look before i start pulling all of the water... towels and big brute cans and your best friend on a day like this.

out goes the water... into the brute cans, i then immediately transferred water to the 30 lagoon, got pumps and heater going then the corals got a quick ride in a 5 gallon bucket. i pulled out all of the rocks before chasing the fish. Also took out all of the water before disturbing anything on the bottom, this was there was no bloom of nasties from messing with any substrate.

an empty tank. I didn't go complete bare bottom as i keep a Leopard wrasse , so i used this feeder bucket from Murdochs farm store to catch the fish and to get flat to the bottom and scoop out all the sand, worked out great!... look at that nasty stuff...

a blank space...

I got my wife to help me somehow with moving the tank... top pictures on this process, we had our hands full

and into its new Place!

Happy to say we had no losses at all! i was so scared at the beginning of this process, but now that its all done its such a relief! even better is now i have 2 full systems set up! cant wait to get this going with the lagoon plumbed in, going with mangroves in there for a while just for fun.

T5's added and i ordered some AI prime 16 hd's to go in there as im going for more lps in this tank and don't need the high demand of the radion's but we will see in the long run

Loving the look and how easy it is to work with the AI products on your phone, i really like them a lot, programming is so easy

All done for now... everything is really puffed up and looking great in there, happy with the new lights plus the T5 supplement is such a great blanket. Now onto the big boy! getting delivered today!

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Thank you, yes im excited to have them color coded, using lots of unions so it will be nice to just grab the right color and screw it on, no wondering if its the right piece or not. Will definitely be interested in your build, what size are you going with?

Either 84x25x25 or 96x25x25. Whichever my SO let’s me get away with lol

 

[Rausch]

Either 84x25x25 or 96x25x25. Whichever my SO let’s me get away with lol

That will be really nice either way! love the length of those tanks, a Tangs paradise in there!