MoKan Reefer
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2018
- Messages
- 224
- Reaction score
- 184
I've been in and out of the saltwater hobby for 15years now. Bouncing back and forth having a setup for a few years, then life would happen and I'd get out again.
In February of last year got back in by buying a 6' 150 (72"x18"x30" tall) which I wasn't a fan of almost from the beginning because of the width of the tank and the fact it had corner overflows.
After about 9 months, I had the opportunity to buy a 4'x4'x1' tall 120gallon custom acrylic frag tank. I had this grand idea to make it into a shallow reef. But once sand and rock were added I realized within a few months that it was really hard to get decent flow with the way the tank was built and where the return and overflow was being diagonal from each other. Even when I had 2 mp40s and 2 gyros there were still dead spots and issues.
One thing I did learn from that frag tank is that I definitely liked having a taller than normal stand so I at 6'2" could get in and out alot easier and have room to mess with things as needed.
So... in February this year, I decided it was time for a change. I set out to find a 4' or 5' tank over 100 gallons that was at least 2' wide and I'd just build the stand and all to what I needed it to be. Low and behold I found a 5'x2'x2' tall 150 for almost nothing.
The fact that the stand was less than 2' tall didnt mean much to me considering I'd already decided that I was going to build a 4' tall stand for it anyway. The overflow weirs someone had made with just some black plate glass and I knew they'd never work let alone the fact they'd tried to use some half inch flex hose and for the overflow and return lines and siliconed the rest of both holes. No bulkheads, nothing. Just silicone. After cutting through the silicone and realizing the holes were still in good shape with no cracks or even chips around them or anywhere else on the tank, we went ahead and bought it. It was cheap and I knew what it could be.
After getting it home and pulling it out of the stand where it sat, I came to realize it had been made with a cast iron frame not plastic. I went to work taking those glass overflow weirs out and removing the pound or so of silicone from the bulkhead holes. Everything went fairly smoothly.
Next was making the stand... My wife actually helped out alot. It measures 5' 1/2" wide, 2' deep, and 4' tall.
Wife wanted to see it with the tank on it lol.
Over the next few days I decided to mock up the plumbing and sump and brackets that would hold the lighting.
After a few more days my wife and I decided we liked everything the way it was and glued the plumbing and add a few more supports for the floor of the stand. With the height of the stand and the fact the setup would be that top heavy with ~1600+ of weight, I decided to use some steel mounts and toggle bolts to secure the frame of the stand to the floor (thankfully we own our house and I have an understanding wife lol).
From there came new sand, cured rock and of course water. I made the top frame of 90° angle aluminum to ensure there would be little to no bow in the glass with the pressure of the tank filled.
After letting it do its thing for a while to ensure any cycle that could happen would, came moving day...
At this point we hadn't decided what exactly we wanted to do to wrap the stand and I still hadn't gotten around to putting a solid floor in the stand but thankfully with using union valves and with the way we'd plumbed it, I could easily disconnect the plumbing going into sump from the overflows and coming from the return to easily remove the sump for anything I need to do which has come in handy alot lol.
We decided to utilize the 48" 8 bulb tek light fixture along with the 3 reefbrite blue xho strips we had used for the frag tank prior which worked out perfectly.
We also use our gyre 150 and 2 mp40s. With just the gyre, there's alot of flow but unfortunately the downside of the gyre was that there was too much flow on the sand bed which was irritating our open brain corals. With the mp40s on the opposite side as the gyre, it breaks up the flow some and adds flow to the center of the tank.
In April, I got a killer deal on a ruby 36 trigger sump, so I decided to swap out sumps, put the floor in the stand finally, knock out the baffles on the original 36 gallon sump we had used and use it as a refugium. So I built a stand for it, and replumbed so that the right side overflow would drain into the sump while the left went to the refugium which would then flow into the sump.
The refugium light we originally used was a 5500k led bulb from Walmart. We decided to change that out for a couple 8watt pink/red plant lights ($6.50 also from Walmart lol) and have seen awesome growth.
Last month we finally got around to skinning and making everything finally look decent.
All just to change it again...
We got a killer deal on 3 radion gen3 pros, 2 xr15's and an xr30 along with a reef octopus 150int skimmer so we made some more changing including with the skin of the stand. We decided to make 6" and 8" strips of the 1/8in wood paneling we had originally used to skin the stand to cover the 2x4 frame. Came out pretty decent (pic before we respiffed the paint).
This way we have full access to everything in the stand at all times.
In February of last year got back in by buying a 6' 150 (72"x18"x30" tall) which I wasn't a fan of almost from the beginning because of the width of the tank and the fact it had corner overflows.
After about 9 months, I had the opportunity to buy a 4'x4'x1' tall 120gallon custom acrylic frag tank. I had this grand idea to make it into a shallow reef. But once sand and rock were added I realized within a few months that it was really hard to get decent flow with the way the tank was built and where the return and overflow was being diagonal from each other. Even when I had 2 mp40s and 2 gyros there were still dead spots and issues.
One thing I did learn from that frag tank is that I definitely liked having a taller than normal stand so I at 6'2" could get in and out alot easier and have room to mess with things as needed.
So... in February this year, I decided it was time for a change. I set out to find a 4' or 5' tank over 100 gallons that was at least 2' wide and I'd just build the stand and all to what I needed it to be. Low and behold I found a 5'x2'x2' tall 150 for almost nothing.
The fact that the stand was less than 2' tall didnt mean much to me considering I'd already decided that I was going to build a 4' tall stand for it anyway. The overflow weirs someone had made with just some black plate glass and I knew they'd never work let alone the fact they'd tried to use some half inch flex hose and for the overflow and return lines and siliconed the rest of both holes. No bulkheads, nothing. Just silicone. After cutting through the silicone and realizing the holes were still in good shape with no cracks or even chips around them or anywhere else on the tank, we went ahead and bought it. It was cheap and I knew what it could be.
After getting it home and pulling it out of the stand where it sat, I came to realize it had been made with a cast iron frame not plastic. I went to work taking those glass overflow weirs out and removing the pound or so of silicone from the bulkhead holes. Everything went fairly smoothly.
Next was making the stand... My wife actually helped out alot. It measures 5' 1/2" wide, 2' deep, and 4' tall.
Wife wanted to see it with the tank on it lol.
Over the next few days I decided to mock up the plumbing and sump and brackets that would hold the lighting.
After a few more days my wife and I decided we liked everything the way it was and glued the plumbing and add a few more supports for the floor of the stand. With the height of the stand and the fact the setup would be that top heavy with ~1600+ of weight, I decided to use some steel mounts and toggle bolts to secure the frame of the stand to the floor (thankfully we own our house and I have an understanding wife lol).
From there came new sand, cured rock and of course water. I made the top frame of 90° angle aluminum to ensure there would be little to no bow in the glass with the pressure of the tank filled.
After letting it do its thing for a while to ensure any cycle that could happen would, came moving day...
At this point we hadn't decided what exactly we wanted to do to wrap the stand and I still hadn't gotten around to putting a solid floor in the stand but thankfully with using union valves and with the way we'd plumbed it, I could easily disconnect the plumbing going into sump from the overflows and coming from the return to easily remove the sump for anything I need to do which has come in handy alot lol.
We decided to utilize the 48" 8 bulb tek light fixture along with the 3 reefbrite blue xho strips we had used for the frag tank prior which worked out perfectly.
We also use our gyre 150 and 2 mp40s. With just the gyre, there's alot of flow but unfortunately the downside of the gyre was that there was too much flow on the sand bed which was irritating our open brain corals. With the mp40s on the opposite side as the gyre, it breaks up the flow some and adds flow to the center of the tank.
In April, I got a killer deal on a ruby 36 trigger sump, so I decided to swap out sumps, put the floor in the stand finally, knock out the baffles on the original 36 gallon sump we had used and use it as a refugium. So I built a stand for it, and replumbed so that the right side overflow would drain into the sump while the left went to the refugium which would then flow into the sump.
The refugium light we originally used was a 5500k led bulb from Walmart. We decided to change that out for a couple 8watt pink/red plant lights ($6.50 also from Walmart lol) and have seen awesome growth.
Last month we finally got around to skinning and making everything finally look decent.
All just to change it again...
We got a killer deal on 3 radion gen3 pros, 2 xr15's and an xr30 along with a reef octopus 150int skimmer so we made some more changing including with the skin of the stand. We decided to make 6" and 8" strips of the 1/8in wood paneling we had originally used to skin the stand to cover the 2x4 frame. Came out pretty decent (pic before we respiffed the paint).
This way we have full access to everything in the stand at all times.
