This girl’s 310g peninsula dream tank with fish room!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay

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It’s happening!!

Hubby said we can get the 310g peninsula tank from Planet Aquariums that we’ve been eyeing for a while! We put the order in at our LFS this past weekend. Tank should arrive in about 3-4 weeks I think. There’s so much to do before then! We decided to build our own stand and canopy to give it a more built-in look. The sump will be behind the wall in the unfinished part of the basement, so we’ve got some work to do there to turn it into a proper fish room!

This is going to be a pretty slow build. We’re going on vacation in July and want to wait until after we’re back to get it up and running. One less thing to worry about that way. So we’ll be taking our time gathering equipment and getting the fish room ready.

I haven’t fully decided on the entire equipment list yet, but I think we’ll be doing live rock from KP Aquatics, T5/LED hybrid lights, and probably a custom sump from a guy that works with our LFS. The plan is lots of fish with a mixed reef. We'll be combining our current 75g and 32g tanks into this one, plus adding some more tangs and a large angel. Tank dimensions are 96.5 x 30.5 x 25.

Pictures to get everyone excited!

Tank will go in this room behind the couch.
20200305_093159 (1).jpg


Here are the plans for the framing of the stand and canopy. The living room on the floor above is sunken-in, so the ceiling here is a bit jenky. The stand is based on @RocketEngineer's design.
fish_tank_frames.png


And here's the rendering of the final product. The sides of the canopy will lift up in 3 sections to give us full access to the tank.
fish_tank_L.png


I'm so excited, this is going to be amazing! Stay tuned to watch our progress building everything over the next few weeks!
 
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LovesDogs_CatsRokay

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Sounds like our plans are fairly parallel. Hmm, parallel peninsula's. I like it!

Best of luck with the build! I'm looking forward to watching it progress!

Thanks, you too! Let me know when you get your build thread started!

nice! I have been looking at that tank too thought about it and not the red sea 650P but my floor was an issue.
fallowing this one for sure!
Yeah weight is definitely a concern. We’d rather have it upstairs but the concrete floor in the basement is a much better option.
 
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Here’s a quick pick of where the fish room is going. The shelving unit on the left is going to be moved to the far end of the basement and the sump and ATO reservoir will go there. Then on right inside that little alcove, we will move our water mixing station there and add a utility sink, a small fridge/freezer, and a desk for water testing and what not. The floor drain is about 30 feet towards the other end of the basement so that’s not ideal but it’ll have to do. We’re also going to run 2-20 amp circuits to the sump area for tank equipment.

CDE66494-9BBA-4483-87E6-F55BEB639073.jpeg
 
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Trying to decide on sump dimensions.

Thinking total size of 60"Wx20"Dx18"H with the section being 8" wide, skimmer section being 20" wide, fuge section being 16" wide and the left over space for 2 7" filter socks and the drain pipes. How do you determine how high the baffles should be between each section?
 
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Tentative equipment list:

Dual return pumps: Trying to decided between COR20s or Varios pumps
2 WAV powerheads at the far end of the tank
2 MP40s on the overflow side
2 Aquatic Life 36" T5 hybrid lights
4 RedSea ReefLED90 lights
Reef Octopus Regal 300INT skimmer (maybe the 250 instead)
Custom sump with refugium (my first fuge!)
100lbs of KP Aquatics live rock, plus some rock from the current tank
CaribSea special grade sand
Apex EL
Tunze ATO
Still deciding what size combination of heaters to use
 

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Here’s a quick pick of where the fish room is going. The shelving unit on the left is going to be moved to the far end of the basement and the sump and ATO reservoir will go there. Then on right inside that little alcove, we will move our water mixing station there and add a utility sink, a small fridge/freezer, and a desk for water testing and what not. The floor drain is about 30 feet towards the other end of the basement so that’s not ideal but it’ll have to do. We’re also going to run 2-20 amp circuits to the sump area for tank equipment.

CDE66494-9BBA-4483-87E6-F55BEB639073.jpeg
Your fish room has about the same square feet as my house.;Facepalm
 

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not sure if the tank is rimless or brace but if they use a 3/4" thick glass, your MP40 wont stick well to the glass. have you consider doing an external skimmer so you have more sump space.
 
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I run 3 Cor pumps. 2 x Cor 15 and 1 x Cor 20. I like them and they are built very well. The body is thick. All parts are included. Easy to maintain. Direct connection into the Apex. Great control. Oddly enough I use 1 Cor 15 and 1 Cor 20 for my dual returns. The reason why is that the Cor 20 is plugged into a different socket outside the Apex system / energy bar. The Cor 15 is 1 link powered. This way if the power goes out or energy bar 1 link has issues I still have the Cor 20 running flow. Has come in handy a few times. I've owned 1 cor 15 since launch - first week actually. No issues. Other two pumps I picked up a month or so after. Only thing I say I don't like is the o-ring inside the body. I always forget to lube it and it is difficult to seat properly. But that is about it.

As far as the other pump goes I can't speak. I figured I could give you my Cor results :) Sounds like you are off to a good start. Only other thing I could think of is maybe consider the flow and power heads again. I have a 210 peninsula style tank and I've struggled with flow. I have 2 x Gyre XF250's and they provide a metric ton of flow. However, my tank wasn't really mature after the upgrade so never could get flow right. I removed them for a bit and started to use 1" Sea Swirls and love them. As the tank and corals start to grow more I'll add one of the Gyres in and go from there.

Best of luck!
 
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Your fish room has about the same square feet as my house.;Facepalm
The picture probably makes it look bigger than it is. The house is a decent sized ranch which means a big footprint for the basement ;)

not sure if the tank is rimless or brace but if they use a 3/4" thick glass, your MP40 wont stick well to the glass. have you consider doing an external skimmer so you have more sump space.
Oh, shoot. I didn't even think about that. Thanks for pointing it out. I don't really like the MP40's tbh, I was just going that way because I already have one. I really like the WAV but am concerned about using all WAVs since they seem to have a high failure rate. I've been eyeing the Tunze Nanostream 6155 and 6255. Maybe I'll end up with a couple of those instead. Guess I have more thinking to do!
 
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I run 3 Cor pumps. 2 x Cor 15 and 1 x Cor 20. I like them and they are built very well. The body is thick. All parts are included. Easy to maintain. Direct connection into the Apex. Great control. Oddly enough I use 1 Cor 15 and 1 Cor 20 for my dual returns. The reason why is that the Cor 20 is plugged into a different socket outside the Apex system / energy bar. The Cor 15 is 1 link powered. This way if the power goes out or energy bar 1 link has issues I still have the Cor 20 running flow. Has come in handy a few times. I've owned 1 cor 15 since launch - first week actually. No issues. Other two pumps I picked up a month or so after. Only thing I say I don't like is the o-ring inside the body. I always forget to lube it and it is difficult to seat properly. But that is about it.

As far as the other pump goes I can't speak. I figured I could give you my Cor results :) Sounds like you are off to a good start. Only other thing I could think of is maybe consider the flow and power heads again. I have a 210 peninsula style tank and I've struggled with flow. I have 2 x Gyre XF250's and they provide a metric ton of flow. However, my tank wasn't really mature after the upgrade so never could get flow right. I removed them for a bit and started to use 1" Sea Swirls and love them. As the tank and corals start to grow more I'll add one of the Gyres in and go from there.

Best of luck!
How long have you been running the COR pumps? I was all set on them until I read there's been a lot of reports of failures. Thats when I started considering the Varios pumps, but I really want to use the CORs.

I considered the gyre's but I had an IceCap gyre and hated it. I'm pretty lazy about cleaning powerheads lol, and it was really noisy. The XF250s are probably a lot better, but I just don't want to risk ending up with noisy ones.

Edit: Just realized you already mentioned how long you've been running them. Thanks for the info!
 
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not sure if the tank is rimless or brace but if they use a 3/4" thick glass, your MP40 wont stick well to the glass. have you consider doing an external skimmer so you have more sump space.
I did consider an external skimmer, but I'm not really concerned about space in the sump, so I the decided the extra cost wasn't worth it. I think there was one other reason I decided on internal too, but now I can't remember what it was ;Facepalm
 

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The picture probably makes it look bigger than it is. The house is a decent sized ranch which means a big footprint for the basement ;)


Oh, shoot. I didn't even think about that. Thanks for pointing it out. I don't really like the MP40's tbh, I was just going that way because I already have one. I really like the WAV but am concerned about using all WAVs since they seem to have a high failure rate. I've been eyeing the Tunze Nanostream 6155 and 6255. Maybe I'll end up with a couple of those instead. Guess I have more thinking to do!
the tunze would be a good powerhead for long tank like yours. it pushes water in a projectile pattern which push it farther than most pump. with several of the biggest one they have might reach the end of the tank without compromising the viewing side with powerhead. I'm a bit OCD when it come to peninsula so having powerhead on viewing side just trigger it for me. oh and dont waste your money on the gyre pump. they're useless in peninsula in my experience
 
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the tunze would be a good powerhead for long tank like yours. it pushes water in a projectile pattern which push it farther than most pump. with several of the biggest one they have might reach the end of the tank without compromising the viewing side with powerhead. I'm a bit OCD when it come to peninsula so having powerhead on viewing side just trigger it for me. oh and dont waste your money on the gyre pump. they're useless in peninsula in my experience

It would be nice to not have any obstructions on the viewing end, but I'm thinking to get 8 feet away the flow might be a little too high on the one side then, having it on both ends will even it out. The powerheads won't bother me too much. I don't think anyway, might change my mind once I see how awesome the tank is, lol.

nice, going to be a nice build, cant wait to see it start. I wish we had basements in Texas, no way my wife would approve a fish room =\
Thanks! Basements definitely do make it easier!
 
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