THz's Build Thread - RedSea S 850 G2+

[TeraHz]

Well, I guess it's time I started one of these.

Let's get the main gear list out of the way:

RedSea Reefer S 850 G2+ (Yeah, I know. We'll see...)
ReeFiUno 2.1 Pro x3
RedSea ReefMat 1200
RedSea Reefer DC 900 Skimmer
Versia Flow 9 x2 Return pumps
Maxspect XF350 x2 flow
IM Helio 700W (2x350) + 600W BRS backup
GHL ecosystem for monitoring, AWC, testing, control, and dosing
Marco Rock base (made into the trendy HNSA)
Live Tampa Bay sand (100lb)
Live Tampa Bay base rock for the sump (20lb)
CaribSea Arag-Alive Natural Reef grade sand to fill

A bunch of random other small things like Avast Marine Parrot level switches, Solenoids, US Water Systems DI canisters, Rubbermaid Tubs...

The floor is well supported where the tank will live, so I'm not worried. (It's right on top of a concrete foundation wall + a load-bearing beam)

I plan to do about 1% AWC daily, and when the time comes to start dosing BRS A, BRS B and TM C. Eventually I'll add trace minerals as well.

Just about everything was ordered on Thanksgiving. Tank and most of the big bits I ordered from a LFS so I have someone to yell at if... you know, RedSea A lot of the smaller bits are from BRS and I made sure to order something from them on each day of their givaway. It worked because I ended up winning one of their box-o-stuff and a signed Serious Reefs hat

So this was December 24th! Merry Christmas he said, right before he almost dropped it...

As he was pulling it out of the truck, the weight pushed the liftgate too far down and the entire thing started rolling away! The guy even jumped from the gate, but thankfully it caught on something and stopped after the first two wheels dropped from the lift gate.... "It's heavy!" he said... lol. (1204lb was the slip, if anyone is interested).

It survived, however:

I have more to write, but will break it up so it's not a giant opening post that I have to write for a few hours

To be continued...

 

[Peace River]

How exciting! Congratulations and good luck on the new adventure!!!

 

[TeraHz]

Ok, here is a bit more.

While I was waiting for the tank, I worked on plumbing, electrical, and aquascape.

This aquascape was a lot of work and a big mess! I would have loved to be able to work on it outside... Especially when it came to hiding the epoxy with sand. I think it took me 3 days to do.

Behind the rocks, I added 2 dedicated 20A circuits, 8x 1/4" Quick Connects (that connect to other rooms, more on that later), and 4 (now 6) network ports. Those are used mostly for the GHL bus and remote sensors because the main Profilux is under the tank, but there are 2 other locations that participate in the system.

The quick-connects are just bulkheads into a double-gang face plate:

And now here is the "wiring diagram"

A few things to note:
My crawlspace is where my well pump, well tank, and house filter are. It's rather cold in there, but never close to freezing. I'm lucky that I have a hole house RO filter, which I'm gladly using as it's much faster and more efficient than the little RO/DI units that are usually used ( I also used them on my previous two tanks.)

I've stolen a corner in the Laundry room to store my fresh salt water. The three spaces have network and RO tubing between them allowing me to move water around. This is what I had to do to get SO approval No big pipes through walls and floor


What about the tank, you ask? Well, I put together the stand right after everything was delivered. And two weeks ago, 8 guys and 8 beefy suction cups later, the tank is on the stand!

The first clean up crew went in right away

After that I added the two sump sections and started working on organizing the million wires and tubing that will live under the tank. I played around with adding a little shelf above the right sump. Just a few pieces of 2020 aluminum with t-nuts, and a piece of acrylic:

Before you say how I'm going to get to the sump if I need to - it's a rail after all, so it's adjustable up and down. This is the "working on the wiring" mode. Here it is in "not touching it" mode:

There is plenty of space to work on the sump if I need to. It also allows me to attach some lights down the road.

This DOSER AWC unit will not live there because it's way too loud. I'll be moving it to the Laundry room.

And that's roughly where I'm at. This weekend I plan to add water to the tank. I'll likely fill it half way with RODI water and leave it for a couple of days to watch for any immediate sag or issues. Then will fill it to the top without overflowing and plan to leave it like that for a week - again to make sure it stays level before I wet the sump. Just in case I need to readjust it slightly once it's full.

Lights arrive next week.

Live sand and rock arrive Feb 13th via air cargo.

 

[RockRash]

How fun. I really like your aquascape. Everything looks great and I love how clean your equipment install looks. My live rock and sand arrives the 11th. I'll be following along, definitely a cool build.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along! Looks like you are off to a great start!

 

[TeraHz]

Ok, I know I said I'll add water this weekend, but

I measured less than 1mm difference in water level from the base of the tank across the 6ft, so pretty happy with the level so far. Tested the automation to fill the RODI reservoirs while water is used (this would usually go to the fresh SW mixing tank). Will likely keep "dosing" water slowly as I monitor the tank.

This was also a good test for my refurbished Doser Maxi 2.1 - got it used with a broken tube fitting so I replaced the tubing and by pure luck found a perfect barb fitting that nests exactly in the little notch and turns it into a quick connect:

It's this fitting with a cutoff barb to the first ridge:

1/4" SuperSeal OD x 1/4" Hose ID Super Speedfit® White Acetal Tube-To-Hose Stem Tube Fitting | U.S. Plastic Corp.

These fittings are suitable for applications involving foodstuffs and potable liquids, as well as for air and inert gases. It can be used...

www.usplastic.com

Tubing:

https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=25399

24 hours of continuous use so far and no leaks or issues with it. Replaced all heads with this setup

Meanwhile, I also connected the return pumps with 1" tubing and these plastic clamps:

Not super happy with the tubing, to be honest. It's very stiff and I know will get nasty because it's clear... But for now will do until I find better 1" tubing for that.


Also mounted the controllers for the skimmer, heaters, and gyres to the left sump section:

I was surprised the Helio controller doesn't have a mounting bracket so had to make one.

I'm waiting for the DCBuddy to show up before I sort out the wiring and final locations of the various powerbricks. Then I'll make it neater.

 

[TeraHz]

How exciting! Congratulations and good luck on the new adventure!!!

Thank you! It's my third reef tank, so third time's the charm?

How fun. I really like your aquascape. Everything looks great and I love how clean your equipment install looks. My live rock and sand arrives the 11th. I'll be following along, definitely a cool build.

Thank you! The aquascape is a lot more interesting in person than the photos show. The photo kills a lot of the detail. I should take some more photos from different angles...

Following along! Looks like you are off to a great start!

Cheers!

 

[RockRash]

Rock work is hard to photograph, I couldn't ever get good pictures. Video seems to be better but still hard.

 

[TeraHz]

Monday update:
Tank is full of water(fresh so far) - so far so good. No leaks, no changes in level. Will likely keep it like this for a couple of weeks before I salt it and prepare it for the live sand.

Sump is still dry - I'm still figuring out backup power and where I'll put it. While we don't lose power super often (maybe once or twice a year) it does happen. We do get brownouts pretty often. Our generator is manual, so I'm thinking of getting some of the fancy new power stations with UPS features in them. Probably the Oupes 1200 that's on sale right now. It should be able to handle all the equipment in UPS mode, and if we lose power I should be able to run the gyres on it for a while.

Lights are arriving tomorrow!

 

[TeraHz]

The tank has been full of water for about 10 days. No issues. I've been playing around with power and redundancy and figuring out how to do it best to make sure one thing can't bring down the system (by tripping a breaker, for example) or that when we lose power it's not a panic to save the tank.

Here is the current updated schematic:

The OUPESes fit perfectly in the open space of the stand. They do block two outlets on the bottom PowerBar but I can live with that for now, since I don't need them all. Once I do, I might just mount it vertically going down under the other two.

I've also been replacing the plugs on all the cables with rotating 90-degree versions so that the cables don't stick out when they're plugged in.

Next, I turned the two avast marine level sensors into two double sensors (for low/high as shown in the schematic) and made them "ethernet extendable" - so I can plug a sensor from a far distance using the ethernet wires in the wall:

I've been using one of these at about 25ft from the profilux and it's working like a charm. I'll be putting one in the saltwater barrel and will start preparing saltwater next.

Which brings me to the next thing. I'm also setting up a couple of 10g tanks to start QT the first fish. I expect the sand to be here in about 2 weeks, so I plan to do Hybrid Tank Transfer to have the fish ready for the display soon after. I plan on starting with a pair of maroon clowns (gotta have nemo!) and probably a small flame angel. We'll see what I find in the LFS around me that looks healthy.

The lights are mounted as well! I have not played with them yet, just have them grouped and added to the network. I'll be doing par testing and setup later since I'll probably not need them for a couple of months still.

I plan to fill the sump with water and turn on the return pumps and heaters next. And add salt! Time to test some of that equipment and start setting up ATO and temp control.

 

[TeraHz]

Return pumps are on and the system is pressure tested now - no leaks. The tank remains level so the floor is holding

I've noticed the cold crawlspace temps are making the BPT in the maxi doser stiffen too much and that seems to be causing some trouble. I thing it's fine for ATO, but for the NSW tank, I'll likely plumb my Sicce Ultra Zero with 3/4" pex and call it a day.

Still no salt in the system. I still plan to do that this weekend. The fresh TBS live sand is coming next Thursday and I can't wait

I think I underestimated the amount of wiring that needs to go in this sump. In my old tanks there weren't a gazillion controllers for every little thing... So I'm still working on figuring the best way to organize it.

I'm making progress in programming the GHL systems but I still need to finish the ATO setup, the heater backup setup, leak detection actions, PAB failure defaults on the switches, and AWC (so most of it lol).


One more thing: I'm starting my white worm culture. Want to have food ready for the first fish.

 

[TeraHz]

Salt is in! Tank is at 35ppt now and ATO is configured. I'm starting to remember how hard photographing tanks with LEDs is.

I've been playing with the position of the gyres. I thought it would be best to keep them close to the surface, but where they are, they create a lot more surface agitation and more flow makes it in between the rockwork and the bottom. Pouring salt crystals was great for observing the flow pattern

Of course the wires... We'll see

One other thing I've been thinking about is GFCI with the battery banks. I have titanium heaters in the tank (two on one circuit and one on the second) and both circuits have combo GFCI/AFI breakers, so while there is power, I _should_ be safe, but the moment the breaker trips to save me, the power bank will kick in and kill me... Also, when the power is out, the breaker doesn't really participate in the circuit so it can't protect.

So I guess I need to put a GFCI buster on the OUPES and plug the PABs in them. Right?


In other news, a snow storm is expected Wed/Thurs when the sand is arriving. We'll see if the delivery actually happens.

 

[TeraHz]

Did some light adjustments and PAR measuring. I think this will be my starting point and looks good enough for me, for now. I discovered the best way to take a FTS now is to just turn off all the non-white LEDs.

Ok, I guess I have to cut up the image. Here are the measurements: The three numbers are the three light levels throughout the day.

 

[Featherweight]

Cool looking build. Very organized

 

[TeraHz]

Big day today. 4 hours of driving to pickup the 4 boxes of goodies from TBS. I have 100lbs of sand and 40lbs of nano rubble for the sump. I started with the rubble. They were fist-sized rocks with basically no green photosynthetic stuff on them that I can tell. Here is a sample:

I examined them one by one, just to make sure nobody was coming over without permit. Even though they're going in the sump, I still didn't want this small guy (gorilla crab, by the looks of it):

The crab and a blobby looking thing (like a slightly harder slug, that was stuck very well to a piece) were the only two things I didn't keep - everything else went in the sump.

Next was the sand. Three 5G buckets with sand in water in a plastic bag:

I thought the stuff would be silty but to my surprise, it was super clean! I don't know if they wash it or not, but sure felt like it. It added just a tiny bit of dust while I was dumping the bags. This is all the dust from an entire 34lb bag:

I also added 3 bags of carib-sea Natural Reef bags which were soooo much filthier. But I wanted whatever bacteria was in those bags and I wanted to add a bit more sand here and there. It actually ended up being a great combo, since the natural reef sand has up to 10mm pieces and the TBS sand is mostly coarse. After a bunch of mixing and moving sand around, the sand storm was incredible. Visibility was like 2" lol.

I took the time to turn on the skimmer and reef mat, might as well get them going to help a bit. Nothing special there, other than RedSea requiring an account to use the app, which was super annoying. I really don't like this new practice of being "smart" and "online". It's the main reason I didn't go with Hydros. The entire system is useless without Internet! But that's another story.

After a couple of hours, I was able to see the rockwork again, well enough to take a few shots before calling it a day:

Let's see now how long it takes for the water to clear up. If it's not clear by tomorrow night, I'll take out the big guns: my diatom filter

I guess the tank is officially live now! I have some fish and inverts in QT. ETA a couple of weeks, I guess. Until then - 2 weeks without lights, I'll be dropping a bit of food every day, just to add some organics. That should allow things to start populating the clean rock and to be ready for more animals!

 

[TeraHz]

I have to say the Reefmat is doing a great job cleaning up the water. There is still a film of ... something on the surface, but things look much better.

The little rubble is full of life - small bristle stars, fan worms, and other filter feeders:

 

[TeraHz]

Spent a couple of hours rerouting cables and adding GFCI plugs to the GHL Power Bars - that way the protection is as close to the source as possible and should be able to protect me. I used These Connector Cords:
Amazon product

And gave them my 90 degree angle treatment with these
Amazon product

I realize I'm losing some water proofing in the plug itself. Once I'm happy things work, I'll likely fill them with silicone. For now, it shouldn't be a big deal (plus GFCI!)

The mod is nothing special. Just three wires to connect:

Here is it done:

And here is how things look (still a bit of cable web in the back corner, but will work on that some other time

And finally an updated diagram with current locations of everything:

This entire exercise was a great Chaos Monkey moment. I recommend everyone randomly unplug stuff and watch what the system does. You do not want to default ON your backup heater

 

[TeraHz]

10 Day post Live Sand - PODS! LOTS OF PODS!

The ugly stage is starting, as expected. The tank is still fishless so this is all based on whatever came with the sand and rubble from the Gulf.

But the pods are everywhere. And they're loving whatever is happening in the tank. Here are a few clips I shot + a video with the microscope of a pod. If you switch to HD (or 4K) you'll see not just the adult pods, but the hundreds of tiny baby pods the glass:







Next week I'm introducing the first fish (QT is over, but still observing) and likely will get some frags from the New Englad Frag Farmers Market so I'll have more than just sand and rocks to show for

 

[Jake_v]

Really nice build, following to see how this turns out!

 

[TeraHz]

Really nice build, following to see how this turns out!

Thanks!