Oct. 2013 - Thanks a ton to PL-reef and Unclepain for all your help! Stand up guys. They spent the better part of a day helping me out with this.
I bought this 200 DD marineland tank/stand/canopy from a friend of mine who was selling it for his ex-wife. Got the whole set up with a bunch of other accessories for $1k. Here it is:
My plan was to swap out my (then) existing 72g mixed reef for this 200g and retain my existing livestock, LR, and sump. My goal setting up my 72g was to keep everything as simple as possible, be as energy efficient as possible, and be as maintenance free as possible. All while not using a skimmer and still being able to keep SPS. These were still my main goals with the 200g.
Backround on my 72g
The 72g resides in my great room or living room or whatever you want to call it. It is on a wall that is shared with my garage, which is attached and heated. So naturally I went with a 55g tank for a sump, and plumbed it through the wall to my garage.
My initial plan was to run as many things off the drain as possible rather than running extra pumps. I learned that works for some things, but not so much for others. I originally ran the drain into the garage and y'd off for several things:
First, a ball valve with a garden hose end to use for water changes. That was and is perfect and works out great so the tank keeps running without a hiccup for water changes, which I seldom do anyway.
Second, another Y goes to a UV sterilizer which then empties to a filter sock. That worked fine but now I've deemed the UV pointless and its bypassed.
Third, another Y went to a phosban reactor and then another reactor with carbon, then into the fuge. This worked for a while but the problem I didn't think about was the unscreened drain water clogging the heck out of my reactors. So now I run a separate pump for those. Then the rest of the drainage goes directly to the filter sock.
On that sump I also ran only an "aquaripure" denitrator which did well for me on the 72g and kept nitrates down to 3 and I always had PO4 at .02 to .04 despite my heavy feeding and not rinsing frozen foods.
Other than that I use a walmart storage bin for my top off which I attached a 1/4 line to that goes down to a float valve in the sump.
I have a cheapo LED light on my fuge that grows algae like crazy in there. And I went with a DIY bridgelux led light on my 72g which has worked ok. I was getting about 120 PAR in the middle on the bottom with those. I decided to buy 2 reefbreeders photon 32's for my new tank and leave the DIY lights for the 72g. Several reasons, time it took to solder all those leds was crazy. 5 separate circuits and 5 ballasts and 5 dimmers and 5 plugs all would need to be doubled. Also dimmers were only manual. With the photon 32's I only will have 2 plugs and get double the par easy. Plus their own controllers for a gradual increase and decrease in light through the day which is very appealing to me.
I also use a neptune apex controller for all my tanks and BRS dosing pumps with C-balance for my 72g which is going ot stay with my 200dd.
So heres some pics of the 72g, courtesy of Trump (Thank you sir) and a before pic of the sump set up in my garage:
The baby gate to keep my kid from harassing my leopard wrasses to death. My inspiration for making the new tank higher...
Getting ready
I do like my tanks to be up higher even though I'm short. I don't like the idea of having to bend over to look at the tank. Other than that it also helps with not having to clean the outside of the glass so much from my kids sticky fingers. lol
So I built a base for my stand to get some extra height. I used 2x12's and basically made a box and trimmed it out. I went double walled, only because I needed it to be 3" wide. This way it would be far enough in to land under the supporting areas of the stand yet far enough out to be able to trim it out around the outside of the original stand. Worked out pretty well. Thanks to the Home Depot guy for cutting all my lumber to specific lengths so I wouldn't have to break out my radial arm saw. 2x12's also worked out to be exactly the right height I was looking for so a little more expensive but ease of getting this together paid off.
I bought this 200 DD marineland tank/stand/canopy from a friend of mine who was selling it for his ex-wife. Got the whole set up with a bunch of other accessories for $1k. Here it is:
My plan was to swap out my (then) existing 72g mixed reef for this 200g and retain my existing livestock, LR, and sump. My goal setting up my 72g was to keep everything as simple as possible, be as energy efficient as possible, and be as maintenance free as possible. All while not using a skimmer and still being able to keep SPS. These were still my main goals with the 200g.
Backround on my 72g
The 72g resides in my great room or living room or whatever you want to call it. It is on a wall that is shared with my garage, which is attached and heated. So naturally I went with a 55g tank for a sump, and plumbed it through the wall to my garage.
My initial plan was to run as many things off the drain as possible rather than running extra pumps. I learned that works for some things, but not so much for others. I originally ran the drain into the garage and y'd off for several things:
First, a ball valve with a garden hose end to use for water changes. That was and is perfect and works out great so the tank keeps running without a hiccup for water changes, which I seldom do anyway.
Second, another Y goes to a UV sterilizer which then empties to a filter sock. That worked fine but now I've deemed the UV pointless and its bypassed.
Third, another Y went to a phosban reactor and then another reactor with carbon, then into the fuge. This worked for a while but the problem I didn't think about was the unscreened drain water clogging the heck out of my reactors. So now I run a separate pump for those. Then the rest of the drainage goes directly to the filter sock.
On that sump I also ran only an "aquaripure" denitrator which did well for me on the 72g and kept nitrates down to 3 and I always had PO4 at .02 to .04 despite my heavy feeding and not rinsing frozen foods.
Other than that I use a walmart storage bin for my top off which I attached a 1/4 line to that goes down to a float valve in the sump.
I have a cheapo LED light on my fuge that grows algae like crazy in there. And I went with a DIY bridgelux led light on my 72g which has worked ok. I was getting about 120 PAR in the middle on the bottom with those. I decided to buy 2 reefbreeders photon 32's for my new tank and leave the DIY lights for the 72g. Several reasons, time it took to solder all those leds was crazy. 5 separate circuits and 5 ballasts and 5 dimmers and 5 plugs all would need to be doubled. Also dimmers were only manual. With the photon 32's I only will have 2 plugs and get double the par easy. Plus their own controllers for a gradual increase and decrease in light through the day which is very appealing to me.
I also use a neptune apex controller for all my tanks and BRS dosing pumps with C-balance for my 72g which is going ot stay with my 200dd.
So heres some pics of the 72g, courtesy of Trump (Thank you sir) and a before pic of the sump set up in my garage:
The baby gate to keep my kid from harassing my leopard wrasses to death. My inspiration for making the new tank higher...
Getting ready
I do like my tanks to be up higher even though I'm short. I don't like the idea of having to bend over to look at the tank. Other than that it also helps with not having to clean the outside of the glass so much from my kids sticky fingers. lol
So I built a base for my stand to get some extra height. I used 2x12's and basically made a box and trimmed it out. I went double walled, only because I needed it to be 3" wide. This way it would be far enough in to land under the supporting areas of the stand yet far enough out to be able to trim it out around the outside of the original stand. Worked out pretty well. Thanks to the Home Depot guy for cutting all my lumber to specific lengths so I wouldn't have to break out my radial arm saw. 2x12's also worked out to be exactly the right height I was looking for so a little more expensive but ease of getting this together paid off.
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