Tuvey's Budget 120g Build

[Jtuvey]

Please bear with me on this tank build thread the idea in this first post is to add the original information from the start of my tank in April 2022. Additional post with be for the upgrades/updates I completed along the way.

Backstory
I started in the the hobby in 2008 with a 32g tank, I found that I had a passion for this hobby, shortly after starting in the hobby I found the love of my life and decided to start my life with her, and sadly ended my short stent in the hobby around 2010 as I began my new life.

Getting back in the hobby and been something I had been dreaming of ever since. In January of 2022, I felt it was time, now that we had a home that I had just remodeled with a front room that seemed to be pretty bare. So, will little convincing of my wife, I started preparing my 120g build. The idea behind this build was to keep this to a budget of about $2500 which I thought was possible as I had found a 120g used tank that I was ready to purchase.

Purchasing the tank
From the photos of the 120g tank, it appeared to be in good shape with just some TLC for the stand and some cleaning needed to the glass of the tank. When I arrived to purchase the tank it was in the basement in an area that was semi-dark, the tank was only $150 it had holes drilled in the center top of the glass with an overflow. I was really excited and decided to move forward with the purchase. The next morning when looking at the tank in my front room, I could then see why this tank and stand were $150. The glass of the tank was scratched terribly bad. At first I thought I might be able to get some polishing compound and buff the scratches out. I soon realized this would not be possible as some scratches were about a 1/16 of an inch deep.

I was bothered but felt I still had gotten a pretty good deal and was prepared to move forward with the plan to use this tank. However, my loving and very supportive wife suggested that we just purchase a new tank with the same dimensions so it could sit on the same stand. At first I was against it, but when she said I would rather you have a tank you are proud to look instead of hating the look of the glass until it is replaced. The the question of wouldn't you rather spend the money to do it right the first time. I then agreed, I quickly put my focus on finding the tank replacement.

I ended up with the 120g Starfire Aquariums tank with a center overflow. The cost of this tank was unexpected but worth it. I found this tank for $1,195 and it was ready to ship to my house.

Sump and Equipment
Now that I had purchased the tank, I had a greater focused on saving dollars but making this build the best I could. I decided to purchase my sump a 40g Aqueon tank, so I could add the Fuji Cube Refugium Baffle Kit.

I added the following to the sump:

• Orlushy 1320GPH 24V Aquarium return pump from Amazon. (This pump is still going strong after 3.5 years. I Clean it about every other month and have never had to run it at max.)
• Inkbird ITC-306A Temperature controller and 2 Finnex Deluxe Titanium heaters. (These are still going strong today at 3.5yr.)
• LED Refugium Light from Amazon
• IOAOI Protein Skimmer for 210G from Amazon (One of my best original purchases)
• BRS Mini Carbon Reactor kit

Lighting
For the lights I new I needed to save here, I also new this would affect the overall performance of my tank. I wanted lighting that could cover edge to edge but wanted to do this on a budget. I ended up selecting the Current ORBIT IC Dual Pro LED's, I also knew these would not be my long term lights.

Flow
I selected the Current Flow pumps since they would link with the lights and I was sold on all the features for the budget price.

Rock
20lbs of Shelf MacroRock and 50lbs of standard MacroRock. All dry.

Sand
80lbs Original Grade Ocean Direct Live Sand

Original budget for this aquarium was $2,500. I spent $1917 for everything except the tank. Total Startup cost including the tank was $3,112, bringing me just $612 over budget. Not to bad considering, I had to buy the new tank.

 

[bast]

It's a great start! I agree with the decision on the new tank.

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade #1

After two months of messing with the return pump and the flow. I realized that getting the return and drain flows just right is to difficult with the ball valve I had originally installed.

I needed to make a change. Thankfully I saw some posts that suggested to put unions just below the bulkheads. this make the upgrade much easier. I rebuild the drain with a gate valve. This made a world of difference.

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #2

After about 6 months I was keeping things slow. I had a unfortunate opportunity to add additional rock, coral, and livestock to my tank. It was unfortunate because shortly after I started my tank, my brother started a 210g tank. In October of 2022 the seal broke on his tank. My tank had been running successful for months and we were able to transfer his coral and some live stock to my tank.

My original inhabitants were

• 2 Ocellaris Clownfish
• Yellow watchman
• TigerPistol shrimp
• Blue Hippo Tang
• Aptasia Eating File Fish
• Orchid Dottyback
• Electric Blue Damsel
• 2 Skunk Shimp
• Blue Ricordea
• Eagle Eye Zoa
• Green Birdsnest
• Space Invader Pectinia

What was added

• Firefish
• Snowflake Ocellaris
• Bi-colored Angelfish
• Blood Shrimp
• 2 Skunk Shrimp
• Blastomussa
• Trachyphylliidae
• Galaxia
• Mt Dew toadstool
• Space Invader Pectinia
• Torch
• Frogspawn
• Blue Frankenstein Leptoseris
• assorted Acans
• Mystic Sunrise Montipora
• Sun Coral
• Honeycomb Leptastrea

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #3

I needed and ATO. I was sick of filling this tank up as it would lose about a gallon a day. I purchased and water tank that was 5 gal that would fit on the side next to my sump. I purchased the Prisim ATO. it was so nice to only have to fill the ATO Revisor about every 5 days. I am sure their will come a time when I want to upgrade to 10 gal for my ATO.

 

[Jtuvey]

Update/Upgrade #4

Dec 2022 Catastrophic failure. All my fault.

I took my family on a work trip as I had many times before. As always I had the tank all setup and prepared for the 3 day trip. after piecing all the details back together when I returned from my trip this is what figured happened.

When we leave, our Nest was set to go into Eco mode, dropping the temp in the house to 50 degrees. I live in Northern Utah so winter is very cold. Well everything on the tank functioned as normal. However I did not realize the Inkbird controller had a setting that would turn it off after it had been constantly heating for over a set amount of hours.

Well as you can imagine when my house is at 50 degrees, the two 300 watt heaters were heating the tank but it was taking longer than usually. The Inkbird controller did exactly what it was programed to do, it shut down after heating for over 3 hrs. It sent me an alert but I did not see it. By the time I got home, the tank was at 50 degrees.

I was able to add hot Saltwater in small doses and and got the heaters started. I did lose some corals however, all of the fish, and inverts survived. I must add most of the coral survived with the exception of the Trach, Blasto, torch, and Mystic Montipora. The frogspawn lived but seemed to be stunted and would never have full polyp extension again.

I was very lucky and I learned my lesson. My Nest thermostat does not drop below 65 when I leave. I fixed the Inkbird to allow for longer run times in the winter and I always have someone come check on my tank.

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #5

I have always been a DYI type of person. When I found the RoboTank controller using a Raspberry Pi I was hooked. I did a ton of research and ultimately purchased the prebuilt kit in January 2023. I first used this to monitor PH and sump temperature (since the Inkbird measured temp in the tank). I have been holding out for the RoboTank Outlet module which I plan to add one day.

Since the purchase I have build a few devices to connect to this controller. I have a dose pump running All For Reef.

I had created a valve system to open the air flow to a CO2 scrubber when the PH levels dropped below 7.9. This did work but, but was not as effective as I hoped it would be.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Excited to follow along!

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #6

After the the Deep Freeze of Dec 2022, I struggled purchasing much of any coral. I wanted to make sure I had really built up some safe guards. Also I wasn't super fond of my original scaping. So in Feb of 2023 My wife and I decided to change things up, many of the surviving corals were doing ok but we didn't want to do too much with them. So we redesigned the rock scape the best we could withing disturbing the coral to much.

below is a picture of how it turned out. This gave me some additional space for coral.

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #7

No major changes from Feb 2023 to Feb 2025, and now It's time for new lights and flow pumps! It was finally time, I had been struggling with Coral growth for quite some time, while some of my corals grew significantly others seemed to be struggling. I strongly believed this was due to the lack of lighting. I had tried to supplement lighting with a two bulb T5 but it still didn't seem to be enough.

Knowing that I was about to spend thousands on new lights I wanted to make the best decision for my setup. I had spent the last 3 years thinking about which lights I would upgrade to if given the opportunity. To my surprise I found a post discussing the Reefi lights. I had never heard of them before and I was very curious. I did my homework, and ultimately decided to purchase 3 of them for my 120g. This may be overkill, but I like the idea of edge to edge lighting, and I could turn them down if needed.

Installing them was a bit of a challenge. I purchased the mounting brackets as I did not want to suspend the lights from the ceiling, and I was hoping I had just enough rim space to mount them. Also I decided to remove the canopy as it was just a nuisance and always in my way. The aquarium I purchased had a glass euro brace along the top edge of the tank.

Well when the lights arrived, I was not able to install the bracket which really I was not surprised. So it was time to figure out my dilemma. I looked only for options and could not really find anything except purchasing a bracket that would go across my entire tank.

After a 3:00 am epiphany the idea was to cut three 4" long pieces of a 3"x1" plastic molding. Then adhere them to the back of the tank so that about 1.5" was sticking above the rim of the tank. It would then give me a surface to mount on. I found some 3M permanent double sided adhesive to adhere the blocks to the back of my tank. This seemed to work surprisingly well.

I attached a picture of the final look. After about 2 days one of the lights was drooping. I realized that the adhesive did not stick well to the black film on the back of the tank. but it was mostly due to the weigh of the light pulling the mount away from the tank. So I re-adhered the blocks, and put a dense foam on the other side. to hold it against the tank and wall. The have not moved since, so I am going to call it a success.

I felt the look was better this way and I had the space I wanted to work in the tank when needed. I am very happy with this upgrade and love the Reefi Uno 2.x lights.

 

[Jtuvey]

Upgrade/Update #8

After the new lights were installed. I have run into a few challenges making me decide it was time change the rockscape again. This time it was going to be a big over hall. I had three main reasons I needed to make this change.

1. My Rasta Zoas were not happy being directly under the intense light from the Reefi lights. They were starting to shrink and wither away.
2. The Blue Frankenstein Lepto had made its self my arch nemesis. I have never see any coral as invasive as this one. It was growing rapidly and killing anything it touched. I will admit it was not placed right and to top it off I had moved the original frag to another location and it was taking over that spot as well. It needed to be stopped and after trying to kill this coral with a few failed attempts it seemed to be coming back with a vengeance.
3. I felt like I had so much wasted space and no room to expand.

So thus began the weeks long changes to my tank. I say weeks long as I would be pulling rock out cutting it building structures and putting it back in. All of the coral needed to be removed from the rocks and I wanted to take this a bit slow as I did not want make my tank recycle by removing all of the nitrifying bacteria at once.

On this post I have attached pictures of what my tank looked like just before the change. The next post will show what the finished product looks like.

 

[Jtuvey]

This post will bring us up to date.

I understand this was very drastic and many of my corals are now starting over however I believe this will be for the best. It seems like everything now has room to grow.

I just put the last piece in on Sunday. I was not sure if I all the changes would have started a new cycle I did not change anything in the sump. I would remove a couple rocks and add a piece, then wait a couple weeks and do another piece. I did not want to lose anything and was not sure if I would end up triggering an mini cycle. So at the same time started Microbactor 7 daily.

Some of the corals may take some time to recover but overall I think everything is doing great. I feel I accomplished my three goals.

My Mt. Dew Toadstool loves its new spot and seems to have doubled in size since putting it in the back. I did not lose anything I did ended up saving a small frag of my Rasta and Eagle Eye zoas.

Feel free to critique, as I can still make changes.

Thanks everyone for sticking with me as I got my build caught up. I will keep regular update from hear on out.