jtshipley
Community Member
Alright guys im gonna start a build thread for me and my fathers tank just for fun.
so some back story, i first started into the hobby by self interest, at the time i worked at one of our local fish stores in the area. we had a few saltwater tanks and i didnt know anything about them, a fellow employee talked me into getting a fluval evo..... and thats when it started haha. I filled my evo on august 8th of 2019. My dad showed some interest in it at first but wasnt too impressed. By august 17th i got him too buy a 125 petco special and we started that build. Months went by and we are both really into it, i ended up getting a new job at a more prestigious lfs geared alot more towards saltwater. i am lucky to be accompanied by a few very knowledgeable people and have learned alot from them but have done a TON of my own research. After months of learning and dreaming me and my dad decided to get a red sea 750 so i was super pumped and went to my work only to find out we couldnt get one for 2 months because of the corona virus shut down, bummed i went home and was scrolling through facebook marketplace looking around and ended up finding a waterbox 220.6 brand new that had not seen water yet, im located in pittsburgh pa and it was about 10 minutes from downtown washington dc, we got ahold of the seller and arranged a date to go get it. It was on the third floor of an apartment which was not easy to get down haha. Once it was home we did some planning and ordering. I will list all equipment we have so far below. It finally came the day to setup, the night previous to this we took as much coral out of the 125 as we could, splitting it between my evo and our frag tank which looked liked it was gonna overflow with coral. Sunday morning we carefully drained the 125 into 55 gallon tubs and transferred rocks and fish, put heaters and powerheads with them and moved the 125 out. We then with the help of two of my buddies moved the 220 stand in, leveled it, then the tank checked level again and we were good. I started to do the plumbing which was very very easy. After that was done we had half of the new scape done with dry rock, we moved that in and then started to pump old tank water into the display while doing the “wet side” of the scape, this way tricky because some of the rocks we had did have coral on them that we couldn’t get off. We then finished with all old tank water and started with new saltwater we had made in 55 gallon barrels. Once the tank finally filled i moved pre seeded bio media to the sump and we waited for about 3 hours testing ammonia every hour before fish were put in..... and heres where we ran into a problem, remember i said the plumbing was super easy yeah well everything was going well until the return line blew off the return pump and shot water everywhere, after staring at it blankly i turned everything off and we made a home depo run. At home depo it took us about 30 minutes to figure out a fix. Went home fixed it and we were up and running again. After water was cleared up a little fish went in. Problem #2 ammonia spike. Our ammonia went up to .5ppm for the first two days and somehow between dosing prime and bio-spira not one thing was lost. The only thing that was “lost” was one of the yellow tangs because he was being a bully, he is in timeout in the sump. At day 3 ammonia stabilized and we put coral in. Day 3 aswell we did wire management and a complete test of water parameters which all was good alk was a little low and mag was a little high.... weird. We installed lights in the cabinets and some more equipment. Working on the ato and putting a shelf above it soon. Skimmer will be up and running by monday aswell as the ato.
Equipment list
• Waterbox 220.6
• 2 Orphek Atlantik g4 v2 ( Going to get two more)
• 2 Red sea Reef wave 45
• Eco tech vectra m2 (wish we went bigger)
• Neptune ATK ( auto top off
Will have full apex soon
• Inkbird controller
• BRS titanium heater
• AI prime fuge light
• Simplicity 240DC skimmer
Equipment wanted
• 2 more orpheks
• Full apex system
• Possibly bigger return
I will now attach some pictures, the 125 before the breakdown and setup and the waterbox currently. If you have made it this far thanks for reading and drop some constructive criticism and follow along. This tank is gonna be ****** and has lots to come!
so some back story, i first started into the hobby by self interest, at the time i worked at one of our local fish stores in the area. we had a few saltwater tanks and i didnt know anything about them, a fellow employee talked me into getting a fluval evo..... and thats when it started haha. I filled my evo on august 8th of 2019. My dad showed some interest in it at first but wasnt too impressed. By august 17th i got him too buy a 125 petco special and we started that build. Months went by and we are both really into it, i ended up getting a new job at a more prestigious lfs geared alot more towards saltwater. i am lucky to be accompanied by a few very knowledgeable people and have learned alot from them but have done a TON of my own research. After months of learning and dreaming me and my dad decided to get a red sea 750 so i was super pumped and went to my work only to find out we couldnt get one for 2 months because of the corona virus shut down, bummed i went home and was scrolling through facebook marketplace looking around and ended up finding a waterbox 220.6 brand new that had not seen water yet, im located in pittsburgh pa and it was about 10 minutes from downtown washington dc, we got ahold of the seller and arranged a date to go get it. It was on the third floor of an apartment which was not easy to get down haha. Once it was home we did some planning and ordering. I will list all equipment we have so far below. It finally came the day to setup, the night previous to this we took as much coral out of the 125 as we could, splitting it between my evo and our frag tank which looked liked it was gonna overflow with coral. Sunday morning we carefully drained the 125 into 55 gallon tubs and transferred rocks and fish, put heaters and powerheads with them and moved the 125 out. We then with the help of two of my buddies moved the 220 stand in, leveled it, then the tank checked level again and we were good. I started to do the plumbing which was very very easy. After that was done we had half of the new scape done with dry rock, we moved that in and then started to pump old tank water into the display while doing the “wet side” of the scape, this way tricky because some of the rocks we had did have coral on them that we couldn’t get off. We then finished with all old tank water and started with new saltwater we had made in 55 gallon barrels. Once the tank finally filled i moved pre seeded bio media to the sump and we waited for about 3 hours testing ammonia every hour before fish were put in..... and heres where we ran into a problem, remember i said the plumbing was super easy yeah well everything was going well until the return line blew off the return pump and shot water everywhere, after staring at it blankly i turned everything off and we made a home depo run. At home depo it took us about 30 minutes to figure out a fix. Went home fixed it and we were up and running again. After water was cleared up a little fish went in. Problem #2 ammonia spike. Our ammonia went up to .5ppm for the first two days and somehow between dosing prime and bio-spira not one thing was lost. The only thing that was “lost” was one of the yellow tangs because he was being a bully, he is in timeout in the sump. At day 3 ammonia stabilized and we put coral in. Day 3 aswell we did wire management and a complete test of water parameters which all was good alk was a little low and mag was a little high.... weird. We installed lights in the cabinets and some more equipment. Working on the ato and putting a shelf above it soon. Skimmer will be up and running by monday aswell as the ato.
Equipment list
• Waterbox 220.6
• 2 Orphek Atlantik g4 v2 ( Going to get two more)
• 2 Red sea Reef wave 45
• Eco tech vectra m2 (wish we went bigger)
• Neptune ATK ( auto top off
Will have full apex soon
• Inkbird controller
• BRS titanium heater
• AI prime fuge light
• Simplicity 240DC skimmer
Equipment wanted
• 2 more orpheks
• Full apex system
• Possibly bigger return
I will now attach some pictures, the 125 before the breakdown and setup and the waterbox currently. If you have made it this far thanks for reading and drop some constructive criticism and follow along. This tank is gonna be ****** and has lots to come!
