Waterbox 180.5 - the BioReef!

tenurepro

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[FTS May 2022]
Greetings all! My SPS dominant reefer 250 is more than 5.5 years old now (www.reef2reef.com/threads/tenurepros-redsea-reefer-250.295764/#post-3619469) and I've been thinking about an upgrade for a bit over a year now. The reefer 250 was the largest tank that i can fit in our home - that is until last summer when i finally finished our basement. With the extra room, i've decided to shut down the reefer 250 and migrate my sps collection and fish to a bigger tank. After a lot of research - i decided to go for a Waterbox 180.5; it is literally the largest tank i can buy that can actually make it through the main entrance of the house, navigate a 90 degree turn to a flight of stairs to a landing, then navigate a tight 180 degree turn to another flight of stairs to the basement... I ordered the tank in Sept. 2021, and it was finally delivered to my garage two weekends ago.
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I managed to put together the cabinet, which is really well built. One little bit of advice; if your floors are uneven (my basement floor slopes towards a floor drain), the supplied leveling feet will not do it - they are only good for correcting up to 1/4". But waterbox uses M6 bolts, so i managed to find longer leveling feet really easily, which did the job nicely.
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After the stand was up, i made two plywood panels behind the tank for mounting equipment and power strips. I installed an under cabinet LED lighting system from amazon. I also got two smart wifi power outlets from Kasa which are controllable via Alexa...
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So now i can just say - Alexa, turn on cabinet lights, and voila! This should allow for hands-free control of tank equipment while i am doing maintenance.

After the cabinet was all ready, its was time for the big move. What made this move possible was this amazing thing called a 'stair climber' they've been around for a while, but i had neverf heard of one before. Its essentially a heavy duty hand truck with a motor that allows the truck and its load to climb up or down stairs on their own power... You just need to balance and maneuver the cart, but the motor does all the heavy lifting on the steps. have a look at the last video to see it in action with a life-size replica of the tank (hey .... practice makes perfect!)
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I also got 4 x 8" suction cups, which made lifting the cart a breeze. So on the weekend, 5 of my best buddies came over. We lifted the tank on the hand struck - i placed a 1/4" sheet of plywood gluded to a 1/4" sheet of foam to pad the glass where it makes contact with the metal hand truck to avoid scratching the glass. it took about 1.5h to make the move, but happy to report that it went smoothly... a lot of effort was needed to support and manoeuvre the stairclimber, but no damage was done to the tank, the house, and any of my buddies!

I'll be tracking the progress of this build on my YouTube channel - here is the first vid showing the tank, stand build, and the equipment used during the move. I'll be updating this page as we go along....



The next step will be sump and plumbing installation, and leak testing! wish me luck!

thanks and cheers!
 
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tenurepro

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Oh, before i forgot, here is how i built the modular aquascape for this tank, which will be sps dominant. The dry rocks were soaked in RODI for about a month, and have been sitting in saltwater for another month... this should hopefully make for a smooth and quick startup time.
 
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Quick tip - the return line that comes with the 180.5 is 32 mm (at the Union connection). You can easily use a converter Union that has 32 mm male and 1” female connection. This allows you to run standard imperial pvc downstream. Here I have the converter Union, a 1” to 3/4” reducer and a 3/4” barb connection for my vectra m1
 
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Ok a bit of a design flow… the overflow of the 180.5 has two circular cutouts to
Attach the lockline return nozzles; these return cutouts are LOWER than the weir combs on the overflow by a few mm. The return cutouts are not sealed in any way, so in a power out situation, water drains down to the bottom of the return cutouts, letting sn additional 2.5 gal of water into the sump resulting in uncomfortably high water levels in the sump. See pics. Not sure what the best way to seal the return Nozzles … any ideas?
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Ok folks / things have been moving fast! About three weeks ago, I put my aquascape in, added 100 lbs of sand (20 lbs ocean direct with that awesome ocean bacteria :) and 80 lbs of argalive reef grade. I filled up the tank with salt water, connected my backup jecod 4000 dcs return pump and let the tank run - unheated for a couple of weeks. I had an ammonia badge on the whole time, and I had no ammonia. My rocks were in a saltwater brute seeded with Dr Tim’s one and only for a good 2-3 month, which explains the lack of ammonia. For heat, I decided to go with 2x500w Finnix heaters controlled with an ink bird temp controller.
 
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Lights, flow, salinity, first fish
Flow
: for this sps tank; I decided to go with 4 mp40s from ecotech. I had 2 mp10s and 2 max spect gyres on my Reefer 250; while I liked the flow do the gyres, they were always a pain in the butt to clean relative to the mp10s and their flow noticeably decreased when dirty. I also like the clean mounting options with the vortechs. I managed to get two used mp40s from a local Reefer and I got two new ones from a local LFS. I initially wanted to have 2 mp40s on the side and 2 on the back, but i decided to try having all 4 mp40s on the back... it makes for a very clean and nearly invisible solution and allows for lovely views of the tank from the side - unobstructed by power-heads or cables.
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Lights
Having had success with Radions with my redsea reefer 250, i've decided to stick with what i know. I exptrapolated how many radion 'pucks' i need for the water box based on the current setup with the reefer 250 (3 xr15's). The math suggested i need a total of 7 'pucks' (=xr15's) on the waterbox. So i decided to buy 2 new xr30s (which are twice as large as the xr15s) and then move my 3 xr15s from the reefer250 to the waterbox once all my corals are migrated. I'll do a par map once all the lights are moved, but i suspect this will give me wall to wall PAR of 250 to 350 across the tank.
I've decided to use the RMS mounting arms because i like their clean look, and cable management is so easy because the power cables just run behind the RMS mounts. One thing that i want to create with this tank is a very zen feel... no visible cables and nothing the obstructs or distracts from the view of the corals and the fish. I think the rms mounts help with this ethos.
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Salinity
For my topoff system, i decided to go with the Tunze osmolator. I had one running on the redsea reefer 250 and i was super dependable (no issues in 6 years). The one issue i had was that i am using a remote RODI reservoir which is actually higher than my tank. So using the standard osmolator pump would have been problematic, as after the pump shuts off, water would still move from my reservoir to my waterbox via a gravity siphon. i explored a couple of DIY ideas for breaking the gravity siphon (e.g. putting a splitter and RO tubing well above my RODI container and the tube that carries RODI water to my tank, this would allow air to enter the tubing and break the gravity siphon when the pump was off. Another possible solution is to make a little hole in the rodi tubing inside the reservoir but above the max water line in the reservoir... this would also allow air into the line breaking the gravity siphon. These solutions would have worked, so long as the tubes/holes allowing air in were maintained and not blocked by buildup, or insects, or dust, etc. etc.... workable but not ideal. In the end, i discovered that Tunze already had a solution for this - mentioned in the osmolator manual... see its good to read the manuals :) . They made a solenoid valve the plug directly into the osmolator controller instead of the pump.... when the water line goes below the optical sensor, the osmolator opens the solenoid allowing water to flow into the tank via gravity... when the desired water level is reached, the osmolator closes the solenoid. As an extra precaution - in case the solenoid fails - i connected the output from the tunze solenoid into a float valve. So if the solenoid fails, the rising water in the sump would close the float valve and prevent the sump from flooding.
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If you are interested about my RODI and saltwater mixing station - have a look here

and here


First fish!
Here is where the fun starts! the waterbox 180 will now allow me to expand my fish collection! more fish, and bigger fish, yay! High on my list are herbivores! ... if you have see this video about what controls algae in natural reefs - please have a look - i promise it will change your view about nutrient management in reef systems :)


So i wanted to get another tang (i already have a yellow tang in my reefer 250 that will be moved), and a rabbit fish. I like to personally QT all my fish, but with my current setup, i can really only QT 1 fish at a time. There is a local guy in Toronto that is known for QT'ing fish in copper for a bit of a premium. His supplier had a one spot fox face, so i asked him to QT one for me. Their supplier also had a fish that i always wanted to try... perhaps not right away, but passion and excitement won the day, and placed an order for a small male blue throat trigger fish. They tend to have a good reputation in terms of not munching corals and being tolerant of other fish. I also picked up a lovely and tiny tomini tang and i am QT'ing it myself using the hybrid TTM method. I have placed the order for the trigger and fox face in Feb, and i finally got them in last weekend. I did a little acclimation and into the waterbox they went! It was great seeing fish in the waterbox, and i loved that they are already making use of all the caves and tunnels that i built into the aquascape! The trigger - we named him 'Frank Sinatra' because of his blue eyes - is so fun to watch, and is already eating from my hand. The Fox face - 'foxy cleopatra' :) austin powers reference - is a tad bit shy, but she follows around Frank and has been eating really well. If all goes well, the Tomini will be added Sunday night.

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Next steps
Once the Tomini is in, the plan is to move the sps collection and the fish / CUC from the reefer 250 into the waterbox... if all goes well, that should be early next week... fingers crossed and i'll keep you updated!

 
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A few long over due updates.
1) I sadly lost my Blue Throat Trigger; he went carpet surfing literally two days before my lid kit came! Very upsetting. I had ordered a Redsea DIY lid kit well before i got my tank, when it came the box was bent in half and everything was ruined. the LFS said they ordered another one, but it never came. My trigger was being QTed by a local person here, and i had to pick him up at a designated time. I had no other tank running so i had to put him in the WB180.5 without a lid. Checked with the LFS, and still now word on the redsea kit. So i put in another order online on a Monday... net was supposed to come on Friday, but got delayed... Trigger went carpet surfing on Saturday, net came Monday... :( dang it! The red sea kit was a bit tricky to put together - i had some many corners and zig zags.. i couldn't really use the spline and spline roller, so i gave up and used zip ties to hold the net to the frame...
 
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I added a tomini tang to the fish gang.... he was QT'ed with the hybrid TTM method; here is a little video about my experiences with the protocol; overall, i am very happy with it!
 
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Ok, so sps have been looking unhappy for since the move. i first thought it was because of 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates... i slowly started dosing potassium nitrate and phosphates till levels are 2 ppm and 0.1 ppm nitrates and phosphates, respectively. Still frags looked pale. I then though it was the lights... i used to run the 3 radions @ 80% in the reefer, but i lowered the lights (and the new XR30s) to 60% to ease the corals into their new home. I thought that perhaps that the SPS need more light. I was going to increase to 80% but i thought i should check par first... i couldn't believe it, the new light setup @ 60% was giving PAR around 400 to 500 when the old setup at 80% was giving PAR around 200 to 300 - i was overcooking my corals! Turns out that i made a mistake when figuring out how many more lights i need to run on the WB180.5; i assumed a linear relationship between tank length, # of lights, and PAR levels... I though that to keep the par the same, i need to add 1-XR15 equivalent very 2 ft of tank. This assumes that a coral is getting its light from a 2 ft area overhead (and nothing further). But in reality, light from radions that are 3 to 6 ft away will still send light diagonally to any given spot resulting in more light that my simple model would suggest. The good news, is that i don't need to turn up the lights as much, and i have very good and consistent coverage across my aquascape. So the SPS where unhappy because i put them in a tank with more PAR and no nutrients. I cranked the lights down to 40%, and with the higher nutrients, things are starting to look good again. So i couldn't resist adding a few more nice corals. Pictures below! Thanks for following!


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