Zachs 220 "In Wall" Display

[Reef2zach]

I have a 220 gallon display with 75 gallon sump. this is my 2nd reef tank and and its taken me almost a year to get it up and running. It has pretty much sat empty in my basement untill i had enough funds to get it fixed and in my wall. Finally have it up and running and in the past few months have added a few critters and some magnificent fish.

 

[Maritimer]

Nice setup, Zach!

As an inwall, I'm not sure how important it is to have a bit of distance between rock and glass, and I think your 'scape works, that aside. Liking the way that pair of blue-jaws looks in there, too!

~Bruce, whose blue-jaw is wearing a feminine outfit, and who's (slowly!) building a 220 himself

 

[Reef2zach]

Nice setup, Zach!

As an inwall, I'm not sure how important it is to have a bit of distance between rock and glass, and I think your 'scape works, that aside. Liking the way that pair of blue-jaws looks in there, too!

~Bruce, whose blue-jaw is wearing a feminine outfit, and who's (slowly!) building a 220 himself

Thanks! I just picked up the pair of blue jaws recently and they are amazing fish (my favorite trigger). I hear you on the slowly part, im only running a 4 bulb t5 on here which is why there are a lack of coral right now. saving up for the Radion G4s that seem to be all the rage these days. Hoping to start stocking coral in the next few months

 

[Reef2zach]

This build was kind of a "tight budget" build, if there is even such a thing in this hobby. But I tried to cut costs where I thought was possible but also spent money where I thought was necessary.

First off I bought this 220 for 500 bucks used, because the guy that had it thought it looked dumb with the braces and broke them off. Well lo and behold the seals broke and he was too lazy to fix it himself so he threw the 220 along with about another 500 dollers worth of extras on craigslist for 500 bucks. He did not disclose the leaking till I showed up to pay for it however and I had just drove about 2 and a half ours to pick this monster up. Not wanting to leave empty handed I decided to take on the task of resealing the tank and using it as my main display. The whole process of resealing took about a week, if your interested in trying something like this yourself there are plenty of tutorials online that will assists in doing this. there is however very limited resources in where to find materials like the proper sealent/ silicone or where to get a brace for a 220 gallon aquarium. I dug around the web and found that the best silicone to use for large tanks is the RTV 100 series silicone this stuff is tough as nails, and is food safe so it doesn't have the harmful toxins that can leach out and kill your aquarium. Most big box stores wont sell this silicone though but you can find it on Walmarts website for around 10 bucks a tube. It comes in red/black/and clear I believe. (Make sure you let the silicone set for at least 7 days before adding water)

After I had re sealed it and filled it with water i took a little break from the build and let the water just sit in the tank in the wall for about 2 months, I wanted to be sure there weren't any leaks before I added anything.
Next was on my list was rock. Now you can find reef rock at just about any LFS or online retailer. But in Minnesota live rock can get very expensive very fast so I once again took to the handy dandy list of craig and started searching for rocks that people were getting rid of to get out of the hobby. ( can you believe there's people that want out? ) I didn't find all live rock and I was willing to settle for dead rock since I had a little rock from my 75 i could seed my tank with. I wound up getting around 100 pounds of dry rock from different people in the Minneapolis area for 200 bucks and about 50 pounds of live rock for 100 bucks. Thats 2 dollars a pound which in my neck of the woods is practically stealing since live rock at almost every store is 10ish dollars a pound and dry rock is about 7 or 8 dollars a pound. The rest of the rock I purchased online from www.reefcleaners.org ( Im not a reefcleaners employee I was not payed to mention them lol) however I am impressed with this rock very porous and clean and if I decide to add more rock I can without cycling, since they treat the rock and it has zero dead matter on it. like you could probably eat off this rock its so clean. this was about another 200 bucks.

So at this point Im about 1000 dollars deep into this tank and I have really nothing going on yet haha this is where the corner cutting stopped and I started to try and get quality products. I next proceded to buy two duel head power heads for flow, a BRS 6 stage RO/DI (Ive had several and this thing is by far the best Ive ever used), a brs carbon/GFO rector (once again BRS makes some great stuff and this reactor works so well), A Hydor Protien skimmer that is rated for over 300 gallons (Im not sure where I stand on this skimmer yet, It was rather expensive at about the 300-400 dollar range but it has overflow issues and I havent seen it do any crazy skimming yet) I was fortunate enough to not need to buy return pumps since the tank came with them, im running two heaters rated for 150 gallon aquariums (with all the pumps and lights running they seem to keep up just fine with temp), and lastly the lights which I dont currently own yet are going to be the Echotech Radion G4s. (currently running a small 4 bulb t5 that was on my 75 for the last few years)

As far as cycling goes this tank was pretty much like any other, It had a really bad outbreak of diatoms then a REALLY bad outbreak of green hair algea (the hair algea scared me since its what almost drove me out of the hobby with my first tank. But i made weekly water changes untill my nitrates and phospates were low enough to safely add a cuc crew. i then threw in about a dozen of every possible snail and crab my LFS carried, ( astrea, cerith, turbo, margarita, blue/red leg hermit crabs) about 4 to 6 weeks after adding my CUC the algea had completely been irradicated. Now this might not be the case for people with fish stuggling with hair algea since I was putting zero nutrients into the tank I knew it had to starve out eventually.

Now I had a choice and that was fish or coral, (Im not making a 6 figure income like some of these guys on this site so I can't do both at once ) the radions were still out of reach for now so i decided to stock some fish to give guests something to look at. The current fish list is as follows. This number may change up in the following years and I will be posting pictures soon as well

1 Convict Tang
1 Yellow Tang
1 Tomini Tang
1 Lawnmower Blennie
1 Male Blue Jaw Trigger
1 Female Blue Jaw Trigger

 

[Reef2zach]