1000 Gallon Build- Here we go- Lots of Pictures

[gwhunter]

Absolutely incredible build(house too)! I realize this it "Reef Central" but that masterpiece is fitting a angel display! Corals are nice but if find myself stressing over them way more than beautiful angels & tangs. Nothing worse after a stressful day at work than coming home to some issue with the corals imho.

Matt

 

[IUfan]

No time for words- just pictures. Details later. Everything flowing well. One minor minor tiny leak. Plumber coming over to fix. Dailing in the pumps so that the flow perfectly matches the return. Everything going great!

Did they deliver salt water or Freshwater and then you added the salt? Curious

 

[Ricardo18]

What type of sand are you using?..I just ordered Tropical Eden Reeflakes and yours looks similar. Or Florida Crushed Coral?

 

[Socaltoaz]

Absolutely incredible build(house too)! I realize this it "Reef Central" but that masterpiece is fitting a angel display! Corals are nice but if find myself stressing over them way more than beautiful angels & tangs. Nothing worse after a stressful day at work than coming home to some issue with the corals imho.

Matt

Thank you. I will be doing angels and then add other "corals" to complement the tank. Ive got some green star polyps in the tank that are doing great and my angel hasn't touched them. I understand they are fast growing, a bit of a pest and not a true coral but I like their look- like flowing grass so I plan on having a big rock covered with them.

Ill also be getting a blue face and these two fish will be my showcase fish. Ive got clowns, a couple of hippo tangs and some green chromis. My one and only angel is a baby emperor angel. Blue face coming this week. After that the plan is two juvenile nano tangs and then Ill be done for a while. Ill add more "coral" but frankly will have to be a bit of trial and error to see what doesnt get nipped by the angels. I also have a couple of cleaner shrimp who are very active and a couple of fire shrimp who are more reclusive and hide more. There are 4 emerald crabs who do a ton of clean up and algae control.

At first I was concerned about not being able to do corals and angels but to me, there are enough creatures like green star polyps that the true reefers don't consider coral but are still beautiful to me that I can have my cake and eat it too by having both.

Did they deliver salt water or Freshwater and then you added the salt? Curious

It was salt water. cost was about 450 bucks for 900 gallons and the process took about 30 minutes. super easy. Was the best way for me to get the tank filled and cycled.

What type of sand are you using?..I just ordered Tropical Eden Reeflakes and yours looks similar. Or Florida Crushed Coral?

I have florida crushed coral.


This week was a fun week for me and a milestone for my tank. Family and I took a 10 day trip out of town. I have to tell you I was super nervous about leaving the tank alone like that. I fully expected to come home to a flood or worse- an electrical fire. I know, Im freaking out but it was just nerve wracking to leave not be home in case something went wrong.

I had set up an Eheim auto feeder and set it to feed flakes, brine and mysis shrimp 4 times a day. It was probably a bit much but the feeder did one turn four times a day to ensure that everyone was fed properly.

The Reef Genesis was also set to change 6 gallons of water a day. My salt water mixing station as well as my RO/DI top of tanks were filled up and ready to do water changes and top offs. However I had to shut off my RO/DI top off tank because my pump was creating a siphon so I just did a big top off and calculated the amount of evaporation that would occur in 10 days and filled up my sump to accommodate. Worse case would have been if the siphon in the top off would have added 100 gallons and flooded or lowered the salinity too much. So I just shut that off completely. I will add an anti siphon value and then the top off will be fully operational. Im using the Genesis Storm for top offs and the Genesis Renew for the water changes.

My review on the Renew (thanks Slief for the suggestion) is absolutely phenomenal. Water changes are as simple as setting how much water you want to change, whether you want to do that daily, weekly or all at once. Push start and the system does the rest. Very well designed and highly recommended by me.

The Genesis Storm, I cant give a full review yet- as its not fully set up because of my siphon but it seems like a bit of overkill for me. Lots of float sensors, lots of fail safes- probably will make more sense once I can get it fully up and running. Right now, its in limbo. Ill do a more thorough review later.

With regards to the vacation, I came back home and everything was perfect. Other than the sump needing a top off from 10 days of evaporation and some algae on the glass, fish and shrimp were doing great. Everyone was out and about and swimming.

I came home, I did a 20 gallon water change with a push of a button on the Reef Genesis as I knew there was a ton of crap collected in the filter socks- I cleaned the filter socks- and ran the wash down on my skimmer.

The wash down on the skimmer is set up with a line into the collection cup and I simply flip a valve which puts pressurized water into the cup which drains into the drain. This makes maintenance very easy for the skimmer as I never really have to open it and clean it. I also have a wiper. I have not yet set up the Apex but once I do, both of these will be controlled by the Apex system. A solenoid valve on the water wash down and turn the wiper on once a day and skimmer maintenance is done and easy.

So all in all, the trip was a success, the tank is doing great and Im going to get a couple of pieces this morning to add to the tank. I still have some wire and cable clean up to do in the fish room and Ill post pictures after all that is done and the tank is a bit more stocked.

After a 20 year hiatus, Im really enjoying coming back to the hobby, the tank is doing great and because we took the time on the front end to get proper equipment and set up, Ive had minimal issues. Livestock is happy, healthy and eating well. No issues with algae or nitrates or any other problems. The almost 1000 gallon total volume certainly helps to keep things stable and gives me a lot of options to keep the tank stocked with stuff that normally would not work.

Happy holidays everyone- enjoy your Sunday and Ill do a big photo update after the new year.

 

[slief]

Thank you. I will be doing angels and then add other "corals" to complement the tank. Ive got some green star polyps in the tank that are doing great and my angel hasn't touched them. I understand they are fast growing, a bit of a pest and not a true coral but I like their look- like flowing grass so I plan on having a big rock covered with them.

Ill also be getting a blue face and these two fish will be my showcase fish. Ive got clowns, a couple of hippo tangs and some green chromis. My one and only angel is a baby emperor angel. Blue face coming this week. After that the plan is two juvenile nano tangs and then Ill be done for a while. Ill add more "coral" but frankly will have to be a bit of trial and error to see what doesnt get nipped by the angels. I also have a couple of cleaner shrimp who are very active and a couple of fire shrimp who are more reclusive and hide more. There are 4 emerald crabs who do a ton of clean up and algae control.

At first I was concerned about not being able to do corals and angels but to me, there are enough creatures like green star polyps that the true reefers don't consider coral but are still beautiful to me that I can have my cake and eat it too by having both.




It was salt water. cost was about 450 bucks for 900 gallons and the process took about 30 minutes. super easy. Was the best way for me to get the tank filled and cycled.



I have florida crushed coral.


This week was a fun week for me and a milestone for my tank. Family and I took a 10 day trip out of town. I have to tell you I was super nervous about leaving the tank alone like that. I fully expected to come home to a flood or worse- an electrical fire. I know, Im freaking out but it was just nerve wracking to leave not be home in case something went wrong.

I had set up an Eheim auto feeder and set it to feed flakes, brine and mysis shrimp 4 times a day. It was probably a bit much but the feeder did one turn four times a day to ensure that everyone was fed properly.

The Reef Genesis was also set to change 6 gallons of water a day. My salt water mixing station as well as my RO/DI top of tanks were filled up and ready to do water changes and top offs. However I had to shut off my RO/DI top off tank because my pump was creating a siphon so I just did a big top off and calculated the amount of evaporation that would occur in 10 days and filled up my sump to accommodate. Worse case would have been if the siphon in the top off would have added 100 gallons and flooded or lowered the salinity too much. So I just shut that off completely. I will add an anti siphon value and then the top off will be fully operational. Im using the Genesis Storm for top offs and the Genesis Renew for the water changes.

My review on the Renew (thanks Slief for the suggestion) is absolutely phenomenal. Water changes are as simple as setting how much water you want to change, whether you want to do that daily, weekly or all at once. Push start and the system does the rest. Very well designed and highly recommended by me.

The Genesis Storm, I cant give a full review yet- as its not fully set up because of my siphon but it seems like a bit of overkill for me. Lots of float sensors, lots of fail safes- probably will make more sense once I can get it fully up and running. Right now, its in limbo. Ill do a more thorough review later.

With regards to the vacation, I came back home and everything was perfect. Other than the sump needing a top off from 10 days of evaporation and some algae on the glass, fish and shrimp were doing great. Everyone was out and about and swimming.

I came home, I did a 20 gallon water change with a push of a button on the Reef Genesis as I knew there was a ton of crap collected in the filter socks- I cleaned the filter socks- and ran the wash down on my skimmer.

The wash down on the skimmer is set up with a line into the collection cup and I simply flip a valve which puts pressurized water into the cup which drains into the drain. This makes maintenance very easy for the skimmer as I never really have to open it and clean it. I also have a wiper. I have not yet set up the Apex but once I do, both of these will be controlled by the Apex system. A solenoid valve on the water wash down and turn the wiper on once a day and skimmer maintenance is done and easy.

So all in all, the trip was a success, the tank is doing great and Im going to get a couple of pieces this morning to add to the tank. I still have some wire and cable clean up to do in the fish room and Ill post pictures after all that is done and the tank is a bit more stocked.

After a 20 year hiatus, Im really enjoying coming back to the hobby, the tank is doing great and because we took the time on the front end to get proper equipment and set up, Ive had minimal issues. Livestock is happy, healthy and eating well. No issues with algae or nitrates or any other problems. The almost 1000 gallon total volume certainly helps to keep things stable and gives me a lot of options to keep the tank stocked with stuff that normally would not work.

Happy holidays everyone- enjoy your Sunday and Ill do a big photo update after the new year.

Glad to hear you had a nice trip and all was OK with your tank while you were gone. If you decide to ditch the storm which I think was a waste of money since you have the Apex, let me know. I will guide you in the right direction with a simple solution that will never siphon and will be bullet proof while also working perfectly with the Renew. All it takes is a few float switches (a redundant set for the ATO and another for too high and 1 more for too low) so you have redundancy and fail safes with alarms. Also a good perstaltic ATO pump like the Stenner I use will never siphon and will last a lifetime. Best of all is that it operates slowly so that should something go wrong, you don't flood you system with fresh water in a hurry and have time to catch it. That said, with my present ATO solution, I have never had anything go wrong in the 6 years I've been running it.

That said, for you skimmer wiper, plug the wiper motor AC Adapter into outlet 4 or 8 of your Apex EB8. It needs to be on one of those outlets due to the low power consumption. Those are the relay outlets and are designed for low consumption devices. The other outlets as triacs and don't play nice with really low consumption devices. The copy this code into the SCH outlet.

Fallback OFF
OSC 720:00/000:15/719:45 Then ON

I have the same self cleaning head and have had it for about 6 years now. This code will run it once a day at noon. It will run for 15 seconds which is plenty for that wiper to keep the inside neck clean and crud free.

 

[IUfan]

Wow, that's not actually terrible deal. 50C a gallon for salt water! Would have taken days to fill with RODI

 

[Bajie]

This is such an impressive build.
The attention to detail is real joy to read, though it has taken me a few days to get through all 50 odd pages
The only "question" that springs to mind is Will you be doing the tank maintenance yourself.
Always wonder about this on large tanks but first time I have thought to ask.
Again, thanks for documenting

 

[Socaltoaz]

Thanks Scott. I actually haven't hooked up the Apex yet. Thats a 2016 plan. Right now Im managing just fine without it but when I do hook it up, I will incorporate your programming.

Wow, that's not actually terrible deal. 50C a gallon for salt water! Would have taken days to fill with RODI

Yes- not a bad deal at all. It was cheaper to buy the water instead of making it.

This is such an impressive build.
The attention to detail is real joy to read, though it has taken me a few days to get through all 50 odd pages
The only "question" that springs to mind is Will you be doing the tank maintenance yourself.
Always wonder about this on large tanks but first time I have thought to ask.
Again, thanks for documenting

Thanks for the comments. Greatly appreciated. To be honest, when I first started I had every intention of hiring someone to come in monthly to take care of the tank. Today however the maintenance is not that big of a deal.

Weekly I clean the filter socks and wipe the glass with a magnet as needed.
The water change is automatic. I just need to "make the water" weekly. I have a 165 gallon tank that I dump pump RO water into and add salt and turn on a pump and let it circulate for a few hours. The pump is on a timer and turns on for 15 minutes a few times a day to keep the water circulating.

The RO system is almost done as soon as I get my anti siphon valve. But that fills a 100 gallon holding tank with RO water and keeps it full.

The skimmer has an auto wash down that I turn on manually and it cleans the cup and water drains automatically. Eventually Ill have this on the Apex to clean daily.

I feed the fish daily and honestly thats about it. I might have a local guy who comes in once every few months just to check everything out and make sure Im not missing anything but I think I got this handled and really the way the tank is set up I do all the maintaining of the tank myself.

Future projects are to set up some sort of auto feeding system that I can feed frozen food with- not sure how to do this but it will be a fun project to try to figure out.

I have to get the RO system finalized as soon as my supplies arrive.

Beyond that, I have no intentions currently to buy anything else for the tank other than fish and some corals. Knock on wood- we are pretty much on cruise control.

 

[Usernam Invalid]

Glad to see you are planning on maintaining the system yourself. For me makes it all that much more rewarding to see my fish and corals flourish and no one to blame but myself if they aren't.

 

[new_world_disor]

Pics of fish etc?

 

[Socaltoaz]

Glad to see you are planning on maintaining the system yourself. For me makes it all that much more rewarding to see my fish and corals flourish and no one to blame but myself if they aren't.

I didn't think I could do it but it's really not a lot of work.

Pics of fish etc?

I'll post pics after the new year.


question to the community- my reef genesis is working great and I have it set to change 6 gallons a day and 42 Gallo s a week and 168 gallons a month. My buddy said its better to do the 42 gallons all at once instead of 6 gallons a day. What say everyone? Smaller continous water changes or all at once weekly.

 

[slief]

I didn't think I could do it but it's really not a lot of work.



I'll post pics after the new year.


question to the community- my reef genesis is working great and I have it set to change 6 gallons a day and 42 Gallo s a week and 168 gallons a month. My buddy said its better to do the 42 gallons all at once instead of 6 gallons a day. What say everyone? Smaller continous water changes or all at once weekly.

From first hand experience, I don't agree with your buddy at all. Smaller daily water changes are easier on the tank and its inhabitants. You don't have an accumulation of nutrients between water changes. The quality of the tank water is consistently better and in this hobby, consistency is key. Especially with reef tanks. Don't get me wrong. A large water change is fine but with larger water changes comes having to match parameters like temp and pH closer to the display levels where as with smaller daily changes, differences in temp or pH of the new water won't have any negative impact on the larger volume. I used to do larger weekly water changes instead of the smaller daily ones. I've had this tank for 20 years now and since switching to the automatic water changes 6 years ago, my tank is happier and healthier than it's ever been. I use less water too.

I will say that you are wasting water right now. You have a handful of fish in your tank. You have no bioload at all for your volume. I have 60 fish in a 650 gallon volume and 5 gallons a day with my heavy feedings and heavy load keeps my tank perfect. I have detectable 0 nitrites and an extremely stable system. At this stage, while your tank is new and with such a low load, 3 gallons a day would be more than enough. Just do an occasional nitrate test and see. You don't really have any corals and if you did, they would need some nutrients anyway.

 

[Buffcole]

Smaller continuous. IMHO. Beautiful home and tank!!!

 

[Socaltoaz]

Ok- figured I was right. Thanks for confirming guys. Btw Scott- I do have some fish and corals- but point taken. I'll dial it down from the 6 gallons and continue with the smaller water changes.

 

[mnkykng77]

From first hand experience, I don't agree with your buddy at all. Smaller daily water changes are easier on the tank and its inhabitants. You don't have an accumulation of nutrients between water changes. The quality of the tank water is consistently better and in this hobby, consistency is key. Especially with reef tanks. Don't get me wrong. A large water change is fine but with larger water changes comes having to match parameters like temp and pH closer to the display levels where as with smaller daily changes, differences in temp or pH of the new water won't have any negative impact on the larger volume. I used to do larger weekly water changes instead of the smaller daily ones. I've had this tank for 20 years now and since switching to the automatic water changes 6 years ago, my tank is happier and healthier than it's ever been. I use less water too.

I will say that you are wasting water right now. You have a handful of fish in your tank. You have no bioload at all for your volume. I have 60 fish in a 650 gallon volume and 5 gallons a day with my heavy feedings and heavy load keeps my tank perfect. I have detectable 0 nitrites and an extremely stable system. At this stage, while your tank is new and with such a low load, 3 gallons a day would be more than enough. Just do an occasional nitrate test and see. You don't really have any corals and if you did, they would need some nutrients anyway.

By doing small daily water changes vs one water change a mont,h allow for wasting less water? For instance on say a 300 gallon tank, doing 1 gallon daily (30gallons/month) vs a one time 20%(60gallons each month) be better? IF so this might be worth it for me being in California and our drought.

 

[dave.m]

Perhaps this article on water changes should be required reading. Small daily changes may be okay for well established tanks, but they may not be appropriate in all cases. Have a look at the article to understand that this is not such a simple topic.

Dave.M

 

[AWD]

FWIW I maintained a tank and sump of 900 gallons. I rarely did water changes (relatively small ones too) at least relative to your setup. It didn't make me friends in the reef community but it worked. People would say it's only a matter of time but it went on for years until I handed the maintenance to someone else and had a series of equipment failures when we pulled the plug on the whole thing. To give you an idea I would buy browned out corals from LFS and sometimes I would buy corals that had major tissue die off and put them in my tank. Some of my favorite corals came from those.

I'm not suggesting nor do I recommend infrequent water changes but you can scale back the volume you are changing, If you want to anyway. However I don't understand why someone would suggest large water changes over smaller frequent ones.
The most important and recurring agreement in this industry is consistency and stability.

We will argue all day long about equipment (UV vs no UV), filtration methods, sand-bed depth, Lighting, etc. However once your tank is established consistency and stability are more important than anything. Everyone will agree with that and I'd make the smallest changes possible.

 

[Socaltoaz]

Dave- thanks for the link. its good reading.
AWD- while I don't agree with your premise of no water changes, I am convinced after doing some reading last night that less is more. In fact other than adding some sort of calcium dosing system to my tank in the future, Im done with equipment and crap for the tank. Ive seen some great set ups of some of the prominent reefers here and its super impressive but also super intimidating. Im happy to have a stable tank so far with happy healthy fish and coral that are swimming around and enjoying their habitat.

 

[Daniel.luu]

Wow, what a build house and fish altogether. Must be tough to manage both giant projects at the same time and taking pictures to keep us posted at RC. Thanks so much Socaltoaz for doing this. Much appreciated. I'm tagging along.

Amazing job!

 

[slief]

By doing small daily water changes vs one water change a mont,h allow for wasting less water? For instance on say a 300 gallon tank, doing 1 gallon daily (30gallons/month) vs a one time 20%(60gallons each month) be better? IF so this might be worth it for me being in California and our drought.

In a system that volume, very little new water would be removed with the daily water changes. With a system like the renew, you could set it for 5 gallons a week instead of 1 gallon a day. The you have your 20 gallons a month instead of 30. I am still a firm believer (based on years worth of experience) that a tank will remain consistently healthier with smaller daily water changes than large weekly or monthly ones. This is because you are not allowing organics to build up between water changes. Instead, you are maintaining consistently better water quality by changing out some every day. There is no rise and fall of the nutrients this way.