240 Gallon Cube

I setup up a couple of two little fishy reactors. One for carbon and one for GFO. The plan is to fill them up tomorrow. I used a line off my return for the tank to feed the reactors. You can also see my tunze controller and drivers.

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I did some work this weekend and added a sand bed to my frag tank and divided it in half for my two pairs of clown fish. One side I plan to have a anemone for my clowns and the other side will be for frags. Here are a couple of pictures

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I also got a nice closeup of my pink tip hammer coral. I plan to add pictures of the individual inhabitants over the next couple of weeks.

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I setup a five gallon surge on my 180 but got rid of it after a frustrating month of tweaking it. I could not eliminate the bubbles on the initial surge which stuck to the front glass and some rocks, it also started coating my bulbs and top of the tank with salt spray from the bubbles popping. If anyone has ideas on how to eliminate the bubbles I would do it again. I tried venting with no luck, tried adding a 2foot long 4" PVC loop hoping the bubbles would not travel through the loop with no luck and also added a pvc chimney opposite the downspout at the tank which was higher than the reservoir hoping the air would escape out the chimney instead of dumping in the tank. All of these mods helped but nothing eliminated the bubbles. It is a cool DIY but make sure you can live with the bubbles.
 
great looking tank and stand, trim sure makes the stand-stand out :)

I am currently building a similar stand for the exact size tank you have, would like to know what size lumber are used for the horizontal runners and vertical support?

I see that on one side of your stand you have a center vertical support, is that necessary? do you think there will be a failure without it? as i am planning not to have that center vertical support.
 
sgwill122 said:
I setup a five gallon surge on my 180 but got rid of it after a frustrating month of tweaking it. I could not eliminate the bubbles on the initial surge which stuck to the front glass and some rocks, it also started coating my bulbs and top of the tank with salt spray from the bubbles popping. If anyone has ideas on how to eliminate the bubbles I would do it again. I tried venting with no luck, tried adding a 2foot long 4" PVC loop hoping the bubbles would not travel through the loop with no luck and also added a pvc chimney opposite the downspout at the tank which was higher than the reservoir hoping the air would escape out the chimney instead of dumping in the tank. All of these mods helped but nothing eliminated the bubbles. It is a cool DIY but make sure you can live with the bubbles.
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The one thing that I would try is the toliet flapper has an air vent. I set the water level in the surge before it fires to overflow down the air vent then the flapper pops open. That little bit of water helps clears out some of the air. I generally get 2 seconds worth of bubble then the surge runs with minimal bubbles.

How high was your surge tank above the display?
 
solRNY said:
great looking tank and stand, trim sure makes the stand-stand out :)

I am currently building a similar stand for the exact size tank you have, would like to know what size lumber are used for the horizontal runners and vertical support?

I see that on one side of your stand you have a center vertical support, is that necessary? do you think there will be a failure without it? as i am planning not to have that center vertical support.
Click to expand...



I did not build the frame work (I refinished a stand that I bought) but it is made of 2x4's that are backed up by 2x4's. Basically they act like 4x4's. Almost all of the vertical and horizontal supports are done that way. I am not sure if the center supports are absolutely necessary but you want to support the bottom of an acrylic tank as evenly as you can. You could probably eliminate them if you used 2x6's for your horizontal supports and spaced them every foot or so to help distribute the load.

I hope this helps
 
solRNY said:
its sure does help, thanks!

i have a few more questions:

is there any horizontal support inside the upper square frame?

what does the tank sit on? serveral sheets of plywood? or sits on just the frame?
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Yes it does,there is one down the middle that follows along the arrow in this picture. The support is attached to 3 legs that attach to a similar support that runs on the floor. There is a 3/4" piece of plywood that covers the entire top of the stand. The tank sits on a 3/4" foam that sits on the plywood.

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Any thoughts on how the single 400W MH is working? Is there enough spread? It looks like the edges are quite dark in a few of the pictures. The tank looks great, and the surges are always a great way to add some more random flow - this should fill in nicely!
 
stylolvr said:
Any thoughts on how the single 400W MH is working? Is there enough spread? It looks like the edges are quite dark in a few of the pictures. The tank looks great, and the surges are always a great way to add some more random flow - this should fill in nicely!
Click to expand...


The lighting is working pretty well. I think I need to pull the light up a little more. It is a little dark around the edges but I do not have that many corals in those areas. If there is a coral there it is a softy or LPS that seem to be doing well. If it goes up it should get a little better. The light is on a coralvue dimmable ballast and I am not running it a full power yet.

I hope to use my friends par meter at the end of the month and see what I have. Once I do I plan on posting it.
 
This is the same size tank I am trying to talk my wife into letting me get and I like the darker corners where the light doesn't hit much I think it gives it depth. I will be following a long.
 
Thanks for the comments.

I took a couple of more photos today. The tank is running quite well. I did move up my halide a little higher to try and get a little better spread of light. I also added a vortech to my frag tank which is doing a real nice job moving the water in the tank. Two weekends ago I borrowed a friend par meter and took a bunch of readings. I hope to have a picture with all the numbers on it posted in the next day or so.

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way nice!! what is the coral in the center bottom(#75post-first pic), seems like it is loving it there!
hope my build comes out as nice as yours :)
 
austinite79 said:
I think that the aquascaping is killer. I like the surge idea. I think a 240 is the way to go. Nice job!!
Click to expand...


Thanks a lot. It is a work in process. It has taken a little while to get corals in the right places. Running a single halide has some challenges
 
solRNY said:
way nice!! what is the coral in the center bottom(#75post-first pic), seems like it is loving it there!
hope my build comes out as nice as yours :)
Click to expand...

Thanks,

It is a pink hammer coral. My clowns used to host in it until I but a rose anemone in the tank.
 
I borrowed a PAR meter from a friend. The numbers that I got were not what I had expected. The back rock work toward the top was some of the lowest numbers and I would have thought it would have been high. I think it has to do with the reflector. I have been considering trying a Lumenmax or Lumenarc and re check the numbers.

Tank_Partankparsmall.jpg
 
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