Annyeong's 280g SPS Reef Build

pisanoal · Sep 11, 2018

Hello all. Although I have been around RC for a few years, and have gone through several tanks, this will be my first build thread. I started reefing a few years ago when my girlfriend, now wife, was talking about getting a saltwater tank. I’ve always loved fish, and in particular had always wanted a saltwater tank. She was the inspiration I needed to finally get into the “hobby”. I say hobby with quotations because at the time, if you had told me how much time, money, effort, aggravation, and joy I would get out of keeping some fish in a glass box, I would have called you crazy. I didn’t even know you could keep live coral… So I got a biocube 14, with a couple of clown fish, and a few other fish. I upgraded to a 40 breeder after a few months and had that for 2 years or so until I bought a house. Once into the house, we decided it was upgrade time again and we set up a standard 125g and it was “the biggest tank I would realistically want”. Now it is decidedly… too small. Naturally, now that this tank is finally starting to hit its stride, it’s time to upgrade to The Biggest Tank I Would Realistically Want. For real this time though…

Current Specs:
System Volume – Display Tank (6ft long standard 125 gallon), Remote Sump – custom built plywood sump holding approx. 60 gallons.
Lighting – 6x80 watt LET retro t5, with a diy LED bar down the middle for some shimmer and sunrise/sunset/moonlighting.
Skimmer – SCA 302
Circulation – 4 x Tunze 6065’s and a 1.5” Seaswirl with two VCA RFG nozzles pushing ~1400gph
Custom PVC coast to coast full siphon, 3 standpipe system (aka beananimal “style”)
Barr Aquatic Systems 2-stage Calcium Reactor fed off return manifold, controlled with a kamoer continuous duty dosing pump.
Tank is driven by a Reef Angel Plus.

Fish:Melanarus Wrasse
2 Clown Fish
Lyretail Anthias
Bartlett’s Anthias
Juvenile (~4”) Clown Tang
Splendid Dottyback (banished to sump)
Genicanthus Angel (forgot exactly which)
2 striped Dartfish

Coral:
Mostly SPS, a few named pieces, (Myagi Tort, PC Rainbow, brand new – Fox Flame, Palletta Pink Tip, couple others I forgot…), a few nice random pieces from a “Battle Box”, before they were really called that, and about 5 pieces from Big E here on RC. He has great stuff by the way if he puts up another for sale thread. Very professional as well. There is also a youth football sized pocillipora colony in there that I would get rid of if the wife didn’t love it. To be honest, she has a point. It adds some nice structure to the tank, especially until the acros grow in.
A few LPS including some acans, a large 150+ head Duncan colony, and a smaller 40ish head colony, a 6ish head frogspawn that was on my original coral order (somehow managed not to kill it and for the first time, it’s finally growing), a purple gorgonian, a zoa colony etc.
A few other random inverts including 2 captive bred pincushion urchins, a feather duster, and a few hundred vermetid snails (yay…).

Some pics of my current setup are included. This is the 125 as of about 3 weeks ago. I am terrible at taking pictures of my tank, so hopefully someone has some good advice for me… Yes I had some cyano issues which I partially resolved by changing out half the sand bed. Next half to come in a few weeks once it settles in again. Please excuse the mess. One of the goals of the new system will be to have everything tidier.

pisanoal · Sep 11, 2018

A few sump and Refugium/recovery tank photos.

pisanoal · Sep 11, 2018

Now on to the good stuff"¦ the Upgrade! So about a month ago, I started thinking about possible upgrade solutions. The main reason being for the now Juvenile Clown Tang, whose name is Annyeong (after the Korean boy in Arrested Development). Since this upgrade is mainly to provide him the room he will need as he grows, the build thread is named for him. A quick aside, I bought him from my usual LFS who insisted I could keep him in a 125 for years before he would need an upgrade. When he got too big I could trade him back in. That won't work now as he is our favorite fish"¦ Also, he starting to get a little pushy with a few of the others, not mean, he will just push them with his body to one side of the tank or to the bottom on occasion.

When I was thinking about upgrading, I was considering doing a plywood build because large tanks are so darn expensive"¦ Especially the deep dimension tanks as you either need to go custom or marineland. My one big complaint about my 125 is the depth"¦ not a lot of room to get super creative on aquascaping. I decided I would plan the build and keep an eye out for a good deal on craigslist, but I didn't expect to do this build for at least 6 months to a year from now. However, I stumbled across a pretty epic find on craigslist in the form of a brand new, still in factory plastic, custom glass cages 72"L x 30"D x 31"H aquarium and oak stand just 2 hours away. There were some sketchy details in my interactions as it was being sold through someone that was not the tank owner. But it ended up being in a guys shed who had passed away, house had sold, and the new owner wanted it gone. So I picked up the tank and unfinished oak stand for $750.

The tank is Â½" glass, eurobraced, undrilled. The only thing I wish it had is a low-iron glass front panel. But for such a good deal, it's hard to complain. Also, I'm not coming from a starfire aquarium, so I don't really "œknow" what I'm missing.

I plan to keep this a low cost upgrade, budgeting around $600 to get it up and running with the improvements I really want to make. I'm trying not to buy anything that has to be upgraded or changed later. If it has to be bought now, I'm getting what I think I will want in the long run. The few things that fall into that list are the overflow, the lighting, and the rockwork. For the overflow, I plan on going with the modular marine 2400 gph slim overflow. I'll have a beananimal setup in the back. I plan to reuse my current lighting, with the exception of either adding one more set of T5's or going with LED bars. I am leaning towards LEDs, and found some pretty inexpensive ones on Ebay that my LFS uses on his ATI fixtures and really seems to like. He recommended I change out some of the blue diodes for some violets but otherwise he really likes them and they run about 50$ + the new diodes and a little soldering. To get the system up and running, I'll probably leave space for these, and purchase them later.

For the rock work, I was planning on making my own utilizing my old sand and some white Portland cement. However, my first attempt at this made me realize that for one thing, it was going to be hard to make realistic looking rock, and for another it wasn't going to save me a whole lot of money as I was going to need 2 more large bags of aragonite sand. Our second attempt came out much better, but there are still some concerns on durability and curing length.

So tried and true florida mined dry rock it is. I plan on removing my two main structures, acid cleaning them and building off of them using the pond foam/epoxy/sand method which has worked out great in the past.
One other concern I have with this upgrade is the size of my skimmer. I know it will be small for a system this size. However, I don't plan on adding many more fish, as I don't want to have any aggression issues with Annyeong. So I might add a larger group of anthias, or some more dartfish but that's probably it for a while. Enough typing for now, here are some pics of the new tank and stand.

Stand is to the left of the picture with the dog(for scale), not the dinky table right behind it. I just realized I didn't take any dedicated pictures of the stand yet.

pisanoal · Sep 12, 2018

So with this upgrade, we decided to rethink our strategy for the “tank room”. Our house is a split level, and the tank is on the lowest level, adjacent to our 2 car garage, where the sump, controller, etc all sit. The room is about 25’ long and around 10’ wide, and the tank currently sits at the far end of the room. There was a pellet stove sitting in the back left hand corner. It was up on a pedestal, and the current tank just barely fit between the pedestal and the wall. The new tank would fit as well, but we decided to yank the pellet stove out as the room gets too hot when it’s on anyways and the new tank will be centered on the back wall. With the old setup, you “can” view down the length of the tank through the left side panel, but it required squeezing between the stove and the stand. The new setup will allow side views on both sides. Also, better for tank maintenance.
I had assumed that the tile extended under the pedestal, but I was wrong… There is carpet. The previous owners left 5 or 6 tiles, but I’ll need a box or two. I have gone everywhere within an hour trying to match it, but no luck so far. I left one with a store and they are checking with their distributors. If that fails, I’ll have to pull some out of the closet, and I hope I don’t break any… I’ll have to be just about perfect to have enough. We talked about doing new tile, but that definitely breaks the budget…
The other major issue is that the last row of tile underneath the old tank is just barely a partial. So the old tank will have to come out for a few days while I do the tile work. That means a tear down and temporary setup. This is sort of a blessing in disguise as it means setup day won’t be crazy stressful on tearing the old tank down, moving it out, setting up the new tank and getting it filled all in a day. Only concern is temporary lighting.
Here are some pictures of before and after the stove tear out. This will definitely open up the room. Sorry for the dog crate, one of our dogs is in heat, so our male gets crated inside while she stays in the garage. We don't need any puppies...

reefmutt · Sep 15, 2018

Nice find!
I was a bit worried when I read 1/2 inch glass on a tank that size and height.. I was happy to see the cross bracing on top.
Should be a very nice system!

pisanoal · Sep 18, 2018

reefmutt said:
Nice find!
I was a bit worried when I read 1/2 inch glass on a tank that size and height.. I was happy to see the cross bracing on top.
Should be a very nice system!

Thanks! Yeah I dont really know a whole lot about larger tank construction. I checked their website and they have several of their standard builds close to that size or larger using 1/2". The bracing is pretty beefy and there is some extra bracing around the inside bottom to reinforce that seam.

I'm hoping the build turns out at least close to as good as i imagine it

Short update.

I finished the canopy last week, but just now getting around to posting some pictures. Its a pretty basic design made out of 1/2" oak plywood. The top and front hinge together and it sits right on top of the tank. We were going to stain it red oak like some other furniture I built down in that room, but opted for a more modern look. The trim color matches the room trim and i really like the gray stain. The stand will of course be stained/painted to match

Pictures dont show it as well, but the canopy on the tank makes it look a whole lot bigger...