Gobie74's wide peninsula 200

I was wondering, where did you get the Bubble Magus Reactors? (If that's what they are...)

They are the bubble magus balling chambers, I got them from Progressive Reef as part of one of the balling method packages they have there.
 
This tank is everything that I have ever drempt of. Almost exact dementions, equiptment everything! I know there are challenges with this style of a tank, what are some that you have ran into so far?
 
This tank is everything that I have ever drempt of. Almost exact dementions, equiptment everything! I know there are challenges with this style of a tank, what are some that you have ran into so far?

You mean other than having to wait for all the parts? :lolspin:

If I had it to do over again, I would probably go for 1" acrylic rather than 3/4". There is a slight deflection in the 3/4", but not too much that I'm overly worried. The reason I went with 3/4" was I wanted to continue to use my Vortech pumps and they have a limit of 3/4". But it turns out they used 1/2" acrylic to build the divider the Vortechs are going to be mounted on, so it could have gone to 1" without a problem.

Other than that, no issues yet, I'm loving it.
 
So today's progress...

I tried to install a dead pH probe into the probe rack but wasn't able to get it in there, I had to dremel out a bit of the flange to get the probes to fit in. That was pretty messy work and delayed me for a while while I cleaned all that mess up. This picture was taken about half way through the process so you can see why I was having trouble installing the probes.

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After a few hours I did eventually get all the plumbing assembled and cleaned up. I still want to paint the outside different colors depending on the intended purpose, green for water to the sump, blue for return water to the tank, and red for the emergency line. Just have to head to Lowe's and pick up the paint. I know it serves no practical purpose, just going for a cool look while I've got the time.

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After getting the plumbing all installed again, here's how it looking so far.

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And finally, after cleaning up, I started filling the sump.

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The sump is as full of water as I can get it right now. I need at least the start of the return plumbing up to the ball valve before the pump to be installed before I can fill it any further.

Today's job was to do a little painting of the plumbing, purely for aesthetics.

If I learned one thing during my time in the shipyard from the painters, it was to mask everything as much and as good a possible. Then you can just spray spray spray!

So first I spent an hour or so masking all the sections that couldn't or shouldn't be painted:

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Then got everything ready to start spraying

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And here we are after a few light coats

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I'm trying to go with many light coats rather than one big nasty coat so it looks better in the end.

Had to stop for the night because it looks like rain might be coming in.

But as soon as this is done, I can get the plumbing installed and move all the equipment out of the display and down into the sump. And from there, I just need to make sure I'm ready for the big move ( looking forward to it, but dreading it at the same time )
 
Gave the paint a day or two to dry and here's the results:

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And installed

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And a slightly different angle

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I did screw up and paint two of the connector pieces the wrong colors, green that should have been blue and blue that should have been green. Fixing that now. So that's preventing me from filling the rest of the sump, but I'm going to start mixing the salt into the part that is filled to at least make some progress.
 
Great looking tank man!! looks like you did your planning right and all those corals will love you for giving them a much wider home :). I fear for your tank some only in the sense that over time it will soak up water and possibly bow bit. Just make sure its not enough to put stress on the joints or it can become very dangerous. Looks absolutely great though man, just keep an eye on the deflection.

Feel free to come over and check out my tank ;) as long as i can come see yours haha.
 
Share the Green Chromis story with everyone???

I was feeding the other tank and just to see what would happen I put one of my nets into the tank to see if I could catch a fish and move him to the new tank. I didn't actually expect to catch anything.

But to my surprise, my chromis swum right up and into the net. For some reason I decided to spare him the trauma of moving him just then and let him go.

Now I have a feeling I'll never be able to catch him again :)

Great looking tank man!! looks like you did your planning right and all those corals will love you for giving them a much wider home :). I fear for your tank some only in the sense that over time it will soak up water and possibly bow bit. Just make sure its not enough to put stress on the joints or it can become very dangerous. Looks absolutely great though man, just keep an eye on the deflection.

Feel free to come over and check out my tank ;) as long as i can come see yours haha.

Yeah, I look to see if the deflection is any worse periodically, it doesn't seem to be. I do have a brace for it, I think it was shown in an earlier photograph. I'd prefer to keep it off, but have it just in case.

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Yesterday I finally got the plumbing all connected and good to go. Well sort of. I choose to use threaded bulkheads so that I could disassemble the plumbing when required. The piece that screws into the bulkhead was leaking a bit under pressure. Had to go to Lowe's to get some thread sealant.

Also, the pump is a LOT more powerful than I thought it was going to be, also a bit louder. I didn't include any kind of throttling valve or recirculation on the return line, so for the moment I am throttling with one of the ball values in the true union upstream of the pump. Not ideal.

Since the pump is so powerful, I'm thinking I'll use it to run the carbon and gfo reactors rather than a separate MJ 1200 pump. Why use more electricity. And since I don't want to throttle with a ball valve and there is still a lot of flow, I'm going to have to add some sort of throttled recirculation line.

Well I hear its going to be a somewhat rainy weekend, so I'll have the time to figure all this stuff out. I'll also take a few pictures of the display without all the equipment in it, it looks SO much nicer now.
 
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Impressive, can't wait to see you start moving the corals from the 150g tank. I would like to ask a question though, as I am thinking of having a tank built like yours. On page two of your build, Porthios asked a question about flow being a problem with Peninsula type tanks. Is this something you are concerned about?
 
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