Ian's 180 SPS dominant build

[Wilberheim]

I have been lurking on this forum for sometime patiently grabbing up some used goodies off the for sale forum trying to save a few pennys like everyone else.


Background: I was in a local petco one day trying to buy some freshwater fish for a small 20 gallon I had at the time (over 2 years ago now) and they wouldn't sell them to me becuase it was inhumane etc etc... Well I looked at my freind and said I am going to start a saltwater tank, he said I was crazy I had never done one nor had I read at all about starting one. I imediatly started reading books, looking around on the internet etc, once I felt I had a good grasp on what I was venturing into I started the hunt for a modest tank. I searched craigslist and came across a 72 bow that would fit perfectly in the space I had available. Since I am a very very spontanous person I rushed into it a little, but not like most other people do it took me 5 months to even get snails in it.

I had set the 72 up at first with a canister filter which I quickly realized was not going to work. I went out and purchased a 20 Long baffled it etc. I installed it and added a PM 1 with the new space and a fuge. Over time I got wiser and removed the K4's and got a used MP-40, got a tek light me being me I had to have the best I could get.

I let the tank cycle for months becuase I was out of town working for weeks at a time while my g/f took care of it...kinda... the tank ended up with some very large diatom blooms, numerous algea problems, I just let it keep doing its thing and it worked out alright. I began stocking the tank with various corals, a few fish and a handful of snails.

It was going great until I decided that the skimmer out flow was WAY to loud, there was micro bubbles in the display, the overflow wouldn't maintain a constant water level, the tank was really small etc. So I set out to correct the problems and I ended up just breaking it down, selling all the livestock and starting over from stratch.

A few weeks later I went to a LFS and picked up a glass euro braced 180 gallon.

Here is some pictures from the first tank to look at.. this was my first ever saltwater tank which I was pretty proud of..

Gotta go back to work but I will be back later to start posting the progression of the 180...

and it was huge..

 

[austin93]

Looks good. Is it an Aquarium Masters tank? What are you planning on lighting this, I also have looked into this tank but was a little concerned with the center bracing. Interested in how you are going to set this up.

 

[Wilberheim]

It is an aquariam masters tank. Seems to be very well built. I was concerned over the center bracing at first as well. I am have lumen max elites which I figure will be 14" or so over the water to get proper spread so I don't think heat will be an issue.

 

[Wilberheim]

Before I brought this tank home I knew I wanted to do a CL becuase I hate having powerheads inside the tank. I went with an OM 4 way, and it was going to need a lot of holes to accomplish it it.

The store owner cut me a deal on drilling the holes in the tank, tooks us 4 hours becuase the hole saws were wore out.. o well it's done now.

The CL setup was pretty basic I have two 1.5" intakes centered in the middle of the tank. Two of the outlets are in the bottom left and right corners, and the last two will come up the back and over the top to the center.

Once I got the tank home (it was very late) I had to hunt down some man power to get it out of the truck and into my garage with out breaking it or hurting somebody. My brother and I ended up making the short move into the garage where It sat for a week or so while I pondered how I wanted to go about finishing the back off.

Couple of size reference pictures I sent to some freinds of mine..

I settled on painting the back with some cheap spray paint from lowes at .99 cents a can I bought 3 to start with..

I taped off and blocked the ends with cardboard to prevent overspray. Saved me a HUGE headache later the spray paint mist went EVEYRWHERE!

cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

After the first coat of paint.. I began wondering at this point if I was ever going to be able to get a solid black background on it..

 

[Wilberheim]

I ended up using two and a half cans.

turned out pretty good I think.

On to the stand...

This was making me very nervous considering the amount of weight it will be holding and I had never done this before.. I searched the vast interweb and finally settled on the design rocket engineer put on this website. I ended up going with a 2x6 for the top frame and 2x4's for everything else. I felt this would be more than sufficent since all the load would be on the corners of the stand. I also wanted the middle of the stand open since I knew I was going to have a very large sump under the stand and wanted a lot of access to my equipment under it.

I am a tall guy at 6' 2" so the stand is 40" tall also I wanted the tank to go floor to celiing in my basement.

I got to this point and ran out of wood after yet another trip to lowes work resumed..

That is what I ended up with. I put the plates on it to make myself sleep better at nights, all of the joints were glued and screwed together.

After doing that I jumped right into painting it with kiltz to protect it from my clumsyness with water.

 

[Wilberheim]

Few days later...

I got some more buddies over to help move the tank onto the stand and set it in its final resting place. This almost ended badly. I had placed the bulkheads in and tied the CL intakes together on the back at this point and didn't even think about getting it throught door.. needless to say I about a 1/8" on either side to spare coming into the basement..

Money pretty much dried up at this point for the project for a week or two. Which felt like an eternity to wait to get going on it agian.

 

[Wilberheim]

Few weeks later....


I decided on a sump size after much debate. I knew I wanted something very large to hold more water, take up drain down, room for equipment in the sump, and to have a large fuge. The final choice was a custom 90 gallon breeder (48"x 24"x 18" I think.), also an aquariam masters tank. I cut some carboard to figure out how I wanted the baffles to fit inside, I went with a melevs reef style sump but in glass of course.

I hunted down some darts off the for sale forum here, both of which were still under warranty and both were in pretty rough shape. I ended up getting both replaced (once was seized, other had bearings starting to go out). I began plumbing the tank. Got to this point and could'nt decide how I wanted to progress so I stalled yet agian.

 

[Wilberheim]

More plumbing work done..

Drains..

Closed loop plumbing with OM.

 

[Wilberheim]

At this point the tank had been filled with tap water for a trial run to make sure I liked how it was all working before getting the RO fired up.

I still had quite a bit of decisions to make on the skimmer, lights, controller etc. I have very exspensive tastes on my toys so naturally I went with what I consider to be top of the line equipment and im sure most will agree.

After spending a week filling the system with ro water I added a couple buckets of salt and began heating the tank and stabalizing the salinity. It ended up taking a few days to heat the tank with four heaters. I ended up purchasing my skimmer (alpha cone 200) and controller, added rock to the tank which I had curing in a trashcan for months prior to beginning this whole build.

These were Ric shrooms that survied in the bottome of the trashcan with no light..

This picture was taken just 15 minutes after plugging this monster in..

 

[Wilberheim]

This is the morning after plugging it in, the tank is still empty at this point too..

The apex after unboxing..

 

[Wilberheim]

This is pretty much where I stand at this point. Tank has been up and running with temporay light over it to help ease the algea problem once I get the halides over it. I went with some lumen max elites, with vertex ballasts and radium bulbs the seller of the pendants threw in for me.

I got the apex setup to have acess from my droid, and all other computers. I still havent gotten the email/text thing setup yet but I am not really concerned with it quite yet since the tank remains empty except for a few snails.

I had a local reefer who happened to be an electrician run me just a few new outlets (two circuits one dedicated to the halides).

At this point in the I started pondering how I wanted to go about skinning my stand. At first I wanted to stain the whole thing and make it really shiney. Well that would cost a fortune which is something I don't have after building this system. I decided to go ahead and skin it with plywood and will be painting it a cream color and distressing it somehow. Both side of the tank will be flanked with built in bookshelves and possibly benches to sit and relax on if you can imagine what that will look like once done. Still a ways down the road but I am hopeful it will look very very good once done.

This is the canopy I built and is half finished really..

 

[Wilberheim]

My ballasts will be here Friday ( 1-22-2010) So I will update agian once I figure out how I will get those mounted and fired up..

I like pictures so I will have plenty more as I continue to progress. Also if there is anything else you would like to see closer or have explianed in greater detail please let me know I will be happy to do so!

 

[hul kogan]

Looks like you have a great build going here Ian! I look forward to watching your progress.

 

[shark007]

Very nice so Far!! Good plumbing so far

 

[Octoshark]

Cool, nice setup

 

[joel sandoman]

Nice build so far. Just clean up those wires a bit

 

[fufu]

alpha cone...*drools* Nice build, what are you doing to put in that monster tank?

 

[DolphinLVR]

Taggin g along as I will be starting my 180 build soon!

 

[Wilberheim]

I have made some progress including getting a pretty good collection of various SPS frags including some ORA.

My ballasts came and I quickly got to reworking the factory plugs on my lumen max's

Tools required to perform the "surgery"

Cut the old ends off.. (point of no return here)

I kinda got excited about getting the lights up and running so I stopped taking pictures as I went. Here is the end result over the tank, the canopy still isn't quite finished yet. I am debating on how to make the doors..

 

[Wilberheim]

Some bad pictures ( P&S camera) But all the pieces have incredible polyp extension, I cannot remember all of them but I have ORA B.O.P, ORA Green BN, green digi, various monti caps including a blue polyped peice, pink birdsnest and a hydrophorna that was donated due to tissue recession. So far my stronger lights are allowing it a very quick recovery! I have like 10 others and they are all acros I just suck at names