imisky's 30G custom system

[imisky]

hey guys,

So i've decided to copy my build thread from another local forum onto RC. These copied build posts are from December, 10, 2007 so if anything seems out of place it was a while back. keeping that in mind i will try my best to keep things updated here so here we go updating everything i went through to get to where i am now at once, so i apologize if this thread is too long as well as all the double/triple posts I'll be doing as i can only put so many photos in one post

When i first got into reefing i was a pico reef guy not that it wasnt fun, but because my budget only allowed me to build picos. So last year (2007) i decided i wanted to build a stand for my 2 picos. However upon finishing the stand, i figured it would be a perfect time to finally starting a 30 gallon SPS dominant tank as i wanted to decrease the amount of maintance required as i was a full time university student.

so a little bit of a background about myself in this hobby, i started with a 3.5 gallon tank which my brother bought..after about a month he pretty much ignored it and everything started to die and etc. so i took the tank and its been mine ever since. ive been in reef for almost 3 years now learning as i go and the last year or so ive been interested in SPS. i converted my 9g custom frag tank into a SPS tank and ever since that day...my wallets been empty haha.. so thats a little bit of a background info on me and the SW side of my hobby.

alright enough of me talking, onto the journal. close to the end of Nov i decided that i want to make a stand for my tanks, the stand measuring 36"L x 13.25"W x 36"H and was supposed to hold 2 of my sw tanks....well thats when i saw the opportunity to upgrade to a bigger tank. so my plans started from then for this 30g SPS tank.

The stand:

the stand i made is based on the simple design of the ADA cube garden stands, except the height is taller and the wide is a bit wider, other then that i added a little extra patch on both side so i can say i DIYed that stand and have people able to tell the stand apart from the ADA one. heres some pictures.

before varnish:

after varnished:

i also picked up some Hydor Koralia powerheads
im planning on using:
1x koralia 1
1x koralia 2
1x koralia 3

and hopefully this will create some nice random strong and weak flow.

The koralia 2 and 3 ( 1 is being used in the 9g sps tank at the moment. )

The Refugium

the 2nd to last piece of equipment i had to get was a refugium
it is a CPR HOB refugium Medium (19"L x 4.5"W x 12"H)
its a huge refugium which will go over half the length of my tank but hopefully it'll work well.

There is now just a few more things left for me to do for the setup and it'll be complete. I have my 70w MH pendents i DIYed which i am sticking with until i find that they wont be powerful enough. I'll have to make a hanger for the lights so i dont have to hang them from my celling (my parents will kill me...haha), grab the tank which i am getting custom made, and then the skimmer. ive decided after long hours of research to get a deltec mce300 it'll be over skimming but at least keeping the tank clean for the SPS.

 

[imisky]

i waited about 3 weeks to receive the custom tank but now its now ( i am currently painting the back black *12:06AM* haha )

heres some pictures the tank is 36"x12"x12" with 3/8" glass so im pretty happy, the sticker on the bottom left of the tank is a sticker which i used for all the DIY objects ive made(i took that off afterwards)

picture of the tank with the back painted and the styrofoam

painted back + all the old equipment

 

[imisky]

so today i went and picked up the via-aqua calcium reactor, i heard its supposed to be very good at doing its job for only $60 so we will see how that works out. it has a pump built into the top for circulation so we will see how that works! heres a picture of it.

**a note on how well this has worked in the last year or so,

it has ben doing it job fine keeping up with the demand of my SPS, which is a surprise for me.

after the calcium reactor i made some light hangers from aluminum rods 3/4" which will side right next to my tank. the height of the hanging rods are 7' tall and 3' long. connected via PVC 90d joints so i am able to quickly remove the upper bar if i needed to do something to the light taking the pendant lights fully off or something. i coated the aluminum rods with clear coat incase it does contain some elements which i didnt want.

heres some pictures (the dangling thing in the back is my door bell not the hanger, the hangers are the silver rods on the sides of the tank)

what it would look light from the side:

upon finishing the light hangers i bought 2x 150w aqua medic ocean lights and 2x phoenix 150w. im sure this will provide more then enough light to a 36" spread without having weird shaded areas.

so the move over to this 30g will happen soon im getting excited about it,

If you are interested there will be more updates to come later, i dont want to spam too much, enjoy guys

 

[AlexP_03]

i really like that stand. clean modern looking nice job. keep us posted.

 

[Mykel Obvious]

Keep posting!! Love the look of that tank... who built it?

Very nice work on the stand as well!! As AlexP said, very modern looking setup

Don't worry about "spamming"... it's your thread, use it!!

mor pitchers pleze :rollface:

 

[GatorWPB]

Very nice build!! I love the dimensions of the tank. 36" tanks are great!

 

[spleify]

Looking good!!

 

[imisky]

so here we go again,

heres a picture of what the tank looked like during the first week of the move over from my 3 nanos. and added all my SPS in there as well as got a colony.

heres an update on the tank, i tried to set the white balance of my camera to represent the real thing as close as possible but in person the tank is actually a little more blue then white.

here you go enjoy

equipment

right hand side

left hand side

side shot

 

[imisky]

heres an update:

The tank has been running without a problem other then some on my end...(like not washing the GFO for long enough) Everything is coloring up fast and some of my corals in the 2 months its been running now, has grown a good 1/2"+ But all parameters stay steady Ca at 380~400, Mg at 1350~1400, Alk now at 10.5 instead of 13 which it was at about 2 weeks ago. The only parameter which swings is the temp as right now its cooled by fans from 76~ sometimes 80 if the fans dont turn on for some reason. Im looking into a chiller now..im looking at the JBJ 1/15HP or 1/20HP, but i wonder how i can run that chiller without another powerhead in my tank. Last night i took out about 10lbs worth of LR..now none of the rocks are touching the 4 sides of the glass i like it more for maintance now!.

as well as added an blue tort in the middle. ( cant quite find out what it is yet, it has a greenish tint in some of its less well lite branches).

heres some photos enjoy guys

a front tank shot:

L-side:

R-side:

 

[imisky]

heres a few pictures that i took of my SPS last night(04-09-2008). not the best looking photos
but the SPS are starting to color up so im excited! and cant wait til they become small
colonies.

can someone ID this one?...cuz i cant

 

[imisky]

so i went out and grabed a nano stream 6055 while it was on sale with a single controller, its a great powerhead but the flow it puts out is a little too straight, so i started to do a search for nanostream mods and came across the one on RC. i saw what they were doing and decided to do the extreme nanostream mod. and here it is. i hope it does what its supposed to do( widen flow, increase flow).

this mod only voids the front housing of the tunzes powerheads and they are only 17$ to replace which isnt that bad. the pipe has now been increased to 1.5" instead of the original 1"

**note currently**

for those who wonder if this mod is worth the $17, i think yes, the flow is impressive, much better than that of the origional housing.
wide and powerful

heres a comparison to the original housing.

so heres the photo of the tunze 6055 with the new front propeller housing, and i also took a photo of my tank to show the amount of flow im getting now with the tunzes or tried to show it...from a top view.

my lights turned off before i could get a photo with only 6055 on i'll get that tomorrow. meanwhile any comments?

still

6055 + K4

 

[imisky]

So since middle of June is supposed to be the hottest its been for 20 yrs (in BC Canada) i decided to get a JBJ Arctica to get prepared for this and in return it has kept my temp in +/-2dF at night time being 77.8 to MH being on at 79.8 ish. I also upgraded my deltec MCE300 to an MCE600 along with a media box. This skimmer is far better than the MCE300 with the trade off of it producing a bit more noise. The media box is used with Zeolites for me to use along with my C dosing (vinegar + vodka +sugar).

 

[imisky]

so now here are some of the more recent photos of my setup, given that the first 2 macro shots are about 2 months old and have grown alot since then. also i replaced the Koralia 4 with another tunze 6055 on a pulsing timer used for the wave box and it is giving me tank a 0.5" wave, anything above that would spill water over and probably make things explode lol. enjoy

and here is the latest FTS, if you look forward a bit there has been some really great growth,

an updated fish list as of today ( 2 of my favorite fish jumped out last nite... my yellow watchman goby + the smallest chromis ) but other than those losses i have these:

2x chalk bass
2x juvie fairy wrasse
1x red stripe anthias <- awesome fish

invert wise,

1x peppermint
1x sally lightfoot
1 loner blue leg hermit

i hope you guys enoyed the compact build thread of my 30G. if theres anything you guys would like to input on please feel free to do so, as I would love to get some feed back.

 

[imisky]

Thanks for the awesome comments guys, i was afraid to post my setup on RC when i first started this system, thinking that i did not know enough about this hobby to post my setup here, your guys' comments made me feel at ease THANKS!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13792433#post13792433 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Mykel Obvious
Keep posting!! Love the look of that tank... who built it?

Very nice work on the stand as well!! As AlexP said, very modern looking setup

Don't worry about "spamming"... it's your thread, use it!!

mor pitchers pleze :rollface:

The person who built my tank was my local fish store owner's friend, I've never met him, and never got a chance to before their store closed. But for the price of $100 it was very well built and the thickness of the glass was just awesome, i was expecting much thinner glass

 

[MMOORE0324]

Awesome looking tank man! I love rimless tanks! Everthing is looking really great, keep posting!

 

[AlexP_03]

wow!! this is a super nice tank good job man

 

[Giga]

Very nice tank! The only thing that would make that look much better is if you could hide the HOB stuff and put it under the stand.Also i'ma sandbed kinda guy. I also saw that you have a FW planted tank. I use to have one but got rid of it. Great tank

 

[imisky]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13796115#post13796115 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Giga
Very nice tank! The only thing that would make that look much better is if you could hide the HOB stuff and put it under the stand.Also i'ma sandbed kinda guy. I also saw that you have a FW planted tank. I use to have one but got rid of it. Great tank

people often ask me why i went with the HOB route on this system. The answer is because I dont have any experience with bigger systems which utilizes sumps and all those pipes which go from the main display into the sump.

I did think about it when i first setup the system, but after reading about it for quite some time i thought it might just be easier to keep things simple and go for HOB tyle equipment although im sure those insump skimmers and etc are much more efficent than what the HOB MCE600 can pull.

But maybe for the future when i upgrade (budget permiting) i'll look into a sump, im sure it would be much better in terms of performance and hiding all the equipment.

 

[spleify]

Wow it's looking good man!! Nice job!!

Spleify

 

[imisky]

heres an update of some close up shots of SPS my tenius, tri-color, and green plating monti.

I'll try and get more soon.

and happy holidays!