Matt's 210 rebuild

i used some lights i bought a year ago and never used. some marsaqua 36' leds. they are ok. they look alright but i have plans for that in the future. ill update this as i go.
i went back and forth on light mounting before i settled on this set up. in the future i want 4 led pendants so i decided to have 4 separate mounts instead of a bar or some other setup. i wanted to be able to move them out of the way to allow better access and i didnt want to hinge them. i have a lunar module and 4 lunar leds and a variable speed module for the lights, ive wired the dimming into the apex.
 

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i had some 3/16 aluminum sheet lying around so i cut some pieces out of it and routed out the center. i broke 3 router bits from chatter. it was annoying. the lights slide all the way to the wall. plenty of space. painted them black. if they Start to sag over time ill add a cable brace. these lights are pretty heavy. the next set may not be as heavy.
 

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first night with the lighting and sump finished. have to make a water change tank for premixed water still. also need to make some cabinetry. but ill gte to that in the future.
 

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i think the tank is cycling. ammonia is very high. like making me very nervous high. i didnt use enough of the old water i dont think. i added some prime to it and some microbacter to it. another thing that may have gotten me was 2 of the larger surface area rocks in the center cluster were from the old rock work. i didnt cure them. i pulled them fresh and let them rot, lol. i figured it would be ok but maybe they had just too much dead organics in them. ill monitor this closely. nothing in the tank is exceptionally valuable, but there are a couple of big old colonies ive had for a while and all of the fish ive had for atleast 5 years, would hate to lose them.
 
mounted the existing coral last night. i think the positions are ok. ill see how they do. ammonia is still elevated but half what it was. nitrates havent come up yet. will observe...the eel hadnt been eating, i was wondering about it if it was just an acclimation issue. well he ate half of our beloved royal gramma. weve had her for many many years. im going to have to watch him closely. dont need him turning all bad roommate and all.
 

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New skimmer came in yesterday. Bubble magus curve 9 elite. Got my dosing pump installed. Carbon dosing is back up. I've always used vodka. I'm gonna try vinegar this time. I go to the grocery store way more than I go to the liquor store.
 
I'll have some pics upcoming. I'm working on the sump. I reused my old sump to get up and running and because I ran out of money basically. I'm building the new one now and hope to have it completed next week. I changed my lighting out. I don't know if I posted that or not. I'm adding apex leak detection to my setup. It's on order. I'm probably gonna get a new skimmer. Just bite the bullet and buy something"¦..expensive lol. This bubble magus is pretty wild. It'll flow a couple quarts one night. Flooded my living room this evening. Not like end of the world but a couple gallons. I have the skimmer draining into a 3 gallon container. Normally takes a couple weeks to fill up but it went wild tonight. I thought I had it tuned but I don't know anymore lol. And I'm not real happy with my return pump. Bash Jebao products all you want but I've run a jebao return pump for like 7 years. Never had a problem. Ran one for my downdraft protein skimmer for same timeframe. Never failed. So I upgraded to one of the newest models variable speed and all that, the old ones were variable speed also, and I have lots of display tank level issues now. Running the same full siphon 1" drain and 1" emergency that I've always run. Every couple days I'm adjusting the stupid drain gate valve. So I'm probably gonna replace it and revamp the plumbing when I do the new sump. The livestock is doing really well. My snowflake went on a food strike and decided to eat some fish. Ate my royal gramma that I had for like 8 years. Found the front half of my baby floating on the bottom. Gills still pumping. I almost broke the reef down then and there to make some eel tempura rolls. Bit half my mandarins head off, had that fish like 6 years. Would eat pellets and everything. I'll never find another like it. I tried everything with that'll, rotten mfer. It was like 3 months before he ate "œnormal" food again. He's back to eating all the foods he used to and is mostly leaving the fish alone. I see one missing a piece of tail every once in a while but that's been kind of standard in this tank for the last 5 years lol. I took out my urchins and tossed them into the fuge. I don't know if they still live or not. Prior to this rebuild I never kept any sps. I think they were eating it. One night half of my encrusting corals got eaten. I'm vodka dosing like I do. Nitrates are down around 3. I don't really bother with any other tests. They always read pretty much 0ish. I'm fighting some, what I classify as, excessive algae growth. Green hair on the rocks. Grows on the glass pretty fast. Seems like it's a faster growth rate than I remember. I figure it'll work itself out. I'll roll some updates out over the next few weeks
 
After much debate I went with trigger platinum 39 sump. I kicked around some dream box ideas and some other semi custom sumps with drop in fleece roller but I really didn’t want to 1:spend that kind of money; 2:use a Clarisea or other drop in fleece roller.
 

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After much debate I went with trigger platinum 39 sump. I kicked around some dream box ideas and some other semi custom sumps with drop in fleece roller but I really didn’t want to 1:spend that kind of money; 2:use a Clarisea or other drop in fleece roller.

Impressive. Very nice plumbing work.
 
I was limited in space so I decided to make my own skimmer neck cleaner. It’s switched by the apex so it cleans the neck once a day. I’m going to add some more features to the skimmer. I’m going to plumb a 1/4 water line and solenoid into the collection cup to rinse the cup once a day and have it plumbed to a 5 gallon collection tank.
 

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I was limited in space so I decided to make my own skimmer neck cleaner. It’s switched by the apex so it cleans the neck once a day. I’m going to add some more features to the skimmer. I’m going to plumb a 1/4 water line and solenoid into the collection cup to rinse the cup once a day and have it plumbed to a 5 gallon collection tank.

That's really slick!
 
I thought about buying a couple apex return pumps. Makes the wiring a lot easier but I decided to be “cheap” and use trusted jebao equipment. 10 years and only 1 failure people. I purchased 2 5000lph jebao pumps. I wanted redundancy and the ability to run a manifold. I also didn’t want big 15000lph pumps like my last return pump. Ive run a jebao return pump out of the sump for about 6 years and never had a failure on it.
I didn’t have the space for ball valves from the sump so they are plumbed straight. The sump has a 2” lip and is fully sealed so it can hold a bunch of water it it needed to.
the return lines have check valves, also a first for me. I figured “why not”.
the tank runs a single 1” full siphon and a 1” emergency drain. 2 3/4” returns. One on each pump. I run one pump 100% and the other is 75% feeding the us sterilizer.
 

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Some more plumbing and sump setup. I finalized the u’ve sterilizer position and plumbing tonight. Having a terrible bacterial bloom. Water goes foggy within 4 or 5 hours of turning off uv sterilizer.
in one of the pictures you can see all of my 1/4” lines into the sump. It will need to be changed a tiny bit but I have my float plumbed to a 1/4 line from my well. The water is good so no worries about r/o and that garbage. One is my carbon dosing and one is my water change line. I’m all about automation and there will be more to come to further that.
 

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I need another pb832. When I get it I’ll finish adding the other fmm and systems. I got some more plans for the sump and automation. I abhor maintenance lol.
 

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I have to finish up the enclosure for the lighting. One of my eb832’s is up there. I’ll show how I wired it up thru the emergency drain line. It’s pretty cool and only leaks a little bit….haha
 
Everything is looking much happier. I haven’t run a sock or any mechanical filtration besides a skimmer for a while and I was feeding a lot so my nitrate and phosphate climbed up a bit and algae got a little out of control but I’ve cut feeding and the tank is a lot cleaner. The numbers have already halved. And I stopped the carbon dosing for the time being. I wanna get back to square and see where the tank stands.
 

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Cleaned up the light wiring. I Was gonna make some enclosures to hide the wiring and power blocks but my first attempt although exactly as I designed didn’t look so good in reality lol. I think it looks fine for now. Now I have to go to granite shop and get a top made for the stand and then some cabinetry work.
 

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