My 60g Ocean View Escape

Thanks madmaxx
My goal is a classic, elegant look: Like an aquarium you might see in a cigar lounge in an old English manor. I want to make it as enclosed and simple externally, and as modern and automated internally as humanly possible.

The Pulkani dry rock has been soaking in various cycles of used water-change water and Seaklear for quite a while now. It began soaking in January. I want to leave no change of a cyano outbreak.

The autocontroller and other electricals are wired and the cables have been cleaned up. The dosing pumps are installed and the acrylic has arrived for the modifications I will need to make to the sump in order to mount the four Phosban reactors I will be adding.

The ATO RODI reservoir is being built at a factory as we speak, custom-fit to rest on the top shelf in the stand. On it's way from US Plastics.

The only bit to the puzzle that I haven't fully resolved yet is the automatic water change system. Since I've run out of room in the stand, I'll have to either build an external cabinet to match the stand to place next to the aquarium in order to hold the reservoirs it will require; or just scrub the auto water change idea altogether.
 
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Looks great and love the LED strip in the stand. Going to have to steal that idea and put a switch on the door so it auto illuminates when opened. Can't wait to see more, subbed for updates!
 
So a ton of things have happened since March. After our new back door and living room floor stonework was completed in early April, I was able to begin the final assembly, finish the plumbing and then I filled the tank.



On april 7, 2014 I ran a tube directly to the tank from my RODI system and did a partial fill for a leak test. The seals were tight with no leaks, so I mounted a float valve to the top of the tank and filled the tank the rest of the way for the next 24 hors using the RODI output tube. Then I added the salt and let the tank circulate for about a week with no substrate or rock.





I decided to use this pump for the main sump return pump. As the name implies, it's proven to be very quiet and has offered plenty of reliable circulation so far.



On May 5, I unpacked a brand new Radion pro Gen 3. I had a buyer for my old nanocube and they wanted my Gen2 Radion as part of the deal, so I used the opportunity to upgrade my plans. The light couldnt mount directly to the canopy because the heat sink fan and buttons are on the top of the light, and the canopy is solid wood right above that. Also, the canopy is a pivot-top design, not the standard fixed top with front access panel in cheaper canopies. These provided some interesting engineering challenges because I would need to rigidly suspend the light away from the roof of the canopy so I could reach the buttons, allow the light to adequately cool itself, and still hold the light firm as the canopy moves during opening, since the entire top rotates 90 degrees when you open the canopy. I resolved these issues by building a rigid suspended mount for the light, then screwing the mount assembly directly onto the undersurface of the canopy (see picture below).



Because of previous experience with chiller failures and catastrophic aquarium overheating, I wanted to also take advantage of the fail-safe capabilities inherent in the Apex system. So I bought two large 12 volt DC computer biscuit fans, wired them in parallel to a 12 volt transformer from an old cordless phone I threw away years ago, and plugged the unit into one of the outlets on the Apex controller.



These fans mounted directly onto the subframe that supports the canopy. This frame sits directly on the top rim of the display tank, and so the fans blow directly across the surface of the water when running. They are set to come on automatically if the temperature rises to 79 degrees Fahrenheit and stay on until the temperature drops to 77. I am SO glad I built this system of fans into my canopy because months later, (two years after another chiller failure on a different tank) my chiller failed in the heat of the summer, and I was able to keep the reef stable while I waited for a new chiller to come in the mail.



The chiller I chose at first was a mistake. I bought it used on this forum. After flushing it with white vinegar, it ran like a charm for two months. The problem was that it was hugely oversized for the tank so it used a massive amount of electricity. Also, the circuit board eventually developed an internal short circuit and the whole system failed. ( Luckily, this didn't happen until the week AFTER we got back from New York so I was able to take care of the issue in person.)



Then I unpacked the base rock that had been soaking in constant fresh water changes since January (It was now May) and after adding Fijipink live sand substrate, I stacked the rock in the tank. I let the tank cycle with a nice hefty few scoops of sand from my old tank and a few zoanthids and xenias (canaries in the coal mine if you will) for another month. My final coal mine canary was a smal Acropora frag. If it survived (which it did) then I would move everything else over to the new tank soon after that.





On June 7, I finally took the plunge. After ensuring that the chemistry was stable and the tank had fully cycled, I introduced the rest of the live stock and liverock that I wanted to keep out of my old tank. The rest of it I sold away, and I shut the old tank down and drained it the following week.
 


Before we left for vacation in July, I wanted to be sure that the Apex system was fully accessibly remotely so I could tweak it while I was gone, and catch any impending catastrophies before it may be too late. So I hired a good friend of mine to set up an Apple Airport Express to connect the tank to our Wifi network. This was a great decision because not only has it placed the tank online wirelessly (clean look with no sloppy cables) but also the AirPort Express operates as a wifi extender, so now I have good wifi in all the places in the house that used to have dead spots. I mounted the AirPort Express to the top of the canopy to keep it far away from salt creep and moisture, but also to increase the range of the wifi signal.
 
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A quick look under the hood:



After wiring the apex and plumbing up the sump and dosing pumps, I quickly realized that I was ENTIRELY out of room. This was a problem I saw coming right after I unpacked all of the hardware components in March and April. My life is far too busy to maintain a reef system the old fashioned way, so for me, the Tuze ATO system was mandatory. Therefore, I build a shelf in the middle of the stand between the bottom of the display tank and the top of the sump. I had to be careful to leave enough clearance for sump maintenance and skimmer cup service, but I needed to keep the shelf low enough to but the maximum size RO reservoir possible in the stand. I wanted everything to stay enclosed.

I purchased a 5 gallon plastic tank built by Ace Roto Mold from USPlastics.com to use as the RODI reservoir. It was custom built to order and is by far the best reservoir tank I've ever had! Very sturdy, rigid construction. It was almost too nice to modify when it came in the mail, but I ended up cutting the cap and screw top off of it so the Tunze pump would fit into it.

If you'll notice, the reservoir is ABOVE the sump. This would cause the RO water to continuously siphon out into the sump until it overflowed if I pumped the RO water into the sump. Therefore, I ran the line from the Tunze ATO to the top of the display tank, and suspended the tip over the overflow box on a bracket. This way, there can be no siphoning.

I'm also running two MP10 wES linked in inverse sequence to provide a surging wave motion back and forth around the tank.

Across the front of the sump are two TLF PhosBan Reactors which I'm simply using as carbon and media filters now that the phosphates are perpetually zero (so currently no phosban). Water circulates to these via a T connector which comes off a separate power head in the sump that provides circulation to the chiller.

along the right are three blue acrylic reservoirs for my two-part and magnesium dosing pumps (one of the reservoirs is partly visible). I run the B-ionic two-part system in my setup.


Now I need to upload some pics of the reef!
 
as you can tell from the pictures, all of my SPS corals are bleached. The monti cap in the past pic above was dark brown when I put it in the tank 2 months ago. It bleached to pink in just a few weeks. I have three other monti cap. two of them go through periods of severe bleaching, die-off, and tepid recovery. Not the best outcome after such a full-on build. Still trying to figure out why. Tweaking the radion parameters now to see if there's any improvement. Took all of the GFO out a month ago but that didnt fix it. I really dont know what to do.
 
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