My New 568 Gal Reef

[Edan_l]

Hello all!!!
It's been a while since I last wrote on Reef Central, mostly because I had to temporarily shut down my 120 gal reef. For the past two years we were renting while we rebuilt our house which gave me the opportunity to convince my wife of the wonders of a large reef. We are now the proud owners of a 568 gallon future to be reef.

The tank is constructed of fiberglass with the front viewing glass being 19 mm extra clear glass. Dimensions:
Length â€"œ 8.5 ft (260 cm)
Width â€"œ 3.08ft (94cm)
Height â€"œ 2.88 ft (88cm)

The tank is places on a steal stand made of a 1.97in profile (0.157in thick).

 

[Edan_l]

Electricity:
The while electrical system will be managed through a programmable controller able to turn on and off different equipment, dim the lights, test pH, ORP and temperature as well as send text messages incase of equipment or system failure. I planned for 28 electrical outlets (there is no such thing as too many outlets…).

Lighting:
At the moment, I only made a decision regarding metal halides; 3 400W 10,000K lamps, electronic ballasts and luninarc diamond reflectors. Once I make up my mind on the amount and layout of the T5s, I will post here.

 

[Edan_l]

Water system:
The main return pump is a Sequence Hammerhead Gold. Them main return pipe has three splits:
One that feeds the calcium reactor, UV and a free outlet.
One that feeds the left side of the tank â€"œ one nozzle from the top and another 4 from the bottom behind the rocks.
Last one feeds the right side of the tank â€"œ one nozzle from the top and another 4 from the bottom front facing the rock work.

 

[Edan_l]

Rock work:
I placed aprox. 730lbs of dried rock in the tank (worked on it alone half the night â€"œ for some odd reason, it's hard finding some to lend a hand at midnight…). The idea was to have 2 rock frames with a lagoon in between for clams and sorts. The main rock structure is made of 3 terraces with a lot of swimming room in between the rocks.

http://www.reef-center-host.com/pix/albums/userpics/10095/Rock14.JPG

At the moment the tank is half filled with RO/DI and hopefully I will be able to start the cycle this weekend.

Edan

 

[ReefingBuddha]

wow, impressive.
- I like that rock, looks like great quality stuff. I kinda wish I had done it so I'll ask, did you consider putting PVC risers under the rock to keep it off that sand and keep stuff from settling. I mention this now as you don't have anything else in the tank yet. Also you might consider gluing some of it together for long term reliability.
- Nice grab on the fiberglass tank, that is an great option and I'm sure it keep that costs reasonable.
- nice work on the electrical and all those outlets will definitely be convenient.
- Nice job on the plumbing, that hammerhead will kick @$$. Oh and an oceans motions 4 or 8 way might work very nicely for your as you can hide so much in your rock work.

Good luck on the rest of your build, things are looking really good.

 

[Bax]

That's fantastic ... I need to build a new house around a huge tank!

 

[ricks]

Nice build..

Kinda tagging along. What about backflow from the lower inlets?

Also you will not have enough flow for a tank that size, maybe (6) Tunze 6201 will help..

Happy Reefing

 

[milsaltnewbie07]

very Nice Build

 

[Jar*Head]

Very nice fiberglass tank. I wish i could do the same or knowing someone who could build me one.

 

[Edan_l]

Thank you for the feedback.

thirschmann, I decided not to put anything beneath the rock work. The sand was added afterwards and I believe that a good cleaning crew and back flow will take care of any future hazards. The sand bed will be about 1.6in thick at the most.

ricks, over the overflows (I only pictured one) you can see an orange nob. That nob is slightly open to break the siphon caused when the pump is turned off.

As to motion, I will be using a couple of the 6201s, and after seeing a similar setup at a friends tank (about the same size), I believe I have enough flow. However, I have a couple of old Vortecs laying about and I can always add another couple of 6201s.

I hope that by the end of the week I will be adding the salt mix and get a start on the cycle.

Incase anyone was wondering, I decided to use an ELOS NS4000 on this system. I like its relative compact size and simplicity.

 

[FishyBiz]

The rock work looks great. Congrats on the tank.

 

[THEmarineman]

Edan
Looks great!!!
I use Elos ns 500 and it works wonderfully.
I guess the 4000 will kick a@!#!@#


Good luck old chap

:rollface:

 

[X men]

Impressive ! i think its a good idea to start from a fiberglass tank. Did you ordered it custom build ? or did you started from an existing tank, and than modified it ? Should make a significant difference in price ...

Could you give us an indication on the price of that tank ?

 

[zaireguy]

super nice build can`t wait to see it done

 

[Edan_l]

Hi X men,

The tank was custom built. In Israel, the vast majority of tanks are glass. I think you can actually count the number of non-public fiberglass tanks on one hand (same goes for acrylic).

Because there is no regular manufacturing of such tanks, the price is about 10-20% higher than glass, but I believe it comes out cheaper in the long run (crack, leaks, seems coming undone...).

A short update:
I finished adding the RO water and I also added the salt. The skimmer started collecting skimate which I presume came from the dry rocks and sand.
I will start water testing tomorrow to see if the cycle started.

Edan

 

[neoyhng]

Wonderful!!!!!!!!! Your electric system is the best I have ever seen!

 

[danskim]

Excellent progress so far!

Let's see some pictures with it filled

 

[byadhavan1]

Good progress, waiting to see the life in your tank

 

[Edan_l]

Here are few new pictures of the tank.
This one is of the tank 1/3 full:

These two are of the tank with only the left MH on:

And this is of the whole tank with all 3 MH on:

For actinics, I decided to use a total of 12 54W T5s (6 in the back and 6 in the front).
I still need to place the Tunzes in the tank.
And I'm happy to say that the cycle has started and now I just need to wait (since I'm going on holiday in the middle of April, I won't be adding any livestock until I get back).

Edan

 

[Bax]

It's always great to see big projects like this make great progress. The display looks fantastic from the front, the vast space is very evident. You are going to make a lot of fish very happy!