Phil's 180 G Reef

[philsky89127]

I've read through just about every build in this forum over the past year or so, but this is only my second post on this site, so here it goes.

I'm realtively new to the hobby. I got my first SW tank about a year and a half ago. It was a 46 G bow-front. I loved the tank, but without a sump (and with only my little experience) I could never seem to keep the tank stable. Here is a picture of it.

Well, if I had known how much patience this hobby requires, I may have not been so eager to start this obsession. thus, with a lack of patience, and and eagerness to go bigger, I bought a 180 G set-up (60 G sump) off of a friend.

Well, I don't have the room for a dedicated fish room, so I was forced to house everything inside the stand. Again, If I had ANY patience and had thought through this a little better, I would have spent the extra money and time and routed my plumbing into the basement and set up my sump and other equipment there. It would just open up my options so much more.

Anyway, being an engineer, here is the schematic I drew up for my system.

I wish I would have documented it better, but these are the pictures I have from the set-up.

When we started to put water in (you can see the small tank on the left):

Lighting pic:

250 W 15K MHs - QTY 3
135 W 6' White VHO - QTY 2
135 W 6' Actinic VHO - QTY 2
LED Moon Lights - QTY

Some pics inside the stand (before the wiring was cleaned up):

I have since made quite a few alterations. The one long power strip in the back has been changed two power strips, each with individual switched for each outlet. All my timers are now mounted on an extra brace I added to the left side of the insde of the stand.

Here is a pic with the water full and a little live rock added. ou can see how much I let my other tank go over the last couple days it was running.

 

[philsky89127]

Everything is now transferred. Murphy (the dog) was going crazy.

My lovely five foot tall wife on her stand so that she can work on it too.

Everything somewhat put back in its place.

Some inital aquascaping and livestock pics:

The culprit that eventually ate some of my acan colonies:

These last pictures above are about a 9 months old. I have som updated pics that I will post later. Right now, I have to go back to work.

 

[psusocr]

Nice clean looking tank!!!

 

[dahenley]

thats a nice stand!!
i wish my 5' tall wife would throw her hands in the tank every now and then....
she just lets me know when it gets too noisy and too dirty. lol

looks good!!!
i bet those fish like the new crib!

 

[philsky89127]

OK, more pics now. After a couple months I added a bunch of rock and changed the aquascaping around. Here are some pics from around 7 months ago.

FTS:

 

[philsky89127]

Well, again due to my impatience I lost a lot of fish and coral over the first few months that I had the tank. A lot of the stuff oyu see in the picture above is not longer in the tank unfortunately. I just didn't have the patience to let the tank mature. I've definitely learned my lesson.

I made a big aquascaping change about 5 months ago when I decided that I needed more rock. I like caves and arches, so I made one huge arch in the middle that extends out towards the front glass.

Here are a couple of shots showing the arch.

FTS:

End Tank Shot:

Here are some more random shots of the progress as of 5 months ago.

 

[philsky89127]

Still from 5 months ago:

I found this guy down in my sump once.

Everybody calls the lawmower blenny my grumpy old man fish.

 

[philsky89127]

Well, I have to admit, at one point in my endeavors I decided to try a ray. I loved him, but he was just too high maintenance for a reef tank. I only had him for about 3 or 4 week, and then he died when I had an outbreak of ich. I wouldn't try one again because it's just too limiting for a reef. However, I can honestly see myself wanting a tank for just these guys in the future. Here are a couple pics.

Another interesting tidbit is that I have a pair of gold-band maroons that were egg-laying for a couple months or so. They stopped when my anemone decided to move around for no good reason.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...417391723_100000513963103_456432_985013_n.jpg

These next two pics are actually the only pictures I've taken in the last couple months. I added these two guys about a month ago.

Sorry for the bad pick, it's a Marin Betta.

In the last couple weeks I've actually added the following fish:

Small Clown Tang
School of Small Chromis - started with 6, now have 3
Male and female Lyretail anthis - looking to get a few more females.
Medium Blonde Naso Tang

I will hopefully get updated pics this weekend.

 

[philsky89127]

Update: January 20, 2011

FTS

End Tank Shot

 

[philsky89127]

Update Continued:

 

[philsky89127]

A couple new additions.

ORA Red PLanet:

Some sort of Acro that caught my eye, ID anyone?

 

[BEEKER1]

My tank is next to the TV as well. This way when the wife wants to watch a chick flick I can pretend to watch while I just enjoy the tank!

 

[philsky89127]

Yea, I thought if I was going to invest this much time and money, I was going to put it somewhere where we are always at.

 

[philsky89127]

Well, I don't have a very complicated system, so I recently decided to throw some complexity into the mix in and attempt to fix two issues.

Issue 1:
Since I don't have a fish room, or hardly any room at all to store supplies/containers etc, I have literally been using 5G buckets for my water changes. Well, needless to say, this is a pain. It ends up taking tons of time and making a huge mess.

Issue 2:
I will preface this issue by saying that I am scared to death of auto top off systems. When I first got into the hobby I designed one that had all sorts of redundancies built in, but in some situation could still fail. I read too many horror stories to ever implement my design.

Since I haven't implementd an auto top-off system, every day I open a valve and let my RO unit top off the sump. However, (again, resulting from the fact that I don't have a fish room), I have an RO unit that fills a container under my kitchen sink with only about a 1.5-2 gallons. I loose more than that every day from evaporation. Thus, I end up having to leave the valve open for a couple hours as my RO system makes more water. It's pretty much another pain since I have to keep checking it, and setting timers to make sure that I don't forget that the valves are open.

Well, I was contemplating this issue the other day and I remembered that in my basement right underneath the sport where my water line drops through the floor before heading out to my tank, I have about a 3' x 5' space available. After much brainstorming I came up with the following fresh water/salt water storage container design. Let me know what you think.

I have bought the cans, built the stand and run some of my plumbing already. Mose of this project won't be expensive except for the pump, so I have to wait on that portion of the plumbing until I can come across a little more spending cash.

I will take some pics today and post more as I make progress.

 

[philsky89127]

Well, here is the final result.

Most of the system:

Opposite view of the system:

Freshwater:

Saltwater:

Pump and inlets/outlet:

Drain from freshwater to saltwater:

More plumbing:

While I was plumbing, I took the time to re-design my interface wit hthe sump. The horizontal valve line allows the top-offs. The vertical valve line allows me to siphon from the sump all the way down to the basement drain.

1/2 inch line that connect from basement system to new sump plumbing shown above.

I know all of the valves and plumbing seem like a little over-kill, but as I was designing I kept getting ideas. With the way the system is now I can do all of the following.

- Pump water from either the freshwater or saltwater reservoir to tank.
- Drip RO water into freshwater tank from RO system via float swtich.
- Use the RO pressure vessel to pump 1.5-2 gallons of RO water to the tank.
- Drain from freshwater reservoir into saltwater reservoir for mixing.
- Pump and water from saltwater reservoir back up into freshwater reservoir if ever needed.
- Account for any tank over-flow (float switch malfunction) with safety drains.
- Siphon water directly out of the sump back into either reservoir, or directly into the basement drain.

Anyway, I used it today for a water change and it worked great. Now all I have to do is clean up the mess I made putting this thing together.

 

[Wichers]

Excellent looking tank! I didnt notice if you posted it but what are you running for lights?

 

[Reefnut2010]

looks good, but remember patience is the key to a sucessful Reef. Otherwise you better plant a money tree in your back yard !!

 

[Pylos]

Nice over time photos and great looking reef.

 

[|FATHOM|]

Wow amazing tank man. Invu

 

[philsky89127]

Excellent looking tank! I didnt notice if you posted it but what are you running for lights?

9:00 - 12:00 - Two 165 W 6' actinic VHOs
12:00 - 8:00 - Three 250 W 15K MHs added to the two 165 W VHOs
8:00 - 11:00 - Same two 165 W 6' actinic VHOs

LEDs run throughout the night