Rebuild of 225 gallon reef

[james-lee]

Ok slowly but surely my tank is creeping back to running status. Here is what I have so far:

Stand with foam pad underneath and plywood board on top.

Stand with tank on top. See the chair top the right? With the help of it and my wife steering I was able to get the tank from the garage to the stand (heavy sob)!

Sump and plumbing in place (tried to keep it as simple as possible and got union valves in place this time around woohoo).

The skimmer will sit in this area where I will have another smaller sump in place for the skimmer to sit in. I will then connect the two sumps via 1 1/2" bulkheads with pvc piping. I will have to cut the drain pipe and add in an 90 degree elbow so the water will just drain straight into the skimmer sump. The first chamber in the bigger sump will hold my Bio reactor and I will have the drain exit into the skimmer sump to catch the excess bacterial growth/die off.

Skimmer sump

Rock work done

Left

Middle

Right

Left Side Shot

 

[james-lee]

Right Side Shot

Added Remote Fuge and Remote DSB

The coolest thing about it is that the return pump chamber is big enough for me to expand if I can ever afford to buy a calcium reactor! More pics to come as things progress. Hopefully the tank will be filled by this Saturday and my live stock and coral can return the week after. Hope ya'll enjoy. :yo:

PS: A little history. My house flooded on new years day due to a busted pipe in the kitchen. In order for repairs to the house to move foward my tank had to be broken down and moved out of the house.

 

[james-lee]

LOL! Not for my wife who is asian. She actually asked if there was a way to store live crabs in the sump for future consumption bahahaha!

 

[james-lee]

Here is a few pictures of the refugium in action:

The pump I am using is a 65 gph pump that came with the red sea co2 reactor that I had when I was running freshwater planted tanks.

 

[james-lee]

Just got the canopy up. The ballast are still with the aquarium guy so I only had actinics. Fired it up and almost borught me to tears to see almost up and running lol!

 

[pgr11]

Things are rolling along great James. Keep it up and before you know it this whole mess will be behind you. Just make sure your booster pump line is TIGHT now LOL

 

[james-lee]

Things are rolling along great James. Keep it up and before you know it this whole mess will be behind you. Just make sure your booster pump line is TIGHT now LOL

LMAO! You are the second person to tell me that ahahaha! I retired the booster pump and will set up the ro/di in the garage to be safe haha!

 

[james-lee]

Quick video of me testing the drains between the sumps. Please ignore the background conversations lol.

Overflow & Drain Between Sumps - YouTube

Another video of the Aquamaxx Reactor in action.

Biopellet Reactor - YouTube

 

[Jmoney619]

I have mine near the kitchen too. I love the location

 

[james-lee]

Quick video looking at the all the plumbing and my rant of the difficulties it took to get this tank back up lol.

 

[james-lee]

Okay got the tank cleaned up as much as possible and redid the rock work after drying all the rock for a few weeks:

I wanted some opinions on the middle. Should I reove the two larger support rocks and the plate rock the coral is sitting on and just let the coral sit on the ground? I am thinking it will give more swimming room and might look cleaner, but the wife says she likes it. What do you guys/gals think?

 

[james-lee]

Added some more rock again and moved some corals around to space out the color of the tank:

 

[maddmaxx]

thumbs up on the melenarus wrasse.... does your yellowtail damsel bother your chromis??

 

[james-lee]

Thank! Not at all. All he does is go around pointing his fins up for nothing. Most the of tank mates just ignore him, but some times my cleaner wrasse gets annoyed by him and chases him around for a good 30 seconds. Pretty good comedy if you ask me. And that black striped damsel. He is a survivor. I thought I lost him a few month back. Found him in the filter sock last night before I did the rock work. Must have gone into the overflow and been living there since haha!