Rich's 180g Build Thread

[milburnr]

Ok now that the tank is about 95% built, and is a week into cycling, I figured I should write up the build.

I started this hobby in Florida, in 1995. I bought a 55 gal tank, and we went to the ocean and filled it with sea water, rocks, and various things. Had no idea what we were doing. We bought a HOB filter at the pet store's recommendation, with - TA DA - Bio Wheels. What fun. Tank was often pretty green. We had a couple of florescent strips, fish tank color. LFS was very, uh, helpful. I feel bad for the fish we went through.

Navy moved us to Italy, where we set up the tank once with local sea life. Nothing lived much, and LFS' did not exist in Sardegna where we lived. Then they moved us to England.

In 2002, I built a stand. I got a copy of Simplified Reefkeeping, which really opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong. I had the tank back-drilled, built a stand, put in a sump, put the bioballs (that I bought at some point before) into storage, got a skimmer, put several powerheads in the tank, etc. Here's what resulted from that:

This was after maybe 8 months running. Things did so well that I decided to get a "real" tank. I had a 180g 6x2x2 built (I think it was about $250, seemed cheap at the time. It's 3/8" glass, braced at the top. I built a stand, here's a pic of it empty:

I bought a whole bunch of 240v equipment for it - pumps, electronic ballasts, etc. Not enough lighting it turns out, but I figured I'd light one side then add on for the other side. I got the temp right, with RODI water from the store (three 10 gal jugs at a time till it was full), salinity right, etc. Then I transferred everything over, and it cycled and everything died. It was bare bottom, I should add... and there was about 80 lbs of LR in that 55g tank. Shortly after this, we found out we had to move back to the USA, so it was just as well, I guess.

So here in Kansas, that tank has been sitting, just like that (see pic above), for 5 years. Finally we decided to do something about it. One of the selling features of this house was the unfinished storage room in the basement, about 4 feel below the level of the family room - perfect place for the sump.

I found this site, and did a lot of reading (still reading, too). Read up on deep sand beds, and refugi-whats?, and pumps, and lighting, etc. Went searching for lights, and found a good deal on two 400w MH "fixtures" - ballast, reflector housing (meant for a warehouse I think), and 20k XM bulb, from my LFS. So I built a canopy for that. Below is the side view, you can see the fans, the rails for the lights to slide back for opening the front. In this pic, the front half is in the garage being modified (it would stick closed, and was too bulky for small tasks like feeding the fish, so I'm putting doors in it).

Below is the front view with water, and the lights on:

Next is the front of the canopy, under construction:

I put in a 20 amp dedicated circuit, wired into a GFCI outlet. That feeds two additional protected outlets, one controlled by a switch for easy pump shutoff. I was worried about the load, but so far it runs 800w of lights, a 300w computer power supply, two 500w titanium heaters, a Dart pump, a viaAqua 4900 subm. pump, two powerheads in the tank, and 40w of flourescent lighting.

Continued...

 

[milburnr]

Here's what the fish room looked like before I put much in it:

After a few additions:

Latest pic (2/24/09):

Water enters from top right, and can be diverted into the refugium. This is lit by a small flourescent fixture with one "daylight grow" bulb and one 6500k bulb. It drains directly into the bottom sump (bypassing the skimmer).

Next, water can be diverted to the Remote Deep Sand Bed (black bin on the 2x4 stand). This drains into the skimmer sump.

Un-diverted tank water drains into the skimmer sump. This was pretty noisy at first, so I came up with a T on the bottom at the water level, then with a pipe going up to vent the air, but sometimes that would fill with water so I used an elbow to direct the water back down to the sump again, just above the water level. It works fairly well.

Here's a close-up of the skimmer and skimmer sump.

Currently supported on two paint cans lol, this Beckett skimmer seems to be doing well. I'm thinking about re-doing the water inlet piping so that it has a ways to fall (putting the valve up higher). We'll see. This sump drain might look strange - what happened was that the first bulkhead with 1.25" pipe was not big enough to handle the flow (until it started siphoning). I had more bulkheads so I added another, replaced some flexible tubing with a T and 2" pipe. This handles the flow well, and quietly.

Here's a closeup of the main sump:

I didn't want to spend a ton of money on acrylic to build a sump, or on a pre-made one. I found these heavy-duty 27g bins, but gluing standard flat bubble traps in them was going to be tough. It occurred to me that I might do the same with pipes and a bucket. It works fairly well. I stuffed filter floss into the outer ring which stopped all the micro bubbles. This is one more thing I'll need to change frequently, but for now, it works well. There's also a home-made filter sock on the drains.

I also discovered that when this one bin was all the way full with the pump off, that the pump on would suck all but about an inch of water (above the top of the pump inlet). That's fine on day one, but evaporation is going to cause problems. Fill it more, and it will overflow. So I added capacity via another bin, and a pipe connecting the two. I might change this around at some point, or get a bigger sump, but it's workable for now.

There's also a big heavy-duty 35g trash bin for RODI water/make-up water. And I initially started out with one 500w titanium heater... overnight, the first night the pumps were running, the water temp went from 75 degrees to 72. Yikes! So I bought a second 500w. Temp is up to 80 now, which seems good for cycling the tank.

Here was my initial overflow setup. It was slurpy and very noisy:

Here's the new setup:

It's not silent but it's tolerable. I've since seen some great overflow ideas, but I'd have to re-do the overflow and piping etc, and it's not really worth it. My wife likes a little bit of trickling sound anyway, she said, so it's good.

I read that one way to reduce overflow noise was to increase your linear overflow, and that the ideal but usually unworkable solution was an overflow that spans the length of the back of the aquarium. Hmmm. I thought about that, and came up with the idea of one quarter (or a little more) of a 4" pipe. Aqua green sewer pipe (clean, thank you!) from the hardware store seemed about right. Thanks to my new table saw, miter saw, three bushels of green PVC shavings, a tube of aquarium grade silicone sealant, and an hour's worth of struggling with clamps and positioning, I turned a 10ft piece of green pipe into a level overflow (with teeth) that spans the entire length of the aquarium. I didn't even cut it too short, which is a pretty good accomplishment.

Here are a couple more pics - one of the canopy, with the overflow in its raw form, and of the outlets. Not as fancy as some I've seen on here, but they work nicely.

One other thing is that I used a computer power supply to run the fans on the canopy. I had an old one (or you can get them for $30 if you look, cheaper if it's used). However, most of the newer ones are switched by the computer, which is obviously not used. The switch wires are the GREEN and GREY ones that lead to the 24-pin motherboard connector. Short these together, and the power supply turns on. I found 120 mm fans at Microcenter for $2.99 each. Not bad for a nice built-in look for the ventilation

 

[milburnr]

edited pics for smaller sizes. if they're still too big, pm me and I'll cut them down a little more...

 

[jimmy n]

Nice start. I'm in Lees Summit which I believe is reasonably close to Olathe. Any must see stores in the area?

 

[milburnr]

Yeah Lee's Summit is not far. The best show tanks are probably at Paradise Aquatics, 119th and Metcalf, but some people feel they cater more to the wealthy people living in the Leawood area - they're all out to help you if you're ready to plunk down a lot of cash. For example, "yeah, can you please just come make that 500g reef tank happen at my house please? Money is no object." Still, they have a HUGE tank, I didn't ask how big it is, but if I had to make a wild guess... 25' x 3' x 5' tall - about 3600 gallons. They have another nice smaller one, but still very big. As far as where I go for my LFS, that would be Aquarium Warehouse, at the Great Plains mall. They have recently gone all salt water, have several large (400g?) reef tanks, several frag tanks, and a new clam tank. The staff is pretty knowledgeable.

 

[milburnr]

I haven't posted to this for a while, so here are some pics to catch things up...
Macro algae in the Refugium:

Chromis

Modified sump intake:

Brittle star I found stuck in the algae scrubber!

Current view of the tank (canopy doors fitted, they need latches though). One of the rocks fell, and one of the lights is off in this pic)

New algae scrubber:

 

[milburnr]

3-16-09:
Nitrates and Nitrates are showing just the slightest hint of pink now. I can't recall if they will be completely clear at some point, but this is pretty good I think.

Here are some recent pics of the tank and the two tangs we got on Saturday from AW. Also the second tank picture (they are left, center, and right), shows two pieces of good live rock from AW also. It seems to have some good stuff on it. I've got so much capacity in the tank that I went ahead and put it in, after letting it sit in the fuge for a few hours.

 

[milburnr]

3/18/09:

 

[milburnr]

3/26/09:
Algae is pretty much gone. In fact, I may need to, um, re-home some of the turbos and the sea hare. I've started feeding the tangs seaweed.

I also moved the algae scrubber, and for now have turned off the skimmer. One week later, my nutrients are still at zero.

 

[milburnr]

3/30/09:
Ok so here are some pics of the wildlife now in the tank. These are mostly frags, so in a few months I can update with bigger coral pics (I hope!), and also maybe more colorful and sharper focused ones!!

 

[milburnr]

3/30/09:

 

[milburnr]

4/1/09:
So we got some clowns, an anemone, and a cardinal. And two coral frags. And then we moved everything around...

Pink Bird's Nest (Seriatopora histryx)

Yellow Coral (seriatopora guttatus? not sure)

Blue Xenia (I think)

Fish

Rock Flower Anemone

Green Bubble Tip Anemone with clown

Feather Duster

 

[inktomi]

I'd get rid of that little anemone before it turns into 300 little anemones. Other than that, looks good. Makes me want to get a bigger tank going =p

 

[milburnr]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14751084#post14751084 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by inktomi
I'd get rid of that little anemone before it turns into 300 little anemones. Other than that, looks good. Makes me want to get a bigger tank going =p

I just did that yesterday, I went in there with Red Sea's Aiptasia-x and killed all 4 little buggers that I knew about.

and thanks!

 

[milburnr]

Taken just now: