sfdan's 120 gallon SPS tank

[sfdan]

Hey everybody. I need to get to 10 posts to PM, so why not do a tank build thread.

I had a nice little nano 15 gallon SPS tank about 15 years ago, in which if I recall correctly I had a 400 watt MH over my tiny tank. I found my reefcentral account registered in the year 2000 and enjoyed reading my posts from 15 years ago!

Well much time has passed and now I'm getting back into the hobby with a 120 gallon tank that will be mainly SPS.

It is cool that some things are exactly the same as they were 15 years ago (protein skimmers, calcium reactors), and some things are completely new (apex, all the new powerheads).

 

[sfdan]

Did not take nearly enough pictures along the way, but going forward I'll try to document it as I go. First, build the stand using the design from the very long thread about building a stand:

 

[sfdan]

Let's try the images again:

 

[sfdan]

Still need to put some trim on the top of cabinet, but otherwise it is ready to go. This is on the floor of my garage which isn't even close to level (off by >1" over the 4' of the stand), so I have 4 heavy duty leveling feet and need to put shims around the base for redundancy (hence the note "shim me" on the stand).

For the lighting I went with a 2x250W MH + 4 T5 bulbs hanging over the tank. I researched MH vs LED, and I went with MH because I'm very comfortable with it. I made this decision about 6 months ago, and in retrospect if I bought the lighting today I would get LEDs, mostly for the power savings. Oh well.

 

[sfdan]

Got a 30 gallon tank for the sump, and very sloppily but functionally put some baffles in:

The sump design was inspired by a thread here, where the refugium will be on the left, overflows and protein skimmer is on the right, and return pump in the middle. Return pump goes to left return, right return, refugium, and there is a capped 1/2" tee for future expansion. I liberally used unions which was quite helpful in getting everything in there.

Getting the overflows not to leak was incredibly challenging because there wasn't much space to adequately tighten the bulkheads. If I did it again I'd either redesign the stand or have the overflows put somewhere else. I probably also didn't really need dual 1.5" returns... dual 1" returns would have been fine and saved me a bunch of trouble. After many crazy attempts to tighten the bulkheads, I read a thread where somebody suggested a method involving jamming a screwdriver into the bulkhead nut and hitting it with a hammer to tighten it. What an idea! Worked amazingly well and finally got them tightened.

I leak tested the overflow system by having both overflows full of water with the overflow valves closed and checking for leaks. Left it that was for a week and there we no leaks, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

After reading a bunch of threads I decided to go with a EM300 skimmer which is in there.

 

[sfdan]

All the new tank control technology is very cool. I made a cabinet next to the tank that will control all the things which are powered.

Apex with 2 EB8 power strips, a Tunze Osmolator for auto top-off and a Neptune WAV for creating flow in the tank. The Apex setup procedure isn't the best designed thing in the world, but once I got everything up and running it seems quite amazing. Very cool to be able to track and control so much in one place, and I love how it can send alerts if something is going wrong.

 

[sfdan]

So these pictures are part-time work over the past ~6 months. As of now the tank is partially filled with RO/DI water so I could level the stand (the picture of the tank on the stand above is from today).

The next step is waiting for my 100lbs of Pukani dry rock to leach out all the phosphates so I can start aquascaping. As a person out of the hobby for so long, the whole concept of dry rock was very foreign to me; I assumed that I'd just buy a bunch of live rock and then go from there. But I like the idea of not potentially having any negative hitchhikers even if it means starting up will take a little longer.

I've found my Hanna 736 tester to be a little finicky so I'm not actually sure the progress of the phosphate removal, but I'm hoping to get that testing procedure down so I can figure out when the rock is ready.