Too much time - 90 gallon SPS "lab" build

[Decadence]

I can't remember the last time that I wasn't doing some kind of major overhaul to make life easier maintaining my reef tank or adding some tricky piece of equipment which I don't actually need. I also can't remember the last time that I had a build thread going on RC; it's about that time to get one going again. This time around, the focus of the game is on trace elements.

The current tank:

Sorry for the lousy cell pic but my DSLR doesn't do pictures from a few feet back very well. The tank is a standard 90 gallon RR on a standard pine stand. I have four Vortech powerheads in there, three MP10wes and one MP40wes.

Current filtration:

This filtration was supposed to be temporary but I wound up getting into a comfortable grove and life got in the way. I'm using a Reef Octopus Ext200 skimmer with an upgraded Bubbleblaster HY3000s pump. My GFO reactor is a little small and is just enough to tip nutrient limitation into phosphate's court which is great for SPS. I harvest algae and carbon dose to keep nitrate below 1ppm and phosphate below 0.03ppm. The tank is bare bottomed with extreme flow and everything goes through a filter sock.

Current lighting:

I'm running two full spectrum China fixtures, mixed with a Current T5 which has ATI purple+ and blue+ bulbs. I also run two 15w LED accents which I built from generic ebay lights to add light for certain corals.

Current supplementation:
All of my RODI top-off water runs through an Aquamedic kalk stirrer and I top off magnesium by hand weekly. For a long time, this was enough. Not too long ago, I had to add a calcium reactor to get more calcium and alkalinity and meet the demands of the tank. I'm running a Geo 612, 20lb aluminum CO2 bottle, Reef Fanatics CO2 controller and an AQP electronic regulator. The calcium reactor is currently not on the tank while I do upgrades and I have instead raised the tank temperature and added a few fans to increase evaporation and I'm dosing vinegar into the kalk reactor for a higher saturation point.

The goal with this round of upgrades:
I wish to cut back my water changes to only one large change a year. Running so much kalk, this is impossible without supplementing trace elements. After six months without a water change, my potassium levels were so low that some of my corals looked awful. Supplementing potassium brought back one of my acros but it was too late for an 8" wide birsdsnest which went up almost overnight.

There will be lots of people who are strong supporters of water changes. I get it. If you need a good reason why I should do something expensive and complicated instead of setting up an automatic water changing system, I don't have one. Really, I'm a man and I like toys. I want more things to measure, log, adjust and talk to my dorky reefer friends about. I want my trace elements to be as stable as the big three are, so stable that doing a water change could only upset the stability.

To achieve my goal, I decided that I needed more space. I have an entire 14 foot wall which I can dedicate to my tank. This remainder of this wall used to house an entertainment center and a 50" flat panel television. After over a year of ownership, I realized that it wasn't plugged in. I moved all of my fish stuff out from in front of the TV and traded it to the owner of a local fish store for a gorgeous aussi pink tabling acro colony (score). I decided that if I really wanted to make all of this work and make maintenance a breeze, I needed a pretty large sump with lots of room to access it.

 

[Decadence]

The lab:
This is the name that I gave to the new work bench which I will be doing all of my testing, fragging, mixing, etc.. It is also going to house the bulk of the new sump. I built the frame to the measurements of 54"x24"x33". I made it nice and tall to fit my CO2 bottle and the the automatic neck cleaner for the skimmer which wouldn't fit under the current stand. The length and width I chose to fit a piece of granite which I found on craigslist... the same thing that I will do when I build the new stand for the tank to match this one.

Construction is pretty basic. I purchased 1x4 from Lowes and cut them to the lengths necessary to build the frames. I made sure that every one I bought was perfectly straight. To securely join the 1x4 without any external brackets, I used a long drill bit and a dowel cutting guide to put straight guide holes all the way through 3.5" width of the board.

With a little bit of wood glue between the boards, I drove 4" screws all the way through the first board to grab the second. To make sure that these joints were straight, I used a known perfect angle as a reference and clamped them before screwing.

I cut the bottom which will hold the sump out of much higher quality wood, 3/4" maple.

To raise the maple off the ground and prevent moisture from ruining it from the bottom, I built spacers to slide under it and support the weight of the sump.

The right side of the lab's stand will not be able to have access to it because I'm building another smaller cabinet to sit between the lab and the display to hold my RODI reservoir and my battery backups, plus some other electrical equipment which I wish to have easy access to away from the sump. This piece too was built from maple since I had extra. With the base and the side on, I added some triangles to the top. I don't know why... It just felt like the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure I saw it on TV or something.

I still have trim work and sanding to do and then I need to build doors but I couldn't help but to get it in place and get the granite on top to get an idea of the sump layout.

This picture will give you an idea of the new space compared to the footprint of the 90.

That's all for now. I need to figure out how I want to trim this thing and what style I want to make the doors. I know that I will be staining the inside a gloss light oak color while the outside will be satin black. I plan to add lights to the inside which I can turn on with a switch to see what I am doing. A Bubble Magnus dosing pump trio should be here this week and I will be adding the four-doser expansion before it is all together. I plan on dosing the four stage of the Red Sea coral colors program with the expansion doser and then using the other three for vinegar, magnesium and maybe some kind of food for filter feeders.

Updates as they come.

 

[sanababit]

Coming along nicely and i still dont do water changes, lol ,good luck

Sana

 

[1SlickFish]

I think I would have gone 2x4 with granite on top, lol, but I like the granite. Kind of like a sandy texture (look) next to the water. If you dont want it IN the water, maybe it can be "next" to the water?

 

[animalkingdom]

nice build...its cabinet quality...

 

[Decadence]

Coming along nicely and i still dont do water changes, lol ,good luck

Sana

Thank you. I don't want to completely give them up because I would like to restore my water to that "balance" of fresh salt probably once a year.. but I would like to have the option to skip a year if I'm feeling lazy. :lol:

I think I would have gone 2x4 with granite on top, lol, but I like the granite. Kind of like a sandy texture (look) next to the water. If you dont want it IN the water, maybe it can be "next" to the water?

With this color granite, I was trying to more closely match the decor of the room. I think it goes perfect with the tile in there. The furniture we have is all satin black so the stand will be as well but I plan on making the inside a glossy light oak color to carry the light inside better and contrast the outside. We have a 36x8x8 rimless tank for LPS which will sit on this in the back, right corner which will look good with that granite base for a few months before it's all purple.

 

[Decadence]

nice build...its cabinet quality...

Thank you! :dance:

 

[Decadence]

I'm trying to plan out my sump so that I can start snapping glass. Would any of you guys recommend running a UV sterilizer on an SPS tank? I have run one in the past (a long time ago) on FOWLR tanks but never with corals. I am afraid that it could mess up the populations of bacteria being promoted by my carbon dosing.

 

[BossHoggin]

I'm trying to plan out my sump so that I can start snapping glass. Would any of you guys recommend running a UV sterilizer on an SPS tank? I have run one in the past (a long time ago) on FOWLR tanks but never with corals. I am afraid that it could mess up the populations of bacteria being promoted by my carbon dosing.

This is not an issue for me

 

[Decadence]

This is not an issue for me

Good to know. I have a 25w Emperror Aquatics UV. I will go ahead and incorporate it into the new build-out.

 

[SavingOurSeas]

Definitely tagging along!!

 

[Decadence]

To put a slight spin on things, I have determined that a few of my fish have gone blind. I'm not sure why this is but I'm positive that it is so as they didn't even attempt to flee as I netted them. These fish are in quarantine right now to train them to eat directly from the baster in an attempt to fatten them up and treat whatever is affecting them. Now that they have had a day to acclimate, tomorrow will bring the first round of treatment starting with prazipro as flukes have been known to cause blindness. With four cleaner shrimp and a cleaner wrasse in my display, other symptoms could easily go unnoticed.

 

[Decadence]

Bubble Magus triple doser is installed in its temporary location, just waiting on the stand to be done. Right now I have it set to dose vinegar and potassium. I will be setting up magnesium here pretty soon. I need to get a baseline after doing a few water changes because the Kent salt mix usually has high mag.

 

[Decadence]

Time and weather have not been cooperating with me but I was able to get a little work done this passed weekend.

I turned a big sheet of wood into a bunch of little pieces:

Then I turned a bunch of little pieces into a cabinet!

Here is a shot of the finishing work on the lab stand from today:

This of course was shot before I put down filler. The filler which I used had a pretty long curing time and I got carried away building the dosing cabinet so I didn't get any further with it.

The obligatory full tank shot from today:

A little more info on the cabinet: I'm going to be finishing this thing the same way that the lab stand is getting finished. It will be satin black on the outside and a glossy light oak color on the inside. I'm going to put three separate doors on this with wood edges around glass centers, like the stand. I want to be able to keep tabs on everything at a glance without having to hear the sounds of the dosing pumps running or relays clicking.

The bottom tier, as you can tell is mostly open. I still have to construct the steel frame which is going down here. I'm basically building a slide-out drawer to hold the 40 gallon glass RO reservoir. It will be guided and it will slide out on ball bearings to make it very easy to fill. The middle tier is for all of the electronics and battery back-ups. I wanted to make sure that they were not in a place where water could fall on them. The top tier is for dosing equipment. I should have more than enough room to add whatever I want to try dosing which gives me lots of expandability for experimenting. I got the expansion set of dosers which gives me four separate programmable dosers.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

Looks like it is turning out really nice. Sorry to hear about your blind fish and I hope everything works out for them. :sad2:

 

[Giga]

I like the stand

 

[Lowefx]

Nice Raptor! I need a better job! haha

 

[Decadence]

Thanks guys!

Nice Raptor! I need a better job! haha

Lol, thanks. Stay away from government jobs!



I picked up a couple VERY nice corals today. I got a 4-5" Leishman's tabling acro and a 7" rainbow millepora from a member of my local reef club's forum. Bothe pieces are in the display and showing great polyp extension already. I'll try and download so DSLR pics soon.

 

[Decadence]

When you're dosing something which says "shake well before use":

I've got this thing running with my amino acids on it now. So far results seam to be pretty good! I hope to have the dosing cabinet all stained this weekend so that I can start plumbing everything and running electrical.

 

[Decadence]

Got pre-stain all done and sanded with 220 grit:

First coat of stain is on the dosing cabinet:

It's really tough to tell in the pictures but I chose the interior color and wood type to emphasize the marble grain. I'm very happy with the results thus far and can't wait to get the second coat on and clear so that I can get the satin black exterior done and get this thing operational. Right now my dosing set-up, controllers and other electronics are a mess!