Kevin's 110g Build thread !!

[Vindicator]

OK! here we go !!!

Its been a long time coming. But the build thread is finially here!! First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Kevin Reid, and Iv been fascinated with the ocean for as long as I can remember. I live in south Miami, so the ocean is only a hop skip and a jump away from my house. My family has been vacationing in the Florida keys for longer than I have been around. We have family friends that have a house down there, and every single summer we go down and have 2 weeks of fun in the sun and water.
But I am getting away from the point! I have had more fresh water tanks then I can remeber, and did one saltwater aggressive tank a few years ago. Snowflake eel, lionfish, puffer and a grouper. That was a great tank, and provided years of enjoyment. But this time out I want to try my hand at a peacefull coral tank. This will be my frist go at keeping coral, so go easy on me

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At this point I have purchased -

-110g All Glass Aquarium
-110g All Glass Aquarium stand
-Octopus 200NW Skimmer with Octopus pump
-Eheim 900gph in sump skimmer
-2 Eheim Jager heaters
-2 Maxi-Jet 1200 powerheads with the 2100gph propeller upgrades
-Nova extreme T-5 light system 8 10k bubs .. I think, ill have to take a look.
-RO/DI unit
-150g worth of red sea salt
-120 pounds of agagonite sand ( may need more, not sure yet)
-and light for refugium.. ill get back to you on that.

Things I have built myself are -

-All the Pvc plumbing, including the overflows (super silent, thanks for everyones help)
-30g sump/refugium
-and I will be doing all the custom rockwork in the days to come.
-RO/DI water station set up and making water!

The tank is a 110g tall, with what will be a refugium/sump in stand. I am going to set it up so that the return pump is in the middle. That way I can control the flow to the Skimmer and Refugium sepearately. I really like the set up. I do need to add one more glass panel as a bubble trap. But I need to run out tomorrow and pick up some fish safe silicone.

Anyway, this is my first build thread, so If you have any questions or advice for me please feel free to chime in. I can use all the help I can get.

And now the part I'm sure your all waiting for !!! Pictures!!! This is my first attempt at taking pictures so they are not that good, but I am sure you will get the point, here we go!

Full tank shot, the lighting is very blue because I shot with the antics on.

Some shots of the plumbing thus far.

MORE!!

A Shot of the T-5 lights I got. Hopefully this thing will run without a chiller Did ok with temp on the freshwater test.

And some Shots of the rocks that I got. I really hope they come out the way I want. They look great! Lots of holes and places to hide. (sorry about the blue lighting, not sure why it came out like that)

OH YA!! before I forget. I got this light for the refugium. But I am concerned that It might be TO powerfull. Does anyone have any opinions on it?

 

[roka64]

150W for a 30G should be good, just watch for the evaporation. What are you planning on keeping in the sump/fuge?

 

[Ziggy953]

I keep a 100w (PC bulb) on my 20g fuge. The 20g is a fuge only inline with my sump. With your fuge being a 30g that is seperated into sump and only a portion being the fuge it may be a little too much light. I would try it and see what it does. The one thing I would do is keep it higher off the water to keep heat to a minimum.

 

[Zagz]

Although I am not a SW person, I will say it looks really great so far.

 

[melosu58]

Very nice. Looks great

 

[Vindicator]

Thanks guys!

Ya I actually incressed the size of the return area slightly since these pictures for evaporation. Also am planning on putting a float valve in the sump connected to a 30g RO/DI water supply for top offs.

I am not 100% on the refugium yet. I am open to idea's. But right now I was planning on having Chaetomorpha in there. I also wanted to put a small mangrove or 2. I heard they are not the best at nutrient export, but I really like them. So it would be more of a side project.

A few more pictures for everyone

Some of the Live Sand that I have got so far

The silicone I bought for installing the baffles in the sump/refugium. I figured with All Glass silicone its got to be ok right ? hehe

And I got my Salt! Woots!

 

[Zagz]

I have a question, as a freshie I don't know the first thing about SW. My question is how is the sand live in plastic bags? I thought live sand was because of the "critters" in it. Don't they suffocate. Sorry if this is a stupid question but I really want to know.

 

[roka64]

No, that is not a stupid question. It's my personal belief that from gathering, sealing, traveling (through cold weather or super hot), storing, shipping, then sitting on the (either AC or heated) shelves of the LFS, there might not be much "live" anymore (not to mention the oxygen depletion).
Vindicator, can you test the ammonia/nitrItes/nitrAtes of one or all of the bags (just to satisfy my curosity) to see what the levels are? Sorry to be the bearer of bad or good news, I think a lot of us were suckered into the :live" sand "idea".

 

[Zagz]

OK that is what I was thinking. In a much less technical fashion. It seemed sort of like instant cycle in a bottle is sold for FW use and has no live bacteria.

 

[Dave66]

Kevin,
Thing to do with a sump refugium is to put it on reverse daylight; that is, when the tank lights are off, the refugium light is on. If you keep macro-algae in the sump, the reverse daylight technique aids in keeping the dissolved Oxygen levels in the tank stable, which is what you want - stability.

Dave

 

[Vindicator]

I will test it when I get a chance. But I am sure you are 99% right about most of the live stuff in the sand being dead by the time it makes it into the fish tank. It says on the bag that it has a 1 year shelve life if stored in the proper conditions, but that is still pretty hard to believe. I really just wanted Aragonite sand in the tank (I have heard this is the best stuff you can have, but have nothing to back that up But I could not find any anywhere locally besides fish stores selling it as live sand. Then a friend of mine told me he had 80 pounds of live aragonite sand laying around from when he did his 300g tank, and that he would give it to me for free! So with that start I just went out and bought another bag from the LFS. Which is why you can see 2 different types in that picture.
Anyway... I guess the point is, if you get the chance to buy Aragonite sand at a cheaper price that was "dead" I would go for it.

Ya Dave, I had heard something about the reverse light cycle for the refugium helping with O2 levels and night and things. I also heard that you can run the refugium light 24 hours a day. But I am going to need some feedback on how that goes. Have not heard of a bad case yet.

Also, I started the aquascape last night. I am using some pond foam to hold some of the rocks together in ways that I think look really cool. I am going to try and finish up on the rock work and get some pictures of them tonight hopfully.

 

[Vindicator]

OK! Well I hope a few people are still paying attention to this tread, because I have some good updates for everyone!

Wow, has it been a long 3 weeks. Been working a lot. But managed to get a lot of work on the tank done, YAY! We have rocks, water, sand, powerheads, skimmer, heaters all up and running. Tank is in the process of cycling at this moment. But it seems to be coming along nicely. Have not had any real problems yet. Been staring at the skimmer for the past week, hehe, what can I say? Its my first skimmer and I cannot stop playing with it.
The water flow with these Maix jet mods is AMAZING! I was actully worryed at first about the sand getting blown around to much. I used a really fine suger sand. It is getting blown around slightly, but I actully am really enjoying it. It creates waves in the sand that remind me of the crazy patterns I would see while diving in Hi current area's.
Oh ya, another thing. As you can see from the pictures I am actully not going to use as much rock as I thought I was at first. As I started adding the rock, I really started to like the "open" look of the tank. I did not want to have the standard "Rock wall". I wanted more of a Florida reef, cannon, ledge look. I think my rocks have enough holes and hiding spots that I can get away with lossing a few pounds. I think it is going to work out great. I used pond foam to attach some rocks together in ways that I thought looked pretty cool.

I am sure I have a lot more to talk about, but I am drawing a blank right now. So let me shut up and just show you guys some pictures of how everything is going!

Enjoy!

The Skimmer! Love this thing so far. Great call on the Octopus guys. In this picture you can see that I have the tank set up on carpet. But I made these custom floor boards for the tank to sit on. They are working out great. You can also see the last minute bubble traps I installed in the sump/refugium.

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The Pond foam that I used. I was just walking around Home depot looking for a refugium light when I came across this stuff. The "fish safe" lable sold me on the whole thing LoL

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Making water!!! Fun stuff!! I forgot to take pictures of the water going into the tank with all the crazyness. But I got some other good stuff.

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Getting there....... WATER!! and sand storm. It was very painfull trying to wait for the water to clear LoL. It only took a day or 2. But I was starring at the sump the whole time haha.. I need something to look at.

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Skimmer working great!

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and the one everyone has been waiting for .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ... Clean water!!!!

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You can see the pond foam in between the rocks at some spots on the last picture. It blends in pretty well. But it will be invisible once I get some coraline covering it up. Speaking of which, you might also be able to see those 2 rocks on the top are Totally covered with Coraline, I am hopeing they will not take TOOOO long to spread around.

But all and all, it is coming along very nicely.

Any questions or comments, please come in and post! I need all the encouragement I can get

 

[cmor1701d]

Kevin,

Looking great so far. The skimmer is too wet. The skimmate should be dark tea colored. Your's looks like it's just pulling water. Bring the water level down a little in the skimmer.

How many pounds of rock do you have in the tank. Is any of it LR, or is it all dry rock that you added?
You want aprox 1½ - 2 pounds of tank capacity in LR for your filtration. Unless you will keep this tank very lightly loaded you may need to add some more rock or other filtration.

 

[Vindicator]

You are correct cmor1701d, the skimmer is running really wet at this moment. I have been playing with it all week and just wanted to get a little bit of waste in the cup for the pictues LoL. But it does need a bit of tweaking to get perfect.
I cannot say for sure on the lbs of rock in the tank. Most of it is dead base rock. So it is going to take awhile before everything gets seeded. I am light on rock, but I think that once everything gets going, the quality of rock that I have with all the holes and such will make up for that.
My main goal was to have a very open tank. I want a lot of swimming room for the fish. I also want to maximize water movement. None of the rocks touch the back glass, and there is room to get a mag float or any other kind of cleaning device behind the rocks to the back glass. This way, all my water can circulate unrestricted by the rocks around the tank.

I will be adding some live rocks to the refugium to help. That should just about even things out perfectly.

 

[pat8you]

Very nice looking tank so far. Keep up the good work and keep posting pictures for us.

 

[roka64]

Nice scaping. How do you have the ledges attached?

 

[Vindicator]

The rock ledges are being held up by the foam work. It is pretty strong stuff when it drys. Just had to hold the rocks in position for awhile with some cardboard boxes while it dryed. Worked out great.

 

[ccCapt]

It looks good, but IMO you're taking a chance depending on that foam to hold up over the years. It looks to be holding together a decent amount of weight in rock. I've seen tanks with rock stocked like that, but the rock is drilled and held in place with acrylic rods. I personally would not take the chance since there probably isn't much info on how strong of a bond that stuff maintains over the years submerged in saltwater.

You will love that skimmer. I have the same one. Just let is run for a good 2 weeks to break in....without messing with it. As Cmor said, you were running it way to wet. A good starting point is push the sliding pipe that adjusts the water in the skimmer all the way down. Then pull it up about 2" and leave it alone .
If you're a DIY type person, I can show you some of the mods that can be done to that skimmer. As good as it is stock, a few easy mods make major improvements. I get a full cup/week of dark brown sewage out of mine.

 

[Vindicator]

Ya, that was another question I was going to ask. I really do not have that much experience with skimmers so far. I was wondering how often everyone has to empty there collection cup. What is average?

 

[Ziggy953]

Without any waste being generated in your tank you probably arent going to get much out of your skimmer for a while. When you add some LR that will change.

In a perfect world you should clean your collection cup daily. Most of us do it a couple times a week.