Archit's 275g

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to start a little thread here for my Miracles 275g tank

Here is what the full setup consists as of now:

Tank: Miracles tank -- 84" (length) x 30" (width -- front to back) x 25" (height). Center overflow. 3-sides starphire glass + A custom frag tank
Sump: Advanced acrylics Alpha series
Skimmer: Tunze 9430
Lights: 3 x Ecotech Radion Pro + 6 x T5s (12 x 39w T5s split evenly so it's really 6 T5s)
Pump: Ecotech Vectra L1
Powerheads: 2 x Ecotech MP60s

Tank when delivered:

In the house in it's final destination!

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

We decided to do the rock work with no water in the tank, to keeps things somewhat easy. Here was the first setup:

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

Well, after a couple of weeks, my wife noticed I wasn't as happy with the rock work as I thought I was, because you really couldn't get the depth perception with the way things were setup. Seeing my frustration, she decided to "fix" it for me

Here's rockscape v2. From high level, looks similar to previous, but everything is pushed back a lot more and fixed a couple other minor things.

Had to put up a baby gate because I started finding some very "random" things in my sump courtesy of my 1 year old haha

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

Here are pics of the canopy for the lights:

The idea was to mount rails on top of the tank, and have the canopy be mounted to this rail system. That way I can just roll it out when I need to do any bulb changes, or any maintenance on the canopy itself or the tank.

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

My first time ever wiring T5 retros, but I think it came out pretty spiffy

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

Everything finally falling in place ... this is on 3/25/16

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

At this point, I finally felt proud enough to yank out the DSLR. Didn't really feel like taking any "nice" pics when everything didn't look nice.

Here's a few pics of my fish as of 3/27/16

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

arch85 · Apr 8, 2016

Anirban · Apr 8, 2016

Welcome......

and nice setup.

goody · Apr 13, 2016

So is your canopy on rails so you can slide it out? Also can you tell me more about your sump or take a sump picture. Trying to get ideas for my upcoming build and love what you've done.

ScottMyers123 · Apr 13, 2016

Welcome to R2R! Very nice setup and fish.

revhtree · Apr 13, 2016

Very nice work!!

Lowell Lemon · Apr 13, 2016

Why is it all the low iron glass tank manufacturers are outside the Pacific Northwest? What a nice looking glass tank there!

arch85 · Apr 14, 2016

Thank you everyone!

goody said:
So is your canopy on rails so you can slide it out? Also can you tell me more about your sump or take a sump picture. Trying to get ideas for my upcoming build and love what you've done.

Yep! Canopy is on rails so I can slide it out to work on the canopy, change bulbs, clean, do tank work, etc. Makes life soooo much easier

Also in lieu of all the crazy fish and corals I want to add, I decided to add a new kick-butt skimmer to my system. Introducing, Deltec SC2530!

I was happily surprised that Deltec had 0 break-in period for me (I wiped it down with RO water), and right away it started producing same/more skimmate than my Tunze 9430. I strategically placed the water in-takes of the skimmers so they don't "re-process" the same water.

Please don't mind the mess -- I need to re-do the plumbing in there. Nothing under my sump is glued -- I simply added decent amount of Teflon tape, and stuck the PVC in to make as tight of a fit as possible. A couple of connections were a little loose so there's a couple of minor leaks that I plan to re-do in the near future.

The return section is a "little" bit of a mess

-- we are using that section as both, our return as well as our refugium until I get my frag tank up and running. Plan is that the frag tank will be our refugium for the near foreseeable future until I start getting good growth from my colonies.

I plan to clean the return section up this weekend when I get a break.

Still a work in progress but slowly coming along!