Benjmain's 75g Garage Reef

revhtree · Mar 26, 2013

Great tank, great space, well done!! Love it!

Aquaph8 · Mar 26, 2013

Great looking tank, love the man cave

MoeManTheSnowMan · Mar 27, 2013

Love'n your thread. Looking good

mrbee2828 · Mar 27, 2013

Thanks everyone. The latest news is that I picked up a 125g on the cheap. I've drilled it for 2 returns, a full bean with a 4' overflow box and plan on upgrading the garage sometime in the next month. It's going to be quiet the chore to swap this out and I'm not looking forward to it. Having said that, this is the 2nd 125g I've bought and drilled with this plan. I flipped the other one not wanting to go through with it. I hope I don't shy away again.

nytegti · Mar 28, 2013

mrbee2828 said:
Thanks everyone. The latest news is that I picked up a 125g on the cheap. I've drilled it for 2 returns, a full bean with a 4' overflow box and plan on upgrading the garage sometime in the next month. It's going to be quiet the chore to swap this out and Im not looking forward to it. Having said, this is the 2nd 125g I've bought and drilled with this plan. I flipped the other one not wanting to go through with it. I hope I don't shy away again.

C'mon Ben just do it!

justgotwet · Mar 28, 2013

Great tank and man cave!

kyle1284 · Mar 28, 2013

great man cave! I enjoied reading your thread... i do have ? though... where do you get the insulation for garage doors? how did you install? i have metal garage doors and similar to you i have a frag tank and a sump in the garage with the chiller and in Texas the chiller tends to run 18 Hrs a day. did you notice any change in the ability to hold constant tempature during hot days? did it help? How much did it cost?

CrabDragon · Apr 8, 2013

That is one awesome freakin man cave. Hats off!

mrbee2828 · May 1, 2013

So I stumbled into a 125g at a great price a bit back. It's been water tested and sitting behind my house for a good while and I've decided to upgrade vs sell it. The tank was painted but it had a few good scratches on the front. So I cleaned it all, scraped off the paint and drilled what was the "front" and basically only have 1 small scratch in the middle now. I built a 4' overflow so it's almost a coast to coast. I put it on top of my 75g for scale

Tomorrow I'm going to begin the swap and I hope to have it wrapped up this weekend. I think I skipped posting here about the 2 part BRS reactor I got last month as well. It was on a maxi jet but I plumbed it off the return line now and it's not in the picture.

mrbee2828 · May 1, 2013

kyle1284 said:
great man cave! I enjoied reading your thread... i do have ? though... where do you get the insulation for garage doors? how did you install? i have metal garage doors and similar to you i have a frag tank and a sump in the garage with the chiller and in Texas the chiller tends to run 18 Hrs a day. did you notice any change in the ability to hold constant tempature during hot days? did it help? How much did it cost?

Let's see, I guess I missed this, sorry. The insulation for the doors was from Home Depot I think. I want to say it was about $60 for each door? It comes with everything you need and took about a hour to do each door. It has adhesive plugs to hold the insulation to the door. It made about a 15Â° difference in the winter and only about a 5Â°-10Â° difference in the summer. I'm not sure how effective it will be in Texas. One thing I haven't finished and need to do asap is vent the chiller to the attic. It basically heats the garage and has to run all the time in June-July.

oceanparadise1 · May 1, 2013

That is one sweet freaking man cave my dude! Totally jealous!

mrbee2828 · May 1, 2013

Thanks guys

skinz78 · May 1, 2013

Looking real good, I want a man cave like yours!

nytegti · May 10, 2013

any update? you get the swap done this past weekend?

NY_Sea · May 10, 2013

great looking setup and great pictures. thanks for posting

mrbee2828 · May 17, 2013

So I haven't practiced what I preached over the last year or so and that's "don't do anything major to your tank before you go away". We planned our week vacation in Florida months ago and I had a buyer hot for my 75g the week before we planned to leave.

He wanted to buy it as soon as I broke it down if I could do it before we left. Of course he never called back and bought another tank. So it is with this hobby, but I had the 125 ready to go and so I started. Since it wasn't a 100% new setup and I had everything automated I felt ok about the switch. It took me about 4 days to swap everything out. I had most of the coral in 2 smaller tanks with heaters and an mp10 on each while I swapped out the tanks. The plumbing remained the same just about with only the chiller getting moved over a few feet.

I'll post more pictures later but here is the start to the new tank. I'm not sure what I'm doing with the middle but I am leaving it open for now with the thought of doing a red carpet anemone there. So some info on the switch:

I lost 2 fish, the last of 3 lyretails of which snapped and had killed the other 2 a monthback. I also lost the flame hawk. Both were strange loses considering live rock, flow, temp and old water was used on the "new" tanks for 3 days.
I've lost my cleaner and peppermint shrimp. Either that or they made it into another tank and I haven't seen them yet.
I burned my blue sponge up to almost nothing while I was gone. I had it up to high in the rush to get out of town.
My RBT is super [ tinkle ]ed/stressed. I'm not sure if it's going to pull through.
I have the power run under the stand now for the most part with individually switched strips. I hope to get a controller late this year.
I'm getting another radeon next month to replace the marazza p. I'm planning on mounting these on a solid, higher rack finally.
I'm going to go to a larger DC Reef Octopus skimmer this summer. Looking at a Diablo DCS 170 or 200.
Once the rock is out of the holding tank I'm going to divide that tank into a frag rack and fuge. The sump will get reworked AGAIN and probably not have a fuge area. This will reduce algae build up in the sump and in the skimmer without the lighting. I'm going to have a sock holder built in and a larger area for the skimmer.
I'm adding another 20g brute inline with the current brutes for larger water changes.

mrbee2828 · May 20, 2013

I picked up 2 colonies of bird's nest from a local guy Sunday and got them mounted this morning. Here are some step by steps for those of you who haven't done this before. I made the column with rods a few months back. Note the number of drill bits. I started very small and worked up to the plug size. Low RPM and no pressure. I just let the drillbit grind/sand out the rock which is fragile to begin with.

mrbee2828 · Jun 5, 2013

I got another radion last week but I've been super busy and haven't had the time to get it hung up. I did put together some plans for a new rack to weld up when I get some time over at my neighbor's.

mrbee2828 · Jun 24, 2013

Progress on the light rack over at my neighbor's who does hot rods on the weekends:

^ just tacked for the moment

I ordered a Reef Octopus Diablo XS 250 skimmer and a reeflo dart/snapper hybrid. Looks like they are both on back order though. I also got the 2" bulkhead and glass cutter for it off glass holes. I'm go to do something a little different on my new sump this time. Since I will only have the strainer for the return now I'll have the filter socks at the end of the line over top of the return area. This is going to lay in the front right of the tank for easy in and out. Right now the way I have the holding tank plumbed in it's a pain around the skimmer so I don't use my socks much anymore. I'm going to make an attempt to have a way for the water to get past the socks if they were to clog as well.

I'm also going to drill a 3rd drain hole on the holding tank. I'm thinking this will keep a lot of the detritus and bits of macro that break off out of my return as well. It's either this or kill the fudge 100%. The skimmer will take up 1/2 the tank at a 16" footprint.