Coral Bar build

[Ground Zero]

Hey guys, been wanting to document this build for some time now, I'm about three months in and aiming to have it all ready before the Reef Expo. Comments and suggestions welcome and Enjoy!

So I was at the Critter a few months back and saw these two damaged tanks for sale for a steal.

A pair of 67 gallon, 72x18x12 display tanks they ordered for the store but they arrived with broken center braces.

And the first thing that came to mind was this...

Coral bar

So I brought them home, and dang were they heavy!

you can see the crack in the closest one standing up

SO, got some plastic weld two part epoxy and and glued it up tight and I was off!

 

[Ground Zero]

Me and my two minions threw a couple of stands together in no time flat.

Brought them in and screwed them together.

 

[Ground Zero]

Added a floor and mixed up some of those Instant Ocean packets I had a million of

Got it all circulating and added some arag alive

Got the overlows and returns put together and started plumbing it all

put a 3/4" sheet of oak on the side, gonna wrap the rest of it the same as soon as I figure out where I'm putting doors... honestly, I really like it open.

and happy happy with some rock and frag racks and circulation.... just not much light.

tbc!

 

[Ground Zero]

a pic of the racks I made for the lower left side... oh yeah, the bottom tank is going to be all frags, still not sure what the focus of the top tank will be... thinking shallow reef right now, but I've also considered some sort of planted tank or volcano, or another frag tank... any other ideas?

plumbed up overflow and you can see the hanging rack running the length of the back wall.

Next stop, Petco for 90 bucks worth of glass
40b for a sump, 20L for a fuge and a 10 ... because there are never enough 10s

12 bucks worth of glass from Lowe's and a half tube of Silicon I had left over from my last sump build...

voila... sump.

 

[Ground Zero]

There are more baffles than the last pick shows, guess I just didn't take one of it finished before adding water.

shot of it circulating, figured I'd give it as much time to cycle and/or stabilize before April... been pretty stable so far.

tried these full spectrum LEDs... didn't have an even enough output for me.

OK... so to this point I'd only made one mistake, I made it too tall, when I framed the first stand out with the idea of housing the mini-fridge (it is a bar after all) it was just too tall to be comfortable. So I cut it back 8" and it was just right. I'm about to make another mistake, but we'll get to that.

I tied both the drains and returns together and put the valves where I wanted the controls to go, and was pretty happy with it all, except one fitting seized on me and threw one side off 1/8" ... I changed it later, drove me nuts.

Here's the upper tank lines ready to be tied in... had to clear away a bit of the vertical struts with a chisel to get all my drain plumbing out

 

[solar]

That is a nice setup!

 

[NeveSSL]

Awesome, Russ! I vote frag tank for the top.

Brandon

 

[Dowtish]

Really cool vision for these 2 tanks!

I did notice 2 cartons of API aquarium salt. Isnt that for disease treatment for freshwater fish?

 

[Ground Zero]

Thanks a bunch guys! More coming
and yes Chris, that's the stuff, but it was the right weight and height for holding my glass panes in my sump while they

 

[Ground Zero]

So here's that mistake I mentioned earlier, I got so happy tieing my plumbing together, I ran both my drain lines into one, rather than keeping them separate as I had planned. SO a tear out of that section is in my future. Also discovered the 1" doesn't have enough flow for just one tank, so going up to two 1.5" lines. Was hoping to minimize gurgle, but cut it a little too close to the bone.

added some temporary power and a Titanium 500w heater, you can see the thermostat module hanging there

picked up a Jebao 12000 dc... might have gone a little overboard there, lol Flow is NOT an issue.

Placed my sump and filled and mixed it, then I threw in some sand that a buddy gave me, nothing else I could think to do with it, white and black mix, doesn't look too bad actually. I ran the little carbon filter (you can see the arm sticking out over the water on it for a week, just to make sure it was good and clean and keep it moving.

 

[Ground Zero]

So this is about the time Joe came along with his awesome Apex group buy and poof! computerized reef bar.

I'm yet to figure out how to rotate pics on this forum.

probes just stuck in for the time being, they didn't stay here long.

Got the Jebao installed, 1.5" in and out... woof. and I filled the top tank and mixed it up.

that's the jebao power supply mounted to the front of that post.

 

[Ground Zero]

So I added in a little cable management to cut down on the clutter

mounted the Jebao controller, at least until I can get an Apex cable for it. You can also see the heater horizontal on the sump baffle

Added some spare live rock to the sump, since the tank is going to be pretty minimal. put in a temp sock holder to clear it up from the return pump blowing the sand around. Oh, and put the fridge in.

and a wider shot of the back. We're now up to about end of January. But I haven't taken many pics in the last month, so I'll have to get some more material before I can bring this build thread current.

 

[NeveSSL]

Looks good! I'd be leary of running that Jebao external, though. I don't think the manufacturer recommends it, either.

I have one on my setup running full bore and almost truly silent... check out the BeanAnimal drain if you've not already.

Brandon

 

[dwilliams87]

Sweet Build Man! Love the idea of a coral bar!

 

[schooleyosis]

Following...

Really cool idea and great progress so far.

 

[roadrashpaul]

Love this so far. You could do a frag tank on the bottom and a macro fuge with sea horses or something in the top. Personally I think that would be really cool.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Great job so far!

 

[TankedNTn]

Great Idea for those tanks. Looking good.

 

[Ground Zero]

Thanks guys, really appreciate the support.

Brandon
I've read about Jebao not being run exernal, but it's been very cool so far, I can barely feel any heat at all when I lay a hand on it. I thought about dunking it, but I'm trying to keep everything on the back side for easy maintance, since I'm still thinking about closing up the front.
The BeanAnimal overflow requires three drains right? my tanks only have one on each end.

Paul
that would be a huge fuge! I do like the idea though, I'm currently planning on using that 20L pictured above for a macro fuge and I'm considering two options right now, one is framing out a slot behind the fridge (below the lower tank right side), where the instant ocean box is in the pics and mounting the 20L there and doing a fuge that feeds back to the sump... but I'd really rather have a gravity feed for pods rather than sending them through the return pump. So the second idea I'm tossing around is mounting it above the bar, maybe on a bracket sticking out of the wall, with a hanging light fixture above and let it gravity feed down to the top and bottom tank... not ready for that one yet, still undecided.